Butcher's Road (22 page)

“That’s a lie, and it’s the last one I’ll allow. Tell me another and I’ll start taking pieces off of you.”

Conrad needed a name to feed the madman, but his calm was shattered. He couldn’t think of anyone to point a finger at except for the man who had actually given him the order. “It was Terry McGavin.”

“I don’t know that name.” Rabin kept his foot on the chair, but leaned forward, slowly pushing the gun toward Conrad’s shining fat face.

“He’s with Moran. On Powell’s crew.”

“You work both sides.” Rabin nodded his head. “Powell wants the Galenus Rose for himself.”

“The what?”

Conrad saw the fucker was as crazy as he’d always believed, and that was a bad thing, considering which one of them held the gun.

“But how did Powell even know of its existence?” Rabin wondered aloud. “No. This is wrong. You’re lying.”

“I’m not lying, you crazy son of a bitch. I picked up a few easy hits from Terry here and there. Simple low-profile shit. I didn’t want word getting back to Impelliteri, and I didn’t want Powell thinking he had me on a leash.”

“And what did Terry tell you about the necklace?”

“Nothing,” Conrad said.

“But you knew about it,” Rabin said. “You made quite a to do about it when we met last week.”

“That was Impelliteri. All Terry told me was to wait outside of Musante’s and pop him when he came out and then do the wrestler the same way. He gave me the time and the place. That’s it. I didn’t hear about the fucking necklace until after I called Marco to let him know about Lonnie.”

“Terry didn’t ask you to retrieve anything from the scene?”

“Not a fucking thing.”

“Curious.”

“I don’t know about that, but it’s true.” Conrad squirmed in the chair. “What about Impelliteri? Are you going to tell him all of this?”

Rabin removed his foot from the chair and stepped away. “I’ll be severing my connections with Mr. Impelliteri. What is said here, remains here. I see no reason to involve him in this matter.”

“No reason at all,” Conrad agreed.

“And your partner, Detective Lennon? He was working with you?”

An idea presented itself and Conrad grabbed hold of it. Roger Lennon had been an annoyance since day one. If Conrad could get Rabin off of his back and put him onto Lennon’s, his life would not only be a lot easier, but it would last a whole lot longer.

“He was the go-between,” Conrad said. He made it sound as if the information was obvious. “Between Terry and me. If Terry said anything about a necklace it was probably to Roger. I can ask him at the station tomorrow.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Once Conrad had told the lie, it hung before him like a rope ladder and he reached for it, swatted at it, knowing it was the only thing that would get him out of this pit. “I’ll call him. Give me a minute, and I’ll get him on the phone.”

“Don’t trouble yourself.”

“You can ask him anything you want.” Conrad knew he sounded too eager, too desperate. The ladder was pulling away, but he had to let it go. The panic in his voice wasn’t doing him any good.

“I don’t see the need to trouble Detective Lennon at this time,” Rabin said. “I admit to some curiosity, what with you being so eager to throw your partner to the lions. There must be quite a history between the two of you, and I’ve recently grown interested in the ease with which those closest to us can deceive and betray. But, thank you, no.”

“He’s the one you want. I can get him for you.”

“I assure you, if necessary, I can get him for myself,” Rabin said. “What about the wrestler?”

“Cardinal? What about him?”

“Have your people turned up any information on the man? His whereabouts? I’m curious.”

“Nobody’s told me anything. I figured you’d get to him long before we did.”

Rabin nodded. “Yes, I imagine I will. There’s an old Paddy I’ve been far too coy about questioning. I imagine it’s time to get serious about that one.”

“If you need a hand, just say the word.”

“Very kind,” Rabin said. He stepped away and lowered the gun before retreating to the entrance of the living room. Rabin threw a glance over his shoulder at the door. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just let myself out.”

“Sure.”

