by Thomas Perry
He went back down, walked out of the garage to the alley and around the building. As he was walking up the street toward the main entrance, he saw three of the six FBI agents he had seen inside the cathedral. One of them was the boss, the one the others had called Agent Meade. The three men came out the front door of Vince Pugliese's building, looking as though they'd wasted their time, and turned toward Schaeffer. He walked toward the building with his hands in his pockets, not showing any interest in the FBI agents. When they passed, he scanned the block as he walked and spotted the other three FBI agents getting into a car. He stopped as though he were turning into the door for Mimi's Ristorante, waited until the car was gone, then looked back up the street to see the other car gone too. Then he stepped through the glass doors to the lobby. There was one man sitting at the desk in a black sport coat tending a sign-in book and a second in an identical coat watching security monitors.
Schaeffer stepped to the desk and held up his new Justice Department identification as though he wanted both to see it at once, but so it was far enough from either to prevent real scrutiny. "Agent Elliot Warren, United States Justice Department. I'd like you both to take a step backward away from the desk, please." The two obeyed. "Now lock the front doors and escort me upstairs to see Mr. Pugliese."
The man with the sign-in book said, "There have been like, ten FBI people here in the past two hours. Let me just call upstairs—"
Schaeffer's hand rested on the man's wrist as he reached for the phone. "That would have to be the worst decision you ever make."
"Do you have a search warrant?"
"Agent Meade and the others will be back shortly with the warrant. But it's a formality. Since shots have been fired and we're in the middle of a search for the shooters, this comes under the exception of hot pursuit. Any sworn law enforcement officer can come in here without a warrant. Now lock the door and take me to Vincent Pugliese."
The two looked at each other. One stepped to the front door and locked it, and the other slid the deadbolt into the floor. The two men stepped into the elevator before Schaeffer.
As soon as the elevator door closed, Schaeffer stopped the elevator and pulled out a gun. He said, "If you cooperate, nothing will happen to you. You won't be charged with anything, and you'll remain safe. If either of you is armed, now is the time to say so and put your gun on the floor."
One of the men said, "We're not armed."
Schaeffer took the man's arm and spun him so he stood facing the wall. "Hands on the wall, feet apart." Then he turned the second man into the same position facing the wall and patted the first one down. He found a small pistol in a holster on the man's belt under his coat. He held the pistol to the man's head. "What's this?"
"It's a gun. I forgot I had it."
Schaeffer fired it into the man's head and watched him drop to the floor, then stepped over him and stood behind the second man.
"Oh, my god," the second one said. "Are you crazy?"
"Do you have a gun too?"
"Yes."
"Then you're the one who's crazy."
He found the gun and put it into his coat pocket. "Do you have any other weapons?"
"A .380 in an ankle holster."
Schaeffer bent over and took the little pistol. "Is that it?"
"That's it."
"You know the penalty for lying to me?"
"I just saw it."
"So you're clean now?"
"Yes."
Schaeffer searched him a little more, but found nothing. He pressed the button for six, the top floor, and the elevator rose.
The elevator stopped on the sixth floor and the door slid open. There was a single corridor that ran along the outer wall of the building. On the same side of the corridor as the elevator there were three doors. Schaeffer used his free hand to keep the security man ahead of him as he stepped out of the elevator. "Go up to Pugliese's door and then stop."
The man walked up to a door that had neither a number nor a name on it and stood in front of it. Schaeffer stepped to the side with his back to the wall so he could watch the other two doors, reached across the man, and knocked. A moment later, the peephole in the door went dark for a few seconds. The door opened, and Schaeffer pushed the man in and came in close behind his back.
There was a shout. "It's him!" Schaeffer's eyes were taking in everything—t he four men in a huge open loft converted to an apartment—Salvatore Castiglione, two soldiers, and Vincent Pugliese. One of the soldiers already had a gun in his hand and fired. Schaeffer felt his hostage's legs buckle, and as he began to go down, Schaeffer went low with him and shot the soldier in the chest. He crouched and turned his gun in the direction of the others. Vince Pugliese popped up from his chair with his hands in the air.
"Hold it, everybody. Drop the guns so we can talk."
Schaeffer watched the remaining soldier drop his gun on the carpet, and Pugliese seemed to realize, a bit late, that Schaeffer would never believe he wasn't armed. He opened his coat wide and pinched the grips of a pistol between thumb and forefinger and set it on the floor.
Schaeffer's eyes settled on Sal Castiglione, who was still seated on a desk chair with his hands behind him. Castiglione said to him, "Don't look at me." He turned his body so Schaeffer could see he had handcuffs on his wrists attaching him to the backrest of the chair.
Schaeffer turned to Pugliese. "You didn't even wait until the other two are buried?"
"You're the one who made this possible. You changed the whole equation last night. Joe and Paul were dead, and Sal came to me for protection right away. We decided the best thing to do was to fly him to Mexico, where he would be safe and live happily on the money he's stashed away. That's our agreement."
"You wanted him to collect his money so you could kill him and steal it."
"Not me." Pugliese held his empty hands up in a gesture of innocence.
"If that wasn't the plan, he wouldn't be in handcuffs, and you would have flown him out before it was too late."
