"When my husband left me," said Rigby, "I moved back to Buffalo and joined the force. That was about four years ago."

"I heard you had a little boy," said Kurtz.

"I guess you heard wrong," said Rigby, her voice fierce.

Kurtz held up both hands. "Sorry. I heard wrong."

"I never knew my father, did you?" said Rigby.

"You know I didn't," said Kurtz.

"But you told me once that your mother told you that your father was a professional thief or something."

Kurtz shrugged. "My mother was a whore. I didn't see much of her even before the orphanage. Once when she was drunk, she told me that she thought my old man was a thief, some guy with just one name and that not even his own. Not a second-story guy, but a real hardcase who would set up serious jobs with a bunch of other pros and then blow town forever. She said he and she were together for just a week in the late sixties."

"Must have been preparing for some heist," said Rigby.

Kurtz smiled. "She said that he never wanted sex except right after a successful job."

"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 Rigby—when they'd had sex in the choir loft of the Basilica of Our Lady of Victory—he 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 guy—tossed him onto the roof of a black and white from the sixth floor—the 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 feels—he knows—that you're on the wrong side of the law these days, Joe."

Kurtz should have just walked away—he even turned to do so—but 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.

Arlene arrived right at nine-thirty. Kurtz was waiting outside the Harbor Inn. The wind blowing in from the lake to the west was cold and smelted like October. Weeds, newspapers, and small debris blew across the empty industrial fields and skittered by Kurtz's feet.

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."

Arlene squinted at him through the cigarette smoke. She knew Kurtz almost never made movie jokes or references, and never Godfather jokes. "Joe," she said softly, "I don't mean to meddle, but I don't think that Angelina Farino has ever had your best interests at heart."

Kurtz had to smile at that. "There's the Civic Center garage," he said. "Do you have an idea how we're going to get in?"

"Did you get any sleep this afternoon?" She pulled up to the curb and parked.

"Some." He'd dozed for about an hour before his headache woke him.

"I brought some Percocet." She rattled the prescription bottle.

Kurtz didn't ask or want to know why she was carrying Percocet. "I took a couple of aspirin," he said, waving away the bottle. "I'm still curious about how we're going to get in. The place is closed up pretty tight at night. Even the parking garage has that metal-mesh screen that has to be raised from the inside."

Arlene held up her big, briefcase-sized purse as if that explained everything. "We're going in through the front door and the metal detectors. If you're carrying a gun, leave it out here."

"Help you?" grunted the guard by the metal detectors. One of the front doors had been unlocked, but it led only into this large foyer.