There was one more thing that Lempert had to check. He opened the back door of the van, swung his legs to the street and quietly closed the door. There wasn’t any point in locking it with eight uniforms loitering around across the street, and unlocking it made noise, so he left it. He walked away from the theater and turned the corner on Fourth before venturing to look over his shoulder. His colleagues were standing around now talking to each other instead of watching the place. Probably not one of them had any idea that Paul Cambria was even here. He wondered if that would have made a difference. Probably not; you had to know the rest of it before it meant anything.
Lempert turned again at the alley behind Chautauqua Avenue, put his head down, pulled his collar up and jammed his right hand into his jacket pocket so that he could grasp his service revolver before he took the first step down the alley. If the Butcher’s Boy was in one of the buildings, he would have a car waiting in back of it, or, at most, one street over. Whatever happened with Paul Cambria, he would need to have a reliable, invisible way of getting in and then getting out. The one thing Lempert remembered about his experience with the bastard ten years ago was that he thought things through. He would probably have a couple of ways out.
Lempert made his way up the alley, trying to look like a schlemiel who was watching the ground to keep from stepping into a puddle, but every few yards he scanned the old brick buildings, fire escapes and the dumpsters, looking for a change. He wasn’t afraid he would miss a parked car, but he might miss something else—a broken window, or a garbage can moved a couple of feet so it could be used to climb in through a vent. It wasn’t that he had any intention of going into an empty building after him: not this one. But if he just knew where the bastard was, he was pretty sure he had him. All he had to do was wait. The waiting reminded him that it was time to take a leak. He looked up and down the alley, then stepped into the shadows behind the shoe store and urinated against the wall. It was a delicious feeling because of the danger and the darkness.
Lempert continued up the alley another block before turning onto Sixth and crossing the street to the other side. The cops standing out on the sidewalk would be cutting the amenities short about now and getting into their squad cars to rest their feet, which meant they would have nothing to do for about two hours but stare up the street and watch the lights change. He made it across while they were still gathered in a gaggle in front of the theater, then made a circuit of Atlantic Avenue behind the theater and back to Fourth. If tonight was the night the bastard was going after Cambria, then he hadn’t done anything much to get ready.
Lempert made his way back to the van on Chautauqua, still walking along with his head down and his collar turned up. As soon as he had passed the last parked car, he stepped into the gutter and followed it to the rear of the van. He had swung the door open and was all the way inside when he felt it. He stopped moving, but just to be sure, the son of a bitch slid it up his back and let the cold muzzle touch the nape of his neck. It was the kind of thing any of them would do because Puccio had taught them to be sadists. He was angry, but he supposed he would have to go through the whole idiotic cross-examination before he reminded this one that Puccio had called him and that he was doing no more than what Puccio wanted everyone to do.
“What do you want?” said Lempert.
“I want you.”
Holy shit, it wasn’t them; it was him. Lempert started to shiver. He was on his hands and knees, and his damned elbows wouldn’t stop shaking and giving out on him; what if the bastard thought all this twitching was some kind of a lame attempt to struggle? Suddenly he was overcome by a clear vision of his stupidity, and it brought a sort of repentance. What the hell could he have been thinking, coming out here to try and ambush a man like this? The money wasn’t even real anymore.
“I think you remember me.”
Lempert started thinking about a move a burglary suspect had tried on him once. He had told him to lie facedown and kiss the pavement, but when the guy got on his hands and knees he sprang forward like a damned gazelle, so all Lempert could do was trip the guy and then put the boots to him. The Butcher’s Boy could open fire and blast his spine. Then, as if he were a damned mind reader, the voice said, “Don’t do anything. I’m going to take the gun because I want to talk.”
As the invisible hand reached into his jacket pocket and took the service revolver, Lempert felt a secret joy. But then the hand went directly to his right ankle and took the other one too, the .32. “What do you want to talk about?”
“First I want you to crawl up to the driver’s seat and pull out of here.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I won’t need to kill you if you do.”
The answer mesmerized Lempert. Need to? But of course he would say anything to get Lempert to drive out of here. If he burned Lempert here, he wasn’t going to be able to walk away whistling. Eight cops—even those eight cops—were not going to let him do that. But need to? It gave him a tiny bit of hope that he might get out of this. If the Butcher’s Boy didn’t want to kill him, maybe he still had a chance. And even if Lempert somehow reversed things and managed to kill the bastard instead of having the bastard kill him, what was he going to say to the eight cops himself? What was the dead suspect doing in the van? He crawled to the seat, pulled himself up, started the engine and tried to look in the mirror to back up.
“Turn the lights on,” said the Butcher’s Boy.
“Oh, yeah,” said Lempert. He could barely get his hand to stop shaking so that he could turn the switch. Oh, God. He really had forgotten them, and now the bastard thought he was playing some trick.
As he started to turn out onto the street, the Butcher’s Boy said, “Go straight while we talk.”
Lempert obeyed, and he decided the bastard had made a mistake. There was something about driving—the thing he had spent eight hours a day doing for more than twenty years—that revived him. He was in control of all this power, so he couldn’t be powerless. “So why didn’t you kill Paul Cambria?”
“I don’t have anything against Paul Cambria. I came to see you.”
Lempert’s bravado disappeared. He had to talk to him, to say something that wasn’t in the groove of the bastard’s logic. “How do you even remember me?”
“Things come back to me. I figured you’d be hanging around Cambria, so I found him. You’re still a cop, right?”
“Yeah.” Oh, sweet Jesus. What could this be about? The bastard didn’t say another word for three blocks. Then he got it. Carlo Balacontano. Ten years ago. The bastard had some wacko idea that because Lempert was a cop he could get to Carl Bala in a federal prison. What happens when he finds out Lempert can’t?
Finally, “I want you to get something for me. I’ll pay you.”
It was coming. Maybe he could convince the bastard with some bullshit story: if you come to the prison with me, all I have to do is flash my badge and they’ll let us in armed. Bang. “What do you want?”
“Pull over up here.”
Lempert looked around as he slowed down. He made a guess; this man wouldn’t shoot him in front of a copying store that was still open, and next door to a bar that had barely begun its prime hours, and across the street from a pizza place. He stopped the van by the curb, but didn’t turn off the engine until the man said, “Come on. We’re going in there.”