Parker16 Butcher's Moon (38 page)

Which just wasn't fair. It was Buenadella who had started * the power play in the first place, and it was Buenadella who had taken Parker and Green's money, and it was Buenadella who had ordered Mike Abadandi to go kill them. But all of that was being forgotten now. The only things being remembered were that Calesian had killed A1 Lozini and that Calesian had fired on Parker and Green after Buenadella had worked out an agreement with them. Nobody was making a big point of blaming Calesian, nobody was arguing with him and giving him a chance to defend himself, but the feeling was obvious in the air. Calesian was out. Not yet, but soon; Farrell would be elected mayor, and would appoint his own police commissioner, and it was only natural to expect the new commissioner to do some reshuffling of assignments. Calesian would lose his slot with the Organized Crime Squad, would be shifted to Public Relations or the Red Squad or some other meaningless backwater, and that would be the end of him. His last state would be worse than his first; less power than before, after having for just one day tasted more power than he'd ever dreamed of.

Was there a way back? Not yet, not that he could see, but still he couldn't just give up. He had to hang around, watching and waiting, hoping for some break somewhere; sitting in Buenadella's den, obscure and ignored in a corner, he watched Dulare and Quittner over at the desk, like two military commanders in a field headquarters setting up for a major battle. Watched and listened and hoped for some new hole to open, some other route back to the trough of power.

Dulare was on the phone now, talking to Farrell. Until a day or so ago direct communication between Farrell and anybody at all on this side of the fence would have been unthinkable; but now they were in a crisis situation, and security was going by the boards. Besides, with the election tomorrow it was too late for anybody to get political mileage out of Farrell's connections; and after the man was elected, what was anybody going to do about it?

Dulare was saying, "George, you just sit tight. You've got good security around you there, and . . . I know they did. That's why your security's so much better now. You stay there, stay out of it, stay above it. Do your early morning voting booth

number, then fade away again and let it all happen. We'll take care of things on the outside . . . They also serve, George, who only stand and
wait ...
I know it. If I'd been in this earlier it wouldn't have happened . . . That's right, George, that's just what's going to
happen ...
I definitely will, I'll let you know first thing . . . That's right. Goodbye, George."

Dulare hung up, made a face, said to Quittner, "The man's a bigger asshole than Wain ever was."

"He'll do," Quittner said. He had a soft voice, with no strength in it; he was frequently hard to hear. "He's just frightened, that's all."

Dulare grunted, and looked at the sheet of paper he'd been doodling on. "I keep thinking," he said, "there must be other places for them to hit. The Riviera. Nick Rifkin's Place. Your man Pelzer."

"They know a lot," Quittner said. "They know more than I do. Nick Rifkin, I knew nothing about."

"A little loan operation." Dulare shrugged, turning that conversation aside. "The question is, what else can they hit?"

"What else is there for them to know about?"

"It's that goddam Faran," Dulare said. "He's a hail-fellow- well-met, let's get together have a couple drinks. You sit with him, you trade stories, pretty soon he knows everything you do."

"He's too expensive," Quittner said.

"Frank's got a lot of friends," Dulare said. "A lot of buddies. They'll all want to forget it, let him go, not make a big deal."

"He's too expensive." Quittner had a cold, soft, unemphatic way of repeating himself that was much more impressive than a lot of shouting or a whole array of different arguments.

Dulare shrugged. "Let's see if we get him back alive," he said. "Then we can talk it over."

There was a silence. Calesian watched Quittner turning it over in his mind, watched him decide not to repeat his comment again but to let it go for now, and knew that Quittner was determined that Frank Faran should die. There seemed to Calesian no question but that Frank Faran was soon going to be dead.

What did Quittner want? While he and Dulare went on talking about other potential places for Parker to hit, Calesian studied Quittner, trying to understand the man. Would he be taking over when Frank Schroder died or retired? Schroder was in his sixties now, so that was a possibility, and Quittner had the look of someone patient enough to wait things out. But did he want any more? It was hard to see Quittner, for instance, in A1 Lozini's role; the man in charge had to have the potential for some sort of human contact with the people under him, and Quittner seemed just too cold and withdrawn, he seemed to live too completely inside himself. It was impossible to think of Quittner hosting one of those gourmet dinners that A1 Lozini used to do once or twice a week.

All at once Calesian felt an almost physical pain of nostalgia for the way things used to be. Way back, four or five years ago, back when Lozini was still completely in charge, before Dutch had made his move, before anything had happened. How easy and good that all seemed now.

