by Thomas Perry
He went to the closet and picked out the sort of outfit that the men outside were wearing—a pair of blue jeans and a shirt, with a nylon windbreaker intended to keep off the night chill of the mountains and conceal a weapon.
He changed into the clothes, searched the suitcase, and found a brand-new Springfield Armory .45 pistol, still in the box, and a full box of .45 ACP ammunition. These people must have flown into southwestern cities, then driven straight to gun stores operated by friendly owners to pick something out so they wouldn't feel powerless. Probably when they went back to catch their flights home, they would drop the guns off where they had picked them up. He already had the sentry's gun, and it was more concealable than the .45, so he left this one alone.
Through the front window he watched a group of younger men coming along the lighted drive toward the lodge. He had never seen any of them before. He waited until they were just past him, then opened the door and hurried to the road to follow them. If someone looked at him from a distance, he would seem to be a straggler from the main group.
He was very watchful, trying to avoid coming face-to-face with any older men because they were the ones who might have seen his face years ago. When he was young, not long after Eddie Mastrewski had died, he had worked for the Albanese family in Detroit for a time. By then he had a reputation, and so a few times the Albanese capo, Johnny Sotto, had used Schaeffer's face. He had gone along with an Albanese soldier to collect debts. People might stall the soldier, but as soon as he walked in the door, the money would appear very efficiently and without any discussion. After a few months he left and never did that kind of work again because he didn't like having so many people see his face.
He had also resisted the camaraderie that some of the capos who had hired him tried to foster. He had kept his distance, done his job, collected his pay, and left town before buyer's remorse set in. He made it clear that he was a free agent and that he was nobody's friend.
The group of men kept moving down the drive leading to the lodge. There were already many men gathering there. He knew that he couldn't take the chance of going inside, where the men who had seen him would be. He preferred to stay outside with the young men who had no idea who he was. The young ones would find out what was going on inside as soon as it happened anyway. They absorbed every word the old men said, analyzed it, and repeated it.
A couple of them had turned their heads and noticed him, and now they slowed to walk with him. The bigger one held out his hand. "Vic Malatesta, from Buffalo." Then he tapped his companion's shoulder. "This is my brother-in-law, Joe Bollo."
He shook their hands. "Mike Agnelli, Calgary."
"Calgary? Holy shit," said Malatesta. "Nice of you to come."
Bollo said, "You're showing your ignorance. Of course we got crews in Calgary. You think we'd leave Canada to the fucking Eskimos?"
Schaeffer smiled, and said to Malatesta, "The Castiglione family has been in Canada since Prohibition."
Malatesta seemed to wilt a little. The Castiglione family was a major power, holding the biggest piece of Chicago since Al Capone went to jail, and had colonies in lots of distant places sending tribute to the home base.
The group kept walking. Schaeffer said, "What do you think of this sit-down so far?"
"I don't know," said Bollo. "Maybe when I hear what Frank Tosca has to say, I'll have an opinion. Or more likely, when I hear what Mr. Visconti's opinion is."
"That sounds safe."
"How about you?" Malatesta said.
"I don't have an opinion yet either. I'm waiting to hear what any of us has to gain by helping Frank Tosca kill somebody and take over the Balacontano family. What's he give the rest of the families? Do they get to taste some of the profits?"
"That would be more like it," said Malatesta.
"Well," said Bollo. "Maybe even without that, making him strong might do the rest of us some good."
"Some guys are saying he's the one to run the whole country."
"Do you know him?" asked Schaeffer.
"No," said Malatesta, "but I've been hearing about him for a long time. He's supposed to be a good earner, and a little bit of a wild man too. And that doesn't hurt when something is up. People used to hear the Italians wanted a piece of their action, and they'd get maybe a little chill in their spines. It wouldn't hurt to have some of that again."
"No question," Schaeffer said. "But maybe the way to do that isn't to send the whole organization out after one small guy that nobody's seen in ten, twenty years. It doesn't feel right to me. Not in proportion, you know? Not dignified."
