Thomas Perry - The Butcher's Boy

The girl’s body was gone, but the usual chalked outline was on the rug where she fell. Not that anybody needed it. It was amazing how much blood you had in you.

“Miss Waring, we’re getting ready to move him now.”

Okay. One last chance. It wouldn’t accomplish anything, probably, except to give her one more image for a nightmare. But you had to look. You always had to look, because they might have made a mistake, gotten too confident, let their flair for the dramatic get them into trouble. She left the counter and made her way back around the racks of souvenirs to the dressing rooms.

The police lieutenant was waiting for her. He pulled open the curtain and stood back. A gentleman, she thought. Absurd. She stared in at the body. It was sitting on the bench, leaning in the corner of the little cubicle, the head lolling sideways as though he were trying to look over his own right shoulder. She could see the face in the mirror, the open eyes bulging, and a T-shirt stuffed in the mouth. It was hard to tell what he would have looked like when he was alive. He was big: fifty-three years old, they’d said, but he was broad shouldered and with a barrel chest. She looked down at his waist. Not much of a paunch—he had stayed in shape. A hard man to take into a busy gift shop and do this to. He’d been strangled and they’d broken his neck. She looked down to examine the shoes, but she couldn’t get past the abdomen without stopping. For some reason that was the most horrible part of it. The joke.

The china figurine of a baby rabbit had been stuffed into the fly of his pants, so only the head and shoulders stuck out, the little face smiling shyly at nothing. She looked down at the shoes. They were beautifully polished, with no scuff marks. What was the leather? Lizard. At least two or three hundred dollars, she thought. A good match for the suit. She’d lost track of what men’s clothes cost, but this one was expensive.

“Do you know what he did?” she asked.

“Did?” said the police lieutenant.

“Yes,” she said. “What he did for a living. You know.”

The lieutenant shrugged and let the curtain swing across the body. “Not really. Ferraro was from New York, and the response from NYPD didn’t tell us much. The first round just said he was a probable. When they sent the rap sheet to us the last they had was 1958, assault, three counts. Nothing recent, but he’s obviously come up in the world.” He nodded, and the ambulance men shouldered their way into the cubicle to begin maneuvering the body to their cart.

“What do you think happened to the girl?” said Elizabeth.

“Hard to tell,” he said. “At the moment I think she probably saw something or heard something, and started toward the dressing room. But it’s possible they wanted her too. She was shot four times. There must have been a silencer because nobody heard anything, and this is a big, busy hotel.”

It didn’t matter, Elizabeth knew, because Brayer had been right all along. They had probably killed the girl because she’d seen their faces. There must have been two of them. It was Ferraro they wanted. But why in a gift shop in a bottom-level corridor of the MGM Grand Hotel? She looked out through the glass display window at the crowds moving past. It was easy to see how they’d done it, slipped in and done their work, maybe one of them at the door to pull the curtain and put up the CLOSED sign. Then in a few minutes they’d just come out and dissolved into the flowing current of people. And it might have been an hour before anyone had checked the door or wondered aloud why a hotel gift shop was closed at ten thirty on a Wednesday. But why? The only possibility was that Brayer was right. It was a struggle for primacy, and the opening gambit would have to be like this, terror tactics, each side telling the other that it would be best to submit. They were saying we can get you whenever and wherever we want to.

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 York 14150 , 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?