No. With a sensation like an iris being slowly forced shut, Calesian put away that weakness. He had been thinking about Quittner, wondering what kind of man he was, wondering if there was any way that Quittner could be useful in Calesian's rehabilitation. There had to be some way to keep from being bounced out of things by all this—was Quittner the way?

Dulare was on the phone again, talking to Artie Pulsone over at Three Brothers Trucking. They had twelve radio- equipped delivery trucks over there, and Dulare had arranged for them all to be out on patrol, driving around the city, looking for trouble. They were in steady touch with Artie at the office, and Artie would occasionally check in by phone with Dulare.

Quittner had gotten to his feet and was over by the French doors, looking out at the floodlit shrubbery and lawn. Being casual, not knowing what he would say but only that he had to start with some sort of try, Calesian stood up and strolled over next to him. "One thing's for sure," he said, also looking out toward the lawn. "He won't get in here, anyway."

"He'll come for his friend," Quittner said.

Calesian looked sharply at him, surprised by the calm assurance of the man. How could he be so positive what Parker would do? "I think he'll call," Calesian said. "Sometime tomorrow. The way he worked it with A1 Lozini."

"He'll come for his friend."

Despite the situation he was in, Calesian felt irritation and couldn't help showing it. "What makes you so sure?"

Quittner glanced at Calesian. His eyes were pale blue, they almost looked blind. Without expression, he said, "You shouldn't have sent him that finger. He wasn't the right man for that."

It wasn't smart to try defending himself, but Calesian couldn't hold back. "That's easier to see now," he said. "At the time, it seemed the right thing to do."

"He wasn't the right man for that. He never was."

Quittner turned his head again, looking out at the lawn. Calesian tried to find something else to say in his own defense, but was distracted by the sound of the den door opening. It was Buenadella.

He looked terrible. It was amazing how much he'd changed, just overnight. Inside his big frame he looked shriveled and stooped. His face was fixed in downward curving lines, like the unhappy side of a comedy-tragedy mask. He had sent his family out of the city and he should have gone with them, but he'd insisted on sticking around. Not that he could do any good; he'd become an old woman, fretful and frightened.

Dulare was just hanging up the phone. Looking up, he said, "How's it going, Dutch?"

"Any news? Did they find him?" A faint whining note had come into Buenadella's voice; it was the worst of the new characteristics, weak and grating.

"Nothing yet," Dulare said. "How's life upstairs?"

"The doctor says Green was awake for a while."

"No shit," Dulare said.

Quittner turned away from the window, his attention caught. Calesian kept watching Quittner.

"Just for a few minutes," Buenadella said.

Quittner, walking over to the desk, said, "Did anybody talk to him?"

"He wasn't awake that way, to have a conversation. It's just his eyes were open for a little while."

"If he really wakes up," Quittner said to Dulare, "we want to talk to him."

Calesian, having stayed over by the French doors, touched his palm to one of the glass panes. It was warm, warmer than the air in the room, so it must still be hot outside, even though the glare of floodlights made the greenery out there look cool.

Buenadella said, petulantly, "I don't see why we don't kill him. That's the only reason Parker's coming here, isn't it? Kill him, leave him on a street downtown, the way Parker left Shevelly."

Dulare, speaking with controlled impatience, said, "He's a playing card. So long as we have him, Parker can still be ready to deal."

"What if he tries to break in here?"

"Good," Dulare said. "I'd love it."

Calesian turned and looked out the window again. Buenadella was saying something else, that whine still sounding in his voice, but Calesian didn't listen. He was trying to think of how to square himself with Quittner.

Did somebody move there? Out toward the end of the lawn, amid the individual clumps of bushes.

No. It was just nerves. Calesian squeezed his eyes shut and looked out again at the glare of light. Nothing. He would let Quittner know just how much clout he had in the police force, how many men owed him favors. Then the lights went out.

Forty-nine

Wiss carried the bomb, one he'd made in an empty soft- drink bottle out of materials from his safe-cracking bag. Elkins did the driving, and when they reached the electric company substation he merely slowed down, looping up onto the sidewalk while Wiss leaned out of the car window and tossed the bottle underhand. It arched up over the fence as Elkins accelerated away, landing in the middle of the high-voltage relay equipment, and exploding on contact. It wasn't a very big explosion, nor very loud, but it cut off all electric service in that section of the city. Driving along in a world suddenly without streetlights or traffic lights, with utter darkness on all sides of them, Wiss and Elkins headed back again toward the center of the city; they had one more job to do tonight.