"It's not going up against him that's the problem. It's finding him. That's what takes a lot of people."
Schaeffer chuckled. "If he's that hard to find, maybe he's not that big a problem. Maybe he's an anaconda."
"An anaconda?"
"Yeah. You don't ever want to tangle with one of those bastards. They're twenty, twenty-five feet long. They wrap themselves around you and squeeze you to death. Only thing is, there aren't any around here, so they aren't a problem unless you go where they are and look for them."
"I see what you mean."
The group moved closer and closer to the lodge, and he slouched a little to change his walk and keep his face down to avoid the light from the lamps along the eaves of the lodge and from the tall windows of the big banquet room.
He had not yet decided what he was going to do. He was outnumbered by hundreds to one, and his only way out would be overland, down from the mountain and across the desert to his car. He couldn't predict how the old men were going to react to Frank Tosca's request for their help and support, and that would make all the difference.
He said, "I got a feeling that we need to know a lot more about this before it happens. My bosses ask me what I think, and I have to say I don't know. Either of you guys know which cabin Tosca is staying in?"
"You're just going to pop in and ask him to explain it to you?"
"Not to just me. Maybe I'll ask one of the Castigliones to come too. But I go back a ways with Tosca. I knew him a little bit in New York when we were twenty. He'll probably remember me."
"Cabin nine," Malatesta said. "Or ten, maybe. They're both together over that way. One is his, and the other is a couple of guys he brought with him."
"Thanks. I'll see who I can get to go with me." He stepped aside and headed across the road toward the lodge. He knew it was dangerous to get too close to the building where all the attention was focused, but he needed to know more. He devoted a portion of his attention to each face that turned his way. So far they were all the faces he had hoped for, the men in their twenties and thirties who had been brought along to carry the luggage and look tough. The older men, the ones who knew him or had at least seen him, were either inside the big room in the lodge or back in their home cities running the businesses that kept the supply of money coming in.
Through the huge panes of glass he could see the old men standing around with drinks in their hands. One of the Castigliones, no, all three of the Castiglione brothers, were standing around in blue jeans and hiking boots. And there was Vince Pugliese, who was their underboss now. It must be a good night for law-abiding citizens in Chicago. There was Mike Catania from Boston, and Dean Amalfi, and one of the Sottos whose first name he couldn't bring back. He was definitely a son or nephew of the Sotto who had run the Albanese empire in Detroit years ago. Mike Tragonatta was perched on a step of the big staircase with his shoulders hunched up so he looked like a vulture.
Tosca. There he was. He looked like a cheap politician threading his way through the crowd, insinuating himself and making it impossible for the others to have a conversation that wasn't with him and about him. As he passed, he punched the shoulder of Rich Martinoli and hugged the ancient, skinny frame of Paolo Canaletti. Schaeffer cringed at the stupid presumption of it. Tosca was claiming a false equality with men older than his own father.
Schaeffer couldn't spend too much time in the glow coming from the lodg
e windows so he moved away. He took this opportunity to go to cabins nine and ten and look in the windows. He found that nine had twin beds and two suitcases, but ten had a king and only one suitcase so he chose that one. He went to the door, pushed the blade of his knife into the space between the handle and the strike plate, and opened it. He went in and closed the door, and then searched Tosca's luggage, but found nothing useful or revealing except a nine-millimeter Beretta pistol. He decided that the rules of the conference must require the participants to come unarmed. He ejected the magazine, removed all of the bullets, and pulled back the slide to open the chamber. He took a sheet of paper from the small pad by the phone, tore off a corner, and crumpled it. He crammed it into the chamber and barrel so even if Tosca reloaded, the first round would fail to feed. He searched for other guns, but there were none in the cabin. He went out through the back window, closed it, but left it unlocked. He walked out of the small clearing on the back side so nobody would see him coming from Tosca's cabin. He passed a few men on the paved drive, but didn't recognize any of them.
