by Thomas Perry
Lempert turned in his swivel chair to study the upper windows on the street again. If you assumed the bastard wasn’t out-and-out berserk, you had to imagine that he might find his way into one of those buildings with a rifle. Lempert saw no changes from the last time he had looked. There were no glows from dim lights on the ceilings, no shades raised a little, no objects visible. He ducked his head, made his way on his knees to the front of the van and peeked out the windshield. There was nothing up the street that could be construed as a problem. The traffic was moving at the usual rate. He crawled to the back window and moved the curtain half an inch. There were no new vehicles parked along the street, no knots of people the Butcher’s Boy could join to get a closer look at the place.
There was one more thing that Lempert had to check. He opened the back door of the van, swung his legs to the street and quietly closed the door. There wasn’t any point in locking it with eight uniforms loitering around across the street, and unlocking it made noise, so he left it. He walked away from the theater and turned the corner on Fourth before venturing to look over his shoulder. His colleagues were standing around now talking to each other instead of watching the place. Probably not one of them had any idea that Paul Cambria was even here. He wondered if that would have made a difference. Probably not; you had to know the rest of it before it meant anything.
Lempert turned again at the alley behind Chautauqua Avenue, put his head down, pulled his collar up and jammed his right hand into his jacket pocket so that he could grasp his service revolver before he took the first step down the alley. If the Butcher’s Boy was in one of the buildings, he would have a car waiting in back of it, or, at most, one street over. Whatever happened with Paul Cambria, he would need to have a reliable, invisible way of getting in and then getting out. The one thing Lempert remembered about his experience with the bastard ten years ago was that he thought things through. He would probably have a couple of ways out.
Lempert made his way up the alley, trying to look like a schlemiel who was watching the ground to keep from stepping into a puddle, but every few yards he scanned the old brick buildings, fire escapes and the dumpsters, looking for a change. He wasn’t afraid he would miss a parked car, but he might miss something else—a broken window, or a garbage can moved a couple of feet so it could be used to climb in through a vent. It wasn’t that he had any intention of going into an empty building after him: not this one. But if he just knew where the bastard was, he was pretty sure he had him. All he had to do was wait. The waiting reminded him that it was time to take a leak. He looked up and down the alley, then stepped into the shadows behind the shoe store and urinated against the wall. It was a delicious feeling because of the danger and the darkness.
Lempert continued up the alley another block before turning onto Sixth and crossing the street to the other side. The cops standing out on the sidewalk would be cutting the amenities short about now and getting into their squad cars to rest their feet, which meant they would have nothing to do for about two hours but stare up the street and watch the lights change. He made it across while they were still gathered in a gaggle in front of the theater, then made a circuit of Atlantic Avenue behind the theater and back to Fourth. If tonight was the night the bastard was going after Cambria, then he hadn’t done anything much to get ready.
Lempert made his way back to the van on Chautauqua, still walking along with his head down and his collar turned up. As soon as he had passed the last parked car, he stepped into the gutter and followed it to the rear of the van. He had swung the door open and was all the way inside when he felt it. He stopped moving, but just to be sure, the son of a bitch slid it up his back and let the cold muzzle touch the nape of his neck. It was the kind of thing any of them would do because Puccio had taught them to be sadists. He was angry, but he supposed he would have to go through the whole idiotic cross-examination before he reminded this one that Puccio had called him and that he was doing no more than what Puccio wanted everyone to do.
“What do you want?” said Lempert.
“I want you.”
Holy shit, it wasn’t them; it was him. Lempert started to shiver. He was on his hands and knees, and his damned elbows wouldn’t stop shaking and giving out on him; what if the bastard thought all this twitching was some kind of a lame attempt to struggle? Suddenly he was overcome by a clear vision of his stupidity, and it brought a sort of repentance. What the hell could he have been thinking, coming out here to try and ambush a man like this? The money wasn’t even real anymore.
