by Lee Thomas
“Come again?”
“Give me a minute. I just shot a guy.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me if you’d shot a lot of guys over the years.”
“Well, I haven’t. I figure he deserved it, but that doesn’t make it easy.”
They sat quietly and then a waiter arrived to take their orders—coffee for both. Lennon removed his hat and stared at it before setting it on the floor.
“I need you to keep your lid on when I tell you this,” Lennon said. “You’ve tossed me once before, and I’d rather not have it happen again.”
Butch looked at the man and tried to decipher what he meant. Had they met? When? Where? He searched Lennon’s face and remembered the mustache, of all things. This was the guy he’d bowled over at Musante’s, the guy he’d mistaken for a shooter coming through the back door.
“So you know I had nothing to do with gunning Musante down, because you were one of the guys hired to do it.”
“Not exactly,” Lennon said. “But I was there.”
Butch listened as Lennon laid it out for him: Curt Conrad’s guilt in Musante’s death; Terry McGavin’s involvement; the conversation he’d had with his captain, who’d told Lennon that Butch was taking the fall regardless of what the evidence said. As he listened he felt his anger ticking up by degrees until he found himself barely suppressing the urge to flip the table over in Lennon’s face.
“Now just settle down,” Lennon said, noticing Butch’s ire.
“Are you serious? Settle down? I’m supposed to drink this up like lemonade?”
“This doesn’t have to be the end of the line. I came down here to warn you, to keep you from trying to work a deal with anyone involved in this shit, because there is no deal. I figured you might be looking to put things together, maybe trying to exonerate yourself, but it doesn’t matter what you find. You need to know that. As for whatever it is you have that Impelliteri wants, hold on to it or sell it or throw it away. If you ask me, you should get your ass on a train to Florida, change your name, and then find a rich widow or get a job on a fishing boat.”
Lennon lit a cigarette and looked at Butch.
So that was it? Some miserable little thug like Terry McGavin has a beef—nothing real, nothing deserved—and with a single phone call, he destroys Butch’s life? It could have been any guy in Musante’s rundown house, any punk off the street. All of this misery and death because a petty man with a bit of power decided Butch was an annoyance, not even a threat, but an irritation he intended to scratch out of existence.
“Of course the guys this afternoon are a different matter. I’ve met them before, and they have some interesting and dangerous toys. I don’t know who they work for though.”
“They work for themselves,” Butch said. “Did you follow them down here?”
“I thought they followed me.”
“How’d you know I was here?”
Lennon flinched at the question. He drew on his cigarette and looked over his shoulder. With his thumb and index finger, he picked a bit of tobacco off of his tongue and dropped it in the ashtray.
“Something happened to Rory,” Butch said. That was the only answer. Rory had sent him to Hollis Rossington, and Rory wouldn’t have talked unless he’d had no choice. No one else in Chicago knew where to find him. “He’s dead.”
Lennon nodded. “The doctors said he probably wouldn’t have made it another month anyway.”
“What does that mean? What happened to him?”
“There’s another player in all of this,” Lennon said. “I think he’s on Impelliteri’s payroll but I can’t get any confirmation of that. I spent a couple of days up north trying to ID the guy, but came up with nothing. What I know is he killed my partner, and he tried to kill Rory Sullivan and his daughter.”
“Molly?”
“She’s okay. The killer got a shiv into her father’s shoulder. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, except Sullivan’s heart gave out. He made it through the day, but he had a second attack a couple of nights later. I’m sorry. I know he was your friend.”
Butch’s anger collapsed. It dropped through him, tearing a path from his throat to his belly. He began to cry. He hadn’t cried since childhood, but the tears welled hot in his eyes and his chest hitched and before he even understood what had overcome him, he was sobbing. Lennon looked away and finished his cigarette, and Butch shoved the napkin against his eyes, and he fought against the miserable expression of weakness, but he had no power over it.
“Pull yourself together,” Lennon whispered.
“Fuck you,” Butch managed between sobs.