Conrad was confused. Relieved but confused. In fact, everything he knew about Rabin suggested Conrad should be face down on the floor, bleeding. But there Rabin was, turning the knob, pulling the door open, leaving the apartment. It wasn’t the smartest move, because Conrad was going to find the old prick and put a bullet in his head, but there was no reason to bring that up just now.

He exhaled and closed his eyes. He only allowed himself a momentary respite, though. The detective wanted a locked door between himself and the killer. Taking a second deep breath, he opened his eyes, pushed himself from the wooden chair, and headed across the room. Conrad stumbled when he noticed the door opening again.

Rabin poked his head in. “I still have your gun.”

“Keep it,” Conrad told him. Guns were cheap. Easy to find. He didn’t care about it, at least not enough to invite Rabin back into his home.

“Don’t be silly.” Rabin opened the door the rest of the way and stepped over the threshold. He held the gun in his palm. His finger wasn’t even looped through the trigger. Once inside the apartment he closed the door behind him. “Professional courtesy and all.”

“Yeah,” Conrad said. “Thanks.”

Rabin met him in the middle of the room and held out the gun. Uncertain, Conrad stared at the weapon like it was a dead bird.

“Should I just return it to your holster?” Rabin asked.

“Nah, that’s fine. I’ll take it.”

And Conrad reached for the gun. He grasped the handle and in a smooth motion, lifted it level with Rabin’s eyes. He pulled the trigger.

The hammer hit an empty chamber with a hard
clap
.

Rabin’s polished-coffin eyes didn’t blink.

“You…” Conrad began to say.

Rabin delivered a quick, vicious punch to Conrad’s nose. The detective’s vision blurred from pain and from a wash of tears that instantly covered his eyes. Conrad stumbled back, disoriented. From reflex, he threw his hands to cover his injured face. He still held the gun and it smashed into his aching nose. Blood gushed over the grip before Conrad dropped the weapon on the carpet. Rabin strolled forward and buried his right fist in Conrad’s belly, doubling the man over.

“I spoke with my wife this morning,” Rabin said.

Though he still couldn’t see, Conrad uncoiled and whipped his fist toward the voice. It passed through the air, sending him off balance. Tottering and blind, he waved his arms with steadying flaps until he was certain he wouldn’t topple.

Then he felt the rope slip around his neck.

“It wasn’t a pleasant conversation,” Rabin said, “but it reminded me of a simpler time.”

Lennon worked late. The station remained bustling with the third shifters. Tobacco smoke rose thick, casting haze over the wooden desks and the men in their suits. In a shadowed corner, a man pecked at the keys of a typewriter. Two men sat on the edge of a desk, smoking cigars and laughing heartily. Al Jolson sang “Sonny Boy” through the radio static. For Lennon, this setting offered greater comfort and familiarity than his house on Whitmore Street. The sense of camaraderie came easily. He and his colleagues shared this space and they shared ideas and they shared a language. To his mind, the station was more akin to a gentleman’s club than a place of work, and with Edie and the girls out of town, Lennon didn’t have to worry about checking in every thirty minutes, or being interrupted by calls from home. Edie questioning. Needling. Wanting his attention when it was needed elsewhere.

For the twentieth time, he looked over the information he’d gathered about Lonnie Musante, a man who struck Lennon as an ever-growing mystery. The creep was completely useless to the syndicate, and yet he was dear to Marco Impelliteri. Why? In a business that thrived on substance and exploit, Musante seemed irrelevant—a criminal failure with a terminal disease. He dealt in speculation, in superstition; he was impotent when it came to what the outfits truly valued: the cash, the blood.

On his desk sat two small evidence boxes he’d had sent up from the cage. Lennon went through the items collected at Musante’s house piece by piece, a ritual he’d performed more than a dozen times in the last few days. When he came to the Mauser 1914 a familiar thought, the same thought he always had when he looked at the gun, ran through his mind. He’d seen the gun before. On the one hand, Lennon knew the familiarity of the weapon was easily explained; thousands of the things had been manufactured and sent to the streets. But it wasn’t just the model that he found familiar; it was this particular weapon. The nicks. The scratches.