“I think you remember me.”
Lempert started thinking about a move a burglary suspect had tried on him once. He had told him to lie facedown and kiss the pavement, but when the guy got on his hands and knees he sprang forward like a damned gazelle, so all Lempert could do was trip the guy and then put the boots to him. The Butcher’s Boy could open fire and blast his spine. Then, as if he were a damned mind reader, the voice said, “Don’t do anything. I’m going to take the gun because I want to talk.”
As the invisible hand reached into his jacket pocket and took the service revolver, Lempert felt a secret joy. But then the hand went directly to his right ankle and took the other one too, the .32. “What do you want to talk about?”
“First I want you to crawl up to the driver’s seat and pull out of here.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I won’t need to kill you if you do.”
The answer mesmerized Lempert. Need to? But of course he would say anything to get Lempert to drive out of here. If he burned Lempert here, he wasn’t going to be able to walk away whistling. Eight cops—even those eight cops—were not going to let him do that. But need to? It gave him a tiny bit of hope that he might get out of this. If the Butcher’s Boy didn’t want to kill him, maybe he still had a chance. And even if Lempert somehow reversed things and managed to kill the bastard instead of having the bastard kill him, what was he going to say to the eight cops himself? What was the dead suspect doing in the van? He crawled to the seat, pulled himself up, started the engine and tried to look in the mirror to back up.
“Turn the lights on,” said the Butcher’s Boy.
“Oh, yeah,” said Lempert. He could barely get his hand to stop shaking so that he could turn the switch. Oh, God. He really had forgotten them, and now the bastard thought he was playing some trick.
As he started to turn out onto the street, the Butcher’s Boy said, “Go straight while we talk.”
Lempert obeyed, and he decided the bastard had made a mistake. There was something about driving—the thing he had spent eight hours a day doing for more than twenty years—that revived him. He was in control of all this power, so he couldn’t be powerless. “So why didn’t you kill Paul Cambria?”
“I don’t have anything against Paul Cambria. I came to see you.”
Lempert’s bravado disappeared. He had to talk to him, to say something that wasn’t in the groove of the bastard’s logic. “How do you even remember me?”
“Things come back to me. I figured you’d be hanging around Cambria, so I found him. You’re still a cop, right?”
“Yeah.” Oh, sweet Jesus. What could this be about? The bastard didn’t say another word for three blocks. Then he got it. Carlo Balacontano. Ten years ago. The bastard had some wacko idea that because Lempert was a cop he could get to Carl Bala in a federal prison. What happens when he finds out Lempert can’t?
Finally, “I want you to get something for me. I’ll pay you.”
It was coming. Maybe he could convince the bastard with some bullshit story: if you come to the prison with me, all I have to do is flash my badge and they’ll let us in armed. Bang. “What do you want?”
“Pull over up here.”
Lempert looked around as he slowed down. He made a guess; this man wouldn’t shoot him in front of a copying store that was still open, and next door to a bar that had barely begun its prime hours, and across the street from a pizza place. He stopped the van
by the curb, but didn’t turn off the engine until the man said, “Come on. We’re going in there.”
The bar? He must mean the bar. Lempert turned off the engine. “Drop the keys on the floor and come out after me.” He dropped the keys on the floor, then waited until the bastard got out. He looked for an opportunity, but there was none. Then they were both on the street, and he could see the bastard in the light. He hadn’t changed much. It was almost eerie. He was six feet away, and had the service revolver in his hand, and his hand in his coat, and Lempert had no doubt that if he moved wrong or tripped on something and stumbled, he would have a hole in him before he hit the ground.
