by Thomas Perry
Wolf waited for a half hour, lying on the still-warm weeds beside the house, then stood up and began the walk to his motel. It was a couple of miles away, and he was tired.
The next day, Little Norman was pleased to learn that the weather in Las Vegas was still fine. He made his rounds wearing boots of crocodile and ostrich hide, and celebrated with an evening meeting with Yolanda in a room he had rented for her at the Frontier. It was after five A.M. when he compressed himself into his Corvette and drove back to his house. It wasn’t until he reached his bedroom that he learned the weather had changed. “Hello, Norman.” He didn’t have to turn his head to know who it was, but he did it anyway. He wasn’t going to go into the darkness without being man enough to look.
“Hello, kid.”
“You’re not surprised to see me.”
“I’m surprised you let me see you.” Little Norman stared at him. He looked almost the same. He wasn’t that much older-no big gut, no less hair, maybe a few wrinkles. Little Norman’s mind was full of irrelevant impressions now, each setting off thoughts that would have been distractions if it had mattered what he thought. The Butcher’s Boy would kill him, and they both knew that he wasn’t going to stand around and wait for it to happen. He would make an attempt to get to a weapon because he was Little Norman. But he wouldn’t make it in time because the man sitting in his chair holding a .45 on him was who he was. Little Norman also knew that the gun wouldn’t jam or misfire because it was the one he kept under his pillow.
The Butcher’s Boy had fooled the alarm system and sat here in the dark waiting for him. This didn’t surprise him either. Alarm systems weren’t for people like them; they were to keep out some junkie who needed your stereo. He let his eyes dart to the nightstand for the remote control, but it wasn’t there. He could have turned out the lights and taken his chances in the dark, but of course this man knew that. So it had to be the lamp itself, quick and low and hard.
“I’d like to talk to you for a minute,” said the Butcher’s Boy.
“About ten years ago? I know why you’re here. I’d be here too.”
“Okay, let’s start with ten years ago.”
“I didn’t think I was setting you up. I thought they really were going to pay you. If I’d known they were going to take you out on the Strip and kill you …” He stopped and shrugged. “You know me.”
The Butcher’s Boy nodded. “You would have made sure they didn’t fuck it up.”
“I was the best. Maybe not ten years ago, but before that.”
“You were the best once. Not a lot of people can say that, especially the ones who were.”
Little Norman nodded. “I might have been able to talk them out of it, too. I always liked you. You were the only one in the trade that seemed to really be alive. Besides me.” Little Norman kept the lamp in his peripheral vision. He was too far away to grab it; he would have to bat it at the Boy. “I’m curious, kid. I know you’re not going to tell me where you’ve been.”
“No.”
“But tell me this: did you have any fun?”
This seemed to take the Boy by surprise. “Fun?”
“Yeah. I mean, was it worth it? Ten years is a hell of a lot of time to be hiding in a hole somewhere. Did you put together any kind of a life while you were gone?”
“I liked it. It was a hell of a lot better than I thought it would be. I’d have stayed forever. It doesn’t make me any happier to be here, but at least I didn’t waste the time I had.”
“I’m glad. At least old Eddie taught you something that did you some good. Don’t tell me when you’re going to do it. Just make it in the head.”
“I’m not here for that. I’m not taking you this time, unless you can’t stand good luck and go for the lamp or something. I want you to talk to the old men.”
There was no question of who the old men were. “What for? What do you want to say to them?”
“Remind them of what happened ten years ago. I behaved like a professional. I did the job, I came here to get paid and the customer tried to chew me up.”
“They don’t give a shit about any of that. They didn’t then. They cared because of what you did after that. You buried a lot of people. It took them years to clean everything up.”
“I want them to remember that too. You understand what I’m saying.”
“You want to scare the old men? Has it been that long? You don’t remember who they are?”
“If they kill me, they get nothing. If they leave me alone, they can forget about me. I’m not working anymore.”
“You did Talarese and Mantino and Fratelli. Three medium-big fish in one week.”
“Talarese is the one who found me. Mantino had a specialist waiting for me when I tried to get out on a plane. Fratelli had people looking for me. I guess he was doing Balacontano a favor.”
“That ain’t the story they’re telling.”
Little Norman could tell that this wasn’t what the Butcher’s Boy had expected to hear. “What are they saying?”
“Talarese was wearing a police wire when you got him.”
“Talarese? Bullshit.”
“You wanted to know what they’re saying. That’s it. A lot of people think somebody who had problems with what was on the recording hired you to get all three of them. Some people think you just went crazy from hiding: you figured it wasn’t enough to put Carl Bala in jail. You had to cut down the ones he left in charge, so his family would fall apart.”
“I did them because it was the only way they left me to stay alive.”
Little Norman watched him for a reaction. “Then you made a mistake. If Talarese was wired, Mantino would be on the recordings. He’d be glad Talarese was dead.”
“I didn’t imagine that guy at the airport. When I left the cops were moving in on him.”
“Did you know his face?”
“No. A tall guy with blond hair and a mustache.”
“Did you ever let anybody take your picture?”
“No.”
