Butcher's Road (10 page)

“You said Musante made people nervous.”

“Not nervous exactly.” Valentino slid his palm across the hair above his ears to smooth it, even though it was already as smooth and shiny as a slab of wax. Then he started looking around the restaurant. “Where’s that goddamn drink?”

“It’ll be here. Tell me about Musante.”

“You know us Italians, a lot of superstitions.”

“You’re not Italian,” Lennon countered.

Valentino continued speaking as if he hadn’t heard. “Well, superstition doesn’t go away when you join the outfits. There’s still a lot of old country hokum in our heads.”

“What’s that got to do with Musante?”

The drinks arrived. Scotch. Valentino downed half of his with a gulp. He kept hold of his glass and turned in the booth, again searching the restaurant. Lennon couldn’t tell if the man was anxious, afraid, or just hopped up on a nose full of cocaine. His irises were like crickets on griddles, bouncing around and looking for a place to land.

“Look, Lennon, there’s just not that much to tell. Musante came from an old family, and they had some sway in their day, but Lon fell from the tree and rolled way on down the hill, if you get my meaning. Marco and Lon grew up in the same Brooklyn neighborhood; that ties men together, you know? What’s the confusion? Musante’s dead. Let him rest.”

“You haven’t answered my question. What did Musante do for Impelliteri?”
Why had his death ignited a street war?

Valentino rolled his eyes and shook his head. He lifted his glass and sipped this time, and then leaned back in the booth. “Eight months back, Lon was in a club, shooting his mouth off about a delivery: Scotch coming in over the Canadian line.” He hoisted his glass and swirled the whisky. “The delivery never made it. Some Fed overheard him and the whole shipment was stopped at the border. Six men collared. Two men toe tagged. These were members of Capone’s crew, part of Nitti’s pipeline, and everybody knew Musante had done the damage. So why was he still walking around? Still breathing? Anyone else would have been target practice in less than a day, but not Lonnie.”

Lennon chewed over the information, sipped his own drink. “He must have had some serious leverage against the syndicate.”

This made Valentino laugh. “We all have serious leverage, Lennon. But most of us are smart enough to never even consider using it. Lon had something else.”

“I don’t follow.”

“No, you really don’t. And I’m not the one to guide you, because I’ve always thought it was all a load of horseshit anyway.”

“All of what?”

“That mystic mumbo jumbo,” Valentino said, as if he’d already said it a hundred times.

Lennon could see the lucidity leaving Valentino’s eyes. No longer crickets on a griddle, his irises bobbed slowly, eyeing his glass and then the table and then his glass again. Apparently his system was coming down from the dope.

“One sentence, Valentino,” Lennon said, leaning on the table. “In one sentence, tell me what Musante did for Impelliteri.”

Valentino stared into the oil lamp on the tabletop, eyes now glazed. “He read his future.”

The statement hung between them. Lennon shook his head and lit a cigarette and leaned back in the booth. “Is that code for something?”

“It is what it is,” Valentino said. His chin dipped toward his chest. “Marco kept Lon around as a spiritual guide or some shit. Hell, I wish someone would pay me for looking into a drained tea cup or at their palm for a few seconds.”

“But Marco believed Lon was legit?”

“Medieval witch shit in the bright and shiny city,” Valentino muttered. Then he barked a sharp laugh and lit a cigarette of his own. “Lon couldn’t have been all that good or Marco would have made his mint at the track instead of running booze. Hell, if Lon had been any good he wouldn’t have been home the other night, you know?”

“And that’s it? Lonnie didn’t work the rackets?”

Valentino shrugged. A thick film had fallen over his eyes and his chin lazily bobbed as if he were trying to stay awake.

“I’m asking you a question.”

“Nah,” Valentino said. “He ran some numbers, but even that was more than Lon could handle. The guy was pretty much useless. They should have just done it and saved everyone the headache.”

“Done what?”

“After the Canadian import went south—or
didn’t
—Marco sent Lonnie an invitation.” He drew on his cigarette and released the smoke slowly so that it oozed over his upper lip. “It’s one of those invitations that you don’t refuse—to an event you usually don’t leave.”

