by Thomas Perry
Hamp could feel his scalp begin to tighten, as though his hair were actually going to stand up. Martillo and Bartolomeo were such little fish that only a criminal would recognize them, and one had. The Butcher’s Boy had seen those guys in Washington and they had seen him, so he had shut them up. It all made perfect sense, but only afterward. Hamp unbuckled his seat belt, stood up and started to sidestep his way into the aisle. The stewardess saw him and hurried up the aisle toward him to let him know he was busted. “Sir—”
But he took out his identification wallet and held it up in front of her face. “My name is Jack Hamp, and I’m a special investigator for the Justice Department. I have a car waiting in that airport, and I need to get to it now.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but it will be a few more minutes before we can deplane. It isn’t something we can do anything about. It’s an FAA regulation.”
Hamp took a step forward and she sensed that she had to move with him or step aside, so she came with him. “The wheels are hot,” he said. “If they were going to blow, they’d have done it by now, but we’ll sit here an hour or more just to be safe. Explain to the pilot that I’ve got an emergency.”
“But, sir. Mr.—”
“Hamp. Do it. Because if you don’t I’m going to crank that hatch open myself.”
* * *
Hamp couldn’t believe it. Elizabeth had actually told him about it the minute she had gotten the damned present, and he hadn’t figured it out. He drove fast along Jefferson, changing lanes and keeping the pedal down as far as he dared. He was what might have been called a professional speeder, since that was what cops in L.A. had to be to get anywhere while the bodies were still warm. He instantly wished he hadn’t thought it in those words. Because now it all made sense, and he hoped this didn’t mean that it was already over.
The mistake was in thinking that the Butcher’s Boy was just wandering around slaughtering the big bosses because they were big. He wasn’t in any position to take on something like that. All he was doing was what Jack Hamp would have done in his place: trying to stay alive. Though to a man like the Butcher’s Boy it meant that you figured out who was giving you the most trouble, and then you killed him. So now he was in Washington, but he hadn’t come here to find a pair of nonentities like Martillo and Bartolomeo. That had just been an accident. Somehow he had figured out who was giving him the worst trouble, the one who had kept him from leaving the country in the first place and would keep closing in on him until he couldn’t move at all—Elizabeth Waring.
Wolf had the cab driver go all the way up the block past his house before he told him to stop at the end of the street and got out. He waited for the driver to disappear before walking back down the block. He was still watching for the fourth man. Somebody had brought those three to his house this evening, and he still hadn’t spotted the man or his car in the neighborhood. But he wasn’t in a position to spend any time looking for him. He had started the sequence, and now he had to finish it and get out.
As he went to E. V. Waring’s kitchen door, he tried to remember the exact layout of the house. There were no alarms or even serious locks to stop him, and she had cleaned the place before he had come to dinner, so there wouldn’t be eight hundred toys on the floor to trip over in the dark.
He reached into his pocket, found a credit card from one of the men he had left in Vico’s yard, slipped it between the door and the jamb and moved it up and down until he found the plunger. He depressed the plunger, but the door wouldn’t move. He could feel that another bolt somewhere near the knob was engaged. He got down on his knees on the concrete steps and pushed on the rubber flap of the cat door that was cut into the lower panel. He measured the length of his arm from the cat door to the doorknob, and judged that it was long enough. Lying on his back on the steps, he stuck his arm inside all the way to the shoulder and felt for the bolt. The tips of his fingers barely touched it, but he managed to turn it and pull it out. Opening the door, he crawled inside, then closed it carefully.
