by Lee Thomas
You’ve done it. I’ve done it.
We both know diplomacy is pointless. The men in power laugh negotiation off as weakness, and the only thing that gets their attention is pain: hurting their wallets or breaking their necks, and I don’t want his money.
I know you are associated with Marco Impelliteri. I want you to let him know I’m coming for him. I’m coming for him tonight. If he values his family, he will send them away. I don’t want innocent lives on my conscience.
In New Orleans, I told you I was never meant to win this fight. I still believe that. But there are ways to lose that are easier to stomach than others.
Regards,
Butch Cardinal.
“Idiot,” Lennon muttered.
If he warned Impelliteri, the bastard would call his entire crew in. Butch would walk into a chorus of tommy guns singing his requiem. But he had to know that. He couldn’t expect Impelliteri to send his family away and then wait in his house alone. So what was Butch’s angle? Lennon really wanted to know, because right now it sounded like the wrestler was looking for a quick and cheap suicide. And what was Lennon supposed to do about it? If he reported Cardinal to his colleagues on the force, then there’d be twice as many guns at Impelliteri’s house, twice as many men who wanted Cardinal cold and quiet. Impelliteri might even make that call himself, knowing he had nothing to fear from Chicago’s finest.
Lennon stood from his desk and then sat again. What was that horse’s ass thinking? Had he lost his fucking mind?
Chapter 45
Steel to Blood
At ten p.m. on Christmas Eve, Butch pressed tightly to the brick wall that surrounded Marco Impelliteri’s home. The mansion was set back from the road and guarded by two men at the gate. He needed to find a clear area to hop the barrier without being seen. Snow fell and the accumulation had risen to his ankles. Wind gusted. He noted the cold but it didn’t get inside of him. He was too anxious. Too aware of his own fear.
He set off along the wall away from the road, deeper into the wooded area adjacent to the Impelliteri estate. He would approach the house from the side. Less yard there. Like Musante’s place in Wisconsin, the perimeter of the house was wide open, with no good cover save for the occasional decorative trees and shrubs about the property.
He built up his courage, thinking about Hollis and Rory and the faceless men and women the gangster had allowed to be murdered for his pitiful wants. In Impelliteri he saw Jerry Simm, and Lonnie Musante, and Paul Rabin, and Lionel Lowery. That singular guise encompassed every gangster, every rotten cop, every crooked promoter. He pulled the strings. He soured the world.
When Butch came to the point at the wall that was closest to the house, he turned and put his palms on the cold brick. A hand grabbed his wrist and Butch spun, ready for a fight.
John Hayes stood beside him in the snow, eyes wide and hands in the air, palms, gloved in black leather, out in a passive display. The Alchemi was bundled in a thick coat and a long gray scarf that matched his hat.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was sent to Chicago to retrieve the Galenus Rose,” Hayes said. “I haven’t done that yet.”
“How’d you find me?”
“You’d made your plans clear enough in Wisconsin, though it would have saved me three nights in the blistering cold if I’d known you were planning to attack Mr. Impelliteri on a holiday.”
“It’s the day before a holiday,” Butch corrected. He lifted his head and scanned the woods behind Hayes. “Where’s your buddy?”
“Mr. Ross is escorting Mr. Musante back to New York.”
“Well, there, you got something out of the deal.”
“True. But you could have disengaged the Mesmer Disk before you stole our car. Mr. Musante could have murdered us where we stood. Fortunately, the disk disengaged on its own before he woke.”
“Good to hear,” Butch said, throwing a quick glance at the top of the wall. “Maybe we could get caught up another time?”
“How did you get the Rose from him, Mr. Cardinal?”
“Stranglehold,” Butch said, distractedly. He eyed the woods and the fence line. Neither he nor Hayes were speaking loudly, but they shouldn’t have been speaking at all. If Impelliteri had guards roaming the grounds, any conversation would eventually be heard. “Cuts off the blood flow to the brain but causes no tissue damage. I figured the Rose wouldn’t go to work if nothing was broken or bleeding.”