He felt slightly better now because he had at least taken some steps to prepare for killing Tosca in his cabin. Any plausible plan was better than no plan. And earlier he had created a gap in the cordon of sentries so there would be at least one way out. Now he needed to learn how the old men reacted to Tosca's proposal. If they turned him down and told him to solve his own problems, Schaeffer's best move would be to get out quietly and then kill Tosca somewhere else on another day.
He got onto the lighted drive and moved toward the lodge again. As he came nearer, he could see into the big conference room and tell that the meeting had begun. The light from inside poured out onto the pavement around the building from the glass wall so he stayed back. He could see there were four large tables pushed together into a huge square. All around it sat the old men.
It occurred to him that the square was a sign of resistance to Tosca. With a rectangular table, somebody was always at the head, and somebody was at the foot. These men were all chieftains, the heads of semitribal groups composed of extended family and close friends, as well as loose collections of hangers-on, allies, and associates who were willing to follow orders because there had always been money and protection if they did. The dons from the smaller, older eastern cities were often as rich and powerful as the leaders of the families in New York or Chicago or Boston because they could control virtually all illegal activity in those places and take a percentage. They were protective of their independence and dignity, and didn't acknowledge the superiority of anyone. They also knew that while a New York family might have more made men, there was no way to project that power to do much in a tightly held city a thousand miles away.
His best hope was that these men would be too suspicious and guarded to help Tosca come to power in the Balacontano family. Why set loose a force greater than their own? Agreeing to hunt for the Butcher's Boy was a small enough thing to do, but its very smallness meant it would be worth little gratitude in the future. Once Carl Bala was satisfied and put Tosca in power, Tosca wouldn't need their help anymore.
He stood in the crowd and studied what he could see of the big room through the glass. If Tosca had wanted to preside, he had been thwarted. The participants were sitting in equal seats at the table, the old men taking turns as each of them made his own statement. Now and then a speaker would stop, raise his eyebrows inquiringly, and gesture toward one or more of the others. Most of the time, the men indicated would nod sagely or make a reply that seemed to indicate an affirmative answer. There was no telling what the topics were, but he guessed that they were using the conference as a way to settle the eternal boundary disputes and make requests for help, a share in some racket, or exclusive rights to some method of stealing in some particular place. He knew that for most of them, there was a wide range of issues that were more important than the succession of leaders in the Balacontano family or the fate of a hit man nobody had seen in years.
Agreements made openly in this company would be difficult to disavow later, and at the same time, could not be understood by third parties to be conspiracies. He stood outside among the young men, the retainers and bodyguards and soldiers, who had no more idea of the outcome than he had. But then, four men came out of the door and lit cigarettes. As they talked to friends and acquaintances, he edged closer. Within a few seconds, the four were surrounded by a growing ring of the curious.
In the center was a man about forty years old. He said, "The local stuff—gambling, street dealers, fencing operations, crews that rip off trucks and trains and cargo containers, percentages of local businesses—all that stays local. You won't have a crew from a Chicago family come in and start asking a contractor in your town to pay them for protection. Trying to pull a scam on a national company or make a deal in a foreign country is open to everybody. But if you have to go to the national headquarters, and it's in St. Louis, you do the St. Louis people the courtesy of letting them know you're there and giving them a small piece of the game." He shrugged. "It's all pretty much the way it was before we were born."
Schaeffer said quietly to the man beside him, "I wonder what happened with Frank Tosca."
One of the men who had come out heard him. "They're still talking about some of it, but he'll get what he wants. They all like the idea of a mutual defense agreement. If some outsider attacks one of the families, the don asks for help, and the other families all send soldiers."
One of the listeners said, "Sounds like overkill."
