Butcher's Moon

Twenty-one

Lozini was out by the pool, still on his first cup of coffee. He had dressed in paint-stained work pants and an old white shirt and brown loafers, and he was wearing sunglasses against the morning glare. He felt unwell and uncomfortable, and it was only partly because he’d had too little sleep. The rest was nerves, the accumulating tension and unease and a sense of helplessness that he wasn’t used to. He’d lived a life of dealing with his enemies, directly and efficiently, and winning out over them. Now he had a sense of enemies he couldn’t find, couldn’t deal with, wasn’t winning over.

And what had happened now? Parker was late by almost a quarter of an hour, and Lozini wanted to know what the new problem was. His nerves weren’t getting any better sitting here.

Movement over by the house. Lozini shifted in his chair, and put the coffee cup back on the glass-topped table. Parker and Green both came out into the sunlight, followed by the houseman, Harold. Lozini waved to Harold to go back inside, and Parker and Green came on alone.

Lozini didn’t stand. He gestured to the empty chairs at the table, and as they were seating themselves he said, “Harold ask you if you want coffee?”

Parker said, “Michael Abadandi works for you.”

Lozini frowned. “That’s right.”

“He came to our motel this morning, to make a hit.”

“On you?” But that was a stupid question, and Lozini knew Parker wouldn’t answer it.

He didn’t. “You didn’t send him,” he said.

“Christ, no.”

Parker said, “Lozini, if you’ve got the digestion for that coffee, you’re a tough man.”

“I don’t,” Lozini said.

“You’re falling off a cliff,” Parker said.

“I know that. Don’t talk about it.”

“I have a point to make.”

“I know the shape I’m in. Make your point.”

“In all this city, there are only two people you can trust.”

Lozini looked at him. Green, silent, was sitting there next to Parker, with his arms folded, squinting slightly in the sunlight and looking much more serious than when he’d had his little chat with Frankie Faran.

Lozini looked from Green back to Parker and said, “You two?”

“How did Abadandi find us? He was told where we were staying. How did anybody know where we were staying? We were followed after I left your meeting last night. How could we be followed? Because somebody who knew about the meeting put somebody outside to follow us. Who knew about the meeting? Only the people you trust.”

“All right,” Lozini said.

“You’ve got a palace takeover on your hands,” Parker told him. “That means a group, maybe four or five, maybe a dozen. A group of people inside your own organization that want you out and somebody else in. Somebody who’s already up close to the top, that they want to take your place.”

Lozini took his sunglasses off and massaged his closed eyes with thumb and forefinger. His eyes still closed, he said, “For the first time in my life I know what getting old is. It’s wanting to be able to call for a time-out.” He put the sunglasses back on and studied them both. Their faces were closed to him, and always would be. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re the only ones I can trust, because I know exactly where you stand and what you want.”

Neither of them said anything. Lozini looked around at the California pool and the New England house and the Midwest sunshine and said, “I built this by being fast and smart. All of a sudden I look at myself and I’ve been coasting, I don’t even know for how long. Five years? No; I was still fast and smart when I was after you in that amusement park two years ago.”

Parker nodded. “You are different now,” he said.

Lozini made a fist, and rested it on the table next to the coffee. “It didn’t take them long, did it? I start to coast, and right away somebody’s climbing up my back. They can smell it, the bastards. ‘Lozini’s getting old, time to make my play.’” He thumped the fist softly on the table. “If only I knew which of them it was, if only I had that much satisfaction.”

Parker said, “One of them at the meeting?”

“No.” Lozini opened the fist and pressed his palm on the table top, splaying the fingers out. Squinting through his sunglasses at the pool, thinking about his people, he said, “Some of them are in it, probably, but not running it. They don’t have the strength you need.”

“Shevelly? He’s your second-in-command, isn’t he?”

“Ted’s years from being ready to take over. If he ever could at all, and I don’t think so. Nobody’d follow Ted, that’s the point. It’s got to be somebody that the others would follow.”

“You know your people,” Parker said. “Who’s got the strength?”

Lozini had already been thinking about that, despite himself. “There’s only three men,” he said, “that could organize it, could get enough people to go into it, and could get acceptance from people like your friend Karns.”

“Who are they?”

“Ernie Dulare. Dutch Buenadella. Frank—”

Green broke in, saying, “Oh. Is that how you pronounce it? Dew-lah-ree. I thought it was Dew-lair.”

Lozini frowned at him. “You met Ernie?”

“No, I just read about him in the paper.” To Parker, he said, “Dulare operates the local horserooms. And Louis ‘Dutch’ Buenadella is our pornography king. The movie houses, the bookstores, and at least one mail-order business.”

Startled out of his funk, Lozini said, “You know my operation pretty good.”

With a modest smile, Green said, “I’m the research girl.”

Parker said, “Who’s this Frank? Not Frank Faran.”

Lozini nodded to Green. “You know that part, too?”

