"Providing set security."

Pruno made a sound that started as a laugh and soon turned into a cough. "Usual protection racket. Those movie guys eat it up. What about you, Joseph? Heard that the Mosque brothers were pronouncing fatwah on you, as if they knew what that meant."

Kurtz shrugged. "Most people know that the D-bros don't have the money for that. I'm not worried. Hey, Pruno—you know anything about some Farino trucks being knocked over?"

The haggard, bearded figure looked up from his bottle. "You working for the Farinos these days, Joseph?"

"Not really. Just doing what I used to do."

"What do you want to know about the trucks?"

"Who's hitting them. When is the next job due?"

Pruno closed his eyes. The light was coming up gray beyond the overpass, and illuminated the filthy, haggard face enough to remind Kurtz of carved wooden statues of Jesus he had seen in Mexico. "I think I heard something about a low-rent type named Doo-Rag and his boys fencing some cigarettes and DVD players after the last truck thing," said Pruno. "No one tells me about crimes in the planning stage."

"Doo-Rag the Blood?" said Kurtz.

"Yes. You know him?"

Kurtz shook his head. "There was a punk in D Block got shanked in the showers supposedly because he owed money to a young Blood named Doo-Rag. Supposedly this Doo-Rag played a season for the NBA."

"Nonsense," said Pruno, emphasizing both syllables. "Closest Doo-Rag got to the NBA was the public courts up at Delaware Park."

"Those are pretty good," said Kurtz. "Would a Blood like Doo-Rag take marching orders from an ex-Crip?"

Pruno coughed again. "Everyone is doing business with everyone these days, Joseph. It's the global economy. You ever see a brochure from any of those top Ivy League—type colleges the last ten years or so?"

"No," said Kurtz. "I haven't received too many of those." He knew that Pruno had been a college professor at one time.

"Diversity and tolerance," said Pruno and drank the last of his wine. "Tolerance and diversity. No mention of the canon, of the classics, of knowledge or learning. Just tolerance and diversity and diversity and tolerance. It paves the way for global e-commerce and personal empowerment." His rheumy eyes focused on Kurtz in the dim light. "Yes, Joseph, Doo-Rag and his street associates would take orders from an ex-Crip if it meant money. Then they'd try to kill the motherfucker. Which ex-Crip are we talking about?"

"Malcolm Kibunte."

Pruno shrugged and then began shivering again. "Didn't know Malcolm Kibunte was ever a Crip."

"You know of any arrangements between this Malcolm or Doo-Rag and the Farinos?"

Pruno coughed again. "Doesn't seem likely, since the Farinos are as racist as all the rest of the wiseguy families. To be more succinct, Joseph—no."

"Know where I can find Kibunte?"

"I don't. But I'll ask around."

"Don't be too obvious about it, Pruno."

"Never, Joseph."

"One more question. Do you know anything about a white guy that this Malcolm hangs around with?"

"Cutter?" Pruno's voice was quaking from the cold or withdrawal.

"That's his name?"

"That is what people know him as, Joseph. I know nothing else. I wish to know nothing else. A very disturbed individual, Joseph. Please stay clear of him."

Kurtz nodded. "You need to get to a shelter and at least get a decent blanket, Pruno. Some food. Spend some time with people. Don't you get lonely out here?"

"Numquam se minus otiosum esse, quam cum otiosus, nee minus solum, quam cum solus esset," said the junkie. "Are you familiar with Seneca, Joseph? I had him on your reading list."

"Haven't got that far yet, I guess," said Kurtz. "Seneca the Indian chief?"

"No, Joseph, although he was quite eloquent as well. Especially after we whites gave his people a 'gift' of blankets riddled with smallpox. No, Seneca the philosopher…" Pruno's eyes grew vague and lost.

"You want to translate for me?" said Kurtz. "Like old times?"

Pruno smiled. "That he was never less idle than when he was idle, and never less alone than when he was alone. Seneca attributed it to Scipio Africanus, Joseph."

Kurtz took his leather jacket off and set it on Pruno's lap.

"I can't accept this, Joseph."

"It was a freebie," said Kurtz. "Got it less than an hour ago. I've got a closet full of those things at home."

"Bullshit, Joseph. Absolute bullshit."

Kurtz tapped the old man on his bony shoulder and slid down the embankment. He wanted to get back to his warehouse before it was truly light.

The old, seven-story brick building had been built as an icehouse, then served as a warehouse through most of the twentieth century, then made money as a U-Store-It warehouse for a couple of decades with its grand old spaces broken up into a warren of cages and windowless cells. Most recently, it had been bought by a consortium of lawyers who were going to make a killing by converting it to expensive condo-lofts opening onto city views on the outside with interior mezzanines looking down into a fancy center atrium. The architect's prospectus had used Los Angeles's Bradbury Building, that favorite location interior for TV shows and films, as a template: clean brick, fancy ironwork, interior iron stairways and cage elevators, dozens of offices with frosted glass doors. Developers had begun the conversion: fencing off the entire structure, leaving the central section open as the atrium, adding rough mezzanines on the upper floors, adding an expensive skylight, knocking down some walls, cutting out some windows. But the loft market had slowed down, the gentrification had crept in the opposite direction, the lawyers' money had dried up, and now the warehouse sat alone except for the dozen other abandoned brick warehouses around it. The lawyers, ever optimistic, had left some of the construction materials at the fenced-off site in anticipation of getting back to work on it as soon as the consortium came into new funds.

Doc, the gun salesman/nightwatchman in Lackawanna, had mentioned the place to Kurtz. Doc had actually guarded the site for a while a year before, when hopes for the return of money and work were higher. Kurtz liked what he heard about it: electrical power had been restored for the upper two floors and the elevator, although the bottom floors were still a lightless, windowless maze of narrow corridors and metal cages walled off from the atrium. A private security service dropped by the place two or three times a week, but only to make sure that the fence was intact and the padlocks and chains secure.

Kurtz had cut through the fence at the least convenient part of the perimeter—back where the property ran along the rail lines—and had used the combination Doc had provided for the five-number padlock on the rear door. The window on that door had been conveniently broken before Kurtz first arrived, so it was no problem leaning out to click the padlock shut and scramble the combination.

Kurtz had approved of the place immediately. It wasn't heated—which would be a problem when the Buffalo winter arrived in earnest—but there was running water on the seventh floor for some of the construction sinks there. One of the three huge service elevators still worked, although Kurtz never took it. The sound it made reminded him of the monster's roar in the old Godzilla movies. There was a wide staircase off the front hallway that let light through thick glass blocks, a windowless interior stairway in the back, and two sets of rusting fire escapes. A few windows had been carved out on the top two floors, but no glass had been put in.

The bottom three floors were a lightless, littered mess except for the echoing atrium, which was a skylighted, littered mess. The atrium offered an avenue of retreat if one were bold enough to trust the scaffolding that ran up the interior all the way to the skylight. The consortium had just got to the sandblasting-interior-brick stage when the money ran out.