“So Impelliteri
did
order a hit on Musante?”

“Yeah,” Valentino said. “Then he called it off the next day. Never heard of that happening before. Nobody talks their way out of an invitation to the dance, but Lon did. No dancing for Ol’ Lon. So maybe he had a different kind of leverage. Hard to say.”

“Then what?”

“Then the Bug sends the Wrestler to kill the Fortuneteller, and my good friend Lennon asks me to lunch.”

Valentino barked another laugh, drew on his smoke, ground it in the crystal ashtray and began looking around the restaurant again, presumably to have his drink refilled. After a quick wave to the gray-haired waiter, he turned his muddled eyes back to Lennon.

“You look like you’re about to fall over,” Lennon said.

“Perhaps a visit to the gents,” Valentino muttered.

“You do that,” Lennon said. He stood and withdrew his money clip and counted bills onto the table. “Tell me something before you go.”

“Hmm? Sure?”

“Where do pretty boys go when they aren’t pretty anymore?”

“Straight to hell, detective.”

Hours later and miles away, Marco Impelliteri, a man whose cunning business sense and quiet brutality had earned him a position near the apex of the Chicago syndicates, strolled across his office to his expansive mahogany desk and lifted the ringing telephone. He’d been in a lousy mood for days, ever since watching flames consume Lonnie Musante’s coffin and its contents: a man he’d known since childhood. The street war wasn’t helping his disposition. He’d called it, wanted it, but the fucking Irish were doing too good a job of dodging his boys’ bullets. He was sending messages, but nobody was listening.

He picked up the phone, cleared his throat, and said, “Yeah?”

“Marco, this is Lou.”

“Yeah.”

“Powell’s goons took out two of my boys this afternoon. Frank isn’t happy. Your vendetta is drawing too much attention, and nobody but you is missing that fuck Musante. Frank says to shut it down.”

The line went dead and Marco Impelliteri looked at the conical earpiece as if it were the statue of a sainted martyr that had just whispered obscenities into his ear. He slammed the thing into the cradle and broke the metal arms loose. Marco lifted the telephone off his desk and threw it on the floor. It was the sixth phone to be scrapped in as many months.

Marco went to the window and put his brow against the cold glass. He didn’t like what he saw outside. The electric lights in his back yard illuminated a field of melting snow with great patches of brown grass appearing like lesions all across the ground. It looked horrible. It looked like rot.

Frank said. Frank said. Bullshit.

Nitti was nothing but a front, a face for the outfit that wasn’t as contentious as Paul Ricca’s. The only reason Al had anointed Frank in the first place was because the guy’s record made him look like a choirboy alongside the other lieutenants. Ricca gave the orders these days, probably had since the day Al went into the slam. Marco wasn’t impressed. That Old Country fuck, Ricca, could suck his cock. Yeah he had the skills, certainly had the brutality, to lead the outfits, but he was a thug. Immigrant filth. He ordered hits with his Sicilian “Make ’im go away,” bullshit, an accent so thick Marco could barely make out what the shit-heel was saying. But Ricca was in charge. He had the muscle, and nobody, not even Nitti, said boo when Ricca opened his mouth. Nitti was weak, as weak as a damp rag puppet, but he knew how the game was played.

Regardless of his feelings for the man, Marco had learned a thing or two from Nitti, learned to pass on the wet work, learned to keep his hands clean and his face out of the papers. That’s why he retained a small crew of hitters, kids who were young enough to move fast and were looking to make names for themselves. It was also why he’d retained a psychopath like Paul Rabin for the more complicated, delicate assignments. Rabin had been a hand-me-down from “Big Cheeks” Collasanto, a Capone lieutenant who’d taken a bullet to the throat in ’27. Impelliteri had gone to Collasanto, needing help with a matter outside the rackets, something that required secrecy and expediency, and Collasanto had been accommodating, if vague.

