The Butcher's Boy (29 page)

He returned to the car and carefully wrapped the money in the newspaper so that it made a neat, tight bundle. He wrapped the masking tape around it and slipped it into the padded book mailer, then sealed the mailer. Maureen watched, but said nothing, just stared out across the broad expanse of the parking lot while he worked. He left the car and returned to the post office, then printed boldly across the package, P.O. Box 937, Tonawanda, New York14150, and dropped it into the mail slot.

When he was back in the car Maureen said, "Is that what this is all about?"

He started the car and drove out of the lot. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"You're collecting your nest eggs, aren't you?"

He nodded. "That's part of it."

"And you're mailing them somewhere."

"It would be hard to deny that, wouldn't it?" he said. "So what? I've got to travel light."

"Nothing," she said. "I just hope you're not one of those guys who has a wife or a girlfriend somewhere waiting to pick it up."

He chuckled then said, "Maureen, are you jealous? I mean, you're a lovely lady and an outstanding fuck, but come on."

"That isn't what I mean and you know it," she snapped. "I mean if wherever you mailed that isn't secure I want to know about it, and I want my money now, because I'm getting out of this. If there's somebody at that address they'll have the money and they'll have the place it was mailed from."

He looked at her. She was staring at him and her jaw was tight. He said,

"Relax. It's a post office box. I've had it for some time. I've got several of them, all over the place. Some I've used for people to get in touch with me when they had a job to offer. Some I use as addresses for the covers I need: a place to send bills for credit cards, license renewals, and so on. There's somebody behind all those boxes—me. This address is a money drop for me. I've only used it three times since I've had it, which is about that many years. I've never given the address to anyone, and nobody knows I've been there. Is that secure enough?"

Maureen didn't answer at first, just stared ahead at the road. Then she brightened and said, "You're not such a terrible fuck either. Nothing special, but adequate, I suppose."

He said, "Then it's settled."

She looked puzzled. "What's settled?"

"That we get rid of this car, scrap Mr. and Mrs. William Prentiss, and disappear into the sunset. We're going to make a jump and then go under for a bit."

They made Peoria at almost two o'clock . This time Maureen drove the car around the block and waited while he went into the bank. The money didn't fit in the briefcase, so he put the rest of it in his pockets. This, he decided, would be enough. There were savings accounts in seven banks in different parts of the country, but they could wait. None of them was large enough to be vulnerable, and the money would keep until it was safe to transfer it in small payments to the account of his next identity. In the meantime it would even draw interest. If he left it for a few years it would double.

The proportion was about right. He had at least eight hundred thousand dollars in those accounts, three hundred thousand in the post office box, and two hundred thousand with him when he returned to the street. He could wait. He could wait until Toscanzio and Balacontano and the others died or went off to retire in Italy, until Little Norman and everyone else who'd ever known him had died and been forgotten. Because he didn't have to work again. He was a rich man. He could take it day by day, living comfortably but not comfortably enough to draw anyone's attention. And each day he bought himself would make it less likely that the Italians would ever find him. Each day he would seem less dangerous to them, and each day would bring them something new that they'd rather think about because there was a profit in it. Someday they'd have forgotten all about him. In five years he'd be one of those problems that had solved itself. In ten, it would be hard to find anyone who could remember whether or not he'd been found and killed. Crawley had played a hunch and waited for him in Detroit and followed him. He'd have done the same himself. A sucker who had to disappear would try to get on a plane for someplace far away that he'd never been to, but you had to figure a pro would go to ground in a familiar place. But Crawley was dead. The only thing that still worried him a little was that Crawley had seen the car, and managed to find it again in the motel parking lot outside Chicago . Crawley had never been that lucky. Had he managed to do that alone?

He stood in front of the bank looking for the car. Maureen would keep circling the block until she saw him. The traffic downtown was heavy, he thought. It might take a few more seconds before she came around again, so he watched the people on the street. It wasn't a bad way to do things, he thought.

There were other people standing in front of buildings across the street waiting for buses or the arrival of friends. He knew he didn't look appreciably different from the others, if you took them as a group. He was wearing a sport coat and carrying a briefcase. The only difference was that his was full of money.

He even counted two who looked a hell of a lot more suspicious than he did. One of them was a short, dark man with curly hair who was just standing on 142

the corner across from him. He was wearing a gray three-piece suit and carrying a briefcase. He wasn't waiting for a bus, because he was right at the corner.

Whenever the light changed, a herd of people would scurry across the street, but he'd still be there. Whatever he was waiting for, he didn't look impatient about it: he never looked at his watch and he never looked up and down the street to see if it was on the way. Maybe he was early. The other man was about a hundred feet from the corner, in front of the display window of a travel agency. He was waiting for someone too, but he was getting impatient. You could tell because he had been staring into the window for a long time, the way people did when they had been standing in one place long enough to wonder if they were attracting attention. It made them feel as though they had to be absorbed in doing something, or people would notice them. People would think, look at that schmuck standing there. He's been there for twenty minutes. She stood him up, and he's too stupid to know it, the poor bastard.

Where the hell was Maureen? His sense of time must be off, because it seemed he'd been here long enough for her to go around the block at least twice. There couldn't be trouble, not real trouble. He hadn't been in Peoria in a year, at least. There was no way anybody could anticipate that he'd be coming to pick up an old contingency fund. The one thing they would believe was that he wasn't worried about money. They'd given him two hundred thousand less than a week ago. But what was keeping Maureen? Unless she'd decided to sell him after all, now that they were separated and he could be had alone. No, that didn't fit. She would wait for the forty thousand he'd promised her, because she could never suspect that he was worth more than that to them, not on what he'd told her. So where was she?

