Dan Simmons - Hard Freeze

Donald Rafferty took a step back on the slippery parking lot. It was snowing again. "What the fuck do you want, Kurtz?"

"I want you to stop drinking on days that you drive Rachel anywhere," Kurtz said. His voice was very soft but very firm.

Rafferty actually laughed, despite his nervousness. "Rachel? Don't tell me that you give a flying fuck about Rachel. Fourteen years and you never so much as sent the kid a fucking card."

"Twelve years," said Kurtz.

"She's mine," slurred Rafferty. "Courts said so. It's legal. I was Samantha's husband, ex-husband, and Samantha meant for me to have her."

"Sam didn't mean for anyone except Sam to take care of Rachel," said Kurtz, taking another step toward Ran Rafferty took three steps back toward the bar.

"Sam didn't plan on dying," said Kurtz.

Rafferty had to sneer at that. "She died because of you, Kurtz. You and that fucking job." He found his keys and threaded them through his fingers, making a fist. Anger was mixing with fear now. He could take this sonofabitch. "You here to cause trouble, Kurtz?"

Kurtz's gaze never left Rafferty's.

"Because if you are," continued Rafferty, his voice getting stronger and louder now, "I'll tell your parole officer that you're harassing me, threatening me, threatening Rachel… twelve years in Attica, who knows what filthy tastes you've acquired."

Something flickered in Joe Kurtz's eyes then, and Rafferty took four quick steps backward until he could almost touch the door to the bar. "You give me any shit, Kurtz, and I'll have you back in jail so fast that—"

"If you drive Rachel again when you're drunk," Kurtz interrupted softly, "I'll hurt you, Donnie." He took another step and Rafferty opened the bar's door in a hurry, ready to rush inside where the bartender—Carl—could pull the sawed-off shotgun out from under the counter.

Kurtz did not look at Donald Rafferty again. He brushed past him and walked down Broadway, disappearing in the heavily falling snow.

Kurtz sat in the smoky gloom of Blues Franklin and thought about Pruno's information on Angelina Farino and what it might mean. And he thought about the fact that he had been followed to the Blues Franklin by two homicide detectives in an unmarked car. It wasn't the first time they'd tailed him in recent weeks.

Blues Franklin, on Franklin Street just down from the Rue Franklin Coffeehouse, was the second-oldest blues/jazz dive in Buffalo. Promising talent tended to appear there on their way up and then reappear without much fanfare when they were serious headliners. This evening, a local jazz pianist named Coe Pierce and his quartet were playing, the place was half-filled and sleepy, and Kurtz had his usual small table, in the corner as far from the door as possible, his back to the wall. The nearby tables were empty. Occasionally the proprietor and chief bartender, Daddy Bruce Woles, or his granddaughter Ruby would come over to chat and see if Kurtz wanted another beer. He didn't. Kurtz came for the music, not for the booze.

Kurtz did not really expect Pruno's friend, Mr. John Wellington Frears, to show. Pruno seemed to know everyone in Buffalo—of the dozen or so street informants Kurtz had used back when he was a P.I., Pruno had been the gem of the lot—but Kurtz doubted if any friend of Pruno's would be sober enough and presentable enough to make it to Blues Franklin.

Angelina Farino . Other than Little Skag—Stephen or Stevie to family members—she was the only surviving child of the late Don Farino. Her older sister, the late Maria Farino, had been a casualty of her own ambition. Everyone Kurtz knew believed that older sister Angelina had been so disgusted by the Family business that she had removed herself to Italy more than five years earlier, presumably to enter a convent. According to Pruno, this was not quite accurate. It seems that the surviving Ms. Farino was more ambitious than her brothers or sister and had gone back to study crime with the family in Sicily even while getting a master's degree in business administration from a university in Rome. She also got married twice while there, according to Pruno—first to a young Sicilian from a prominent La Cosa Nostra family who managed to get himself killed, then to an elderly Italian nobleman, Count Pietro Adolfo Ferrara. The information about Count Ferrara was sketchy—he may have died, he may have retired, he may still be in seclusion. He and Angelina may have divorced before she returned here, but perhaps they had not.

"So our local mobster's kid is really Countess Angelina Farino Ferrara?" Kurtz had asked.

Pruno shook his head. "It appears that whatever her marital status might be, she did not acquire that title."

"Too bad," said Kurtz. "It sounds funny."

Upon returning to the United States a few months earlier, Angelina had worked as a liaison for Little Skag in Attica, paying off politicians to ensure his parole in the coming summer, selling the white elephant of the family house in Orchard Park and buying new digs near the river, and—this was the part that floored Kurtz—opening negotiations with Emilio Gonzaga.

The Gonzagas were the other second-tier, has-been, wise-guy family in Western New York, and the relationship between the Gonzagas and the Farinos made Shakespeare's Capulets and Montagues look like kissing cousins.

Pruno had already known about the Three Stooges' contract on Kurtz. "I would have warned you, Joseph, but word hit the street late yesterday and it seems she met with the unlucky trio only the day before."

"Do you think she was acting on Little Skag's instructions?" asked Kurtz.

"That is the speculation I hear," said Pruno. "Rumor is that she was reluctant to pay for the contract… or at least reluctant to hire such inept workmen."

"Lucky for me she did," said Kurtz. "Skag was always cheap." Kurtz had sat in the windy packing crate, observing the ice crystals in the air for a silent minute. "Any word on who they'll send next?" he asked.

Pruno had shaken his oversized head on that grimy chicken neck of his. The old man's hands were shaking in a way that was obviously due more to need for an overdue injection of heroin than to the cold air. For the thousandth time, Kurtz wondered where Pruno found the money to support his habit.

"I suspect that the next time, they will invest more money," Pruno said glumly. "Angelina Farino is rebuilding the Farino Family's muscle base, bringing in talent from New Jersey and Brooklyn, but evidently they don't want to have the reemerging Family tied to this particular hit."

Kurtz said nothing. He was thinking about a European hit man known only as the Dane.

"Sooner or later, however, they will remember the old axiom," said Pruno.

"Which one's that?" Kurtz expected a torrent of Latin or Greek. On more than one occasion, he'd left the old man and his friend Soul Dad alone to hash out their arguments in classical languages.

"'If you want a thing done right, do it yourself, " said Pruno. He was glancing at the door of the shack, obviously eager for Kurtz to leave.

"One last question," said Kurtz. "I'm being followed off and on by two homicide cops—Brubaker and Myers. Know anything about them?"

"Detective Fred Brubaker has—in the argot of our time—a major hard-on for you, Joseph. He remains convinced that you were responsible for the demise of his friend and fellow shakedown artist, the late and totally unlamented Sergeant James Hathaway from Homicide."

"I know that," said Kurtz. "What I meant was, have you heard anything about Brubaker tying up with one of the families?"

"No, Joseph, but it should be just a matter of time. Such an association was a major source of income for Detective Hathaway, and Brubaker was always sort of a dull-witted understudy to Hathaway. I wish that I had more optimistic news for you."