"We're going to throw you out the goddamned door if you don't answer our questions better," shouted Gonzaga.
"We'll take you to a hospital with Rigby," said Kurtz. "Just tell us who the federal connections were and why they"
"Do you know the irony?" interrupted Colonel Trinh, smiling suddenly. "The irony was that Major O'Toole and I are retired we only came back to New York because of the SEATCO stockholders' meeting and because Michael wanted to see his niece."
The colonel shook his head, still smiling, and then deliberately pitched over to his left.
Gonzaga and Angelina grabbed at the man's legs and boots, but before they could get a grip, he was gone, out the black door, whipped away and down by wind and gravity.
"Oh, fuck," said Angelina Farino Ferrara.
"That's better!" shouted Baby Doc from the front. "Now someone get up here in the copilot's seat and help me trim this pig."
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
They took the extra SUV that Campbell had driven to Gonzaga's compound and tossed his body in the back. Dr. Tafer and Kurtz carried Rigby to it on a litter, sliding her onto the flat floor left after all the seats were folded away. Then Tafer drove off with Baby Doc's men, Gonzaga had driven away with Bobby and his crew, and Baby Doc himself had lifted the Long Ranger off with a roar of turbines amidst a hurricane of Utter.
Kurtz had grabbed the keys and gone around to the SUV's driver's door, but Angelina had swung up first. "I'll drive," she said. "You stay in the back
with Ms. Cellulite. I'll send somebody for the other vehicle."
He had jumped in the back, propping Rigby's head on his leg. Tafer had put her on a second unit of plasma and she was unconscious from the morphine. The Yemeni doctor had warned that she was in shock and in bad shape from loss of blood.
They were only a couple of miles from the Erie County Medical Center. For once , Kurtz thought, he'd planned ahead .
"We can't carry her in, you know," called Angelina from the front. She was driving carefully, staying under the speed limit and stopping for lights even when the intersection was dark and empty. Kurtz smiled to himself when he thought of what a haul it would be for the policeman who pulled them over for speedinga wounded cop, a dead thug, a cache of stolen night-vision gear and automatic weapons, with a bloody, female Mafia don driving.
"I know," said Kurtz. "We'll drop her at emergency. I trust this truck isn't registered and the plates are bogus."
"Totally," said Angelina. "This thing will be in a chop shop before sunrise."
They drove in silence for a block or two. It was about two-forty-five in the morning. The time, Kurtz knew from experience, when human beings held their least firm grip on life. Rigby was cold to the touch and she looked dead. Kurtz used three fingers to find the pulse in her neckit was hard to find.
"Well," said Angelina, "you sure provided Toma and me with a bonding experience, just like you promised."
Kurtz had nothing to say to that. He looked out at the dark buildings going bythey'd just crossed Delavan and were within a couple of blocks of the hospital.
"This third party that Trinh was talking about before he took a header," said Angelina. "Did you ever consider that it might be Baby Doc? That he's been working both sides against the middle?"
"Yeah."
"If it is, we just paid the son of a bitch three quarters of a million dollars to help him take over a drug ring he's been trying to take over for years."
"Yeah," said Kurtz. "But it's not Baby Doc."
"How do you know?"
"I just know," said Kurtz.
They pulled up the emergency room drive. Kurtz kicked the back doors of the SUV open, pulled the IV needle, lifted Rigby out, and laid her on the wet concrete. Angelina laid on the truck's horn. Kurtz was inside and they were driving off at high speed just as the first nurses and orderlies came out the automatic doors.
"Think she'll make it?" asked Angelina. She swung the truck up onto the Kensington Expressway. No one was giving chase.
"How the fuck do I know?"
The bodyguard's body rolled against Kurtz as the SUV took the turn toward downtown. Kurtz crawled up into the passenger seat. "Where does Campbell go? Another chop shop?"
"More or less."
"Then why bring him back?"
"Leave no man behind or somesuch macho shit, right?" Angelina looked at him. "You in love with the cop, Joe?"
Kurtz rubbed his temples. "You going back to the Towers?"
"Where else?"
"Good. My Pinto's there."
"You're not going back to your Harbor Inn dump, are you?"
"Where else?"
"Do you have any idea what's going to happen when they ID your girlfriend back there?"
"Yeah," Kurtz said tiredly. "Buffalo P.D.'s going to go apeshit. And Rigby's partner, a hard-on named Kemper, is going to go more apeshit than the rest. I'm pretty sure Rigby told him that she was going to be with me yesterday, so he'll send black-and-whites out to pick me up as soon as he hears."
"And you're still going back to your place?" Kurtz shrugged. "I think we've got a few hours. There was no ID on Rigby and she'll either be unconscious for hours or"