Sullivan almost began to laugh as he turned slowly and walked toward Wisconsin too.
Then he began to run, a full-out sprint toward the busy street. Madman that he was, he started laughing his ass off. He'd decided to brazen it out, just run. Like in the old days back in Brooklyn when he was a kid making his bones in the game.
Run, Mikey, run. Run for your life.
What could the DC metro cops do? Shoot him in the back? For what? Running? Being the potential victim of four armed men in an alleyway?
The cops were yelling, threatening him, but all they could do was watch him get away. Funniest thing he'd seen in years, maybe ever. The cavalry had come to the rescue – his.
Huge mistake.
Theirs.
Chapter 88
HALF A DOZEN UNIFORMS were moving in and out of the station house on Wisconsin when Sampson and I got there that afternoon. A detective named Michael Wright had finally made the connection that he and his partner might have just missed capturing the Georgetown rapist, that he'd maybe missed the biggest deal of his career. Still, they were holding two men in the cage who might know what was going on. They needed a closer.
Sampson and I passed inside a ten-foot-high bulletproof partition and headed for the interrogation rooms, which were beyond the detectives' cubicle area. The work space looked familiar – scarred, badly littered desks, old computers and phones from another era, overhead storage bins filled to overflowing.
Before we entered the interrogation room, Wright told us that the two men in there hadn't said a word so far, but they'd been armed with Berettas, and he was sure they were killers. "Have fun," Wright said; then John and I walked inside.
Sampson spoke up first. "I'm Detective John Sampson. This is Dr. Alex Cross. Dr. Cross is a forensic psychologist involved in the investigation of a series of rapes in the Georgetown area. I'm a detective on the case."
Neither of the men said a word, not even a wisecrack, to break the ice. Both of them looked to be in their early thirties, bodybuilder types, with permanent smirks on their faces.
Sampson asked a couple more questions; then we just sat there in silence across the table from the two men.
Eventually an administrative assistant knocked on the door and entered. She handed Sampson a couple of faxes, hot from the machine.
He read the pages – then handed them to me.
"I didn't think the Mafia was active in the DC area," Sampson said. "Guess I was wrong. You're both soldiers in the mob. Either of you have anything to say about what was going down in that alley?"
They didn't, and they were annoyingly smug about not answering our questions and pretending we weren't even there.
"Dr. Cross, maybe we can work this out without their help. What do you think?" Sampson asked me.
"We can try. It says here that John 'Digger' Antonelli and Joseph 'Blade' Lanugello work for Maggione out of New York City. That would be Maggione Jr. Maggione Sr. was the one who hired a man named Michael Sullivan, also known as the Butcher, to do a hit in DC several years back. You remember that one, John?"
"I do. Took out a Chinese drug dealer. Your wife, Maria, was also murdered right around that time. Mr. Sullivan is now a suspect in this case."
"This same Michael 'the Butcher' Sullivan is also a suspect in a series of rapes in Georgetown, and at least one murder connected to the rapes. Was Sullivan the man you had cornered in Blues Alley?" 1 asked the Mafia hitters.
Not a word came from either of them. Nothing at all. Real tough guys.
Sampson finally stood up, rubbing his chin. "So I guess we don't need Digger and Blade anymore. Well, what should we do with them? Wait, I have an idea. You'll like this one, Alex," Sampson said, and chuckled to himself.
He motioned for the Mafia soldiers to get up. "We're finished here. You can come with me, gentlemen."
"Where?" Lanugello finally broke his silence. "You ain't charged us yet."
"Let's go. Got a surprise for you." Sampson walked in front of the two of them, and I walked behind. They didn't seem to like having me at the rear. Maybe they thought I might still be harboring a grudge about what had happened to Maria. Well, maybe I was.
Sampson signaled a guard at the end of the hall, and he used his keys to open a cell door. The holding area was already filled with several prisoners awaiting arraignment. All but one of them was black. John led the way inside.
"You'll be staying here. If you change your mind and want to talk to us," Sampson said to the Mafia guys, "give a holler. That is if Dr. Cross and I are still in the building. If not, we'll check in on you in the morning. If that's the case, have a nice night."
Sampson tapped his shield a few times against the bars of the holding pen. "These two men are suspects in a series of rapes," he announced to the other prisoners. "Rapes of black women in Southeast. Be careful, though, these are tough guys. From New York."
We left, and the lockup guard slammed the cell door behind us.
Chapter 89
FOUR O'CLOCK ON A COLD, rainy morning, and his two younger boys were crying their eyes out in the backseat of the car. So was Caitlin up in front. Sullivan blamed Junior Maggione and La Cosa Nostra for everything, the huge, ugly mess that was happening now. Somehow, Maggione was going to pay for this, and he looked forward to the day of retribution.
So did his scalpel and his butcher's saw.
At two thirty in the morning he had piled his family into the car and snuck away from a house six miles outside Wheeling, West Virginia. It was their second move in as many weeks, but he had no choice in the matter. He'd promised the boys they would return to Maryland one day, but he knew that wasn't true. They wouldn't ever go back to Maryland. Sullivan already had an offer on the house there. He needed the cash for their escape plan.
So now he and the family were running for their lives. As they left their "Wild West Virginny Home," as he called it, he had a feeling that the mob would find them again – that they could be right around the next bend in the road.
But he rounded the next curve, and the curve after that, and made it out of town safe and sound and in one piece. Soon they were singing Rolling Stones and ZZ Top tunes, including about a twenty-minute version of "Legs," until his wife put her foot down about the nonstop high-testosterone noise. They stopped at Denny's for breakfast, at Micky D's for a second bathroom break, and by three in the afternoon, they were somewhere they had never been before.
Hopefully, Sullivan had left no trail to be followed by a crew of mob killers. No bread crumbs like in "Hansel and Gretel." The good thing was, neither he nor his family had ever been in this area before. It was virgin territory, with no roots or connections.
He pulled into the driveway of a shingle-style Victorian house with a steep roof, a couple of turrets, even a stained-glass window.
"I love this house!" Sullivan crowed, and he was all fake smiles and hyperenthusiasm. "Welcome to Florida, kiddos," he said.
"Very funny, Dad. Not," said Mike Jr. from the backseat, where all three boys were looking grim and depressed.
They were in Florida, Massachusetts, and Caitlin and the kids groaned at another of his dumb jokes. Florida was a small community of less than a thousand, situated high in the Berkshires. It had stunning mountain views, if nothing else. And there were no Mafia hit men waiting in the driveway. What more could they ask for?
"Just perfect. What could be better than this?" Sullivan kept telling the kids as they started to unpack again.
So why was Caitlin crying as he showed her their new living room with the sweeping views of big bad Mt. Greylock and the Hoosic River? Why was he lying to her when he said, "Everything is going to be all right, my queen, light of my life"?
Maybe because he knew it wasn't true, and probably, so did she. He and his family were going to be murdered one day, maybe in this very house.