They walked into the copying store. There were typewriters and computers for rent, and lots of envelopes and colored paper for sale, and about a dozen Xerox machines in two rows. When Lempert saw the kid behind the counter, with his long, greasy ponytail and dark, bushy eyebrows that showed over the tops of his dark glasses, he decided there was a God. He remembered pulling this kid out of a 280Z after following him for ten blocks. It was the end of the month, and Lempert needed to write a few more tickets, so he had decided that this kid was going too fast. The kid had smirked at him, so he had whirled him around, slammed him against the car and frisked him, then put the cuffs on him and made him lie on the ground while he searched the car for drugs. If only he had found some, or planted some. Then this kid wouldn’t be the one to lean on the counter and smirk at him while he got his brains blown out.
“Here’s what I want,” said the Butcher’s Boy. “I want a copy of whatever the FBI is sending out to the police computers about me.”
“The NCIC file? How am I supposed to do that?”
“Maybe somebody will fax it here from the station, or Washington, or whatever. Maybe you can get one of these computers onto a phone line and call it up. Anyway, do it.”
“Give me a minute to think.”
“If you do it, I’ll pay you. If there’s some trick or something, I”—and then he paused for what seemed like a long time—“won’t.”
Lempert went to the kid at the counter. “I want to use a phone.”
The kid recognized him. He hesitated, and Lempert had the impression that he was scared, but it gave him no pleasure. “Here’s the phone.”
Lempert only briefly considered saying something on the phone that made no sense. Who could say what this man knew? He dialed the squad room and heard McNulty’s voice say, “Police Department Metro Division.” Of course it had to be McNulty working tonight, somebody who not only didn’t like Lempert but was also so stupid that his partners wouldn’t ride in a car with him unless they had personally checked the shotgun to be sure there wasn’t a shell in the chamber when he stuck it in the rack.
“It’s me, McNulty. Lempert,” he said. “I need a favor.”
“Don’t we all,” said McNulty.
Lempert thought for a moment. What was in his desk? Nothing that would get him into this much trouble. “I want you to look in the lower left-hand drawer of my desk, and fax the stuff in the file folder on top to me.”
“So where are you, Paris?”
“This is serious.”
“Where you at?”
Lempert turned to the kid, who was pretending to be dusting a shelf with a cloth. “Give me the fax number here.”
As the sheets rolled out of the machine, the Butcher’s Boy barely looked at them. He just took them out of the tray, glanced at them, folded them with one hand and stuffed them into his coat pocket. Most of the time he watched Lempert. What kept driving Lempert crazy was that the kid at the counter knew him. He was watching the proceedings out of the corner of his eye, and unless he was retarded, all this must have struck him as strange. He could probably see the lump in the Butcher’s Boy’s coat where he held Lempert’s service revolver. But he also knew that Lempert was a cop, and naturally would assume that the Butcher’s Boy was a cop too, and since cops carry guns, there was nothing strange going on at all. Anybody else would slip out the back door and dial 911. Even this kid would if it was anybody else but Lempert. Now the bastard was probably going to kill them both, walk out of here and drive away in the van. The keys were on the floor.
Finally the machine stopped grinding out pages. The Butcher’s Boy said, “That’s good enough. How do you usually get your money?”
Lempert knew he didn’t mean his police pay. “A post-office box.”
“Write it down and give it to me.”
Lempert couldn’t believe it. “You’re really going to pay me?”
As the Butcher’s Boy looked at him, Lempert could tell that he was being evaluated, and that somehow the assessment wasn’t good. “I said it.”
Lempert smirked. “Yeah. I heard you.”
“People lie to you a lot?”
“About money? Just about everybody.”
The Butcher’s Boy looked at him with a mixture of pity and distaste. “Then it’s your fault. You should have killed the first one.”
The man was absolutely serious: he had killed the first one. Lempert could tell, and it had a strange effect on him. For a few minutes he had been gaining strength. He had begun to look at the hand that gripped his revolver and feel a certainty that his hand was bigger and more powerful, and just a minute ago he had begun to wonder if maybe it wasn’t faster too. He had begun to visualize how he would grab it while it was still in the pocket and break it at the elbow, and his blood had started to warm in preparation for the moment. But now the other feeling had returned, the one he had felt when he had first met this man years ago. Not this time, not this man. He simply was not somebody you could do that to and have any real expectation of succeeding, because you couldn’t surprise him. A dozen people must have already tried whatever he had just thought of, and all of them were dead.
