by Thomas Perry
He took it. “Is this the phone David calls?”
“It is.”
“Then it’ll do.”
“If they start to be curious about me, it will be bugged as quickly as any other phone.”
“Then make sure they don’t suspect you of anything.” He paused. “I’m sorry I came here like this.”
“Forget it. Now go away.”
He stood and seemed to glide through the door. She heard him moving to the staircase, then listened for the front door opening, but heard nothing more.
13
He got into his car and drove out of McLean. She had surprised him. The big news, the only events that people were talking about, were that somebody wanted him dead badly enough to be offering a huge payoff, and that Carl Bala was up for parole. It had not occurred to him that Bala would ever get out of prison, or that there was any mechanism left for him to be released other than death.
In 1982 Balacontano had hired him to do a couple of very risky, high-paying jobs. Bala protected himself by hiring Schaeffer through a Las Vegas go-between lawyer named Harry Orloff. After doing the jobs, Schaeffer was walking down an alley in Denver and got jumped by a pair of muggers. He killed them, but not before getting marked up and hurt. One of them had hit him with a rock the size of a brick.
He went to Las Vegas a few days before the prearranged pay date, partly to recover from his injuries and give his bruises and cuts time to heal. Being there with his face looking that way made him a liability, and maybe made him seem weak too. It had also given Balacontano time to do some thinking. Balacontano had not been foolish enough to openly refuse to pay a professional killer, even one who knew only the go-between. But he had calculated that it would save him a great deal of money to pay some less expensive men to kill the expensive killer.
When Schaeffer broke into Orloff’s house, he found Orloff had been killed, probably to keep secret the name of his employer. But Schaeffer had found a living man there named Arthur Fieldston, who was the legitimate-looking front man for some of the businesses owned by Carlo Balacontano.
Schaeffer killed Fieldston, cut off his head and hands, put them in a cooler, and drove it across the country to Balacontano’s horse farm outside Saratoga Springs, New York. He buried the head and hands about two hundred feet from the main house and called in a tip to the New York State police.
As he drove, he thought about Elizabeth Waring. He was reasonably sure she was telling him the truth. Carl Bala really had been scheduled for a parole hearing, probably the most unexpected news that she could have told Schaeffer. And while she didn’t know who was trying to kill Schaeffer, her guess that it had to do with Balacontano’s possible release was probably right. What Schaeffer needed to know now was whether the hunters were people who wanted Balacontano to stay in prison, people who were working for Balacontano to ensure his parole wasn’t sabotaged, or people who simply wanted Schaeffer dead for their own reasons and thought he’d show up if Balacontano was about to be released.
She could have been lying about it, he knew. She was certainly not a friend of his, but they had forged a kind of truce. It was a tested legal practice in America that the police were allowed to tell a suspect all the lies they could think of and then charge him with whatever they wanted to without penalty. But his experience with Waring over time had been that she didn’t use that tool, at least not with him. Lying wouldn’t accomplish what she wanted, which seemed to be to convert him into an informant.
He thought about the glimpse of her personal life he’d just gotten. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course she must have had some kind of love life over the years. Her husband had died when she was very young. He should have been prepared for another person to be in that room with her, but he had been thoughtless. He was lucky it wasn’t a homicide cop.
Everybody had a right to a personal life, and everybody had a right to keep it personal. He had come to learn that while growing up in Eddie’s butcher shop. Eddie always had a few special customers. Often a lady would call while the boy was in school to place her order and arrange the best time for Eddie to deliver it to her house that day. He would be gone about an hour, come back as cheerful as always, and go right back to work. He would come and go by the back door, so most customers would assume he had never left and was simply doing some cutting, weighing, and wrapping in the back of the shop.
One afternoon about a month after the boy had turned sixteen and had his driver’s license, Eddie was waiting on customers when the boy came home from school. The boy headed straight for the back of the store to get rid of his books and coat and put on his apron, but Eddie stopped him. “I’ve got a delivery order ready to go out.”
The boy said, “No problem. I’m here.”
Eddie said, “She asked me to send you. It’s Mrs. Whittaker. Do you know where they live?”
The boy was confused. “I don’t think so.”
Eddie took the black pen from his apron pocket. “Here. I’ll write it on the wrapper.” He scribbled the address on the white butcher paper. “You can take the car.”
This was a big moment for the boy. Eddie had taught him to drive, and he had passed the road test and gotten his license. Eddie let him drive the car whenever he wanted, but this was different. It was using the car the way grown-ups did—to do business, make deliveries, serve customers.
It was the sort of winter day that people in Pittsburgh learned to expect from January to March, a world of dirty snow that never melted, the leafless trees looking skeletal under an iron-gray sky. He arrived at the address on the package just before four o’clock. He parked Eddie’s car along the curb, around the corner where the snowplow had already pushed the snow into a ridge and where he could walk without stepping into snow higher than his shoes. The house was large, a survivor from the nineteenth century, with a big porch and a steep, high roof above the second story.