”I suppose that’s Frank Schroder,” Green said. “The narcotics man.”

“Jesus Christ,” Lozini said softly. “You want to tell me which one it is?”

“Well, I’ve never met them,” Green said, “but I doubt it’s Schroder.”

“Why?”

“He’s a little old to take over, to begin with.”

“He’s five years younger than me.”

Green spread his hands, and offered an apologetic smile. “Not old to be running things,” he said, “but maybe too old to start running things. I don’t see him getting enough support. Besides, there’s a rumor he’s been eating his own candy.”

“That isn’t true.”

“Of course it’s true. Even I’ve heard it.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“Oh.” Green made an erasing gesture with the palm of his hand. “I don’t care if the rumor itself is true or not,” he said. “My point is, it’s true that there is such a rumor, and a rumor like that will keep support away from a man.”

Lozini nodded, accepting it. “All right,” he said. “Frank’s the least likely.”

Parker said, “Leaving the other two. Dulare and Buenadella.”

“Right.” Lozini looked at Green. “Any ideas?”

“Sorry. They’re both the right age, they’re both strong, they’ve both got good power bases inside your structure already, they’ve both got the right sort of connections outside town. You know them; which of them is the most greedy?”

“Both of them,” Lozini said.

Parker said, “Give us their addresses.”

“You’re going to go fight my battle for me?”

“No. Whether you make it or not is up to you. But two years ago, whoever O’Hara talked to about the money in the amusement park was somebody already plugged in with this revolution you’ve got going on.”

“It was set up that long ago?” Bewildered, Lozini tried to remember indications that far back, hints that he should have picked up but had somehow missed.

”They’ve been waiting for this election,” Parker said. “That’s what’s going to finish you off.”

“It is, too,” Lozini said.

Green said, “Everybody else in this country has their elections in November. What’s with you people, that you have to be different?”

“We made that change on purpose, years ago,” Lozini said. “People do things by habit. Run the election in an off-year, or in an off-time, you get a lower turnout, you can control the result easier. Only this time it’s working against me.”

“And my money,” Parker said, “went to either Dulare or Buenadella, whichever one is doing this, to help finance the rebellion. So that’s where we go to get it back.”

Lozini looked at him with something like awe. “Good Christ but you’re single-minded,” he said.

“I came here for my money,” Parker said. “Not a gang war.”

“So you’ll go to both Ernie and Dutch? How do you figure out which one it is?”

“We’ll find out before we go. We’ll ask one of the people that went over to him.”

“Abadandi?”

“He can’t talk right now,” Parker said. “Give me Calesian’s address.”

“Calesian? Why him?”

“Nobody’s going to make a move against you,” Parker said, “without having your top cop in their pocket. Calesian’s smart enough to know you’re on your way out.”

“That son of a bitch.”

Parker said, “What about Farrell?”

Lozini and Green both looked at him in surprise. Lozini said, “Who?”

“Your mayor,” Parker said. “You sure he’s on the way out? Maybe he went over, too.”

“Farrell isn’t my mayor,” Lozini said.

Green said, “Wain is the mayor. Farrell’s the reform candidate running against him.”

Parker frowned at them both, and said to Lozini, “You always kept saying ‘my man.’ I figured that was Farrell.” To Green, he said, “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

”Tell you what?” Green was obviously as bewildered as Lozini.

Lozini said, “What difference does it make? Alfred Wain is my man, and he’s on the way out. George Farrell is the reform man, and he’s on the way in.”

Parker said, “Farrell is the one with the big banner across London Avenue. Posters all over the place.”

“That’s right,” Lozini said. “We haven’t been spending that way. Money’s been tighter for us the last couple of years, I already told you that. Receipts are down everywhere, you heard that from Nate Simms last night. Besides, we never had to spend that much. Farrell’s working in a different league.”

“I should have made sure,” Parker said. He seemed to be talking mostly to himself. Frowning toward the pool, he said, “It’s my mistake, I shouldn’t have taken it for granted.”

Lozini said, “I still don’t get you.”

“Your receipts aren’t down,” Parker told him. “They’re skimming off the top. Farrell is their man.”

Green said, in a small voice, “Oh.”

The whole thing opened all at once for Lozini like a sunflower. “Those dirty bastards. They’ve been financing Farrell with my money.”

“And mine,” Parker said. To Green, he said, “So we by-pass Calesian, we go to Farrell.”

“Right.”

Parker got to his feet. “Retire, Lozini,” he said. “Go to Florida and play shuffleboard.”

Lozini watched the two of them walk through the sunlight and into the darkness of the house. Shuffleboard. Calesian. Abadandi. Ernie Dulare or Dutch Buenadella. Farrell. With his money.

Lozini got to his feet. Aloud he said, “I haven’t fired a gun in twenty-seven years.” His voice was absorbed into the water of the pool: flat, no echo. He walked around the pool and on into the house.