by Thomas Perry
She collected the two FBI agents and got into the back seat of the car while they prepared to drive out. She dialed the office of the deputy assistant, but changed her mind and hung up. Then she called her colleague John, who was assigned to the Balacontano hearing. The phone rang four times and offered to record a message.
She said, “It’s me. I just talked to Carl Bala. He sincerely thinks he’s getting out. He’s always been very cynical and, I think, realistic before. I’m wondering whether he’s confident because he has a great lawyer, or whether his great lawyer actually told him he’s getting out. In this case, there could be a big difference.”
28
Schaeffer picked up his car and drove south again, this time to Maryland, where he was far away from the dangers of New York. He was alive, and John Cocella, the acting boss of the Balacontano family, was dead, along with his bodyguards. Some Scarpis were dead too, and that would add to the general climate of anger and hatred he had needed to create.
The training Eddie had given him was what had made the difference yesterday. The instant Schaeffer had seen the Scarpi soldiers were going to lose, he had started to move, and kept moving until he had killed Cocella and gotten away. He could still hear Eddie’s voice from long ago: “Plan a job for a month if you have to, but do it in seconds. Once it starts, you’re an egg in a frying pan. If you take too much time, you heat up and burn.”
He fell asleep and woke only when the service people started rattling carts full of china and silverware in the morning. As he lay in bed, he soon heard guests walking along the hallway outside his door, some of them talking to companions. He was just outside DC now, partly because he wanted to mask his travels from the Justice Department.
He would have to go back to New York to check on the struggle at some point, if only to keep the two families angry and fearful. What he would like best was for the Scarpis to acquire some allies among the other New York families, because that would keep the pressure on the Balacontanos. But he was sure that what he’d done already would keep Bala’s men thinking about the Scarpis for a few days instead of going out to search for him.
The next night he activated one of the new cell phones and called Elizabeth Waring.
When she answered, he said, “I read in the paper that you arrested Rocco Paglia for the Boccio killing.”
“I saw that too,” she said. “You called me at two a.m. to read me the newspaper?”
“To give you a chance to thank me.”
“You told me a story, and I passed that on to other people. And you were right that there were still a few eyewitnesses who were willing to testify in exchange for a couple of years off the sentences they were serving.”
“Doesn’t that buy me a thank-you?”
“Thank you. It also keeps you on the list of people I could convince my bosses to make a deal with. For the moment you’re a reliable source of information. Would you like to take the department up on the offer before some young hit man collects on you?”
“No, thank you,” he said. “I just called to see if you had any information for me about Carl Bala’s parole hearing.”
“It’s scheduled for two days from now, on August 1, as you know. It’s at the federal prison where he’s locked up. If you’re considering going in the hope that he sees you and has a heart attack, forget it. Only his victims or their immediate families can attend the hearing. A hearing examiner asks the questions and puts together the report and sends his recommendation to one of the US parole commissioners, who makes the decision. If the parole is not granted, Bala could get another shot at it in two years.”
“What do you think is going to happen on August 1?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “A couple of months ago I would have said his chances were nil. Now I’m not so sure. He’s got a very good lawyer. Most of the time, inmates aren’t represented by counsel, because these hearings are not adversarial proceedings. These prisoners have already been convicted and served their sentences. The hearing officer looks at the written record, reads comments from victims, asks a few questions, says no or maybe, and sends it on. This time Bala clearly thinks he’s getting out. The people from our office who are submitting their own statement to the hearing officer think otherwise.”
“Okay.”
“You’re positive he was the one who hired you to do a couple of killings, right?”
“Right.”
“If he hired you, then you’re both guilty.”
“I know. I apologize.”
She suddenly changed directions. “Do you know that there was a big shootout in New York this week?”
“I read about it.”
“I have to take an interest in these things,” she said. “First Dominic Santangelo gets shot through the back of the head at his house, and then John Cocella and four of his men and four Scarpi soldiers all get shot down around a Balacontano office building. You know what stood out for me?”
“No,” he said.
“There were lots of bullets fired from lots of handguns. I know the police picked up at least seventy-five brass casings. But it turns out that all of the bullets that hit John Cocella and his bodyguards came from one gun.”
“So?”
“It reminded me of something.”
“What was that?”
“A long time ago I was on a case. First there was a machinist killed when his truck exploded outside a California union hall, and then there was the murder of a US senator in Colorado, and then a series of killings of LCN bosses all over the country. The killings caused maximum confusion and chaos and violence, and it also seemed that there was only one person who benefited from the chaos.”
“Interesting story,” he said. “To me this one just sounds like the usual fighting these people used to get into once in a while.”
She was hoping she’d succeeded in making him lose track of the time. The Justice Department’s technicians would be frantically narrowing down his location.
“Well, anyway, I’ve got to go.” The line went dead. She knew he was already taking the battery out of his phone. She waited for her phone to ring so someone could tell her they’d found him. After a few more minutes, the silence told her that they had not.
