Butcher's Moon

Twenty-eight

Calesian fired a second time, over the falling man’s head at the guy coming out behind him. But it was a harder shot, the second target still being in the semi-darkness inside the room, and with a few seconds’ warning to start moving out of the way. He knew without looking that he’d missed, so he ran forward toward the open doors, crouching and weaving, making himself as difficult as possible to aim at.

He had come here directly after the phone conversation with Buenadella. Knowing that at least two police agencies kept routine watch on Buenadella’s house, just to have a general idea who his visitors were, Calesian had come around the back way, across several well-tended spacious rear yards, having to deal with one Great Dane along the way, and when he’d arrived here he’d gone directly to the French doors leading to Buenadella’s office. He’d almost opened the doors, but with his hands on the fancy handles he had heard voices from inside, and he’d wanted to know who it was talking to Buenadella before he showed himself.

There were spaces between the orange drapes covering the French doors on the inside; Calesian had stooped to peer through, and when he’d seen Parker he’d immediately backed away from the house, taking shelter amid the hedges so he could think things over.

So; Parker too had figured things out, but unlike Lozini, he had chosen to go directly to the top. Was he here because he wanted to find out if Buenadella was the man organizing the takeover, or was it because he already knew? Whichever it was, they were obviously just talking in there. Parker wanted his money, not a lot of corpses, so he wouldn’t shoot Buenadella. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be good for Calesian to jump him inside Buenadella’s house. Better to wait for him to come out.

Which was what he’d done. Except that it hadn’t been Parker all by himself in there; the other one, Green, had also been present, though Calesian hadn’t been able to see him in looking through the space between the drapes. And that was why Calesian had made his mistake.

If he’d known Parker and Green were both in there, he would have stayed out of sight until both men had emerged completely from the house into the outer daylight. He was fast and he was accurate, well-trained on the pistol range in the basement at headquarters, and he had no doubt he could step out from concealment and drop any two men on earth before they could reach for their own weapons. Even fast-draw artists from rodeos or movies; anybody.

But he hadn’t known about Green. So the French doors had opened, a man had come out, and Calesian had stepped out from behind the hedge to kill him, to finish him off once and for all. And it was as he was coming out, raising his arm in the formal shooter’s posture, elbow locked, entire arm and hand and gun pointing at that man’s heart, that he saw the second one coming out behind the first and realized his mistake.

And by God, they were fast. Both men were moving when he squeezed off that first shot. There wasn’t a chance in hell for the first man to get away, but the second one was still inside the house, and he moved fast, and the second shot missed.

So Calesian ran forward, crouching, weaving, and burst through the French doors to see the interior door slamming on the other side of the den. And Dutch Buenadella was on his feet behind his desk, yelling something Calesian didn’t hear and didn’t pay attention to.

Goddammit. In the house, actually inside the house, with Buenadella’s family present. The situation couldn’t be worse, but the guy couldn’t be allowed to get out of here alive. Calesian crossed the room on the dead run, yanked open the door, and something grabbed his arm, spun him backward around off balance, and shoved him away toward the side wall.

Buenadella. Calesian, flinging his arms out to get his balance back, saw Buenadella slamming the door again, and he couldn’t believe it. “Dutch!” he yelled, and surged once more at the door. “He’s getting away!”

Buenadella stiff-armed him. “God damn you son of a bitch bastard asshole, stop where you are or I swear to God I’ll rip your head off your shoulders and kick it into the street!”

The tone of voice got to Calesian more than the words. He stopped, panting, adrenalin pumping, and finally saw that Buenadella’s face was purple with rage, and that the rage was directed at him, at Calesian. “Jesus Christ, Dutch,” he said, still panting, “I could have had them both.”

“I just made a deal with them!”

Calesian blinked. He lowered the pistol in his right hand and looked dazedly around the room. “You did what?”

“A deal. You know what a deal is, you half-assed Armenian hot shot? You know what anything is except shoot people?”

“How a deal? What kind of a deal?”

“I give them their money back.”

Calesian stared at him. “I don’t believe it,” he said.

“For peace and quiet?” Buenadella was leaning forward, not exactly shouting but nevertheless pushing the words very hard into Calesian’s face. “To get my man safely into the mayor’s office? To take over from Lozini with no problems, no questions, nobody gunning for me? When I can write the whole fucking thing off to begin with, and pay out of skim money in the second place, and wind up with the Feds and Al Lozini paying the whole thing between them?”

