Now Angelina Farino Ferrara was trying to use Kurtz to kill Gonzaga. Kurtz hated being used more than almost anything in the world, but in this situation, the woman had leverage over him. He had done his eleven and a half years in Attica for the killing of Sam's murderers with some patience because it had been worth it—Samantha Fielding had been his partner in every way—but now those years were shown to be worthless. If it had been Emilio Gonzaga who put the hit on Sam, then Gonzaga had to die. And die soon, since Gonzaga would be taking over the Farino Family by the end of summer, which would make him all but invulnerable.

If Angelina really wanted Kurtz dead now, all she had to do was tell Gonzaga. There would be fifty button men on the street in an hour.

But she had her own agenda and timeline. That's why Kurtz was allowing himself to be used by her. Gonzaga's death would suit both their purposes—but then what? A woman could not become don. Little Skag would still be the heir apparent of what was left of the once-formidable Farino family, although without the Gonzaga judge and parole-board connections, Little Skag might be cooling his heels in maximum security for more years to come.

Was that Angelina's plan? Just to keep Little Skag in prison while she eliminated her rapist, Emilio Gonzaga, and tried to consolidate some power? If so, it was a dangerous plan, not just because Gonzaga's wrath would be terrible if an assassination failed, but because the other families would intervene eventually—almost certainly at Angelina's expense—and Little Skag had already shown a willingness, actually an eagerness, to whack a sister.

But if she could blame Gonzaga's murder on this loose cannon, this non-made-guy, this madman Joe Kurtz—This scenario seemed especially workable if Joe Kurtz was dead before Little Skag's killers or the Gonzaga Family or the New York families' people caught up to him.

Joe Kurtz's strength might be survival, but he was having increasing difficulty in seeing how he could do everything he had to do and still survive this mess.

And then there was this Frears and James B. Hansen thing. And Donald Rafferty. And Arlene's need for another $35,000 to expand their on-line business.

Suddenly, Kurtz had a headache.

"Did you bring the thirty-five thousand for Wedding Bells dot com?" asked Arlene when Kurtz came in the door.

It was late morning. Brubaker and Myers had followed him from the Royal Delaware Arms and were out there now—Brubaker in the unmarked car at the end of the alley, watching the back door, Myers on the street in front, watching the entrance to the abandoned video store upstairs.

"Not yet," Kurtz said. "Did you have Greg bring Alan's old Harley down this morning?"

Arlene nodded and gestured with her right hand. Cigarette smoke spiraled. "I'm more interested in finding a new office anyway. Do you have time today?"

"We'll see." Kurtz looked at the stack of files and empty Express Mail packages on his desk.

"I got them about an hour ago," said Arlene. "The Hansen file from the Frears murder in Chicago, the Atlanta thing that had exactly the same M.O., and the ones from Houston, Jacksonville, Albany, and Columbus, Ohio. The other four haven't arrived yet."

"You read them?"

"Looked through."

"Find anything?"

"Yes," said Arlene. She batted ashes. "I bet we're the only ones ever to look at all these family murders together. Or any two of them together, for that matter."

Kurtz shrugged. "Sure. The local cops all saw it as a local nut-case family murder—and they had the killer's corpse in the burned house. Each case open and shut. Why compare it to other cases they don't even know about?"

Arlene smiled. Kurtz hung up his coat, shifted the holstered.40 S&W on his waistband, and settled in to read.

Five minutes later he had it.

"The dentist," he said. Arlene nodded.

In each of the murder-suicides, identification of the killer's burned body was made through tattoos, jewelry, an old scar in the Atlanta case—but primarily through dental records. In three of the cases—the Chicago Frears/Hansen case, the Atlanta Murchison/Cable murders, and the Albany Whittaker/Sessions killings—the killer's dentist was from Cleveland.

"Howard K. Conway," said Kurtz.

Arlene's eyes were bright. "Did you see the dentists' signatures in the other cases?"

It was Kurtz's turn to nod. Different names. But all from Cleveland. And the handwriting was the same. "Maybe our Dr. Conway is just the dentist to psychopaths around the country. Probably was Ted Bundy's dentist."

"Uh-huh." Arlene stubbed her cigarette out and came over to Kurtz's desk. "What about the other I.D. factors? The tattoo in the Hansen killings? The scar in the Whittaker case?"

"My guess is that Hansen finds his replacement for the fire first—some street person or male hooker or something—kills him, stores the body, and then decorates himself accordingly. If they have a tattoo, he sports a fake one. Whatever. It's just a few months."

"Jesus."

"I'll need his current—" began Kurtz.

She handed him a three-by-five card with Dr. Howard K. Conway's business address on it. "I called this morning and tried to make an appointment, but Dr. Conway is semiretired and isn't accepting new patients. A younger man answered the phone and shooed me away. I found listings for Dr. Conway going back to the early fifties, so the guy must be ancient."

Kurtz was looking at the photographs of the murdered girls. "Why would Hansen leave Conway alive all these years?"

"I guess it's easier than getting a new dentist all the time. Plus, the dental records are probably all older than whatever identity Hansen—whatever his name is—is using at the time. It'd be weird, something even local cops would notice, if their killer only had dental records a few months old."

"And it's not weird that someone living in Houston or Albany or Atlanta goes to a Cleveland dentist?"

Arlene shrugged. "The nut cases all moved from Cleveland in the past year or two. No reason for local homicide cops to red-flag that."

"No."

"What are you going to do, Joe?" There was an edge to Arlene's voice that he had rarely heard when he had been a P.I.

He looked at her.

"Come here often?" said Kurtz.

Angelina Farino Ferrara just sighed. They were working in the weight room today, and the Boys were outside on the treadmills.

Kurtz and Arlene had chosen the video-store basement for their office because it was cheap and because it had several exits: back door to the alley, stairway door to the now-defunct video store upstairs, and side door to the condemned parking garage next door. The drug dealers who had owned the place when it was a real bookstore had liked all those exits. So did Kurtz. It had come in handy when he'd left half an hour ago.

Arlene's late husband's Harley had been parked on the dark lower level, just beyond the metal door. Greg had left a helmet on the handlebars and the keys in the ignition. Kurtz had straddled the machine, fired it up, and weaved his way up ramps and out of the basement of the empty parking garage, snaking by the permanent barricade on Market Street that kept cars out. Detective Brubaker presumably still had been on watch on the alley side, and Detective Myers on the street side, but no one was watching the Market Street garage exit. Taking care on the snowy and icy streets, reminding himself that he'd not been on a bike for fifteen years or more, Kurtz had ridden to the health club.

Now he was doing repetitions on the chest-press machine with two hundred pounds. He had done twenty-three reps when Angelina said, "You're showing off."

"Absolutely."

"You can stop now."