Wolf stood up and made his way slowly into the dining room, where they had eaten, then glided silently across the living room where the thick carpet muffled his steps. He could feel his left knee brush against the couch where they had sat, and this helped him orient himself. He stood absolutely still so that he could let his mind work without distraction. He was inside, but he still wasn’t sure what he was going to do. At any other time of his life he would have gone down the hallway to her bedroom and put a hole in her temple before even attempting to do anything else. He might make a noise in the next few minutes, and she would wake up. Or there might be some blood at his house that he had missed, and then she would be alive to give the FBI an accurate description of him. But while he constructed the argument for it, he already knew that he wasn’t going to do it. He was not here to kill this woman. He might have to do it to survive, but he was determined to at least try it the other way first. If he could just get into the room, take what he wanted and get out, there would never be any reason for her to tell anyone what he looked like. He began to move again, but at the entrance to the hallway he stopped. When she had walked onto this floor, she had taken off her shoes, so he did the same.
Inside the door he could hear the sound of a child breathing slowly and deeply. He stepped to the side and felt his way along the wall until he identified the woodwork that framed the closet door. He groped for the knob and squeezed it tightly in his fist to swing it open without making any noise. He reached up to the top shelf and felt something made of leather. A baseball glove. Then there was the soft texture of cloth. Sure, a baseball cap. Now the smooth, sharp corner of the box. He reached both hands up to the shelf to be sure he could lift it without sliding it across the wood.
“Who are you?” came a little voice.
It was high and piping, and there was something shaky about it, like a bird. Oh, God, he thought. I don’t want to kill this kid. “Mr. Richardson,” Wolf said softly.
“Oh,” said the boy. He waited for the kid to say something else, but there was no sound. He lifted the box and turned. “What are you doing here? I was asleep.”
“I’m sorry, but I had to come. I’ll be gone in a minute.”
“Where’s my mother?”
“She’s asleep. If we’re quiet, she won’t wake up. She needs her rest.”
The light came on and the click sounded like a hammer hitting a piece of metal. He was a tiny little boy, skinny, with his hair standing up on his head. He still had his hand on the lamp beside his bed, and he was squinting. “What are you doing with that?”
“It’s for work. We need one of these pictures of your trip to England at the office right away.”
“Which one?”
Wolf opened the lid. “London. The Parliament building. We’re going to enlarge it so we can see what’s going on inside.”
“How can you do that?”
Wolf regretted having said it. How old was this kid—four? “We blow up the part we want so we can see in the window, and we transfer it to a computer. Then we can make a three-dimensional image and turn it around every which way.” He made a slow rotating motion with both hands.
“What for?”
“I shouldn’t tell you,” Wolf said. Jimmy looked at him skeptically. “Well, we think somebody in Parliament isn’t who he says he is.”
“Who is he?”
“We don’t know yet. That’s why we need the picture.”
Jimmy seemed to contemplate the plan, and finally to enlist, but he was a little worried. “You can’t see much.”
“We have to try. Can you show me which one?” Wolf took the sheaf of papers out of the box as he set it down on the kid’s bed. While the little boy shuffled through the pictures, he worked the rubber band off the papers with one hand.
“This one,” said Jimmy, and he held out a picture of his mother standing in front of the Houses of Parliament.
Wolf felt the passport now, and in a second he had it in his coat pocket with
the pistol. He took the picture and scrutinized it. “It’s perfect,” he said. “Thanks, Jimmy.” He stood up, returned the photographs and packet of papers to the box and put it back in the closet. Then he turned to the little boy. “I’m sorry I had to wake you up. You’d better turn the light out and go back to sleep now.”
“Okay.” Jimmy clicked the light off and lay back on his pillow.
As Wolf made his way into the hall and closed the door, he could hear the boy stirring. He walked quickly out of the hallway to the living room, stepped into his shoes and moved to the front door. As he opened it, he sensed that he wasn’t alone. He was going to have to kill him.
This time the voice was a tiny whisper. “Good night.”
“Good night, Jimmy.” He stepped outside and closed the door, then hurried down the steps and across the lawn to get to the sidewalk and the place where the darkness began. In an hour he could be on a plane to London.