Lempert wrote the post-office-box number on a piece of paper that was meant to refill the fax machine and watched the free hand pick it up and put it in the pocket with the other sheets. But then Lempert was distracted. The back door of the copying store, the one that opened onto the parking lot of the plaza, sent a glint of light in his direction. It had moved, and the reflection of the overhead fluorescents had flashed too. As he watched, he could see the reflection swinging a little, back and forth. Somebody he couldn’t see had touched it. A sick feeling came over him; it was somebody testing to see if the back door was locked.
Apparently the Butcher’s Boy hadn’t seen it. He said, “You’ll get some money in the mail in a couple of weeks. Let’s go.” He tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the counter where the kid could see it and moved toward the front door. Then he stopped. “Coming?”
Lempert was sweating again. Whatever happened next, he was going to be in the middle of it, standing here without a weapon or a place to hide. If it was cops, he could give a yell and dive to the floor, and they would know enough to fire. He hoped it was cops. But how the hell could it be? It must be either the wind or Puccio’s men. God, he hoped it was Puccio’s men. Even if they were the ones who actually got him, Lempert would share in the credit. It was only fair.
* * *
As Albert Salcone stood outside the back door, he saw Ficcio across the door from him, reaching out his hand. Salcone gasped, then realized there was no way to keep Ficcio from touching the door. He pressed himself against the back wall of the building, blew the air out of his lungs and waited. As he watched the door swing back and forth a little, he forced the hatred he felt for Ficcio to drain out of his mind. Ficcio was a kid by today’s standards. In Salcone’s day, by the time you were nineteen, either you were in some jungle wearing camouflage fatigues or you were in jail. Now a kid that was nineteen might not have been in a real fight in his life.
Salcone turned to Ficcio and shook his head disapprovingly. Maybe Ficcio understood. At least he looked crestfallen. Salcone hoped he was devastated, but there was no way to explain to him now why he should be. Either the door was unlocked, in which case it would offer no resistance when they moved in, or it
was locked. If it was locked, then when one of them tried to get in for real, it wouldn’t budge and he would have to fire through it. Either way, there was nothing lost. The one thing you didn’t want to do was test it and let the occupants know you were coming.
Salcone had been planning to have Ficcio go in through the back door alone while he waited in the street at the front of the store. But that wasn’t going to happen now. So much for all the cunning that had gotten them this far—Puccio’s and his own.
Puccio had come up to him in the theater and told him to find out what he could about the van that had been parked in the street across from the building. He had said there was something peculiar about it, and Salcone had known Puccio long enough to forget about asking questions and get out there. When he had sneaked to the rear corner of the van a while ago, he had peered inside and seen something every bit as peculiar as Puccio had suspected, but not as ominous. It was Bob Lempert, sitting in a swivel chair like the ones bass fishermen installed in their boats so that their butts wouldn’t get sore.
He had gone back inside and told Puccio that it was only Lempert, but Puccio had not been reassured; he had been puzzled. He had said in Italian, “He can’t be doing that for the police department. The only reason he might is if he was pretty sure the Butcher’s Boy was coming to get Paul. I told him to keep his eyes open like everybody else, but he’s too lazy to sit out there all night without getting paid.” He thought about it for a moment. “You know, he’s just stupid enough to have seen something in the police reports and kept it to himself so he could collect on the contract. Do me a favor. Go out and find a place to keep an eye on him, where he can’t see you. And take Ficcio with you.”
Salcone had responded to that with a raised eyebrow, and Puccio had read it instantly. “I know. But you might need somebody to come in and get me, and he won’t attract attention.” Then they could hear the movie starting, and it was time to move.