Lennon ran his finger down the wooden wrap-around grip and paused at a chip near the base, likely where a ring had gouged the wood while some lowlife was ramming the magazine home. His thumb traced the shape of the divot and then Lennon put the gun down on his desk as the realization of where he’d seen it before flooded him.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. He shook his head.

Lennon sprang from his desk and ran from the office. When he found a rookie in blue, standing over a filing cabinet, he clapped a hand on the kid’s shoulder and said, “Drop what you’re doing. I need a file. A grocery store robbery. Went down a couple months back. Gladson’s Mercantile. Perpetrator’s name was Myer or Mayer.”

“Who was the lead officer?”

“Curt Conrad,” Lennon said.

The case all of his colleagues considered solved, all but closed save for the apprehension of their suspect, unraveled in his head. Musante. Cardinal. Conrad had set the whole damn thing up. His partner had involved him in a mob hit, crossing a line Lennon had sworn to keep at a distance. Premeditated and foolish, Conrad murdered one man and framed another, and dragged Lennon along for the goddamn ride. Once Lennon had the proof in his hands, he would be paying his partner a visit. The man owed him answers.

• • •

Lennon stood in the doorway of Curt Conrad’s apartment, staring at his partner’s corpse. The detective lay face down. A blood-stained rope snaked away from his throat. His arms were curled under him, like a baby sleeping on its stomach. The room reeked of sweat, grease, old cigar smoke, whiskey, and the combined death scents of blood, urine, and excrement. Lennon put a hand over his mouth. A door opened in the hallway to his left, and Lennon stepped into the apartment, closing the door behind him. He felt little in that moment. Nothing, in fact. A perplexing numbness had overtaken him the moment he’d pushed open the door, replacing the anger he’d carried with him from the station. He’d come for a confrontation and had found his partner was beyond accusation or explanation.

The room was a mess. Cluttered. Dirty. Typical for the corpulent son of a bitch. Conrad’s service piece lay on the floor next to his body. A pile of bullets had been left beside it.

Lennon knelt and grasped Conrad’s wrist. He checked for a pulse, but Conrad was already cold.

“Stupid,” Lennon whispered. Playing both sides only doubled the number of people gunning for you.

Before calling the station, Lennon made a thorough search of his partner’s home. In a beat-up nightstand he found a bankbook with a surprising total jotted in black ink on the last page. Conrad kept a rigorous accounting of his spending—from cigars and egg sandwiches to the car he’d bought last spring. It was, perhaps, the only evidence of organization in an otherwise cluttered life. Beneath the bankbook he found a small journal, bound in cracked black leather. Lennon flipped through the notes inside. The journal contained names and phone numbers, jotted down in no particular order. With no time to read every entry, and wondering if his own name was among those listed, Lennon put the ledger and the journal in his coat pocket.

Lennon finished his search, went to his car, and deposited the few items he’d taken from Curt Conrad’s apartment in the glove box. Then, back in the apartment, he called the station. After the call, he returned to the living room and sat in a wooden chair by the window, waiting for the homicide squad to arrive, waiting to feel something about the man lying dead on the floor before him.

• • •

The next hour played slow and murky for Lennon. He rose from the chair when his colleagues arrived, but it was like trying to swim to the surface of a mud pit. Everyone offered outrage and condolence in equal measure. Men clapped him on the back, expressing heartfelt sorrow that Lennon had lost his partner in such a violent manner. They assured him they would find Conrad’s murderer: they would find the pig, the fucker, the son of a bitch, the rat. Lennon nodded through it all, unable to summon the same level of fury as his colleagues.

Lennon remained at the scene for over an hour, though he added little to the investigation. He listened in on conversations, speculations. He answered a few pointless questions. Just before leaving, a detective named Glaser, a smooth creep in an expensive hat, burst into the room to announce that one of the other residents had seen the killer exiting the building.