Thomas Perry - Sleeping Dogs

* * *

Jack Hamp’s flight from Chicago was within inches of touching down at Washington National just as a freak tail wind blew in from nowhere, and in order to keep the wing from dipping, the pilot had to give the engines another punch. There was no doubt in Hamp’s mind what was happening because when the wheels touched the ground the tires gave a screech like a buzz saw, and the plane rattled along the runway taking the regularly spaced bumps at about twice the normal speed. He barely had time to brace himself for the drag of the brakes before he felt his head go forward in a bow so that he was looking at his knees. He wasn’t particularly concerned, because a hot-wheels landing wasn’t unusual, but he was impatient because now the plane would have to sit on the runway until the brakes cooled. To pass the time he read over the preliminary report from the Washington office again, occasionally glancing out the window beside him at the men in coveralls down on the tarmac playing flashlight beams over the tires and undercarriage.

He’d seen the whole procedure a few times in his days as a birdwatcher at LAX. The ground crew always stood fore or aft of the wheels because on the rare occasions when they did pop, the hot debris and metal would tear straight out along the wings. There wasn’t a hell of a lot anyone could do until the night air cooled the wheels down to a temperature that would at least let the ground crew move a portable gangway up to get the passengers out.

As he read, he thought about Elizabeth Waring. She might not know who these victims were any more than he did. That was what bothered him most about this case. You had to be an organized criminal yourself to know who these guys Bartolomeo and Martillo were—and a well-organized criminal at that. It didn’t make any sense as an offensive move. The only thing that might help the Butcher’s Boy right now was noise; the victim had to be big enough to cause a stir. If he was in Washington, it would have to be Jerry Vico, or at least somebody who had made his bones with Vico.

The Butcher’s Boy was in a special sort of fix right now. He had to do things which weren’t predictable, but which made some kind of sense in retrospect. If they were predictable, there would be people waiting for him, but if they didn’t make sense when you thought about them later, then they wouldn’t help him get out. The organization would assume that he was completely round the bend, like a rabid animal. If this happened, he was dead, because you couldn’t see something like that and figure you would just wait until it wandered away. You wanted to know exactly where it was during every second until you killed it. If the report said he was popping unknowns who hadn’t done anything to him, then something was missing.

Elizabeth could probably help him out on this one. As he thought about her he felt a shudder of regret and embarrassment. He never should have made that joke about her being ugly; what if she really was ugly? No, it was worse than that. Just about every woman he had met who was worth anything thought that she was ugly. It was some kind of mass delusion. What on earth had led him to trigger a reaction he would have known was likely if he had stopped to think? But there was something about the anonymous present that bothered him. At first it had surprised him and made him feel panicky because maybe he was supposed to have sent her a present and hadn’t known it, so he had pushed it away with the first smart-ass remark that came to mind. He had even said something about its being a bomb, as though nobody would send her anything unless he wanted to …

Hamp could feel his scalp begin to tighten, as though his hair were actually going to stand up. Martillo and Bartolomeo were such little fish that only a criminal would recognize them, and one had. The Butcher’s Boy had seen those guys in Washington and they had seen him, so he had shut them up. It all made perfect sense, but only afterward. Hamp unbuckled his seat belt, stood up and started to sidestep his way into the aisle. The stewardess saw him and hurried up the aisle toward him to let him know he was busted. “Sir—”

But he took out his identification wallet and held it up in front of her face. “My name is Jack Hamp, and I’m a special investigator for the Justice Department. I have a car waiting in that airport, and I need to get to it now.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but it will be a few more minutes before we can deplane. It isn’t something we can do anything about. It’s an FAA regulation.”

Hamp took a step forward and she sensed that she had to move with him or step aside, so she came with him. “The wheels are hot,” he said. “If they were going to blow, they’d have done it by now, but we’ll sit here an hour or more just to be safe. Explain to the pilot that I’ve got an emergency.”

“But, sir. Mr.—”

“Hamp. Do it. Because if you don’t I’m going to crank that hatch open myself.”

* * *

Hamp couldn’t believe it. Elizabeth had actually told him about it the minute she had gotten the damned present, and he hadn’t figured it out. He drove fast along Jefferson, changing lanes and keeping the pedal down as far as he dared. He was what might have been called a professional speeder, since that was what cops in L.A. had to be to get anywhere while the bodies were still warm. He instantly wished he hadn’t thought it in those words. Because now it all made sense, and he hoped this didn’t mean that it was already over.

The mistake was in thinking that the Butcher’s Boy was just wandering around slaughtering the big bosses because they were big. He wasn’t in any position to take on something like that. All he was doing was what Jack Hamp would have done in his place: trying to stay alive. Though to a man like the Butcher’s Boy it meant that you figured out who was giving you the most trouble, and then you killed him. So now he was in Washington, but he hadn’t come here to find a pair of nonentities like Martillo and Bartolomeo. That had just been an accident. Somehow he had figured out who was giving him the worst trouble, the one who had kept him from leaving the country in the first place and would keep closing in on him until he couldn’t move at all—Elizabeth Waring.

Wolf had the cab driver go all the way up the block past his house before he told him to stop at the end of the street and got out. He waited for the driver to disappear before walking back down the block. He was still watching for the fourth man. Somebody had brought those three to his house this evening, and he still hadn’t spotted the man or his car in the neighborhood. But he wasn’t in a position to spend any time looking for him. He had started the sequence, and now he had to finish it and get out.

As he went to E. V. Waring’s kitchen door, he tried to remember the exact layout of the house. There were no alarms or even serious locks to stop him, and she had cleaned the place before he had come to dinner, so there wouldn’t be eight hundred toys on the floor to trip over in the dark.

He reached into his pocket, found a credit card from one of the men he had left in Vico’s yard, slipped it between the door and the jamb and moved it up and down until he found the plunger. He depressed the plunger, but the door wouldn’t move. He could feel that another bolt somewhere near the knob was engaged. He got down on his knees on the concrete steps and pushed on the rubber flap of the cat door that was cut into the lower panel. He measured the length of his arm from the cat door to the doorknob, and judged that it was long enough. Lying on his back on the steps, he stuck his arm inside all the way to the shoulder and felt for the bolt. The tips of his fingers barely touched it, but he managed to turn it and pull it out. Opening the door, he crawled inside, then closed it carefully.