A few minutes after hanging up, he walked up to the front desk at his hotel, turned in his key card, and took the receipt the night clerk printed for him. He got into his car and drove. The hotel where he had stopped was one of about fifteen large ones in the surrounding mile, as well as twenty or more smaller ones that weren’t tall enough to dominate the horizon. Every one of them was close enough so that a cell phone call would ping off the same repeater towers.
As he drove, he took apart the cell phone he had used. For the next few miles he threw parts of the phone into any sewer grate he passed on his drive north. When he reached the outskirts of Philadelphia, he checked into his next hotel. He liked it immediately because it had an underground garage with an elevator, so he would be able to come and go without being seen. He could deal with the late-night-shift people tonight and then never see them again. For now he had to wait. Waiting had kept Eddie and the boy alive a few times.
He remembered one job they’d taken in the dead of winter. He and Eddie had spent days finding a man named Barzoni, who was the head of a crew of thieves. The boy hadn’t retained the list of the man’s crimes after all these years. All he remembered was that Barzoni and his crew had somehow betrayed the trust of the Draco family, a central New York State tributary group reporting to the boss in Buffalo. The Buffalo underboss, Bobby Moscato, had put out an open contract, a promise to pay $100,000 to anyone who killed Barzoni. For each of Barzoni’s men he would pay $20,000.
It was a cold winter, and Eddie and the boy were driving along the southern shore of Lake Ontario, a part of upstate New York where a man’s ears would freeze while he was walking from his house to his car and it hurt to
breathe too deeply. The wind was arctic air that screamed across Canada and the lakes with the intention of making human life unbearable and dangerous.
It was after dark when Eddie and the boy passed a small town outside Oswego and came upon a row of cottages that had been built along the lake side of the road. The boy spotted a car that matched the description of Barzoni’s parked in the garage of a cottage, nose outward. Eddie stopped his car and turned it around while the boy got out, touched the parked car’s hood, and felt no heat. That meant the car had been there a while. They drove back the way they had come to get indoors and plan the hit.
The only sheltered place for a stranger on this stretch of shoreline was a small hotel that rented rooms to ice fishermen in the winter and tourists in summer. When they walked into the foyer, they saw coats on the rack and realized they weren’t the only visitors.
A big table in the dining room and bar was occupied by seven men in their thirties. At a seat with his back to the wall sat a man who appeared to be their leader, a professional killer and competitor of Eddie Mastrewski’s nicknamed Cat-head Malone.
Eddie stepped up to the table and said, “Hello, Cat-head. I’m surprised to see you here.”
“Likewise,” Malone said. The boy could see the origin of the nickname. While Malone was a tall and athletic-looking man, he had a head that was small and round, and ears that protruded from a spot slightly higher than most people’s ears. “We’ve been here since morning, waiting for all of them to get here. This one is ours.”
Eddie’s hand gave a slow sweep to indicate the many empty beer bottles that had collected on the table. “I can see there’s no denying you’ve been here a while. And I know he’s down there in one of the cottages, but he’s not alone. Are you sure you want to try to take him by yourselves?”
“Nice try, Eddie,” Cat-head said. “There are seven of us. There are two of you, and I’m being generous there, since that kid can’t be more than half your weight. You’d better tie a beer keg to his ass or the wind out there will pick him up and blow him to Florida.”
The boy glanced at Eddie for a signal. Eddie didn’t look at him but gave his head an almost imperceptible shake. The boy had both hands in his parka pockets with his fingers wrapped around a pair of .45 Model 1911 pistols, his favorites. He let the muscles relax but didn’t move his hands.
A moment later, a tall, stocky blond woman wearing a waitress’s dress and apron with a pair of jeans underneath because of the cold came by with a tray to clear the empty bottles. Eddie took this moment to order another round of drinks for Malone and his friends. This seemed to make them more at ease, and the boy saw a couple of them take their hands out of their pockets without bringing anything up with them. After the next round had been delivered and consumed, they seemed more affable.
A bit later Cat-head told Eddie, “Now all we have to do is kill some time, wait for the night to get really dark. Around midnight, before the last quarter moon rises, we’ll get the work done.”
Eddie shrugged. “The moon can be pretty bright when it’s reflected off the snow.”
“I got a way to fix that, too,” Cat-head said.
“Are you going to paint the snow?”
“When the time comes, you’ll see. It’s been five degrees or less around here for the past month, and nearly that cold for the month before. The lake is frozen solid for at least two miles out from shore. Some of the ice fishermen have been driving cars out to their fishing huts.”
“More balls than brains,” said Eddie.
“They’ve been doing it for a hundred years around here.”
“Not them,” said Eddie. “You.”
“What are you talking about?” Cat-head said. “If the guys in that cottage are watching for anybody, they’re watching the road. They’ll never expect us to come sneaking across the ice to come up behind them.”
Eddie surveyed the seven men. Then he said, “Cat-head, I’d let it go for tonight. I’d think it all through one more time in daylight before I went out there.”
Cat-head grinned. “You just know we’re going to collect on this, and you think if you undermine my confidence we’ll let you join us. But then it would be the same money divided by nine instead of seven.”