He began to feel a prickling sensation at the back of his scalp. He was vulnerable. He had to stand here in the open as long as it took. There was no plan to cover the possibility that one of them would get into trouble. He'd only been in the bank for ten minutes—what trouble would there be? But there must be a problem. And here he was. He didn't even have a gun. You didn't walk into a bank with a gun on you because it wasn't worth the risk.

Suddenly he saw the car swing around the corner. He felt the muscles in his neck and shoulders relax. He could see Maureen behind the wheel now, coming toward him. It was all right. Then he thought, if she stopped somewhere and went into a store to buy a new pair of panties or something I'll make her wish she hadn't. As the car approached he took a step forward toward the curb to meet it.

The car didn't stop. Maureen didn't even look in his direction, just drove on past him and kept going. His practiced reflexes took over and he completed his stride and made another step forward. He looked down the street into the distance as though he hadn't recognized Maureen. His mind worked at the problem. She had seen something and come here to warn him.

She was being followed. It had to be that, because nothing else would make leaving him here less dangerous than picking him up. Somebody was 143

following her, and she thought they wouldn't make their move until the two of them were together in the car. So it had to be the car. Crawley hadn't been alone after all, and someone had spotted the car a second time. And now she would have to keep driving, leading them somewhere else until either she shook them off or they realized she'd seen them. That meant they'd backtrack until they found him, or they'd take her and ask her questions. He didn't bother to think about that. She'd tell. His forty thousand wasn't worth what they'd do to her. Nothing was.

So he had—what? Five minutes? Fifteen if she bought it for him. He looked at his watch, and then started walking down the sidewalk. The important thing would be to get off these streets as quickly as possible. He wished Peoria had subways. A taxi might do it, he thought, but he didn't see any. A bus? No, a city bus was too dangerous. If anybody saw you get on, he'd see the route number and he had your schedule for the next hour. He walked briskly, varying his pace to the hurried strides of the people around him. He was getting cold. He hoped it didn't show. A businessman wouldn't hang around on the street long enough to get as cold as he felt.

Across the street and ahead of him was a Sears store. That looked like the most promising place. He stopped at the corner to wait for the light to change.

Then he saw the man. It was the short man in the gray suit. He had moved down the block across the street, and now he was standing at the corner. He looked to see if there were a second man. Maybe the one who'd been staring in the travel agent's window? He couldn't see anyone who looked familiar. But the man in the gray suit was looking at him.

He started walking again. The man in the gray suit walked too, moving parallel with him across the street. So that was the way it would be. The man in the gray suit had intended to let himself be seen. He was herding him somewhere; it must be to a place where a second man waited in ambush.

He considered the situation. Something up ahead was a trap. The man in gray was herding him forward. He didn't look over his shoulder, but he knew that there would be somebody following at a distance to keep him from turning around if he recognized the tactic. If he went into a store, so much the better for them. They'd have time to prepare for him while he waited for an advantage that would never come. He knew the strategy, but it had a flaw. It depended upon the victim's natural inclination to wait while his chances slipped away. The ones who were following him, guiding him toward the pocket, would converge on him until it was too late for him to move, because any one of them was close enough to kill him. So he had to move now.

He watched the cars gliding past in the street. A taxi would be perfect, but his luck didn't seem to be running today. Still, it had to be that way, a jump that would put him outside the triangle that was closing on him. Then he'd have a chance. He stopped at the next light and waited. The light changed and all the other people crossed the street, but still he waited. The man in the gray suit was stopped across the street from him, and he knew whoever was behind him 144

would be coming up fast.

The light changed again and the first car across was a Volkswagen. He waited for the station wagon behind it, then made his move. He ran forward and flopped onto the long, flat roof just as the car began to move. The driver seemed to know that something had happened, because he started to brake, but then horns sounded behind him, so he speeded up again. The horns were louder now, because the other drivers were alarmed. Then it must have occurred to the driver of the station wagon that he'd hit something. He pulled over to the curb, opened his door, and got out, but what he saw made no sense. A man was running away, carrying something—a briefcase, maybe. But he wasn't concerned about that so much as he was about whatever he'd hit. He started the long walk back up the street to the light. Jesus Christ, he thought when he saw the two men running down the street toward him. It must have been bad. He just hoped to God it wasn't a kid or a doctor. If you ran over a kid or a doctor they made you pay for the rest of your life. When the two men sprinted past him at full speed he felt a giddy relief. Then he thought, Oh, God, don't let it be a pregnant woman. Even a doctor would be better than that.

The afternoon had been exhausting. For once it wasn't that they didn't know anything. They had too much information from too many sources. It was too complicated to be coherent. It was just as Brayer had said. "We're not looking at some gang fight. We're looking at a disruption in one of America ’s biggest industries. We don't even know what the hell to look at. Ferraro gets killed in a gift shop. Castiglione at his house. A guy named Crawley gets it in a Holiday Inn near Chicago —Christ, we don't even know what he was or who he worked for.

But there was a booby trap in the shower of the room where he was killed—

wired to electrocute whoever used it. The killing is what we're seeing. But how do we know that what we ought to be looking at isn't that one day the ice cream doesn't get delivered to a baseball game in Cleveland, or a chain of shoe stores in Massachusetts goes bankrupt because the banks won't give the company a loan?"

Brayer was right. It was ridiculous. The Organized Crime Division of the Justice Department was—what? three hundred people? And there was no way even to sort out the information that was coming in now from every agency whose jurisdiction included some avatar of the Mafia. Because that was everybody.

Elizabeth walked across the casino toward the corridor with its waiting elevators. When she opened the door to her room, she managed to stifle the scream before it got out, but not the jolt of adrenalin that seemed to pump into 145

her veins. She could feel her temples throbbing as she said, "What are you doing here?"