“Couldn’t Mantino have found somebody who saw you in the old days? Think about it. You sure he wasn’t one of the cops?”
Wolf didn’t have to think. “Who did the wire belong to?”
“I won’t know unless they arrest somebody. Maybe they won’t. Maybe you killed everybody worth jail space.”
“I’m leaving now,” said the Butcher’s Boy. He stood up, the gun still trained on Little Norman. “Tell the old men what I said. Make sure they know what they’re doing if they decide to come after me.”
“You think Carl Bala’s going to leave you alone?”
“Carl Bala can’t do anything unless they let him.”
“What about the police?”
“I’m worried about the old men.”
“How do I give you their answer?”
Wolf shook his head. “This is the last conversation anybody’s going to have with me. If somebody is looking for me, watching me or waiting for me, I’ll know where they came from.”
“All you’re offering is that if they leave you alone, you’ll leave them alone?”
The Butcher’s Boy gave a little shrug. “It’s not a bad deal.” He stepped backward out the door and closed it behind him. Little Norman strained to hear his footsteps, then listened for the squeaking hinge on the front door, then waited for the rattle of a car’s starter. He heard none of them.
“No,” he said aloud. “Not a bad deal at all.”
Elizabeth cradled the baby in her arms. Amanda was asleep, but every time Elizabeth tried to ease the bottle out of her mouth, she would suck on it a few times to reassure herself that it was still there. Elizabeth stared across the baby’s room at the wall. It had occurred to her a few seconds ago that if she were the Butcher’s Boy, right about now she would be on her way to Boston to get Giovanni Bautista. It would have to be done right, though, a virtuoso performance, because Bautista would be expecting him. He was the last of Balacontano’s old stalwarts, and if the Butcher’s B
oy killed him now it would accomplish two things: it would cut off, at least for the moment, Carl Bala’s most potent remaining means of finding him; and it would scare the hell out of everybody outside the family who might consider hunting him. This was the part that nobody else had ever understood about the Butcher’s Boy ten years ago: in order to survive, he’d had to remind people of their mortality. That would be what was on his mind now—surviving by convincing people that if they didn’t leave him alone he would kill them. What else did he have?
Now she slipped the bottle out of Amanda’s lips, jammed it upright beside her in the padding of the chair, then carefully eased her weight forward and straightened her legs to stand. So far, so good; Amanda was still limp and sleeping, a little gurgle in the back of her throat coming in slow, regular intervals, like a snore. Elizabeth stepped carefully on the boards of the hardwood floor that she remembered didn’t creak much, and made her way to the crib in her stockings. She leaned over the bars with Amanda in her arms, setting first the little heels, then the bottom, then the back, and only then, very slowly, the head on the mattress. She pulled the soft blanket up to the baby’s armpits, and was turning to sneak out of the room when she heard the telephone down the hall ring. She froze and looked at Amanda, then tried to step toward the doorway more quickly, each step now landing unerringly on a board that cracked like a rifle shot, and the phone growing unaccountably louder.
She slipped out, quickly closed the door and skated on her stocking feet to the telephone in the office. “Yes?” she said into it. She knew her voice sounded angry, and how could they know?
Richardson’s voice had a stupid cheerfulness. “Hi, Elizabeth. Hope I didn’t get you up.”
“No,” she said. “You know, I never asked you. Do you have any kids?”
“Sure.” She could hear him beaming, probably looking at a picture that he kept somewhere out of sight. “Dan’s twenty-two and Brenda’s nineteen. She just transferred to Northwestern.” Of course the question had been a mistake. She had wanted to know whether he had any idea what time one-year-olds get up, or whether he had simply forgotten, but the instant she had asked she realized that Richardson wouldn’t have been the one to get up with a baby.
“Actually, I was going to call you before work anyway. I’d like to have the Boston office watch Giovanni Bautista as closely as possible, starting now-I know it’s expensive—and also get the people who watch airports and borders to step up security on the major routes from Boston into Canada.”
“Why Canada?”
“That’s in case the ones who are watching Bautista make a mistake. The Butcher’s Boy is ready to leave. I can feel it. He’ll do something to get them off his back so he can disappear. Killing Bautista is one possibility. There are others, of course, but that one just struck me. Can you do it?”
“I’m not sure what we can do. We’re going to have a meeting. The deputy assistant wants to talk about the case.”
“Which one?”
“Hillman’s in charge of us. How soon can you get here?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve got to get Jimmy up and give him his breakfast; then I’ll call the baby-sitter and ask her to come early. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
As soon as she let the receiver’s weight press down on the button it rang again, as though it were alive. She snatched it up. “Yes?”
It was Hamp. “Hi, Elizabeth. I’m sorry to call you before work, when the baby’s probably getting ready to nod off.”
“How did you know? Do you have kids?”
“I just have a knack for waking people up. Can you talk?”
“Yes. Where are you?”
“Cleveland. They found the car he was using. I can see it from where I’m standing. He abandoned it in the parking lot of a big project. He left it clean.”
“I hope you’re not waiting for me to sound surprised. Did you get anything out of it?”