Jack Hamp crouched in the bushes across the street from the Waring house and watched the lone man walk toward him. The man was cautious, first turning his head to look at Elizabeth’s house, then at the one beside it and finally at the one where Hamp was hiding. He walked slowly, but there was nothing casual or leisurely about it. He had sensed that something wasn’t the way he wanted it, and he was scanning for some sign of another person. It was mesmerizing to watch him. He was going to assure himself that the whole block was clear before he made an attempt to break in on Elizabeth. Attempt? Hell, he still couldn’t overcome his years of talking like a cop. If this guy decided to do it, Elizabeth was going to have a visitor.
Hamp slowly pulled his big .45 out of his coat, trying to keep the movement steady and silent. He had the hammer cocked and the safety engaged. The man was already moving toward the lawn in front of Hamp; in a second or two he would be on top of him. Hamp spent part of the second remembering that the Butcher’s Boy was probably more than a match for him in the dark. By temperament, training and experience, Hamp desperately wanted not to have to squeeze a trigger on anybody, and this would make him hesitate.
Hamp disengaged the safety with his thumb, straightened his legs enough to bring the pistol up above the top of the bush and hoped that it was all that the Butcher’s Boy could see clearly. “Justice Department. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
It was exactly as he had seen it a dozen times in his imagination. The man didn’t stop to think and didn’t hesitate. In the second that it took Hamp to see that his right hand was going to his coat, it was already there and coming back out. Hamp fired. The report of the heavy military pistol clapped the air and the man took the round square in the center of his chest. As the man flopped backward onto the sidewalk, Hamp could see that he had almost gotten the barrel clear of his coat. It slid off his chest onto the pavement and Hamp walked over to pick it up. He stared down at the man. He was about the right age, and he was nondescript and ordinary enough to have survived for a long time while people were looking for him. Hamp could also see that the hollow-point round had made a terrible mess of his chest.
Hamp looked around him at the lights going on in upstairs windows all along the block. He noticed that his mouth had gone all dry and cottony. The last time this had happened, he had thought it was the shock from taking the bullet in his leg, but it must have been another reaction. He began the process of composing himself for the first of the conversations he would have to go through now: you know the fellow you’ve been trying to find? Yes, the one you’ve wanted for ten years. I’m afraid he can’t tell you anything now. I just killed him. My name is Jack Hamp.
Elizabeth looked at the two sets of fingerprints, and then at the report from the FBI. She had been awake half the night waiting for this, and she wondered if the strain, surprise and sheer fatigue had simply obliterated her ability to comprehend. But it hadn’t. She moved past the standard preprinted paragraph about the required thirteen points of comparison and read the conclusion again. It was positive. Suddenly she remembered that Jack had been waiting even before she had begun, and it was thoughtless to make him wait any longer.
“His name is Gilbert O’Mally. He has four arrests: grand theft, assault, aggravated assault and a parole violation.”
“That isn’t what I’d figured,” said Jack. “I didn’t think they’d even have him on file.” It was going to take him some time to give this the proper amount of reflection. Elizabeth Waring didn’t look the way he thought she would at all, but she was exactly the way he had hoped she would be. The suspect looked pretty much as he had expected, but nothing else about him was right. “I expected no arrests, no convictions.”
“You were right,” said Elizabeth. “Ten years ago was when this man was serving his time for aggravated assault. He’s a local criminal.” She waited for this to sink in, but Jack didn’t say anything. What was he feeling—disappointment, relief? “It isn’t him. This isn’t the Butcher’s Boy. He’s still out there.”
“It’s happening again,” said Elizabeth.
Richardson shook his head. “We don’t think so.” He looked at Hillman, the deputy assistant, for a sign of agreement, but the deputy assistant was staring at something that had besmirched his shirt cuff without actually becoming visible. Elizabeth wondered if this was a rebuff for Richardson’s being presumptuous enough to postulate a “we” that included a deputy assistant attorney general of the United States of America. It was possible; short men were protective of their right to speak for themselves, as though if they were not heard, they would disappear. But Richardson was pressing on. “Martillo worked for Detroit. He was here at the sufferance of Vico, and that sufferance simply wore itself out. Is that hard to believe?”
