O'Toole took off her glasses again. "I've been thinking of using Mrs. DeMarco's services."
Kurtz had to blink at that. "For WeddingBells? To set up all the details of a wedding online?"
"Yes."
"Ten percent discount to personal acquaintances," said Kurtz. "I mean, you've met Arlene."
"I know what you meant, Mr. Kurtz." O'Toole put her glasses back on. "You still have a room at what is the hotel's name? Harbor Inn?"
"Yes." Kurtz's old flophouse hotel, the Royal Delaware Arms near downtown, had been shut down in July by the city inspectors. Only the bar of the huge old building remained open and the word was that the only customers there were the rats. Kurtz needed an address for the parole board, and the Harbor Inn served as one. He hadn't gotten around to telling O'Toole that the little hotel on the south side was actually boarded up and abandoned or that he'd leased the entire building for less than the price of his room at the old Delaware Arms.
"It's at the intersection of Ohio and Chicago Streets?"
"Right."
"I'd like to drop by and just look at it next week if you don't mind," said the parole officer. "Just to verify your address."
Shit , he thought. "Sure," he said.
O'Toole sat back and Kurtz thought that the short interview was over. The meetings had been getting more and more pro forma in recent months. He wondered if Officer O'Toole was becoming more laid back after the hot summer just past and with the pleasant autumn just winding downthe leaves on the only tree visible outside her window were a brilliant orange but ready to blow off.
"You seem to have recovered completely from your automobile accident last winter," said the parole officer. "I haven't seen even a hint of a limp the last few visits."
"Yeah, pretty much full recovery," said Kurtz. His "automobile accident" the previous February had included being knifed, thrown out of a third story window, and crashing through a plaster portico at the old Buffalo train station, but he hadn't seen any pressing need for the probation office to know the details. The cover story had been a pain for Kurtz, since he'd had to sell his perfectly good twelve-year-old Volvohe could hardly be seen driving around in the car he was supposed to have wrecked up on a lonely stretch of winter highwayand now he was driving a much older red Pinto. He missed the Volvo.
"You grew up around Buffalo, didn't you, Mr. Kurtz?"
He didn't react, but he felt the skin tighten on his face. O'Toole knew his personal history from the dossier on her desktop, and she'd never ventured into his pre-Attica history before. What'd I do ?
He nodded.
"I'm not asking professionally," said Peg O'Toole. "I just have a minor mysteryvery minorthat I need solved, and I think I need someone who grew up here."
"You didn't grow up here?" asked Kurtz. Most people who still lived in Buffalo had.
"I was born here, but we moved away when I was three," she said, opening the bottom right drawer of her desk and moving some things aside. "I moved back eleven years ago when I joined the Buffalo P.D." She brought out a white envelope. "Now I need the advice of a native and a private investigator."
Kurtz stared flatly at her. "I'm not a private investigator," he said, his voice flatter than his gaze.
"Not licensed," agreed O'Toole, evidently not intimidated by his cold stare or tone. "Not after serving time for manslaughter. But everything I've read or been told suggests you were an excellent P.I."
Kurtz almost reacted to this. What the hell is she after ?
She removed three photographs from the envelope and slid them across the desk. "I wondered if you
might know where this isor was?"
Kurtz looked at the photos. They were color, standard snapshot size, no borders, no date on the back, so they'd been taken sometime in the last couple of decades. The first photograph showed a broken and battered Ferris wheel, some cars missing, rising above bare trees on a wooded hilltop. Beyond the abandoned Ferris wheel was a distant valley and the hint of what might be a river. The sky was low and gray. The second photo showed a dilapidated bumper-car pavilion in an overgrown meadow. The pavilion's roof had partially collapsed and there were overturned and rusted bumper cars on the pavilion floor and scattered outside among the brittle winter or late-autumn weeds. One of the carsNumber 9 emblazoned on its side in fading gold scriptlay upside down in an icy puddle. The final photograph was a close-up of a merry-go-round or carousel horse's head, paint faded, its muzzle and mouth smashed away and showing rotted wood.
Kurtz looked at each of the photographs again and said, "No idea."
O'Toole nodded as if she expected that answer. "Did you used to go to any amusement parks around here when you were a kid?"
Kurtz had to smile at that His childhood hadn't included any amusement park visits.
O'Toole actually blushed. "I mean, where did people go to amusement parks in Western New York in those days, Mr. Kurtz? I know that Six Flags at Darien Lake wasn't here then."