“Not interested in a ninth of anything,” said Eddie. “I’m just giving you my best advice. If you go out there on the ice, you’ve got no place to fall back to if something goes wrong. There’s nothing to hide behind. You’ll die out there on the lake. What can it hurt to go get a night’s sleep and start fresh? Maybe then you can make a sensible plan.”
Cat-head said, “No. It happens tonight.”
Eddie stood up. “Well then, good luck. I hope you get through this and collect.” He turned and walked to the foyer. The boy tugged down his watch cap and zipped his parka, followed Eddie to the car, waited for him to unlock it, and got in. Eddie didn’t drive in the direction the boy expected. Instead he headed toward the cottages along the lake.
“What are we doing?” the boy said.
“We’re going to get the best seats for the show. They’re going to walk across the ice. If we don’t see that, we’ll always wonder what it looked like.”
The boy wasn’t sure he would but said, “I guess so.”
Eddie drove along the lake road, past the cottage and the two other cars parked on the far side of it. He made the curves carefully to avoid sliding off the road into a snowbank. When they were a distance away, he slid to a full stop, turned, and drove his car into a pinewood lot where the exposed roots of old trees alternated with dry needles and the dusting of snow that had made it through the evergreen boughs above. The car bumped along, bouncing Eddie and the boy out of their seats toward the ceiling.
“A little rough,” the boy said.
“That’s good,” Eddie said. “If it gets soft, it’ll mean we’re stuck.” He turned off the headlights and drove by the dim glow that came from city lights reflecting off the clouds from Oswego and maybe even Syracuse.
When they reached a break in the trees, he stopped where they could look through the windshield and see the cottage. Eddie let the engine idle and kept the heater and the defroster fan running. “This will do,” he said. “We should see fine from here.”
He looked at his watch, couldn’t see it, then held it close to the faint greenish glow of the dashboard. “Eleven forty-five. It won’t be long.”
Twenty minutes later Eddie and the boy saw the first dark figures walking carefully on the snow-dusted ice about three hundred feet from shore. The boy watched, counting them as they appeared, one through seven. They were carrying long guns. One of the men took a careless step and his feet flew up in front of him and he landed on his back. After a few seconds the man rolled onto his belly and then got on his hands and knees, crawled a few feet to pick up his rifle, and used it as a crutch as he stood unsteadily on the ice.
“Slippery,” said Eddie.
“For a second I thought he got shot,” the boy said.
“He will. Give them time.”
The seven kept stepping along, moving each foot only a few inches at a time. Gradually the wind grew stronger and concentrated into gusts that rocked Eddie’s car a little. The wind blew the snow up from the ice in what looked like clouds. The men turned their faces away from the onslaught, pulled their coats tighter across their throats, and tugged down their wool caps.
Finally the seven made it to the stretch of ice in front of the cottage. They arranged themselves in a row about fifteen feet apart. Then they lay prone on the ice to aim their rifles at the cottage.
The boy surveyed the scene. It was late and there were no lights on in the cottage. It seemed likely that the Barzoni crew of enemies were asleep, not standing up in windows where they could be seen and shot.
As he watched, a switch was thrown somewhere inside the cottage, and the scene changed in that instant. A
row of floodlights mounted along the eaves of the house all went on at once. Their beams lit up the ice so that it looked like an empty snow-covered parking lot. The glaring white headlights of the two cars parked along the side of the cottage flared on too, and the firing began.
The men on the ice were clearly visible, planted on the white frozen surface of the lake. The lights were blinding them. Behind them, their own dark shadows lay like pointers to show exactly where each of them was. All the men who were lit up on the ice could do was pour rifle fire into the lakeside wall of the cottage.
Their shots were punching holes in the wooden clapboards, and a couple of well-placed or lucky shots hit floodlight bulbs. The front ends of the two parked cars were hit many times, and eventually their headlights blinked out.
The defenders in the cottage were invisible except for the muzzle flash when one of them got his rifle sights lined up on one of the men on the ice. The muzzle flashes drew fire, but one by one the bullets found the men on the ice.
The boy counted four men lying prone on the ice who were not moving or firing, and then one more. Two others got to their feet with difficulty and tried to run, but their short, awkward footsteps took them only a few yards before a ferocious barrage cut them down. Then all the boy could hear was the wind blowing across the ice, covering the seven bodies with powdery flakes.
“Everything was just like you told Cat-head,” the boy muttered.
“Yeah,” said Eddie. “But what now?”
“What do you mean? It’s over.”
“Cat-head and his friends are dead, but Vic Barzoni is not dead. And there are still people who are willing to pay good money for him to get that way.”
“Could we do it?”
“Well, they used their two cars well in that fight. Their brights blinded the ice boys and made them easy to see. But those two cars got popped a lot of times. The headlights, radiators, windshields, and at least one front tire all got hit. If we were to drive past the cottage and put a few rounds into the front of the car that’s backed into the garage, they’d be stuck here or have to walk out.”