When the lights went out, the darkness was more complete than city dwellers ever know. High thin stars defined the moonless sky, but the earth was black wool, across which men stumbled, blinking, moving their arms out in front of them like ant feelers. The defenders in the Buenadella house stared out windows at nothingness, clutching guns, squinting, trying to see with their ears but hearing nothing more than their own breathing and faint creaking noises from the man at the next window. "Shut up!" they whispered at one another. "I think I hear something." A couple of them, seeing light flecks before their eyes, fired aimlessly into the dark, the muzzle flashes a quick red light that they didn't know to look away from, making them more blind than ever.

The two men inside the TV repair truck across the street, surveillance specialists from the state CID, didn't know at first there was anything wrong. They had their own electric power inside the truck, and the camera through which they looked at the world outside was equipped with infrared. But then, just as they were realizing something had happened, the rear doors of the truck opened, a flashlight shone in at them, and a voice said, "Don't reach for any guns."

They might have reached for guns anyway, despite the fact that they couldn't see past the hard brightness of the flashlight, if they hadn't simultaneously heard the sound of shooting flare up over at the Buenadella house, reminding them that they were after all only technicians. Bewildered, but understanding instinctively that this wasn't a mess they wanted to involve themselves in, they both raised their hands.

Tom Hurley held the flashlight, while Ed Mackey with his hood over his face climbed into the truck, disarmed the two men, and tied them together back to back with their belts and shoelaces. Hurley said, "Make sure that camera isn't working."

Mackey looked at the camera, then hit it three times with a gun butt. "It isn't working," he said, and he and Hurley left the truck and went over to the house.

Stan Devers had gone up a telephone pole half a block away shortly before the lights went out. He was equipped with insulated gloves and a pair of heavy wire cutters, and while there was still light to see by, he made sure he had the group of lines leading to the area of the Buenadella house. When the lights went out he worked by feel, scissoring through the lines, hearing the musical notes when they snapped. Finished, he dropped the wire cutters into the oceanic darkness below him, and went slowly backward down the pole, feeling for the metal rails. He had no sense of height in this blackness, and it soon seemed to him it was taking too long to get down the pole. Leg down, hand down, leg down, hand down; surely he should have reached the ground by now. A stupid panic tried to rise up in his chest, and he felt the idiotic urge to just jump out from the pole into the black, drop the rest of the distance, however long it was, get this damn thing over with. And still he kept inching and inching and inching his way down the rough wood surface; and
when
his foot did finally thud against the ground, it came as a surprise.

The three drivers, Mike Carlow and Philly Webb and Nick
Dalesia,
had been waiting in three cars parked a block away.
When
the darkness hit, they drove forward, using parking lights
only.
Ahead of them they saw the spot of light where Mackey
and
Hurley were dealing with the men in the TV repair truck.
They
drove on by that, and made the turn onto Buenadella's property; as they turned, they switched on their headlights, high
beams,
four bright lights per car.

Men upstairs in the front windows had seen the faint outline
of
automobiles coming, defined by the yellow glow of parking lights, the dim red luster of taillights. They'd readied themselves
to
fire, but the sudden blinding glare of headlights left them with
no
targets to shoot at.

The three cars ignored the circular driveway. Spreading out across the lawn, evading the crooked sundial, they came to a stop about twenty feet from the house, in a widely separated row, all pointed directly at the front door. In all the surrounding blackness, the facade of the Buenadella house showed up like a painted bas-relief on a velvet wall.

The three drivers got out of their cars and moved quickly around behind them. They had pistols in their hands, and they used the cars as shields as they scanned the front windows of the house. Anyone intending to shoot out the headlights would have to show himself in a window; at the first sign of any movement in one of those windows, all three drivers would open fire. The headlights would stay on.

At the rear of the house, Parker and Handy McKay and Dan Wycza and Fred Ducasse had waited for the darkness, crouching in the shrubbery at the far end of the lawn. In the lighted windows inside the house they could see men moving back and forth, in conversation together or watching, and each of them chose an indoor target. Parker, on one knee with his gun hand supported on the other knee, sighted on the figure in the French doors in Buenadella's den. That was Calesian there, and it was right to kill him this way, with their roles reversed.

When the lights went out, Parker squeezed off two shots. He heard the other three around him firing, and when they stopped, there was a ragged response of gunfire from the house. "Wait it out," he said, speaking into the darkness.

Dan Wycza's voice sounded from his left, saying, "I wonder did I get mine."

That was all any of them said until they saw the sudden blare of headlights from the other side of the house. The house was silhouetted by the lights; it was like an eclipse of the moon.

Parker got to his feet. "All right," he said, and he and the three others walked forward across the lawn to the house.