"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…"

"Dead," said Angelina.

"… or she'll wake but keep her mouth shut for a while."

"But it's a gunshot wound," said Angelina, meaning that the police would be informed straight from the emergency room and that a cop would be sent over to check it out.

"Yeah."

"Come spend the night in the penthouse," said Angelina. "I won't rape you."

"Another time," said Kurtz. He looked at the don's daughter. "Although I have to say, you do look ravishing."

Angelina Farino Ferrara laughed unselfconsciously and pushed her sweaty and gore-matted hair off her bloody forehead.

Kurtz knew as soon as he went through the front door of the Harbor Inn that someone had been there—perhaps was still there. He pulled the Browning. Then he went to one knee, laid the ditty bag on the floor, tugged on the night-vision goggles that he'd conveniently forgotten to give back to Baby Doc in the confusion, and clicked on the power. The glasses whined up and the dark foyer-restaurant glowed bright green and white in his vision.

The telltales were in place by the stairs and in the center of the main room, but that meant nothing. Kurtz could sense a movement of air that shouldn't be there—air that smelled of piss.

He searched all the ground floor rooms before going up the stairs with the Browning extended.

He found the taped circle of missing glass in the front window. Someone had destroyed all three of his video monitors, firing a slug into each of the CRTs. In his bedroom, someone had urinated on his mattress and pillows and thrown his clothing around the room. In his reading room, the same someone had used a knife on his repaired Eames chair, slashing the cushions beyond salvage. Most of the books had been thrown off the shelves and the bookcases had been tumbled over. His visitor had defecated on the Persian carpet.

Kurtz didn't have to wonder who it'd been—this wasn't quite the style of the local kids. He searched the rest of the building and discovered his backup pistol missing. The window to the fire escape was still partially open. He pushed it shut and reset the lock.

"Hope you had a good time, Artful Dodger," muttered Kurtz. He found some clean, dark clothes that hadn't been peed on, went in and took a shower—checking carefully for booby traps before turning on the water. He threw the borrowed clothes into a laundry bag along with the stuff his night visitor had urinated on. Then he cleaned up the poop in the library—feeling like one of those idiots whom he saw walking their big dogs in the park along the river, pooper scooper at the ready—dropped the whole mess—filthy clothes, baggy of feces, mattress, bed clothes, pillows, and Eames chair—into the Dumpster below the rear window. Then Kurtz washed his hands again and, fully dressed except for the Mephisto boots he'd decided to keep, curled up on his weight-press bench in the front second-floor room, set his mental alarm clock for seven A.M., and went instantly to sleep.

"My Yasein was working for the CIA."

Kurtz was at the breakfast table in Arlene's kitchen. The girl named Aysha was speaking. Arlene had explained in a whisper when she'd come to the door that she told the girl the truth—mostly—explaining to her that her fiancé had been killed in a Shootout at the Civic Center, probably while trying to assassinate a parole officer. But Arlene had let Aysha think that it had been Peg O'Toole who had returned fire with deadly effect.

"How do you know he was working for the CIA?" said Kurtz.

"He wrote to me about it. Yasein wrote to me every day."

"While you were in Canada?"

"Yes. I have been in Toronto for more than two months, waiting until Yasein could bring me into the United States of America."

"What did he tell you about working for the CIA?"

The girl sipped her tea. She seemed very calm, her large, brown eyes dry, her voice steady. "What do you want to know, Mr. Kurtz?"

"Did he give you any names? Tell you who approached him about working for the CIA?"

"Yes. His controller was code-named Jericho."

"Did he give Jericho's real name?"

"No. I am sure that Yasein did not know it. He wrote me that everyone in the CIA used code names only. Yasein's code name was 'Sparrow. "

Kurtz looked at Arlene, who was on her third Marlboro. "How did Jericho first contact Yasein?"

"He came into an… how do you say the word? Room in police headquarters where people are questioned?"

"Interrogation room?"

"Yes," said Aysha in her pleasant accent. "Interrogation room. Mr. Jericho came to see Yasein in the interrogation room when Yasein was arrested as an illegal immigrant and possible terrorist." She sipped her tea and looked at Arlene. "My Yasein was not a terrorist, Mrs. DeMarco."

"I know," said Arlene and patted the girl's arm.

Kurtz rubbed his aching head and raised his coffee cup, letting the steam from the coffee touch his face. He'd wakened at five with the mother of all headaches and gotten out of the Harbor Inn before the cops showed up. An anonymous call to Erie Medical Center hadn't even told him if Rigby was alive—they'd asked him repeatedly if he was family and tried to keep him on the line; Kurtz had left the pay phone quickly.

"So Yasein was taken into the Buffalo police headquarters?" asked Kurtz. "Or the federal building?"

"It was, as you say, federal," Aysha said carefully. "He wrote that it was Homeland Security people who detained him."

"FBI?"

The pretty young woman frowned. "I think not. But my Yasein was not proud of being detained, and he did not share all details."

"But this Jericho CIA guy first talked to him while he was in detention either at the Justice Center or FBI headquarters here in Buffalo?"

"I believe, yes. Yasein did write to say that he had been terrified—they arrested him on his way home from work, four men, put a black bag over his head, and drove him to the center where he was interrogated. He wrote that it had smelled like a large building—parking garage in the basement, a… what do you call a very quick and direct lift?"