“You put the assignment and the money in an envelope and you have one of your chumps drop that envelope off. You don’t want to meet this man, don’t want Paul Rabin to know your face if you can help it.”

Impelliteri had been about to laugh in Collasanto’s face. Considering the level of bat-shit crazy exhibited by the gang boys he’d bummed around with on the streets of Brooklyn and later Chicago, it struck him as pretty damn funny that he should be warned away from a contract man, but before he let this train of thought lead him to laughter, he considered Big Cheeks’ history, knew the currents of violence that had lifted and carried him to Al’s side. The life he’d lived. The shit he’d done. If this man was concerned enough to keep a distance from Rabin, then Impelliteri would do the same.

When he needed Rabin’s services, he sent the fat cop. Let that slob say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing and take Rabin’s heat. The life of a cop meant less than a turkey neck to Marco. He had a hundred cops in his pocket.

Cermak and his war on crime, now there was a laugh.

And Marco had to admit Rabin knew his business. Men that were supposed to disappear, like that piece of shit Barney Orso, disappeared and never surfaced. If a more public display was necessary to throw a scare into Moran’s crew, Rabin could manage that, too. The killer did his job and that was all that mattered. Soon enough, Rabin would introduce himself to that meathead Cardinal, and he’d open the wrestler up—slowly if Rabin followed Marco’s instructions. He wanted that son of a bitch to pay.

Every time he thought about that fucking wrestler his stomach turned sour. He pictured Lonnie lying dead, a guy he’d known since they were both pissing diapers, and he thought about the package Lonnie was supposed to deliver, and Marco’s vision went red. He wanted Cardinal to suffer all the way to his soul, and he wanted every Paddy on Powell’s crew to follow him into the ground, and then he wanted the rest of the cunts in Moran’s outfit to follow
them
.

Nitti wanted him to shut it down, told him it was done. Nothing was fucking done, not until the Irish were under dirt or under water, and Marco was shown the respect he deserved.

He left the window and crossed his office. In the hallway he looked up the stairs and then over his shoulder as if someone were following him. Impelliteri climbed the stairs, turned left on the landing and walked to the first door: his daughter Sylvia’s room. Carefully he turned the knob and pushed the door open, allowing the light from the hall to cut a line from the threshold to his daughter’s bed. Upon seeing her, the red rage all but vanished. Sylvia faced the wall, her beautiful black hair sprayed over the pillow like bands of satin. Her silk duvet, the color of lavender, clutched tightly to her legs and rose in gentle swells at her hips and shoulders. The sight stirred Marco, made him forget Lou’s phone call and the muddy thoughts it had stirred up. His beautiful girl. His light.

Marco took a step into the room, but a noise from the front of the house startled him, brought him to a stop. It might have been nothing more than the house settling, or a tenacious icicle finally releasing its grasp on the eaves, falling, and cracking against the walk, but a distinct change in the air followed the noise, as if it had thinned and fled. Escaped. Maybe his guard, Tony, had decided to do a sweep, or he’d noticed the office light on and decided to see if his boss needed anything. It was possible, but Impelliteri doubted it.

Backing out of the room, Marco listened carefully. He closed the door to his daughter’s room and reached for the gun he kept in the pocket of his robe. Once he had a firm grip on the weapon, he returned to the top of the stairs and looked down. The entryway was empty, and the floor was clean, no muddy footprints to indicate intruders. He eased down the stairs, alert for both sound and motion. At the bottom of the stairs he stopped again, and he listened, and though he didn’t hear anything, his belief that someone was moving around remained. It was the air. The air felt wrong. It shifted and rolled like a phantom draught. Marco retraced his steps to his office and outside he pressed his ear to the door. More silence.

Marco entered the room, holding the gun low and close to his hip. Tony stood behind his desk. Hands at his sides. The man’s narrow face was tight with fear.

Before Marco could take in the totality of the scene, or completely understand the expression on his bodyguard’s face, a hand slammed down on his wrist with so much force he dropped the gun and flinched. When he opened his eyes, he saw a hard, broad face and the point of a knife, hovering less than an inch from his eye.