“Then listen,” the detective said. “This other player, the mystery hitter, he also knows you’re down here. On the bright side, Molly Sullivan shot him in the gut, and that might lay him up for a while. You might even be really lucky and the fucker is already cold, but he knows what I knew: that you’re staying in New Orleans with a guy named Rossington. It took me all of five minutes to find the address. So he’s going to need to be warned before you take off.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Butch said. He sniffed loudly and wiped the last of the tears from his eyes.
“Let me be clear, Butch. It’s all coming down on you, and it’s coming down here and now. Those men, Hayes and Brand, followed me to Rossington’s place, and they saw you standing at the gate. Brand is gone, but Hayes probably has friends. Then you’ve got this hitter from up north, and if he is working for Impelliteri then all it’s going to take is a phone call to a local boss, and this whole place turns into a war zone.”
And it’s all for nothing, Butch thought. It should have been funny; all of this fuss and energy wasted on a useless chunk of metal. But there was nothing funny here. How many people were about to die pointlessly? He knew he’d never be able to convince Impelliteri or anyone on his crew of the Rose’s uselessness, and what were the chances the men he sent would spare Hollis? No. He couldn’t leave. He had no choice, at least no choice he could live with.
“Are you listening to me?” Lennon asked.
“I think I’m ready for a fight,” Butch said. “What about you?”
Lennon closed his eyes in apparent frustration. “I have a wife and two daughters to think about, so I’m not looking to play cowboy. I took a big enough chance just coming down here.”
“Then you should go,” Butch said. “Thanks for your help.”
“You can’t win.”
“I was never meant to win, Lennon.” Butch stood from the table. “Thanks again,” he said, and then he walked out of the restaurant into the persistent thunderstorm.
Chapter 40
The Last Night in New Orleans
At the gate to Hollis’s house, Butch paused and checked his surroundings. Seeing no one on the streets, he opened the gate.
Hollis was home. He hugged Butch when he stepped through the door.
“I thought you were at the club,” Butch said.
“I was. I had a visitor.”
Butch listened as Hollis related the exchange he’d had with a gangster named Remy Long. Though Hollis didn’t know how the thug had come across his information, Butch figured the Lowery kid had finally put it together and sought out a syndicate man to set his revenge in motion. Considering the direction of his luck, Butch shouldn’t have been surprised.
Lennon had been right. It was all coming down on his head. Right here. Right now.
He needed to get Hollis out of the house, had to keep him away until this mess was handled. Looking into Hollis’s concerned face, a face he wanted to hold close, the lie formed easily.
“We can’t stick around here,” Butch said. “I have one more guy to see about the necklace. He’s Uptown so it’ll take me a couple of hours.”
“Can’t it wait?” Hollis asked.
“Wait for what?” Butch asked. “The longer I’m in town, the more dangerous it gets.”
“Then let’s leave,” Hollis said. He stepped forward and rested his hands on Butch’s
shoulders. “I can scrape some money together, enough to get us by for a couple of months until all of this quiets down.”
Butch pretended to think it over, though his mind was already made up. “Then you should start scraping. Get the money together. But I have to see this man. He’s the only one who knows exactly what this necklace is, and I need to know. Once I do, I’ll meet you at the club and we can decide where to go from there.”
“I think it would be better if we stuck together.”
“There’s no time. Look, if they know I’m here, then the longer we stand around talking the more trouble we’ve got. Get your ass back to the club. I need to change into something dry, and then I’m leaving too. They aren’t likely to spot me on the street, especially once I get out of the Quarter. When I get the information I need, I’ll meet you at the club. Do not leave the club until I get there, because we’re going to need to leave fast, and I can’t be looking all over town for you.”
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
Butch moved in and kissed Hollis on the lips, but he couldn’t enjoy the intimacy. He felt the outside world encroaching on this place, felt eyes on him. Shame and uncertainty rushed in, and he pulled away. He patted Hollis’s chest.