When he climbed the steps to the front porch with the package, the door swung open. Mrs. Whittaker was inside holding the door open for him. As soon as he was past the threshold, she shut the door and locked the bolt. She was wearing a thin blue dress with a flower pattern. She gave a shiver and hugged herself. “So cold already,” she said. He saw her perked nipples under the dress. She took the package of meat, walked quickly up the narrow hall to the kitchen, and put it in the refrigerator. Then she walked back, her eyes mostly turned downward toward the hardwood floor but looking up a couple of times to glance at the boy.
She seemed shy. She was only twenty-three, something he knew because she had been a senior when Ray Politz’s older brother Dick was. He’d seen her a few times. He and Ray had been almost twelve. He had forgotten how pretty she was, or maybe never really been aware of it because she was so much older than he was. She was thin, about five feet four inches tall, with blond hair that looked like corn silk, and light skin that showed pink blushes, at least at that moment.
He watched her coming back and saw her notice it and smile, showing her perfect white teeth. The boy remembered that her father was a dentist. She reached him and leaned against the wall. “What do I owe you?”
The boy was shocked. He had come unprepared. He had no idea. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Eddie just told me to deliver the meat. I forgot to ask.”
“That’s okay. Maybe you can tell me next time.”
“Eddie will open a charge account. In fact, I’ll do it myself when I get back,” he said. He was trying to impress her.
“Thank you,” she said, and smiled that beautiful smile for him again. She seemed young, with her thin, graceful shape and the kind of blond hair that seemed to belong to a child. But she also seemed older, more grown up and sophisticated.
She said, “You know, I have a little problem, and my husband doesn’t get home from work until eight-thirty on Thursdays. I wonder if you would take a look at it.”
If she had asked him to walk through
fire, he would have agreed. “Sure,” he said.
She started up the stairs, and he couldn’t help looking at her as she climbed the steps. He watched her hips sway as she climbed. She stopped at the top of the stairs, looked over her shoulder, and must have noticed he was looking at her bottom, but she ignored it. “It’s this door that keeps getting stuck so I can’t pull it open. Could you open it?”
She pointed at a door a few feet to the right of the landing. He went to the door and pushed it with his shoulder. It budged and then swung inward to reveal a small, neat spare bedroom. “Do you have any sandpaper? I could sand it so it won’t stick.”
She moved in behind him so closely that they were touching, and snaked her arms around his waist. Her lips were close to his ear. “Next time. You know, Michael, having you look at me like that makes me feel all warm and confused.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. I like it. And all men like to look at women.” She stepped back, and he turned to face her. She said, “Go ahead. Touch me.”
He let his hands go to her waist. It felt impossibly tiny. She took his wrists and lifted his hands to her breasts and then down along her sides to her hips. “I know you like me.” She released his wrists. “I like you too. I think you want me to take off my clothes. Do you?”
“I do want that. Yes, please.”
She laughed, and then went ahead. When she was naked, she stood in front of him for about five seconds, watching him look, and then undid his belt and helped him out of his clothes. After a few minutes of embracing, kissing, and touching, she went to the bed, pulled back the covers, reached under the pillow, and produced a condom. She tore open the package and rolled it onto him.
He made love to her, shyly and clumsily at first, but with curiosity and wonder and interest. He saw her turn her head occasionally and squint to consult the electric alarm clock on the nightstand. At a certain point during their second time, she said, “Finish now. It’s okay. I’m happy now. Give in to it.”
He did. She lay still and embraced him, ran her fingers through his hair and kissed him gently. “That was really nice,” she said. “But we have to get dressed and send you back to work now.”
He didn’t resist. He was still amazed at his great good fortune and didn’t want to risk it. They both dressed quickly and efficiently and found themselves facing each other. They kissed once more, and then she placed both hands on his chest to push him a foot from her so she could look into his eyes. “Did you have a nice time?” Her eyes were blue, like a summer sky.
“Yes. This is the best day of—”
“Okay. I did too. I’ll call the shop the next time I have the chance, and you can do the delivery again.”
He smiled. “Thank you.”
She laughed. “You’re funny.” She gave him a gentle push to get him to start down the stairs. “Is Eddie the Butcher your father?”
“No, why?”
“I’ve been watching you for a while. I always wondered. I know we’re going to be close. We already are. I can’t help being curious about you.”
When they got to the front door, she unlocked it and held it open. “Drive carefully. It’s been getting really cold this time of day, and the roads are probably slippery.”
“I will.”
She said, “One more thing. This is a secret between us. Please don’t ever tell anyone else that we did this.”
“I won’t.” He never did. When he got back to the shop, Eddie was already mopping the tile floor in the meat-cutting room, the smell of the steaming soapy water and Lysol filling the air. The bell rang when the boy opened the front door, and Eddie appeared at the doorway to the cutting room. “Hi, kid. Delivery go okay?”
“Yes,” said the boy. “But I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t ask for the price or bring change or anything. I told her I’d start an account for her.”
“Good thinking,” Eddie said. “Make your customer feel trusted.”
The boy stepped closer to the counter. “What should I be doing now?”
