"So our local mobster's kid is really Countess Angelina Farino Ferrara?" Kurtz had asked.

Pruno shook his head. "It appears that whatever her marital status might be, she did not acquire that title."

"Too bad," said Kurtz. "It sounds funny."

Upon returning to the United States a few months earlier, Angelina had worked as a liaison for Little Skag in Attica, paying off politicians to ensure his parole in the coming summer, selling the white elephant of the family house in Orchard Park and buying new digs near the river, and—this was the part that floored Kurtz—opening negotiations with Emilio Gonzaga.

The Gonzagas were the other second-tier, has-been, wise-guy family in Western New York, and the relationship between the Gonzagas and the Farinos made Shakespeare's Capulets and Montagues look like kissing cousins.

Pruno had already known about the Three Stooges' contract on Kurtz. "I would have warned you, Joseph, but word hit the street late yesterday and it seems she met with the unlucky trio only the day before."

"Do you think she was acting on Little Skag's instructions?" asked Kurtz.

"That is the speculation I hear," said Pruno. "Rumor is that she was reluctant to pay for the contract… or at least reluctant to hire such inept workmen."

"Lucky for me she did," said Kurtz. "Skag was always cheap." Kurtz had sat in the windy packing crate, observing the ice crystals in the air for a silent minute. "Any word on who they'll send next?" he asked.

Pruno had shaken his oversized head on that grimy chicken neck of his. The old man's hands were shaking in a way that was obviously due more to need for an overdue injection of heroin than to the cold air. For the thousandth time, Kurtz wondered where Pruno found the money to support his habit.