Thomas Perry - Sleeping Dogs

Carmine Fusco had worked for Vico for a long time and he knew what the Butcher’s Boy meant to him. Vico could pick up a couple of million bucks in one morning, just for popping one man. If Vico had a crew working the hotels that was good enough to lift a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of cameras and jewelry every single day, and a guy who trucked it all to another town to sell it for a thousand, which was pretty good, it would still take more than three years to gross a million from the operation. Then you had to add another three years to pay off all those guys. That was how Vico thought, so it was how Fusco thought.

He had let Martillo off at the bottom of the garage and the jerk had stood for it. That was the joke about having somebody like him come to town from someplace like Detroit and not work for Mr. Vico like everybody else. He wasn’t born here, so he didn’t know the city well enough to figure out that anybody who had been spotted in this part of town on foot only had a couple of places where he could have parked.

As Fusco’s brother-in-law, Gilbert, drove slowly up each aisle and turned down the next, Carmine kept the window open and listened. If the Butcher’s Boy was looking for Martillo, he was going to have a chance at him, but if he made any noise it was going to cost him. You had to take some risks to get a guy like this, but Carmine wasn’t about to risk anybody who belonged to Mr. Vico.

Then he heard the pop. It sounded more like something blew up than a gunshot, because the concrete made it reverberate for a second. He poked Gilbert. “Hit it.”

The Cadillac didn’t make much noise when it accelerated, so there was just a scream of tires as the car floated around the corner like a sailboat in a high wind. It was one big, fat slob of a car. In a few seconds it was on its way up the ramp. Now there was a second shot, this one even louder than the first, and it made Carmine see yellow for a second. So much for Martillo. It had to be the coup de grâce, the guy putting a hole in his head to make sure he stayed dead. “Stop,” he said. “Let us out, and get ready to block the ramp.”

He and Castelli and Petri climbed out, and then Carmine had a vision of black and silver. With a roar the front of Martillo’s Lincoln skidded around the bend, the rear end swinging about so that the grille and headlights were no more than ten feet in front of him. As he realized that it wasn’t going to stop, he took three steps back to get up on the railing and out of its way. It passed him so close that he felt the wind. He somehow knew that there was a bullet hole with a big crack in the driver’s side window without knowing how he saw it because the car was moving so fast. As it tilted down the ramp it seemed to be flying, and when it hit the first floor it bottomed out and sent up a spray of sparks.

Fusco gave Castelli a push toward the stairs, then looked at Petri and pointed to the left. Fusco walked up the ramp himself. It was good for his status to have the others think that he had all the guts, but the truth was that it was the safest place to be. This guy wasn’t going to shoot the man in the middle first. You might shoot the one on the right, or the one on the left, but you never shot the one in the middle. It was one of those odd things.

Fusco was a little suprised when he made it to the top of the ramp without hearing another shot. But then he saw Martillo’s driver, who was dead as a can of tuna. When he turned his head, he could see Castelli bending over another body in the stairwell. It was Martillo, which left only one likely candidate for the driver of the Lincoln.

“Carmine,” said Petri.

“Wait a minute,” Fusco said. “I’m thinking.”

“Didn’t that guy Martillo say his car had a Thiefbuster?”

Fusco smiled. It figured that Petri would have picked up on that. Ever since those things had gone on the market, Mr. Vico had been on Petri’s butt to think of a way to locate and disconnect them. They were making it dangerous and nerve-racking to boost a car.

Wolf finally found the button that rolled down the window and pushed it. It went only halfway down before the place where his bullet had punched through stuck in the slot and the electric motor hummed without moving it. When he rested his elbow and forearm on the window and leaned, it rolled all the way in. This didn’t help make him feel any more comfortable, but it did make the car look normal from the outside. On the inside it wasn’t normal at all. He had walked up to the driver and shot him through the window. The bullet had gone through his forehead and out the back of his skull, and he had fallen across the front seat. The problem with head wounds was that they produced a lot of blood. Even though he had pushed the body out the passenger side within a few seconds, there was blood all over the interior; the leather upholstery of the passenger seat had a pool of blood on it that sloshed onto the floor every time he applied the brake, and seeped backward when he stepped on the gas pedal.

The only thing on his mind now was getting onto 1-395 and back to Alexandria before somebody spotted him. He had to find a way to slow everything down. It was as though the pace of things had changed in his absence. Events happened too quickly now, which made it seem as though they didn’t have any relationship to each other. He needed an hour or two in a place where he didn’t have to look over his shoulder. He would have to duck under the surface again and come up someplace else where he could be the one who made things happen. He wished now that he had killed Little Norman instead of talking to him. He had considered it carefully, and thought he’d had nothing to lose. If everybody he had ever known was already eagerly looking for him so that they could get rich, then there was no way he could make things worse, so he had offered a rational, measured bargain: in effect, he would cease to exist, and all they had to do was to let him. But they hadn’t let him, and this was why things were happening so fast.

He reached Alexandria with a small feeling of surprise. He had managed to sedate himself with the simple mechanical task of keeping the car between the lines. He turned onto his street, then into the driveway, opened the garage door, drove the car in and shut the door with the briefest, most economical movements he could manage. As he walked to the front door, he glanced across the street at the house of E. V. Waring. Tonight was going to have to be the night. If he left her body inside the trunk of Pauly the Bag Man’s car and parked it in the right place, maybe he could cause some trouble for them.

As he opened his front door, he saw a piece of paper stuck in the mail slot. When he plucked it out, he could see the engraving that he had selected: “E. V. Waring.” It read, “Please stop by around eight for coffee and dessert. It’s the only way I can thank you for your help this morning, and my pride demands it. The least I can do is welcome you to the neighborhood. Sincerely, E.”

“You know, this wasn’t necessary,” said Wolf. “It’s wonderful, but you didn’t have to do it.” He gestured vaguely at the long dinner table. The dark, polished hardwood stretched for at least five feet past the zone covered with white linen, china, silverware and the remnants of a peach torte. She must have bought it in some other time, when she thought she was going to be cooking for her whole FBI squad, or whatever they called them.

Elizabeth smiled. At least somebody had taught him to compliment the hostess. He seemed to be nice enough, but he was boring—unbelievably, thunderously boring. He didn’t appear to have any interests or experiences that he could be induced to tell her about. Why did she always feel that she had to do this kind of thing? “It’s nothing. I just wanted to thank you for helping with the car and giving me a ride to work. I hope you didn’t get into trouble …”