Now Chippewa Street was the only happening place in the entire rotting corpus that was the greater Buffalo metropolitan area. If one never left this stretch of Chippewa Street one might be able to imagine that Buffalo, New York, was still a viable entity. For three entire, short city blocks, between Elmwood and Main, there was a heartbeat: lights, wine bars, nightclubs, limousines sliding to the curb, trendy restaurants, and pedestrians on the street after six P.M. After two A.M. as well, when the clubs let out. And a Starbucks. Kurtz thought that the
locals were inordinately proud of their Starbucks.
When Arlene had found the money for this office, Kurtz had stipulated only that it not be above a Starbucks. He hated Starbucks. The coffee was all rightKurtz didn't really pay attention to his coffee as long as it didn't have cockroaches or something worse floating in itbut whenever the Starbucks shops showed up, it meant that the neighborhood had gone to shitadmittedly, upscale to shituntil the area was just a Disney parody of itself.
Arlene had agreed to avoid that particular coffee haven, so here they were a block and a half east of and two stories higher than the Starbucks. But there were rumors that another one was coming in just across the street.
Now, as Kurtz went up the two flights of stairs to the third-floor office and in the door, he saw why Arlene had wanted to locate here. His secretary had first lost her teenage son to a traffic accident and then her husband to a heart attack while Kurtz had been in jail. Both of those males had been computer whizzes and Arlene was the best hackeror whatever the hell you called themin the family. She was still using access codes to files and funds for the Erie County District Attorney's office, and she hadn't worked there for five years.
But she worked too hard and smoked too much. Her only hobby was reading detective thrillers. This SweetheartSearch and WeddingBells-dot-com gig brought her into her officeeven though she could just as easily access the servers from her suburban Cheektowaga homeat all hours of the day, night, and weekends. Even at two A.M., Kurtz realized, the view out the big south-facing window just beyond her desk was full of lifelights and people below and traffic soundsjust as if they lived in a real.
He paused in the doorway. He wasn't sure how she'd react to his head wound, bandages, raccoon blood-mask, road rash, and devil's eyes.
"Hey," he said, walking past his cluttered desk to her immaculate one.
"Hey, yourself," said Arlene, tapping the keyboard, her eyes intent on the screen even while a Marlboro dangled from her lip. Smoke curled around her head and then drifted through the small screened window next to the big glass window.
Kurtz perched on the edge of the desk and cleared his throat.
She paused in the typing, flicked ashes, and looked at him from less than three feet away. "You're looking good, Joe. Lose some weight?"
Kurtz sighed. "Gail called you?"
Gail DeMarco, Arlene's sister-in-law and good friend, was a nurse in the pediatric ward of Erie County Medical Center where Kurtz had been handcuffed mere hours earlier.
"Of course she did," said Arlene. "She's only working mornings now because of Rachel and saw your name on the admissions list when she came in at eight. But by the time she got up to see you, you'd flown the coop."
Kurtz nodded.
"Besides," said Arlene, typing again, "the cops have already been here this morning hunting for you."
Kurtz took off the fedora and scratched his head above the bandages. "Kemper?"
"And a female detective named King."
Kurtz looked at her. He and Rigby had been over before he started up the agency with Sam and hired Arlene. And Sam hadn't known about Rigby. So Arlene couldn't know about her. Could she ?
Suddenly the floor and desk rose like a small boat on a broad swell. Kurtz took a breath and walked to his own desk, dropping into the swivel chair more heavily than he'd planned. He dropped the fedorablood on the sweatbandonto his desk.
Arlene stubbed out her cigarette and came over to stand next to him. Her fingers began pulling back the tape and bandages. He started to push her away, but his arm felt as if it were handcuffed again.
"Sit still, Joe."
She peeled away the crusted dressings. Kurtz bit his lip but said nothing.
"Oh, Joe," she said. Her fingers hurt him as they probed, but everything hurt him. It was just more noise amidst the jet roar.
"I think I can see the skull itself between these wide stitches," Arlene said calmly. "Looks like somebody took a chunk out of it. Nodon't touch. And don't movejust hold this tape here."
She tossed the bandage into his wastepaper basket. Kurtz noticed that the gauze was furred with hair as well as dried blood. She rooted in her lower left drawer and came out with the big first-aid kit that she'd always kept there, just as she'd always kept a.357 Ruger in the top right drawer.
Kurtz closed his eyes for moment while she painted the wound with something that burned like kerosene and then set fresh dressings in place, cutting strips of adhesive off the roll with her teem.