“Go,” Butch said. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
Concern pinched Hollis’s lips, but he gave a quick nod. “Okay. Sure. You know where the club is?”
He couldn’t even remember the club’s name. “Yeah. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Hollis leaned in and kissed him again. Butch felt uneasy but refused to pull away this time. He wrapped his arms around the man and held him tightly. Once the kiss was broken, he whispered, “Thank you,” into Hollis’s ear, and then he said, “You have to go now.”
And Hollis left. Butch watched him pause at the door. He lifted his hand in a half wave and waited for the door to close behind his friend. The click of the door securing triggered a dull pain in the center of his chest.
He never expected to see the man again.
In his room, he closed the drapes and peeled off his wet clothes and then stood at the foot of the bed. The ceiling fan made slow revolutions above, sending a chill breeze over his scalp and shoulders, and Butch closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He imagined the house on good land, his oldest dream, only now he pictured Hollis there with him. His friend stoked the wood stove, stirred the contents of a pot on its scalding surface. He poured beer into glasses and carried them out to the porch where Butch waited, staring at a sunset woven of purple and crimson and orange. Hollis took a seat next to him. They said nothing. Nothing needed to be said.
Butch opened his eyes. After his skin had dried, he dressed in a pair of Hollis’s gray trousers, a white undershirt, and a pair of warm woolen socks. Then he left his room.
In the kitchen he put on a percolator of coffee, knowing it could be a long night. It could also be a very short night. There was no way for him to know. A killer might already be aiming a rifle at him through the kitchen window or a gang of thugs might be converging in the courtyard, having walked through the gate only seconds after Hollis had left the property.
Just leave, he thought. Walk into the rain. Let Hollis believe the mobs had fed him to the gators so the man could get on with his life. He couldn’t let his friend give up everything for him, no matter how much he wanted it.
He could disappear the way Detective Lennon had suggested—a long, uneventful life on a Florida beach, tanning his skin and fishing and drinking rum until the sound of the ocean lulled him to sleep.
Butch decided that if he lived through the night, he’d consider it again. For the moment, he poured himself a cup of coffee and returned to his room. There he set the cup on the nightstand and performed a series of stretches to loosen his muscles. Feeling limber enough, he drank more of the coffee, sat on the edge of the bed, and thought the evening through.
• • •
They came for him at eight o’clock. The rain persisted, beating hard on the flagstones and the leaves of the succulent plants. Butch stood against the ivy-draped wall of the slave quarters, pushed deep into the shadows. He’d waited there for two hours, his mind numb to the downpour and the chill, ears adjusted to the marching rain, listening for the soft squeal of the hinges on the courtyard gate.
When it came, Butch tensed and made himself stand as motionless as a statue. A shadow appeared to his left and he saw the silhouette of a gun. Only a few steps into the courtyard, the man paused, turned back. For a second, he looked directly at Butch but must have only seen the camouflage of bushes and gloom. The man tested the door to Hollis’s bungalow and then leaned in close to peer through the window.
Satisfied that the building was empty, he turned to the big house and began creeping across the courtyard.
Butch launched himself away from the wall of ivy and hit the flagstones in a run. He was grateful to the rain for covering the sounds of his footsteps. He was only a few steps from the shooter when the man heard his approach. He looked up and swung in Butch’s direction. But Butch was already diving at the man. They landed hard on the flagstones. Butch leapt to his feet and brought his foot down hard on the man’s wrist, stomping again and again until the gun fell from his fingers. Butch retrieved the weapon and aimed it at the man’s face, which was still little more than a smear of pale skin.
The man on the ground kicked Butch in the stomach and tried to get to his feet, but the kick had been poorly delivered, ineffective. Butch kept the man in the gun’s sights.
“Did you come alone?” Butch asked.
“Fuck off,” the man said.
Butch fired the gun into the wall beside the killer’s head. The man squealed and covered his face with his arms.
“Did you come alone?”
“Two waiting in the car. If I don’t come out, they come in.”