“Do you have the Rose, Mr. Cardinal?” Hayes asked. His expression was earnest, a father demanding the truth from his child.
“Don’t be feeble. Of course, I have it,” Butch said. He patted his chest with three light raps. “I also have that bullet-stopping bib Mr. Brand wore and his arm band. You can have them all back when I’m done here. Now, you need to get moving.”
“What if I came to help, Mr. Cardinal?”
“Then I’d say you’re a damn fool. And I’d thank you.”
“We should get started then.” Hayes dug in a pocket and produced two small items. They looked like thumbtacks with gnarled heads and long rough pins. “Take one of these.”
“What’s it do?” Butch asked, reaching for one of the tacks.
“It’s a petrification thorn. Lodge it in a man’s skin and he’ll be paralyzed until it’s removed. We found a trove of items at Musante’s, but the bulk of them were taken back to New York with Mr. Ross. I kept a few things, anticipating a night like this.”
Butch clapped Hayes lightly on the shoulder and then turned back to the brick barrier. He pulled himself up until his sightline was even with the top of the wall. Snow fell in fat wet flakes, giving the grounds and the house at their center a pristine, idyllic appearance. Ground-mounted floodlights bathed the exterior of the house in illumination, making the gangster’s palace appear flat and unreal. In the yard a dozen paces from the edge of the drive, a sixteen-foot pine fell beneath a similar bath of lights. Shining ornaments hung from the boughs in acknowledgement of the holiday. Dull light showed in two of the windows, but the remainder of the interior was dark. A row of parked cars, eight in all, drew a line from the front drive to the garage on the side, yet there was no sign of movement in or around the house. Lennon had delivered Butch’s message, and Impelliteri had responded with a clear show of strength, a dare, a taunt.
Butch lowered himself and turned to Hayes. The man was affixing the hearing device they’d taken from Rabin’s ashes to the side of his head. He held up a finger to Butch, requesting silence as he adjusted the metal strip over his ear. After a moment, he closed his eyes and leaned against the brick and maintained this pose for more than a minute, occasionally bobbing his head lightly as if listening to music. When he opened his eyes, he mouthed, “They’re inside,” to Butch and again lifted his finger for silence.
Finally, Hayes removed the device and returned it to the pocket of his black overcoat.
“What have we got?”
“Trouble,” Hayes said. “Based on the number of conversations and a number of sounds I can positively attribute to human activity, we’re looking at no less than twelve men. Taking into account the likelihood that not everyone involved is speaking or moving around, we could be looking at significantly more.”
“I expected that.”
“And you still want to go in?”
“Do you want to wait here?”
“Not even a little,” Hayes said. He removed the iron rod from his coat lining and held it tightly. “There are four men walking the perimeter.” With a startling swing, he rapped the bar against the brick wall and the metal trembled; it separated lengthwise until he held two narrow lengths of the rod. With a bar in each hand, he said, “I’ll take the two in the back. Yours are on either side of the gate. One just lit a cigarette and the other is humming Christmas carols.”
Butch put his hands on the top of the wall and launched over. On the other side, he dropped into a snowdrift that rose halfway up his calf. He crouched low and set off along the fence line,
grateful the electric bulbs pointed at the house and left the bulk of the yard in shadow. Clouds blotted out the stars and moon, but the snow made its own kind of light as if each flake had captured a bit of star shine before falling to earth.
He ducked behind a thick shrub and moved forward, wincing every time one of his feet crunched through the packed snow even though the gusting wind erased the noises within moments. In fact, the howling gusts were so vociferous he found himself only a few steps from the humming gunman before he’d even realized the man was ahead of him. Fortunately, the man’s back was to him, otherwise the evening might have ended far earlier than Butch would have liked.
The guy was tall and slender. His coat was too big for him, and it hung from his shoulders like an adult garment being modeled by a child. Butch noted the barrel of the tommy gun jutting out from the crook of his elbow.