“Just start the card for Mrs. Whittaker. The charge for today was fourteen dollars and sixty-seven cents. Then clear the register and lock the cash in the safe. Where’s the car?”
“Right outside at the curb.”
“Great. We won’t have to freeze our asses off walking home.”
Eddie went back to finish the floor. He never gave the boy a knowing smile or asked any questions, either then or during the years while Mrs. Whittaker kept her account active. The boy had occasionally revisited this day in memory over the next decades.
Michael Schaeffer thought again about Elizabeth Waring. What she had done was give him a little information but not enough to identify his enemy. He needed to know who was sending people to kill him. There were probably twenty bosses who had reason to hate him. In order to create enough chaos to escape the manhunts when he was young, he had killed some important men and tried to make it look as though another family had done it. Some of the current bosses were probably the sons or nephews of the men he had killed. They might see the release of Carlo Balacontano as simple bait to bring Schaeffer in front of a gun sight. But he had studied Carlo Balacontano, and he was sure they had too. If Balacontano was freed, many of those bosses had reason to be afraid. Bala had been powerful, ruthless, and smart when he’d gone to prison. There had been no limit to his greed or his need for power. During all those years in prison, he had been ruling his crime family through a series of puppets and stand-in bosses. If he was a threat in the old days, would he be different now, or just smarter and angrier and richer?
And Elizabeth Waring could be manipulating Schaeffer. It was easy to forget that she was the most dangerous person in the world to him. She had been trying to trap him for about thirty years, just as some of the crime bosses had. And she was better educated and smarter than any of the men who were after him. Every time she turned her attention to him, she remembered everything from before, and she demonstrated that, in the meantime, she had learned something new. He was a murderer who had never been to jail, and she was in the business of taking people like him off the street. Maybe she had arranged the parole hearing for Carlo Balacontano just to lure Schaeffer back from where he’d been living.
She would have been justified. He was guilty of a lot of murders. It occurred to him that she was one of the people who would have said it was terrible of Eddie to make him into a killer, if she had known. Maybe it was true. But what Eddie had taught him wasn’t just the killing. He’d also taught him how to live through it.
14
He drove the hundred miles to Richmond, Virginia, keeping his eyes moving to check the traffic behind him. What he looked for were crude methods that Mafia soldiers might use—changing a driver’s appearance with hats or coats, falling far behind and turning on the high-beam headlights so they could still see him but didn’t look the same to him, or having two cars follow and switch off at intervals so they didn’t get too familiar.
He assumed that the methods Elizabeth Waring would use if she wanted his location were more sophisticated. He had removed the battery from his cell phone so his GPS signal wouldn’t give him away. The Justice Department would probably check the license plate–reader networks of the local police forces. She knew the time—a few minutes after 3:00 a.m.—and knew he was heading away from her house in McLean. Traffic was sparse, so her people might be able to narrow the list down to a few thousand license numbers, possibly only a few hundred. She could get somebody to find out if any of these cars had changed hands in the past month. He had used electrical tape to alter some of the numbers on his plates, but he was going to have to register the car in another state soon, possibly New York or Pennsylvania,. A nonexistent license plate number would move his car to the top of their list.
He knew he was likely up against killers who hadn’t been born when he’d left the United States the first
time. He didn’t ask himself why they wanted to kill him. They did it for the same reason he had in the old days: somebody was offering them money. The ones he’d seen in the past few days were more overconfident than he had been. They assumed that because they were younger, they would prevail. When he was a teenager, he had known more about how to do the job than they did the day they died. Eddie had made sure at the beginning.
After he had learned to load, fire, and care for each of Eddie’s pistols during the spring and summer when he was twelve, Eddie said he was happy with his progress but added, “I need to take you to a guy. We’ll leave Sunday when the shop is closed. Pack enough clothes for three weeks.”
The guy was named Don Sarkassian. He lived on a farm out in the sticks. It took Eddie an hour and a half to drive out there. Don had about a hundred acres of flat land that he never planted, and at least five times that many acres that were rolling hills and second-growth forest.
He had converted a hill like a barrow at the edge of a flat field, dug a gaping scoop out of the hill with a backhoe, and poured sand into the depression so that when a bullet went through a target, it burrowed into the sand a few inches. He would occasionally start up the backhoe to sift the sand through a screen. Then he’d recycle the bullets and reload them into brass casings.
Sarkassian was a former pistol champion who had won so many medals, trophies, and commemorative guns that he had grown bored with competition. Eddie let the boy know that Sarkassian had, on occasion, taken on some wet work, but a man who could flip a quarter into the air and hit it with a .45 pistol didn’t see men as challenging targets.
The morning they met, Sarkassian led him and Eddie out to the range to take some target practice. When they’d each emptied a magazine, Sarkassian stopped and studied the boy for a minute and then talked to Eddie some more. Suddenly he tossed a .45 pistol at the boy, who caught it with both hands and then held it out to Sarkassian, handgrips first. Sarkassian said, “Thanks.” To Eddie he said, “It’ll cost you about two grand for ammunition. I’ll teach him for free.”