Dan Simmons - Hard Freeze

It was time to leave town for a while.

He'd called DeeDee in Hamilton, Ontario, telling her to get her cellulite ass down here to pick him up, but she couldn't get off work until after five and she griped about the storm coming in off the lake, so there was no way that Rafferty was going to wait for her. He'd had the nurse call him a cab and he was going to get to Lockport, pack the things he needed—including the.357 Magnum he'd bought after that asshole Kurtz threatened him—and then he was going to take a little vacation. Rafferty was sorry that Rachel had gotten hurt—he didn't mean the kid harm—but if she did have a setback and failed to pull through, well, hell, that was one way to be sure that she wouldn't change her mind and rat him out to the authorities again. All he'd wanted was a little feel, a touch, maybe a blow job from the kid; it wasn't like he was going to take her virginity from her or anything. She had to grow up sooner or later. Or maybe not.

An orderly came into the lounge and said, "Your cab is here, Mr. Rafferty."

He tried to stand but the nurse he didn't like shook her head and he settled back into the wheelchair. "Hospital policy," she said, wheeling him out under the overhang. Big deal, hospital policy, thought Rafferty. They make sure you stay in the wheelchair until you're out of the building and then you're on your own. You can go home and die that day as far as they're concerned. Tough titty.

The cabdriver didn't even get out to open the door or to help Rafferty into the back seat. Typical. The ugly nurse steadied him with one hand while Rafferty struggled out of the wheelchair, his injured wrist hurting like hell and his head spinning. The concussion was worse than he'd thought. He collapsed into the seat and took some deep breaths. When he turned around to tell the nurse that he was okay, she'd already turned away and pushed the chair back into the hospital. Bitch .

For a second, Rafferty considered telling the driver to drop him off at one of his favorite bars, maybe the one on Broadway. A few drinks would probably help more than these wimpy Tylenol Threes they'd grudgingly given him. But then Rafferty thought better of it. First, it was snowing like a bastard, and if he waited too long, the goddamn roads would be closed. Second, he wanted to get his stuff and be ready when DeeDee got there. No time to waste.

"Lockport," he told the driver. "Locust Street. I'll tell you which house to stop at."

The driver nodded, hit the meter, and pulled away into the falling snow.

Rafferty rubbed his temples and closed his eyes for a minute. When he opened them, the taxi had pulled onto the Kensington but was going in the wrong damned direction, toward the downtown instead of east and then north. Fucking idiot , Rafferty thought through his headache. He rapped on the bulletproof glass and slid the open partition wider.

The driver turned. "Hello, Donnie," said Kurtz.

Hansen was driving to the Royal Delaware Arms to plant the.38 in Kurtz's room when his cell phone rang. He considered not answering it—the life of Captain Robert Millworth was effectively at an end—but decided that he'd better respond; he didn't want people at the precinct to notice his absence for at least twenty-four hours.

"Hansen?" said a man's voice. "James B. Hansen?"

Hansen was silent but he had to pull the Escalade to the side of the road. It was Joe Kurtz's voice. It had to be.

"Millworth then?" said the voice. The man went on to name a half dozen of Hansen's other former personae.

"Kurtz?" Hansen said at last. "What do you want?"

"It's not what I want, it's what you might want."

The shakedown , thought Hansen. All this has been leading up to the shakedown . "I'm listening."

"I thought you might. I have your briefcase. Interesting stuff. I thought you might like it back."

"How much?"

"Half a million dollars," said Kurtz. "Cash, of course."

"Why do you think I have that much cash around?"

"I think the two hundred K I liberated from your safe today was just the tip of the iceberg, Mr. Hansen," said Kurtz. "A lot of the people you've been posing as earned a lot of money—a stockbroker, a Miami realtor, a plastic surgeon, for Christ's sake. You have it."

Hansen had to smile. He'd hated the thought of leaving Kurtz and Frears behind him, alive. "Let's meet. I have a hundred thousand in cash with me right now."

"So long, Mr. Hansen."

"Wait!" said Hansen. The silence on the line showed that Kurtz was still there. "I want Frears," said Hansen.

The silence stretched. "That would cost another two hundred thousand," Kurtz said at last.

"All I can get in cash is three hundred thousand."

Kurtz chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound. "What the hell. Why not? All right, Hansen. Meet me at the abandoned Buffalo train station at midnight."

"Midnight's too late—" started Hansen, but Kurtz had disconnected.

Hansen sat for a minute by the curb, watching the Escalade's wipers bat away the falling snow, trying to think of nothing, allowing the neutral Zen state to fill his mind. It was impossible to clear this noise, these events—they kept falling on him like the snow. Hansen had not played tournament chess for years, but that part of his mind was fully engaged. Frears and Kurtz—he had to think of them as a unit, partners, a single opponent with two faces—had made this chess game interesting, and now Hansen had the option of walking away and always remembering the pieces frozen in mid-play, or the option of clearing the chessboard with his forearm, or of beating them at their own game.

So far, the Frears-Kurtz team had been on the attack even when Hansen had thought he was playing offense. Somehow, they had stumbled upon his current identity—probably John Wellington Frears's contribution to the game—and their moves after that had been predictable enough. The robbery of his home to obtain the evidence had been shocking, though obvious enough in retrospect. But they had not yet gone to the police. This meant one of three endgames had to be in play—A) Frears-Kurtz wanted to kill him; B) Kurtz was actually double-crossing his partner to carry out the blackmail and might actually tell Hansen of Frears's whereabouts if he was paid; or C) Frears-Kurtz wanted him dead and wanted the blackmail money.

From what Hansen remembered of John Wellington Frears, the black man was too civilized for his own good. Even twenty years of stewing about his daughter's death probably had not prepared Frears for murder; he would always opt for turning Hansen in to the proper authorities. Hansen also remembered that the violinist had used the phrase "proper authorities" frequently back during their political discussions at the University of Chicago.

So that left Kurtz. The ex-convict must be running the show now, overriding Frears's protests. Perhaps Kurtz had made contact with the Farinos for help. But James B. Hansen knew how limited the Farino Family clout was in this new century—almost nonexistent with the old don dead, the core of the Family scattered, and the drug addict Little Skag locked up in Attica. There were intelligence reports of a few new people being recruited for the Farinos, but they were middle-management people: numbers runners, a few bodyguards, accountants—no real muscle to speak of. Which left only the Gonzagas as a power in Buffalo.

Kurtz had demanded half a million dollars, with a bonus for Frears, which was certainly enough to get the Farinos involved on spec, but Hansen suspected that Kurtz was too greedy to spread the money out. Perhaps this Farino daughter, Angelina, was giving Kurtz some logistical support without knowing the whole situation. That seemed probable.