He took two quick steps forward. The tall man must have heard him, because he spun and tried to change his grip on the gun, but before he could get off a shot, Butch yanked the machine gun out of his hands and tossed it in the snow. Then he slapped a palm over the man’s face to keep him from calling his buddy. Butch stepped forward and pivoted, so that he faced the wall, and with another step, he put all of his weight into a forward thrust that crushed the man’s skull against the bricks. The guy’s eyes rolled up in their sockets, and though it appeared clear the first blow had succeeded in incapacitating the man, Butch repeated the motion and then let the thug drop.
After retrieving the gun, he eased toward the gate. A brief summation of his situation made it clear that crossing the drive without being seen wasn’t likely, even with the gloom and snowfall. He backed away. Once he was certain he was out of view of the second guard, he leapt over the wall and made a wide loop across the street from Impelliteri’s house. When he jumped over the fence again he was on the west side of the property, thirty yards from where he’d left the body of the first guard. He snuck up on the second man and pressed the muzzle of the tommy gun into the guy’s back.
“Toss it,” Butch said.
The guard didn’t need any explanation. He threw his weapon to the ground and raised his hands into the air. Butch knocked the man unconscious with the butt of his gun, driving the wooden stalk into the base of his skull with a crack that was muffled and quickly erased by the wind.
Hayes met him outside the wall where they’d first parted. The older man’s lip quivered, either from the cold or in response to what he’d just done.
“Okay?” Butch asked.
Hayes nodded rapidly. “Easy as pie.”
“These were kids,” Butch said. “Impelliteri put his disposables outside. The guys in the house aren’t going to be nearly this green.”
“Indeed,” Hayes replied. “I’d suggest we head along and meet them. I’m freezing out here.”
The Impelliteri house had three doors: front, back, and another on the west side providing access to and from the garage. Butch wasn’t interested in these; they would be the logical places for Impelliteri to station the most guards. The plan was to enter through one of the dozen windows on the ground floor, but the question remained, which window? Butch stood and looked over the fence, eyeing the layout through the falling snow. Impelliteri could have multiple guards at every window in the house; it was too dark to determine.
Butch wished he’d come with a better plan in his pocket. From where he stood, he could only see the edge of the garage, poking out from the far side of the house.
“If I could make a suggestion, Mr. Cardinal?” Hayes said at his side.
“I’d be grateful.”
“Instead of rushing into the wolves’ den, it might be best to flush them out.”
“Come again?”
“Burn it to the ground,” Hayes said. Butch looked at the man, whose lip continued to quiver, and now he believed it was merely a response to the bitter night. His eyes were solid and calm. “The garage is the natural point of attack here. I assume there are canisters of petrol inside, as a man like Impelliteri might find it necessary to flee the city without stopping at a gasoline-filling station along the way. Though not part of the house, the garage connects to the house via a narrow walkway covered by a wooden awning. Further, I believe there is only one man stationed inside. If we ignite the garage and the fire spreads, which it should despite the precipitation, Impelliteri and his men would be forced to come out, and we might better act against them.”
“That’s pretty good,” Butch admitted. “I’ve got Keane’s knife. That’ll get a fire started.”
“Or we could use the matches in my pocket,” Hayes said wryly. “Whatever the case, we will know their numbers and they will be exposed. Unfortunately, it will require us to remain outdoors, and it really is unbearably cold.”
“A burning house might take the edge off that,” Butch noted.
They circled the fence line around the back of the house. At the corner, they encountered a stubby man with a cigar jutting from his lips; its end glowed orange in the otherwise black and white landscape. Hayes saw the guard first and instantly quieted him by impaling him with the iron rod, which passed through the man’s clothes, his skin and muscle and bone, as easily as it would pass through a drift of snow. Surprised and already well on his way to death, the guard’s jaw clamped down in pain, biting through the end of his cigar, a piece of which fell to the snow. Its burning end hissing as the wet accumulation snuffed out the lit tobacco.