"You hear that?" said Pugliese to Castiglione. "It's too late. Sorry we didn't fly you out of here in time to save you, Sal. First it was the cops everywhere, and now my old friend. I guess he can't bear to leave until he kills you."
Castiglione looked at Pugliese. "You two deserve each other. I came to you for help after this psycho killed my brothers. You lived by my family's trust for thirty years, but when the bad hour came, you turned on me before anybody else." He turned to Schaeffer. "I remember you. I suppose you came back here because he told you he'd hide you, or smuggle you out, or something. Don't you know they always do that? The one they get to kill you is your closest friend, the one you trust."
Schaeffer moved his arm slightly and shot Pugliese, and then the last soldier. He looked at Castiglione. "I'm afraid that's the best I can do for you—let you see him die before you do."
"It's not much, but I would have hated to die with that bastard smirking at me."
Schaeffer pointed at the window, his face unsurprised. "See that?"
Sal Castiglione turned in an almost involuntary reflex to look, and Schaeffer shot him in the back of the head so he would die instantly.
Schaeffer stood still and listened. There were no sounds of sirens, no sounds of people running up the stairs. There had been plenty of time since the first gunshots. He supposed the sixth floor of the old stone building was too high up and too substantial to let the noise reach the street.
He walked across the loft to the area that was set aside as a kitchen. He couldn't help wondering if Vince had ever used any of the appliances. He began going through drawers and saw the place was fully equipped. After a moment he found what he had been looking for—a reusable fabric grocery bag. He took it and returned to the living room area. He started by taking the guns dropped by Pugliese and the two soldiers. He put them in the bag, added the three guns he had taken from the dead security men, then went through the wallets of the five men in the living room and took the cash. He dug the car keys
out of Pugliese's pocket. He considered searching the loft for money, but he knew Vince would not have made finding it an easy matter. He decided he'd used up his time.
He went through the big loft apartment opening doors, searching for the secret way out, and then found it. He opened a plain door near the kitchen and saw that inside was an auxiliary heating and air-conditioning unit. A person who opened the door would normally have closed it again because all that was beyond the box-shaped HVAC unit was what looked like a plain white wall. But he stepped in and pushed it, and the wall swung away from him on hinges to reveal a space beyond. He sidestepped through it and found himself on the landing of a staircase that had apparently been closed off during remodeling. There was a small airline bag sitting on the landing beside the door. He picked it up and opened it.
He had found Pugliese's escape kit. It held a Browning .45 pistol and two spare magazines, a large stack of bills, and a few credit cards and driver's licenses and passports in different names. He put the kit into his grocery bag and went down the eleven flights of stairs to the steel door. He carefully turned the bolt so it wouldn't make a noise and opened the door a half inch to look out at the underground garage. There were the same few cars as before, but no people.
He opened the door the rest of the way and hurried to the black car that Pugliese and his men had used to go after him on the street. He used the remote control button to unlock the door. He got in, started the car, and drove it up out of the garage. He drove the three long blocks to where his car was parked, left the black car around the corner from it, and walked back carrying his bag of guns and money. He set it in the trunk of his Camry, then got behind the wheel and drove. It was late night now, and it meant there would be less traffic on the major routes out of Chicago. If he turned west at the interstate, he could be in Los Angeles in three or four days.
28
IT WAS MONDAY MORNING, and Elizabeth Waring was finally at home. Chicago had been a defeat, a horrible misstep. It had also been a searing humiliation for her. She had gone into a crucial and dangerous situation without being clear in her own mind about what was going on or what she intended to do. She had gone fact-finding with a gun in her pocket. That was about all it was. All of her years of experience and her native ability to extrapolate information from bits of available data to figure out what was going on had deserted her. No, she had deserted them. All she had done was stumble on the name of a man the Butcher's Boy was likely to visit and then rush to be there too.
She had not decided in advance what she wanted to accomplish. Did she want to prevent him from making a deal with Pugliese, or from killing him? Did she want to protect him from being killed in an ambush, or did she want to arrest him? The answer to all of those questions had been yes. She had wanted him to see spontaneously that the whole world of organized crime was always going to be arrayed against him and that his only sensible choice was to turn himself over to Elizabeth Waring of the Justice Department. She had not brought enough federal officers to make his capture even possible because she had some notion that he would go quietly and willingly. It was ridiculous. He was not capable of reacting that way. His only strategy in life was the opposite, the strategy of wild animals. If he was surrounded and vastly outnumbered, he would be more vicious than ever and kill more of the attackers. In his world, agreements were more than risky. They were usually suicidal. They were an enemy's way of disarming him so he could be killed.
She had come to him with an offer he must have seen as naive and foolish. She had hoped he would be desperate enough to consider it, but he wasn't. He could never be. Then she had toyed with the idea of pulling a gun on him and holding him in custody. That was stupid because he would always take the chance that someone wouldn't shoot in time, or would miss, or wouldn't kill him. He would always take the chance, instantly, without hesitation, moving as fast as he could to evade and counterstrike.