"That's the point. Things used to work because everybody knew if they wanted to go head-to-head with the Mafia, they were taking on a lot more than what was in front of their eyes that day. There was no way they could win. We need that again. Say some Mexican gang starts shaking down a neighborhood in Houston. The next thing that happens is that the city fills up with goombahs. Fifteen or twenty of the Mexicans disappear one night and the problem is solved for the next ten years."
One of the listeners said, "I'd be ready for that."
"Right. It's the only way. We should have been doing that already."
"Damned straight."
Schaeffer said, "What's that stuff about him wanting some guy killed? Why can't he handle that himself?"
"I think it's a test, to see which of the old men are on board."
"What do the old men think?"
"They all agreed to that first thing. It's common courtesy. You'll hear everything in a few minutes. They're going to take a half-hour break after the last couple of capos finish talking."
Schaeffer drifted backward, allowing other men to slip in to listen, so he didn't appear to be moving, but was soon ten feet from the center of the conversation. Then he was in dimmer light, farther from the lodge. He turned away and began to walk. When he was near the cabins, he left the pavement and walked between two of them as though he were taking a shortcut to his own.
He went to the back of cabin ten, entered through the window, and sat down in the dark to wait for Frank Tosca. He had heard what he needed to know so there was no reason to take the risk of standing outside the lodge in the crowd, waiting for someone to recognize him. He sat in the dark and planned and rested. It was over an hour later before he heard men's voices as they passed on the paved drive outside. Maybe the formal part of the conference was over, or maybe it was just the break. But he had to be ready.
He stood and went to the doorway, stepped into the space at the hinge side of the door, took out the lock-blade knife he had brought, and opened it. He concentrated on regulating his breathing and his heartbeat, readying himself for the struggle. This was no different from the old days. There was no longer any room for negotiation or for last-minute bartering. He heard a man coming up the gravel walk. He listened for other footsteps, but there was only one set. The man climbed up the wooden steps. His leather-soled shoes clopped on the wooden porch. His key was in the lock. The door opened and he stepped inside. Tosca. He began to close it, but before it was fully close
d, Schaeffer was behind him, his forearm snaking around Tosca's neck, the knife edge tilted inward. He brought the knife across Tosca's throat with as much force as he could, and then leaned into the door so it closed and locked. He released his hold on Tosca.
Tosca collapsed to the floor on his back, his blood pumping out of him rapidly. His eyes were wide with the panicky realization that he was dying, and would be dead in seconds. His shirt, the upper part of his sport coat, and the carpet beneath him were soaked already, and the blood was pooling beside him.
Schaeffer looked down and said, "I told you to leave me out of it."
A few seconds later, Tosca lost consciousness and his body relaxed. On his way to the window Schaeffer wiped the knife on the bed sheet, closed it, and put it in his pocket. He moved the pistol he had taken from the dead sentry from his belt to his jacket pocket and climbed out the window. He closed the window, took a few steps, and slipped in among the surrounding pine trees.
He walked purposefully toward the outer edge of the complex, heading upward on the hillside with his hand in his pocket on the gun. He passed within sight of two more cabins, and he could see there were lights on in their windows. He kept climbing steadily up the hill, away from the cabins. From the vantage of the higher ground, he could see that about half the soldiers were still milling around outside the lodge, and a few of the old capos seemed to have stayed in the big meeting room, standing in small groups talking, but there were many more men walking up the paved paths to cabins. He could see nobody running or making big gestures so he knew Tosca still had not been discovered. He climbed as rapidly as he could, staying in the cover of the pine groves.
He began to feel winded, to gasp for breath as he forced himself to trot up the hillside. The lack of breath was a nightmarish feeling. He was back in the world he had left twenty years ago, forced to stay alive with his wits and the weapons he could find, but he wasn't the same man anymore. He was twenty years older, far beyond the age when this prolonged physical exertion was routine. What he was doing tonight was something that would have challenged him in his prime. He didn't allow himself to think about how much of the ordeal was ahead of him; he just kept running, putting one foot in front of the other, taking himself up the side of the mountain.