He could handle two more. With the gun it would be easy enough. He wasn’t much of a shot, but he wouldn’t need to be if he could keep the element of surprise on his side.
“Let me go, buddy, and I’ll tell them I got the job done. You’ll be free and clear.”
“I’m finding it hard to trust you.”
“You better think this through. We don’t show after the job, and Remy’ll send a fucking army over here. You run and he’ll find you. He’ll hunt you till the day you die.”
“There’s a line already formed for that one. Get up,” he told the man.
After the man stood, Butch ordered him across the courtyard. He put his hand in the center of the man’s back and walked him toward the corridor beside the bungalow. The shooter wobbled on his feet, stumbling ahead like a drunk on sand. He paused and lurched and dipped to the side. Butch thought he might topple over.
It was a ruse, and the shooter, whipped around, knocking the gun aside. Butch recovered quickly and threw an elbow to the man’s jaw, sending him to the wall. The shooter pushed himself from the brick wall. Butch took two awkward steps backward.
Gunfire erupted. The cracking reports cut through the rain’s clatter in a staccato thunder. It came from the gate at the end of the corridor.
Butch scurried to the center of the courtyard out of the line of fire, but the shooter danced back and forth as a barrage of bullets entered his chest and face. The man collapsed. The glass of the French doors along the ground floor of the main house shattered. Butch raced toward the big house and took up a position behind a potted plant in the corner of the portico.
All of this happened in seconds. Reflex guided his actions more than rational thought, but he was still breathing. Through pure dumb luck, his would-be killer had saved his life. Butch just hoped the luck would hold. The gunfire quieted, leaving only the sound of the beating rain. He looked through the leaves of the plant and saw movement, but it was the motion of shadows on shadows. He could not place where the men were standing with any certainty.
“I think we shot Colin,” a man said.
“Son of a bitch. Remy ain’t gonna lik
e hearing that.”
“We’ll tell him the wrestler done it.”
Butch tried to get a bead on the voices. It should have been easy enough as the mouth of the corridor that opened onto the courtyard wasn’t that wide, but he didn’t want to waste the bullets he had. The other men weren’t so worried about conserving their ammunition. They opened fire a second time, strafing the French doors and windows behind Butch as if they found glass offensive. One bullet passed through the lip of the pot giving him cover, and fragments of ceramic flew in the air amid a puff of mud. Butch lay down flat on the ground until the second wave of gunfire ended.
From what Butch could tell, the men had positioned themselves against the wall of the corridor, using the corner for cover. He might get lucky with a shot, but he had no faith in his marksmanship, and as it stood the men seemed uncertain of his exact location in the courtyard. A few bad shots would give him away and do more harm than good.
Even so, he couldn’t stay where he sat. Eventually the men would dare the courtyard. They would find him.
He got his feet under him and duck-walked backward into the house, wincing at the sound of the glass crunching under his feet. He made it halfway across the foyer before the men caught sight of him and the barrage of gunfire resumed. Butch bolted, making for the stairs on his right. Bullets followed him across the room, never quite reaching him, and he threw himself over the banister. He hung in the air for a moment, feeling the dread of exposure. Then he dropped hard. One of the stairs dug deep into his ribs. He didn’t stop to entertain the pain, but rather got to his feet and raced up the stairs. He went to the window on the landing and looked out.
The men had moved into the center of the courtyard, surveying the destroyed wall of glass. Butch carefully aimed the pistol at the man on the left, and he took a deep breath before he began to pull the trigger.
Before he could fire, a blur caught his eye. The pale smudge came from the corridor the men had recently vacated, and it moved swiftly to their backs like an eager phantom. It took a moment for Butch to realize the smudge was a man. Butch squinted to make out the details of the scene through the rain, but his eyes never quite caught up with the action. One moment the two gunmen were facing the house, holding their weapons at the ready, and the next, they were in pieces on the ground. Their torsos had been cleaved in half and blood poured into the puddles of rainwater. Their severed arms still clutched their guns.