“Dead end,” Hamp said. “He rented it on the Ackerman credit card. As far as I can tell, he hasn’t let anybody run the card through a machine since then.”
Elizabeth sighed. “Great. Jack, I think the place he’s going might be Boston. He could be after Giovanni Bautista.”
There was a long silence on the other end, and she could hear the sounds of traffic. Finally he said, “I don’t think so.”
“Why not? Maximum trouble, maximum confusion. Bautista’s the logical one to hit.”
“That’s right. It’s practically a straight line. L.A., Santa Fe, drop off the car in Cleveland, then Buffalo. There’s not much left in that direction but Boston.”
“I see your point: too obvious for him. What’s your theory?”
“I think he’s someplace in the Midwest. I think he’s laying low and looking for a way out.”
“What are you going to do?”
“The best place to wait for him to poke his head up is Chicago. I can get just about anyplace from there in an hour or two.”
“Jack, there’s something I just found out that I ought to tell you about. My boss has called a meeting. The deputy assistant is going to be there, so it’s got to be about money or resources or whatever you want to call it, so—”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m independently wealthy. I have a pension from the LAPD. I’ll call you with my new number when I get to Chicago.”
The conference room looked different, even though it was another dark, rainy dawn. It was because the last time she had been here she was alone, laying out printouts on the big table and sitting in one chair, then another, and looking at each corner of the room without knowing she was seeing it, because the front of her mind was thinking about the way he would be traveling. People in the room changed it, and even though it was their place, it wasn’t an improvement.
Hillman, the deputy assistant, was already seated at the head of the table. It was typical of Richardson to relinquish his space to a visiting potentate. In a subtle way, this made it the deputy assistant’s meeting, and he obviously knew it. He sat back and watched her enter and look around at the others, then take a seat at the opposite end of the table. If it was going to be that kind of meeting, then she would take a place where she could face him. Elizabeth studied him without letting her eyes rest on him. He had thick brown hair that had begun to recede, and he had allowed some hairdresser to convince him to comb it forward in the front, so that at first it appeared to be a hairpiece. When she had come in, she had assumed he was tall because he had wide shoulders. But now he lifted his arms and rested them on the table, and they were so short that she thought that she must be taller than he was, and that he had probably arrived early enough to be seated before anyone saw him. He was going to interfere, just as his predecessors had ten years ago. Simply by being here and asking questions for an hour or two, he would cost them half a day. In half a day the Butcher’s Boy could put them another ten years behind him.
The deputy assistant looked down at his watch, then at her. “Miss Waring?”
“Hello, Mr. Hillman,” she said. There were three other women in the room, and all of them were in their twenties and wore designer glasses that had been chosen as accessories to outfits of the sort that nobody in this office used to wear except in court. From the looks of their hair, all of them had gotten the call hours before she had.
“It’s nice to see you again.” She could tell that Hillman wasn’t sure if he had seen her before, but if she had been in the Justice Department for more than ten years, she had a right to expect that the upper echelon at least knew her by sight. “I understand you’ve been transferred from Fraud. What’s your first impression?”
“I’m not exactly new,” she said. “This is where I started, And I’m not transferring back; I’m just on loan for this case.”
Hillman nodded sagely. “That’s right.” It was as though he had been testing her hold on her sanity. “The reason we’re having this little get-together is that this case came as a surprise upstairs. I’d sort of like to get up to speed. I under
stand that this Butcher fellow assassinated one of our informants in New York so that the wire was discovered; then the theory is that he flew to Santa Fe and killed a boss named Peter Mantino, and then went to Buffalo and killed the boss there.”
Elizabeth nodded. “That’s one possibility.”
Richardson looked alarmed. “Just a day ago you were sure of it.” He glanced at the deputy assistant as though he were checking to see if he was on fire. “Has something changed?”
Elizabeth answered him but looked at the deputy assistant. “The Buffalo police pointed out to me that it’s a lot of work for one person, no matter who he is. It meant he had to kill several other people in Buffalo—at least three—in different ways in a few hours. Not that he couldn’t do it, but it leaves the question of why.”
“Why?” This time it was the deputy assistant. “I understood that this is what he does.”
“It’s easy to think of reasons why a boss is murdered. Somebody hires the killer, or he has a personal grudge to settle. It’s not as easy to imagine why one man would come in and shoot two or three soldiers in one part of town, then go shoot the boss and three more soldiers afterward. Nobody would hire one man to do that, and the only reason anyone would want that sort of massacre is an unfriendly takeover. The Butcher’s Boy isn’t eligible for management.”
Richardson smirked. “I don’t think we really need the advice of the Buffalo police on this sort of thing, do we?”
“I didn’t ask for it, but it makes a certain amount of sense.”
Richardson prompted her. “But you aren’t buying it, are you?”
“Some of it.”
The others waited, but she didn’t go on. Finally Richardson prodded her. “Which parts?”
“The last time we heard of the Butcher’s Boy, ten years ago, he did something very similar, only we didn’t know what was happening until later. I think that something went wrong that made his clients turn on him, so he was on the run and did it to churn up the water so he could get away. I can’t be sure why he’s doing it this time, but I don’t think it’s for money.”