She showed him a rear entrance, separate from the video store, steep stone steps, a steel-reinforced door opening onto the alley. Back in the basement, she went over and swung a bookcase out, revealing another door. She took a key out of her purse and unlocked the padlock on the door. It opened onto an empty underground parking garage.
"When this place was a real bookstore, they sold heroin out of the sci-fi section down here. They liked to have several exits."
Kurtz looked around and nodded. "Phone lines?"
"Five of them. I guess they had a lot of queries about their sci-fi."
"We won't need five," said Kurtz. "But three would be nice." He checked the electrical outlets in the floor and walls. "Yeah, tell Tommy this will do nicely."
"No view."
"That doesn't matter," said Kurtz.
"Not to you," said Arlene. "You won't be here much if it's like the old days. But I'll be looking at these basement walls nine hours a day. I won't even know what season it is."
"This is Buffalo," said Kurtz. "Assume it's winter."
He drove her to her townhouse and helped carry in the cardboard boxes with all of her personal stuff from the Kwik-Mart law offices. There wasn't much. A framed photo of her and Alan. Another photo of their dead son. A hairbrush and some other junk.
"Tomorrow we lease the computers and buy some phones," said Kurtz.
"Oh? With what money?"
Kurtz removed the white envelope from his jacket pocket and gave her $300 in fifties.
"Wow," said Arlene. "That'll buy the handset part of the phone. Maybe."
"You must have some money saved up," said Kurtz.
"You making
me a partner?"
"No," said Kurtz. "But I'll pay the usual vig on the loan."
Arlene sighed and nodded.
"And I need to use your car tonight."
Arlene got a beer out of the refrigerator. She did not offer him one. She poured some beer into a clean glass and lit a cigarette. "Joe, you know what all this car borrowing is going to do to my social life?"
"No," said Kurtz, pausing by the door. "What?"
"Not one damned thing."
CHAPTER 5
Miles was watching the falls from the American sidedecidedly inferior viewing to the Canadian sidebut necessary, since the two men Miles was meeting here probably could not cross into Canada legally. As with most native Buffalonians, Miles rarely paid attention to Niagara Falls, but this was the kind of public place where a lawyer might run into one of his clientsMalcolm Kibunte had been his clientand it was not too far from Miles's home on Grand Island. And Miles had little worry about running into any of the Farino Family or, more important to Miles, into any of his professional or social peers at the Falls on a workday afternoon.
"Thinking about jumping, Counselor?" came a deep voice from behind him as a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.
Miles started. He turned slowly to look at the grinning face and gleaming diamond tooth of Malcolm Kibunte. Malcolm still had a firm grip on Miles's shoulder, as if considering whether or not to lift the lawyer and throw him over the railing.
He would have, too, Miles knew. Malcolm Kibunte gave him the creeps, and his buddy Cutter actively scared him. Since Leonard Miles had spent much of the last three decades of his life around made men, professional killers, and psychotic drug dealers, he paid some attention to these anxieties. Looking at them both now, Miles did not know which man was stranger lookingMalcolm, the athletic six-foot-three black man with his shaved head, wrestler's body, eight gold rings, six diamond earrings, one diamond-studded front tooth, and ubiquitous black leather outfit, or Cutter, the silent, anorectic-looking near-albino, with his junkie eyes looking like holes melted through white plastic and long, greasy hair hanging down over his grubby sweatshirt.
"What the fuck you want, Miles, calling our asses all the way out here to this fucking place?" said Malcolm, releasing the lawyer.
Miles grinned affably, thinking, Jesus Christ, I defend the scum of the earth . In truth, he had never really represented Cutter. He had no idea if Cutter had ever been arrested. He had no idea what Cutter's real name was. Malcolm Kibunte was obviously an acquired name, but Miles had represented the big mansuccessfully, thank Godin two murder raps (one involving Malcolm's strangling of his wife), a cop shooting, a drug-ring bust, a statutory-rape case, a regular rape case, four aggravated-assault cases, two grand-larceny trials, and some parking violations. The lawyer knew that this did not make them good buddies. In fact, he thought again that Malcolm was precisely the type who would have tossed him over the falls on a whim if it weren't for two factors: (1) Miles worked for the Farino Family, and although the family was a pale shadow of its former self, they still commanded some respect on the street, and (2) Malcolm Kibunte knew that he would need Miles's legal skills again.
Miles led the way apart from the other tourists, motioned the other two to a park bench. Miles and Malcolm sat. Cutter remained standing, staring at nothing. Miles clicked open his briefcase and handed Malcolm a file folder.