"Your old man may have been a professional thief but you never steal anything, Joe," said Rigby King. "At least you never used to. Every other kid at Father Baker's, including me, would lift whatever we could, but you never stole a damned thing."
Kurtz said nothing to that. When he'd first known Rigbywhen they'd had sex in the choir loft of the Basilica of Our Lady of Victoryhe was fourteen, she was seventeen, and they were both part of the Father Baker Orphanage system. They didn't know their fathers, and Kurtz didn't think either one of them gave a shit.
"You never met your old man either, did you?" he asked now.
"I didn't then," said Rigby, pulling up to the curb by the Civic Center parking lot entrance. "I tracked him down after Thailand. He was already dead. Coronary. But I think he might have been an all right guy. I don't think he ever knew I existed. My mother was a heroin addict."
Kurtz, never the best at social niceties, guessed that there was probably a sensitive and proper response to this bit of news as well, but he had no interest in spending the effort to find it. "Thanks for the ride," he said. "You have my Pinto keys?"
Rigby nodded and took them out of her jeans pocket. But she held onto them. "Do you ever think about those days, Joe?"
"Which days?"
"Father Baker days. The catacombs? That first night in the choir loft? Blues Franklin? Or even the ten months in Thailand?"
"Not much," said Kurtz.
She handed him
the keys. "When I came back to Buffalo, I tried to look you up. Found out my second day on the job that you were in Attica."
"Modern place," said Kurtz. "They have visiting hours, mail, everything."
"That same day," continued Rigby, "I found out that you murdered that guytossed him onto the roof of a black and white from the sixth floorthe guy who killed your agency partner and girlfriend, Samantha something."
"Fielding," said Kurtz, stepping out of the vehicle.
The passenger window was down halfway, and Rigby leaned over and said, "We'll have to talk again about this shooting. Kemper wanted to brace you today, but I said let the poor bastard get some sleep."
"Kemper has a hard-on for me," said Kurtz. "You could have come and uncuffed me last night You both knew I didn't shoot O'Toole."
"Kemper's a good cop," said Rigby. Kurtz let that go. He felt stupid standing there holding his little brown-wrapped bundle of clothes like a con getting sent back out into the world.
But Rigby wasn't done. "He's a good cop and he feelshe knowsthat you're on the wrong side of the law these days, Joe."
Kurtz should have just walked awayhe even turned to do sobut then he turned back. "Do you know that, Rigby?"
"I don't know anything, Joe." She set the unmarked car in gear and drove off, leaving him standing there holding is brown-wrapped bundle.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
When he got in the blue Buick, Arlene said, "I see you got the Pinto back." It was parked behind the triangular building in its usual spot.
"Yeah," said Kurtz. He'd had some problems with the local project youth the first weeks he'd lived here, until he'd beaten up the biggest of the car-stripper gang and offered to pay the smartest one a hundred bucks a week to protect the vehicle. Since then, there'd been no problem, except that he'd already paid several times what the Pinto was worth.
Making a U-turn and heading back to the lights of the city center, Arlene tapped a sealed manilla envelope on the console between them. "That blowdried mob guy showed up with the package you said was coming."
"Did you open it?"
"Of course not," said Arlene. She lit a Marlboro and frowned at him.
He opened the envelope. A list of five names and dates and addresses. One guy and two of his family members. A woman. Another guy.
"Angelina Farino Ferrara hired me to look into who's been hitting some of their skag dealers and clients," said Kurtz. "Toma Gonzaga bumped into me this afternoon and offered me the same job, only to see who's been hitting his family's clients."
"Someone's been killing both Gonzaga and Farino heroin dealers?" Arlene sounded surprised.
"Evidently."
"I haven't heard about this on the Channel Seven Action News." Kurtz knew that Arlene was old enough to remember and miss Irv Weinstein and his if-it-bleeds-it-leads TV newsreels from long ago. All the day's carnage and corpses wrapped up in forty-five seconds of fast footage. Kurtz missed it, too.
"They've kept it quiet," said Kurtz.
"The families have kept it quiet?"
"Yeah."
"How the hell do you keep five murders quiet?"
"It's worse than that," said Kurtz. "Twenty-two murders counting Gonzaga's dealers and addicts."
"Twenty-two murders? In what time period? Ten years? Fifteen?"
"The last month, I think," said Kurtz. He tapped the envelope. "I haven't read their publicity handout here yet."
"Christ," said Arlene. She flicked ashes out the window.
"Yep."
"And you've agreed to dig around for them? As if you have nothing better to do?"
"They made me an offer I couldn't refuse," said Kurtz. "Both Gonzaga and the don's daughter are offering cash and other incentives."