“Goddammit, Dutch,” Calesian said, reasonably, apologetically, “how was I supposed to know that? This morning you had a contract out on them.”

“Never mind this morning. They came here, we talked sense, we made a deal.” Buenadella’s hand swept toward the body lying on the grass just outside the French doors. “And now look.”

“All I knew was, you wanted them dead.” Calesian self-consciously put his pistol away, trying not to draw attention to it in the course of the movement.

“You think everybody’s supposed to be dead,” Buenadella said in disgust. “That cop O’Hara, that was a bright stunt. And now this guy. Who else you been killing, hot shot?”

Calesian became horribly embarrassed; in fact, he felt himself blushing. “Look, Dutch,” he said, and then couldn’t go on.

Buenadella peered at him in wonder. “By God,” he said, “there is somebody else. Who?”

“Al Lozini came to see me,” Calesian said unhappily. “At my home. He—”

“You killed Al?”

“He had a gun on me, Dutch, I couldn’t—”

“You killed Al Lozini? Do you realize how many friends Al has around the country? Do you realize how many—” Buenadella stopped, spread his arms out wide, appealed to heaven. “Give me strength.”

“There wasn’t any choice, Dutch. I didn’t want to, for Christ’s—”

“Didn’t want to? You’ve killed us all, you blood-drinking bastard! Karns, Culligan, a dozen of them. They’d let us retire Al, everybody gets old, everybody has to move over, we were making that play out, everything fine. But kill him? I know three guys off the top of my head that know Al Lozini thirty years; they’ll send an army in here when they find out Al’s dead.”

“They won’t,” Calesian said. “Nobody goes that far for a dead man, there’s no point.”

“They won’t deal with me,” Buenadella said. “Never again. I’m through, I’m finished. Nobody will deal with me. Even if I give them your head on a plate, say it was your idea and I punished you, they won’t believe me and they won’t deal with me.”

That much was right, and Calesian knew it. Casting around, feeling helpless, feeling as though he was being unfairly blamed for a series of bad happenings for which he shouldn’t really have to carry the weight, he looked around the room again and his eye lit on the body outside on the grass. “Then,” he said, “we palm it off on them.”

Buenadella frowned. “What?”

“Those two guys. Your deal with them is blown anyway. So we claim they killed Lozini while trying to get their money.” “Why would they kill Al?”

”To deal with you. They weren’t getting anywhere with Lozini, and they knew you were next in line, so they killed him and came to you. To threaten they’d do the same to you and deal with the next man down the line.” Leaning forward, speaking softly and earnestly, Calesian said, “It’ll play, Dutch. It’ll read just like the truth.”

“Christ,” Buenadella said, looking around, thinking it over. “What a goddam mess.”

“It’ll play, Dutch.”

Buenadella said, “But Parker’s supposed to know Walter Karns. What if it comes down to our word against his?”

“We have to kill him,” Calesian said. Hastily, seeing the expression on Buenadella’s face, he added, “I’m not being trigger-happy, Dutch, it’s the simple truth. If they’re both dead, there’s no more problem.”

Buenadella looked over at the one out on the lawn. “Is he dead?”

“Naturally.”

“Take a look.”

Calesian shrugged and went over to the body and rolled it over onto its back. Blood gouted from the chest, high on the left side. Too much blood, and too high on the chest. Frowning, Calesian touched the guy on the side of the neck, and damn if there wasn’t a faint pulse there. The pulse was keeping the blood flowing out of the wound.

It was seeing the second one in the doorway that had distracted Calesian, thrown his aim slightly off. Two inches from where he’d wanted the bullet to hit.

Buenadella was standing next to Calesian, looking down with distaste. “He really is dead, huh?”

Reluctantly, not looking up, Calesian said, “No.”

Fear in Buenadella found release in anger. “Goddammit! You can’t even do that right! Killing’s all you know how to do, and you don’t even know how to do that.”

A dull anger moved in Calesian, but he didn’t have the will to follow through. He could defend himself, he could yell back, he could get up and punch Buenadella in the face. All he did was stay on one knee next to the dying man and watch the blood pulse out, while Buenadella’s words ranted above him.