Butch picked up the man’s machine gun. In a few minutes, it wouldn’t matter how much noise they made. Impelliteri would know they’d arrived.
At the garage, Butch worked his way around to the sliding doors. They were all open, revealing Impelliteri’s three vehicles: a Chrysler Custom Imperial, a Lincoln Zephyr, and an Auburn Speedster.
Butch didn’t immediately notice the guard. He sat on a stool behind the Chrysler. Butch crept into the structure. A rapid cracking, like a lit packet of firecrackers, filled the garage. He dropped to the hard floor and scooted close to the front bumper of the Lincoln. Peering beneath the carriage, Butch could not make out the legs or feet of the gunman, but he knew the shooter had to be standing somewhere behind the car. Instead of trying to aim, Butch swept his gun in a smooth arc across the floor, keeping a steady pressure on the trigger. The front tires popped and a man shouted amid another raucous spray of bullets. With his ammunition expelled, Butch lay quietly listening for his opponent’s location. A series of high-pitched curses rose from the back of the building, followed by the ratcheting click of a new ammo cylinder being locked into place. Then there was an animal grunt, and Hayes softly called, “All clear.”
Hayes had come in through the back door of the garage and finished the guard. Butch met him at the trunk of the Auburn. The man lay in the corner, a hole the size of a golf ball punched through the bridge of his nose.
“They had to have heard that,” Butch said.
Hayes responded with a finger to his lips. They waited, but no shouting mob burst from the house. No fresh percussion of gunfire disturbed the night. Satisfied that Impelliteri’s men had either not heard the gunfire—a highly unlikely prospect—or they were simply waiting to ascertain its meaning, Butch jabbed a finger at Hayes and then pointed to the back door. He needed the man to keep an eye on the walkway connecting the building to the house while he prepared the garage for a blaze.
He grasped the base of the copper band and it uncoiled from his arm. Though it was firmly in his grip, Butch felt oddly bereft, having come to take comfort in the metal’s presence on his skin. His arm felt wrong without it, but he needed the staff. Using long, calculated slashes, Butch ripped through the sides of the cars, severing the steel and the fuel lines in the process. Along the east wall, he found three large cans for gasoline. One of them was empty, but the other two held liquid. He upended one can and let its contents run across the floor of the garage. The other he carried to the doorway where Hayes waited. Outside, Butch poured a line of gasoline around the base of
the garage and tossed the can into the snow. Already prepared, Hayes held a wooden match between his fingers, but Butch raised his hand: Not yet.
Easing close to the back door, muscles coiled and ready for a fight, he brought his arms back and then swung the staff with only a whisper of effort and lodged the copper in the doorjamb about two feet above the threshold. Then he turned to Hayes and nodded.
The fire came on quickly, but it seemed hushed, even gentle as it spread out around the foundation of the garage and slithered through the open doorway. Certainly, it would do the trick, but Butch had expected a more dramatic blaze, perhaps even an explosion.
That came two minutes later, after he and Hayes were on the far side of the west wall.
Flames engulfed the base of the garage and smoke poured from the openings. The snowfall oppressed the rising smoke, keeping it low and tight and thick around the roof of the structure. Then the first of Marco Impelliteri’s cars exploded, and then the second. By the time the third car went up, the side door of the house was thrown open and a man attempted to bolt onto the walkway. The copper staff did its job, severing his legs at the knees. The man flipped in the air, screaming until the concrete walk knocked the breath out of him. Butch had hoped the staff would cripple several of Impelliteri’s men, bringing the numbers down to a more reasonable level, but it only claimed that single victim, whose blood gushed onto the snow like spilled oil. When the third car exploded, tearing through the roof of the garage with a deafening thunder, the other men had backed away from the side door. It closed a second later.
Butch waited at the wall. His heart beat heavily against his ribs while flames claimed the building. As Hayes had predicted, the flames ran along the awning and began to lap at the side of Impelliteri’s house. One of the cars in the drive ignited and exploded and two more followed in a strange, incendiary domino effect.