Now she was going to have to do the thinking she had not done before. She needed to find an unambiguous position in relation to him and then construct a plan that would induce precisely what she wanted to happen. And she wouldn't try to do it alone this time. That had been a childish reaction to the refusal of Hunsecker to see the value of an informant like this one. She would have to design an ambush for the Butcher's Boy. It would have to involve enough federal officers to overwhelm him, to swarm him and physically overpower him. It was the only way to keep him alive and hold him long enough to make a deal.
She had always liked Monday mornings. Some of the people at work had told her she liked it because she didn't drink, but that wasn't why. Monday seemed to be the fresh start that would give her a lead on all the problems she was supposed to solve. She always drove to work early and got a sense of what was happening before the others came in, then selected the most pressing problems and the most promising leads and got people working on them as soon as they arrived. During breaks and lunchtime, she would turn her attention to issues that had to do with the kids or the household that required her to talk to someone during business hours.
There had been a couple of hundred Monday evenings when she had gone home physically and mentally exhausted, but glad that she had proceeded that way because the rest of the week would be better. This morning she began by looking at the routine activity reports that her analysts had set aside because they'd seen something in them that didn't seem routine. There was often a suicide in which the deceased had more than one bullet wound, a missing boater who'd never gone sailing before, a man killed in a hunting accident wearing a business suit. Sometimes it would be a violent incident with lots of victims and witnesses who had names from a single ethnic group. Occasionally that was a sign of organized crime. It usually took only a short time each morning to clear up some misunderstanding or refer the cases to regional offices for further investigation.
This morning, as she was going through the reports, her phone rang. "Justice Department, Waring," she said.
"Elizabeth? This is John Holman, over at the FBI. I was hoping you'd be in early."
"Hi, John. Are you still in Chicago?"
"No, I got back last night. When I came in this morning, I saw some information I thought you'd be interested in—some stuff we got on a couple of wiretaps over the weekend."
"Should I go over to your office?"
"I'm sending you copies of the transcripts by e-mail, but I wanted you to be aware that they're coming. The first batch is from a tap we've had on the phone of a Castiglione soldier named Ronald Bonardo. He runs a crew that's been doing real-estate scams in Florida. They'd buy and sell the same house four or five times among themselves to jack up the price, take out a giant mortgage, and then walk away. That worked in boom times when houses were going up. Now they're taking money to prevent foreclosures. The victim signs his house over to them."
"What does he say on tape?"
"Bonardo called Vincent Pugliese in Chicago to ask what was going on. Pugliese says on Friday night that the two older Castiglione brothers were dead and he was taking over the family. He said the one who had done the killing was the Butcher's Boy. That's the nickname of the guy you've been watching for, isn't it?"
"Yes. Is there anything on the tapes that will tell us where the Butcher's Boy is going next?"
"Not on the pages I've seen. The other transcript is a phone tap on a Lazaretti soldier in California named Joe Buffone. He's talking to an associate, a Lazaretti soldier in New York named Nano Scuzzi, this morning. Scuzzi asks whether they've got things set up. He says, 'I did what I was told by Tony. I delivered the first two hundred thousand to their company. That gets them on the job. When they deliver proof that he's dead, we give them the other three hundred.' Scuzzi says, 'Tony's smart. We don't want to see our best earners following that bastard into some dark alley, like the Castigliones did. It's stupid to even try. Let the guys like him handle him. If the pros bag him, we won't have to.' What do you think?"
Elizabeth felt her morning changing rapidly. "They've hire
d a hit man to kill the hit man. Or a team of them. I suppose it should have been obvious that this was going to happen, but I didn't see it coming. It makes perfect sense. The Lazaretti soldiers are skilled as drug smugglers and distributors. It doesn't make them effective against a professional killer. That's why they hired people like the Butcher's Boy a generation ago."
"How do you think we should handle this?" Holman asked.
"The first thing is probably to find out what we can about this murder-for-hire team. The ones who work that way usually have some kind of cover—an office, a company that takes in money and issues paychecks. Maybe there's something earlier on the tapes that will tell you where Buffone went to make his payoff, or if he spoke with the go-between on the tapped phone, or some detail we can use."
"I'll let you know if we find anything," he said.
"Thank you, John. I really appreciate your keeping me up on this. The taps were on two unrelated cases, and they would have been missed if you hadn't noticed. I'll talk to you soon." She hung up, and she felt a headache begin around her eyes and expand and intensify. She had been in Chicago all weekend, away from her children and putting herself in danger, which she had no right to do. She had just told herself that she wasn't going to try to go off alone and ad lib a plan after she was in the street between an angry professional killer and a bunch of armed gangsters. But the Butcher's Boy might be the most promising informant in forty years. And he wasn't worth anything dead.
29
IT WAS TUESDAY, before first light on the West Coast. The mockingbirds had been singing sleepily for some time, perched unseen in the canopies of the tall sycamores, not showing themselves or flying just yet because the last of the owls were still out, gliding silently above the trees and searching for one last catch before sunrise. There were specific boundaries in time that they all had to fear. If an owl was still in flight when the sun rose, he risked having a gang of crows attack him. When they did, it was five or six of them at once, wave after wave, hurling themselves into him, trying to corner him, blinking and defenseless.