“Yes.”
Richardson’s lips didn’t quite smile. “The phone company says a call was made on Martillo’s car phone after he was dead. You know who the call went to? Vico.”
“Does Vico have a car phone?”
“Yes.”
“Then he’d know that they list all the outgoing calls.”
“He was caught literally red-handed. The car was found full of blood in his back yard, for Christ’s sake.”
“With three of his own men inside.”
“It was a reprisal. Toscanzio’s people were telling him that he shouldn’t have killed their boy.”
“Okay,” said Elizabeth. “Let me get this straight. You honestly think that Vico had Martillo killed, and then his soldiers called him on Martillo’s car phone to tell him that the deed was done. Then Toscanzio’s people arrived from Detroit and killed the three killers. Then what? Did they put the bodies in the car and deliver them to Vico’s back yard, or did Vico do that himself?”
“Choice number one. They also booby-trapped the fence so that whoever touched it would be electrocuted.”
“Was anybody?”
“Two people, actually,” said Richardson. “Both of them soldiers of Vico’s, and both heavily armed, incidentally, as though they were expecting trouble.”
“And you’re going to try to bring Vico to trial on the basis of this evidence?”
Without warning, the deputy assistant suddenly satisfied himself that he had found the fault on his cuff. He straightened his short arms so that the cuffs would retract into the sleeves of his jacket, then raised his eyes. He never let them move to Richardson, but instead let them gaze into space for a moment, then settled them on Elizabeth. “What do you think happened, Elizabeth?”
“Ten years ago the Butcher’s Boy got into trouble with the Mob. Specifically, Carlo Balacontano hired him, then tried to have him killed instead of paying him. What he did in response was to lash out violently and senselessly, killing several people who had little or nothing to do with the dispute. Since the various families were all suspicious of each other anyway, this created confusion and allowed him some breathing space. What he did with the time he had won was to kill a man named Arthur Fieldston and bury his head and hands on the estate of the man who had betrayed him in the first place.”<
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“Who was convicted in a court by a jury,” snapped Richardson. “And the conviction held up under appeal.”
The deputy assistant restored silence by staring straight ahead without acknowledging that he had heard Richardson. Then he looked once more at Elizabeth. “And that’s what you think is happening again?”
“Yes. I know he killed Talarese, and I think he killed Mantino and Fratelli. Two of them were creatures of Carlo Balacontano. I think he made an attempt at somebody in Gary, Indiana—maybe Cambria or Puccio—and the policeman, Lempert, got killed in the scuffle. I don’t know what Martillo had to do with anything, except that I’m told he worked for Toscanzio in Detroit, which would add to the mess. I think that Vico didn’t do any of this, and that he’s been framed just like Carl Bala was ten years ago.”
“Here’s the crux,” said the deputy assistant. “It’s Occam’s razor.”
“It is?”
“You have two possibilities. First, that we’re witnessing the periodic internal strife that occurs inside the Mob for the usual reasons of fear and greed, and that they’re using their many foot soldiers to pursue a power struggle. The other possibility is that one man, for no known reason, comes back after ten years and kills lots of heavily armed and protected people in different places in different ways, and then frames still another for some of the killings. One theory is simple and based on familiar behavior; the other is complicated and based on unknown quantities. One is likely and the other is unlikely. No?”
“Not this time.”
“Why not?”
“Because a man like Vico isn’t stupid. You’re accusing him of killing Martillo, which would start a gang war, and then forgetting about it long enough to let the man’s car be delivered to his back yard with his own casualties inside. He doesn’t make mistakes like that.”
The deputy assistant’s face seemed to soften with a kind of paternal sympathy. “You have to look at this logically, Elizabeth. We’re in the business of taking men like Vico off the street. In order to do this, we have to wait until he makes a mistake. When he finally makes one, can we say we won’t prosecute because we don’t believe he’d make that mistake?”
