Butcher's Moon

Thirty

Driving across town, Ted Shevelly felt very nervous. He didn’t like going to Dutch Buenadella’s house in the first place, and he doubly didn’t like it that Harold Calesian was the one who’d summoned him. And to make matters worse, he couldn’t find Al Lozini, couldn’t talk the situation over with him to find out what the hell was going on.

Turning in at the curving blacktop driveway to Dutch’s house, he noticed the TV repair truck across the street, knew it meant either the Feds or the state CID were taking movies of his arrival, and didn’t much care. The cops already knew who he was, it hardly mattered whether he visited Dutch Buenadella or not. Besides, his main trouble wasn’t cops. At least, not the cops outside. His main trouble was Buenadella and his tame cop on the inside, Calesian.

It was one of Buenadella’s rougher-looking goons who led him through to the den, where Buenadella was sitting at his desk, looking uncomfortable and unhappy and even a little sick, while Calesian paced back and forth, a slow and measured tread, frowning at the floor, obviously thinking very hard. He looked up when Shevelly entered, and stopped in the middle of the room to say, “Hello, Ted.”

Shevelly felt it important to maintain the hierarchy. He didn’t know why he had that feeling, but he followed it. “Hello, Dutch,” he said to Buenadella, then turned to nod at Calesian. “Harold.”

But it was too late to maintain a chain of command. Calesian had taken over here, and Shevelly saw that right away. While Buenadella sat at his desk looking worried, his eyes never leaving Calesian, it was Calesian who did the talking, his voice hard and authoritative as again he paced back and forth. “We’ve got a problem, Ted,” he said. “It seems Parker and Green killed Al Lozini.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry, Ted.” Calesian paused to touch Shevelly’s arm, then moved on. “I know you liked Al, I hate to have you hear it this way.”

“What the hell did—” Shevelly couldn’t encompass it. “What for?”

“I think they got impatient,” Calesian said. “I think that just comes down to it, they got impatient. They looked around, and decided Dutch here would probably be the number-one boy if Al checked out, so they dropped Al and got in touch with Dutch and told him he had twenty-four hours to cough up their seventy-three thousand or they’d kill him and deal with Ernie Dulare.”

“Holy Christ,” Shevelly said.

“It all happened this morning,” Calesian said. “Dutch called me, and between us we set up an ambush for them, Dutch told them to come here and collect the money. When they got here we shot one of them, but the other one got away.”

“Which one?”

“Parker.”

“You shot the wrong one,” Shevelly said.

Calesian shrugged. “They’re both hard cases,” he said. “Parker’s the more obvious, that’s all. The point is, he’s still out there. We need to finish him off before he makes more trouble. We’re in trouble enough with Tuesday’s election as it is.”

Shevelly rubbed a palm across his forehead. “Every goddam thing at once,” he said. “And Al— I can’t get over it.”

Buenadella finally spoke up. “I loved Al Lozini,” he said. His voice was trembling as he said it; Shevelly, looking at him, suspected the tremble was caused more by fear than by love, but he didn’t make any comment.

Calesian said, “The point is, we’ve got to get Parker. We need to bring him in again, and finish him off.”

Shevelly frowned at him. “Bring him in? How?”

“I know how to get in touch with him,” Calesian said. “I can make an arrangement with him, a meeting. You go to the meeting, you tell him the story, and he comes in.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Shevelly said. “Why’s he going to meet with me? He’ll think it’s another trap.”

“He’ll pick the spot,” Calesian said. “It won’t be a trap, so what do we care where you meet? The point is to tell him the story, that brings him in.”

“What kind of a story,” Shevelly said, “is going to make somebody like Parker come back in again where you can get your hands on him?”

“A story with evidence,” Calesian said. He strode to Buenadella’s desk and picked up a small white box, the sort of box that inexpensive earrings or cuff links come in, nestling on a bit of cotton gauze. Shevelly noticed Buenadella looking at the box with repugnance, his lips drawing back from his teeth as though he might suddenly throw up.

Calesian brought the box over to Shevelly. “This evidence,” he said, and opened the box, and inside, on the inevitable bit of cotton gauze, was a finger, severed just below the second knuckle.