"You were stupid, Kurtz," she said. "You even did time to help throw investigators off Gonzaga's track. It must amuse the shit out of him."
"I would have heard," said Kurtz.
"You didn't," said Angelina, knowing that time was up nowhis and hers. It had to go one way or the other. "No one heard. But I can prove it. Give me a chance. Call me and we'll set up a meeting.
I'll show you the proof and tell you how I can buy you indemnity from Stevie. And more important, how you can get to the Gonzagas."
There was a long pause of silence, broken only by the wind blowing in from the lake. It was very cold. Angelina felt her legs threatening to quiverfrom the cold, she hopedand forced them not to. Finally, Joe Kurtz said, "Take that top off."
She had to raise her eyebrows at that. "Not getting enough, Joe? Been hard to score since you screwed my sister?"
Kurtz said nothing, but gestured with the muzzle of the pistol.
Keeping her hands in sight, she tugged off the straps of the tiny headlamp and pulled the loose sweatshirt over her head, dropping it on the black pavement. She stood there only in her jogging bra, knowing that her nipples were more than visible as they pressed through the thin cotton. She hoped it distracted the hell out of Kurtz.
It didn't. With his free hand, Kurtz pointed to the wall of the underpass. "Assume the position." When she spreadeagled against the wall with her hands on the cold concrete, he approached warily and kicked her feet farmer apart. He tugged her Compact Witness.45 out of its holster and ran his hands quickly, professionally, down her front and thighs, pulling the cell phone from her pocket. He smashed the phone and put the Compact Witness in his peacoat pocket.
"I want that forty-five back," she said, speaking to the cold breath of the wall. "It has sentimental value. I shot my first husband in Sicily with it."
For the first time, there came something that might have been a human sounda dry chuckle? from Kurtz. Or maybe he was just clearing his throat. He handed her a cell phone over her shoulder. "Keep this. If I want to talk to you, I'll call you."
"Can I turn around?" said Angelina.
"No."
She heard him backing away and then there came the sound of a car starting. Angelina rushed to the opening of the tunnel in time to see an old Volvo disappearing along the footpath into the trees to the north.
She had time to put on her sweatshirt, tug on her headlamp, and slip the cell phone under her shirt before Marco and Leo came panting down the path, pistols drawn.
"What? What? Why'd you stop?" wheezed Leo while Marco swept the area with his pistol.
I should fire these shitheads , thought Angelina. She said, "Charley horse."
"We heard a car," panted Leo.
"Yeah, me too," said Angelina. "Big help you two would've been if it had been an assassin."
Leo blanched. Marco shot her a pissed look. Maybe I'll just fire Leo , she thought.
"You want a ride back?" asked Leo. "Or you gonna keep running?"
"With a charley horse?" said Angelina. "I'll be lucky to hobble to the car."
CHAPTER SIX
Kurtz had various telltales in his hotel to tell him if visitors were waiting, but these weren't called for this morning. The hotel was in a rough neighborhood and the local kids had already spray-painted Brubaker's unmarked Plymouth with the tag UNMRACKED CAR on the driver's sidespelling was not the local hoodlums' strong suitand PIGMOBILEthey had not planned their spacing wellon the passenger side. Something about the sound of «pigmobi» amused Kurtz.
The rest of the situation did not amuse him all that much. Brubaker and Myers rousted him about once every three weeks and, so far, they'd not caught him with a weapon, but when they didand the law of averages suggested they would have tohe'd be back in prison within twenty-four hours. Paroled felons in New York State were exempt from the God-given, Constitution-guaranteed, and redneck-worshiped right of every American to carry as much firepower as he wanted.
With his.40 S&W in one pocket and Angelina Farino Ferrara's cute but heavy little Compact Witness in the other, Kurtz went into the alley in back of his hotel and stashed both weapons behind some masonry he'd loosened himself two weeks earlier. The alley's resident winos and druggies were at the shelter or protecting their benches at this time of day, so Kurtz guessed that he might have a few hours before some scavenger would find his stash. If this roust took more than a few hours, he was screwed anyway and probably would not need the weapons.
Kurtz's residence hotel, the Royal Delaware Arms, had been a fancy place about the time President McKinley had been shot in Buffalo two turns of the century
ago. McKinley may have stayed here the night before he was shot as far as Kurtz knew. The hotel had been going downhill for the past ninety years and seemed to have reached a balance point somewhere between total decay and imminent collapse. The Royal Delaware Arms was ten stories tall and boasted a sixty-foot radio-transmission tower on its roof, pouring out microwave radiation day and night, lethal doses according to many of the hotel's more paranoid inhabitants. The tower was about the only thing on the premises that worked. Over the preceding decades, the hotel part of the building, the lower five floors, had gone from a workingman's hotel to flophouse to low-income housing center, and then back to residential flophouse. Most of the residents were on welfare, lithium, and/or Thorazine. Kurtz had convinced the manager to let him live on the eighth floor, even though the top three floors had been effectively abandoned since the 1970s. A loophole in the fire and building codes had not specifically prohibited the rooms from being rented or some idiot from renting oneliving up there amidst the peeling wallpaper, exposed lathing, and dripping pipesand that is exactly what Kurtz was doing. The room still had a door and a refrigerator and running water, and that was all Kurtz really needed. His roomtwo large, connected rooms, actuallywas on the alley-side corner and served not by one but by two rusting fire escapes. The elevator doors above the fifth floor had been sealed off, so Kurtz had to walk the last three floors every time he came or went. That was a small trade-off for the security of knowing when anyone had visited him and for the warning he would get when someone tried to visit him. Both Petie, the manager and day man on the counter, and Gloria, the night man on the counter, were paid enough each month to be trustworthy about ringing Kurtz on his cell phone if anyone unknown to them headed toward the elevator or stairs.