It could have been much worse. Brubaker and Hathaway had been friends, of sorts, and both were crooked cops, but Hathaway had been on the Farino pad and on the personal payroll of Maria Farino during her shortlived bid to take over her father's business. Hathaway had seen a chance to take out Kurtz and curry favor with Maria Farino, and it had almost worked for him. Almost. If Brubaker and Myers had been working directly for the Farinos or Gonzagas now, it could have been a short, bad morning for Joe Kurtz. At least now he knew for sure that the cops weren't totally in Ms. Angelina Farino Ferrara's pocket.

When Kurtz could finally stand, he staggered a few steps, opened the window, and vomited out into the alley. No reason to get his bathroom all messy. He'd cleaned it just a week or two before.

When he could breathe a little better and his stomach muscles had quit their spasms, Kurtz went to the refrigerator to get breakfast carrying the Miller Lite with him as he sprawled on the couch. He knew he had to get down to the alley to retrieve the two pistols, but he thought he'd rest a bit before doing that.

Ten minutes later, he flipped open his phone and called Arlene at the office.

"What's new, Joe? You're up early."

"I want you to do a deep data search for me," said Kurtz. "James B. Hansen." He spelled the last name. "He was a psychologist in Chicago in the early eighties. You'll find some newspaper articles and police reports from that period. I want everything you can get—everything—and a search of all James Hansens since then."

"All?"

"All," said Kurtz. "Cross-referenced to psychology journals, university faculties, crime database, marriage licenses, drivers' licenses, property transactions, the whole smash. And there's a triple murder and suicide involved in Chicago. Cross-check against all similar murder-suicides since then, using the crime database. Have the software search for common names, anagrams, factors, whatever."

"Do you know how much time and money this is going to cost us, Joe?"

"No."

"Do you care?"

"No."

"Should I use all of our computer resources?" Arlene's son and husband had been expert computer hackers and she had most of their tools at her disposal, including unauthorized e-mail drops and authority from her previous jobs as legal secretary—including one stint working for the Erie County district attorney. She was asking Kurtz whether she should break the law in requesting hies.

"Yes," said Kurtz.

He could hear Arlene sigh and then exhale cigarette smoke. "All right. Is this urgent? Should I push it ahead of today's Sweetheart Search?"

"No," said Kurtz. "It'll keep. Get to it when you can."

"I presume this isn't a Sweetheart Search client we're talking about, is it, Joe?"

Kurtz sipped the last of his beer.

"Is this James B. Hansen in Buffalo now?" asked Arlene.

"I don't know," he said. "Also, I need another check."

"Listening," said Arlene. He could imagine her with her pen and pad poised.

"John Wellington Frears," said Kurtz. "Concert violinist. He lives in New York, probably Manhattan, probably the Upper East Side. He probably doesn't have a criminal record, but I want everything you can get on his medical records."

"Shall I use all possible—"

"Yes," said Kurtz. Medical records were among the most closely guarded secrets in America, but Arlene's last job while Kurtz was in prison had been with a nest of ambulance chasers. She could ferret out medical records that the patient's doctor did not know existed.

"Okay. Are you coming in today? We could look at some office space I marked in the paper."

"I don't know if I'll be in," said Kurtz. "How's Wedding Bells coming?"

"Data-mining services are all lined up," said Arlene. "Kevin's waiting to get us incorporated. I've got the Website designed and ready to go. All I need is the money in the bank so I can write the check."

"Yeah," said Kurtz and clicked off. He lay on the couch for a while and gazed at the twelve-foot-wide waterstain on the ceiling. Sometimes it looked like some fractal imagery or a medieval tapestry design to Kurtz. Other times it just looked like a fucking waterstain. Today it was a stain.

Angelina Farino Ferrara hated eating shit for the Gonzagas. The «negotiations» all took place at the creepy old Gonzaga compound on Grand Island in the center of the Niagara River. This meant that Angelina and the Boys were picked up in one of Emilio Gonzaga's tacky white stretch limousines—the Gonzagas controlled most of the limousine services in Western New York—and driven across the bridge and through various checkpoints into the Grand Island fortress under the careful watch of Mickey Kee, Gonzaga's toughest killer. Once at the compound, more of Emilio's goons would pat them down and check them for wires before sitting the Boys down in a windowless vestibule and marching Angelina into one of the manse's many rooms as if she were a prisoner of war, which, in a real sense, she was.

The war hadn't been her doing, of course—nothing in the family business had been her doing for the past six years—but was a result of her brother Stephen's bizarre machinations to seize control of his own family business from behind bars in Attica. The housecleaning that Stevie had instigated—involving, Angelina knew, the murder of her conniving sister and useless father, although Stevie did not know that she knew—had also brought the Gonzagas into the Farino family business to the tune of a half-million dollars, most of it going to a hit man known only as the Dane, who had carried out the Hamlet-like last act for the don, Maria, and their double-dealing family consigliere at the time. The Gonzaga money had bought a sort of peace between the families—or at least a cease-fire with Stevie and the surviving members of the Farino family—but it also meant that tacit control of the Farino family was currently in the hands of their traditional enemies. When Angelina thought of the fat, fish-faced, blubbery-lipped, sweating pig-hemorrhoid that was Emilio Gonzaga determining the Farinos' destiny, she wanted to rip both his and her brother's heads off and piss down their necks.

"A pleasure to see you again, Angelina," said Emilio Gonzaga, showing his cigar-stained pig's teeth in what he undoubtedly thought was a seductive, debonair smile.

"So nice to see you, Emilio," said Angelina with a shy, self-effacing half-smile she had borrowed. from a Carmelite nun she used to drink with in Rome. If she and Emilio had been alone at that moment, with none of Gonzaga's bodyguards around, especially the dangerous Mickey Kee, she would have happily shot the fat don in the testicles. One at a time.

"I hope it is not too early for lunch," said Emilio, leading her into a dark-beamed, dark-paneled, window-less dining room. The interior furnishings looked as if they had been designed by Lucretia Borgia on a down day. "Something light," said Emilio, gesturing grandly to a table and a dark-wood sideboard groaning under the weight of large bowls of pasta, haunches of beef, fish whose eyes stared up plaintively, a stack of lobster glowing pink, three types of potatoes, entire loaves of Italian bread, and half a dozen bottles of heavy wine.

"Wonderful," said Angelina. Emilio Gonzaga held the black, high-backed chair for her while she took her place. As always, the fat man smelled of sweat, cigars, halitosis, and something faintly Cloroxy, like stale semen. She gave him her coyest smile again while one of his pigboy bodyguards pulled out his chair as he took his place at the head of the table, to her left.

They talked business while they ate. Emilio was one of those men—like former President Clinton—who liked to grin and talk and laugh with his mouth full. Another reason Angelina had fled to Europe for six years. But now she ignored the display, nodded attentively, and tried to sound smart but not too smart, agreeable but not a total pushover, and—when Emilio flirted—appropriately slutty but not a complete roundheels.