Mistake?
But whose mistake? he wondered as he continued up Eighty-first Street. Was Junior such an arrogant bastard that he could just come and go when he liked? Was it possible that he had no fear of the Butcher? No respect? Not even now?
Or had he set a trap for him?
Maybe it was a little of both. Arrogance and deception. Hallmarks of the world we live in.
Sullivan stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts at the intersection of New Utrecht and Eighty-sixth. He had some black coffee and a sesame bagel that was too doughy and bland. Maybe this kind of shit food played somewhere in Middle America, but a half-assed bagel had no place being sold in Brooklyn. Anyway, he sat at a table, watching the car lights pass back and forth out on New Utrecht, and he was thinking that he wanted to walk into the club on Eighty-first Street and start blasting. But that wasn't any kind of plan – it was just a nice, violent fantasy for the moment.
Of course, he had a real plan in mind.
Junior Maggione was a dead man now, and probably worse than that. Sullivan smiled at the thought, then checked to make sure that nobody was watching, thinking he was a crazy person. They weren't. He was. Good deal.
He took another sip. Actually, the Dunkin' coffee wasn't half-bad. But the bagel was the worst.
Chapter 97
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, he was in position. Now here was the funny thing: He'd done this same kind of commando raid when he was just a kid. He and Jimmy Hats and Tony Mullino had climbed a rickety fire escape on Seventy-eighth, then sprinted over the tar-papered rooftops to a building near the social club. In broad daylight. No fear.
They were "dropping in" on a girl Tony knew in the building attached to the social club. The chick's name was Annette Bucci. Annette was a hot little Italian number who used to put out for her boyfriends when they were all of thirteen, fourteen years old. They'd watch Happy Days and Laverne Shirley, like the idiots they were, smoke cigarettes and weed, drink her father's vodka, screw their little brains out. Nobody had to use a rubber because Annette said she couldn't have babies, which made the three boys the luckiest bastards in the neighborhood that summer.
Anyway, this present escapade was a lot easier, since it was nighttime and the moon was almost full. Of course, he wasn't here to screw Annette Bucci, either.
No, he had very serious business with Junior Maggione, unfinished business that probably went all the way back to Maggione Sr., who had bumped off his pal Jimmy Hats. What else could have happened to Hats? So this was about revenge, which was going to be so sweet that the Butcher could almost taste it. He could see Junior Maggione dying.
If the plan worked out tonight, they'd be talking about it in the neighborhood for years.
And, of course, there were going to be pictures!
He was pumped as he hurried across the old rooftops, hoping that nobody on the top floors would hear him and maybe come up for a look, or even call the cops. Finally, he made it to the brownstone attached to the social club building.
Nobody seemed to know he was up there. So he hunkered down on the roof and caught his breath. He let his heartbeat slow down, but he didn't lose his anger. At Maggione? At his father? What the hell difference did it make?
As he sat there, Sullivan wondered if maybe he was suicidal at this point in his life. On some level anyway. He had a theory that people who smoked had to be, and assholes who drank and drove too fast, and anybody who got on a motorcycle. Or killed his own father and fed him to the fish in Sheepshead Bay. Secretly suicidal, right?
Like John Maggione. He'd been a punk all his life. He'd come after the Butcher. And now look what was going to happen to him.
If the plan worked.
Chapter 98
SURVEILLANCE. WAITING. Twiddling our thumbs. It was just like the old days again, and it only half-sucked this time.
As Sampson and I sat less than a hundred yards from the house in Montauk, along the South Fork of Long Island, I was growing more and more enthused about the possibility of taking the Butcher down soon. At the same time, I couldn't help thinking that something wasn't right.
Maybe I even knew what was wrong: This killer hadn't been caught before. As far as I knew, no one had come close. So why did I think we could bring him down now?
Because I was the Dragon Slayer and had succeeded with other killers? Because I used to be the Dragon Slayer? Because in the end life was fair, and killers ought to be caught, especially the one who had murdered my wife? Well, hell no, life wasn't fair. I'd known that from the moment Maria collapsed, then died in my arms.
"You don't think he's going to come back here?" Sampson asked. "Is that what you're thinking about, sugar? You think he's on the run again? Long gone?"
"No, that's not it exactly. This isn't about Sullivan coming here or not. I think maybe he will. I don't know exactly what's bothering me, John. I just feel… it's like we're being set up somehow."
Sampson screwed up his face.
"Set up by who? Set up why?"
"Don't know the answer, unfortunately. To either of those reasonable questions."
It was a strange gut feeling at this point. Just a feeling, though. One of my famous feelings. Which were often right, but not always, not every time.
As the sun began to go down and it got colder, I watched a couple of insane surf casters down near the ocean. We could see the water from the woods. The fishermen were dressed in neoprene waders up to their chests, and they were probably going for stripers at this time of year. Their lure bags and gaffs were attached to their waists, and one of them had a crazy-looking miner's lamp strapped on to his Red Sox ball cap. It was very windy, and the windier it got, the better the fishing – or so I've been told.
I had the idea that Sampson and I were fishing too, always fishing for whatever cockamamy evil lurked deep beneath the surface. And as I watched the seemingly innocent activity down at the shoreline, one of the fishermen slipped under a wave and then scrambled to recover some of his dignity. That water had to be damn cold.
I hoped that didn't happen to Sampson and me tonight.
We shouldn't be here like this – but we were.
And we were exposed, weren't we?
And this killer was one of the best we had ever faced. Maybe the Butcher was the best.
Chapter 99
SIMPLE STUFF REALLY, the basic ingredients of a professional murder, committed by a professionaclass="underline" This time out it was a jug of high-octane gasoline, propane, a stick of dynamite for ignition. Nothing too hard about the prep. But would the plan actually work? That was always the $64,000 question.
In a way, it almost seemed like a prank to the Butcher – some stunt that he and Tony Mullino and Jimmy Hats would have tried to pull off in the old days, back in the neighborhood. Get a few crazy yuks out of it. Maybe put some chump's eye out with a cherry bomb. Most of life had seemed like that to him – pranks, stunts, getting revenge for past wrongs.
That was what happened with his father, how he came to kill the sick bastard. He didn't like to think about it too much, so he didn't, just closed off the compartment. But one night, long ago in Brooklyn, he'd cut the original Butcher of Sligo into little pieces, then fed Kevin Sullivan to the fish in the bay. The rumors were all true. Jimmy Hats had been out on the boat with him, and so had Tony Mullino. The guys he trusted.
Tonight wasn't that different in one respect – it was all about getting revenge. Hell, he'd hated Junior Maggione for twenty years.
He took a fire escape down from the roof of the building next to the social club. Once he was at street level he could hear gruff men's voices coming from inside the club. A ball game was playing-Jets and Pittsburgh on ESPN. Maybe the game was why everybody was preoccupied on this cold, overcast Sunday night. Bollinger drops back! Bollinger stays in the pocket!