Butcher's Moon

Forty-two

In the den, Calesian paced the floor, prowling back and forth while Buenadella sat at the desk with furrowed forehead and watched him as though he were a one-man tennis match. The French doors were closed against the night’s mugginess but the curtains were drawn back, and through the glass panes the floodlit lawn could be seen, the grass and shrubbery and trees all an artificial unhealthy shade of green in the glaring light.

Calesian was sure he was on top of things. He’d nailed down the relationship between himself and Buenadella, he’d had a good productive meeting this afternoon with George Farrell, he’d been present and listened to during the first exploratory meeting this afternoon between Dutch and Ernie Dulare, and he had Parker on the run. And still he was keyed up, tensed and poised and ready as though a starting pistol were about to be fired somewhere and he had to be ready to leap.

It was waiting for the election, that’s all. Nine o’clock tomorrow morning the polls would open, eight o’clock tomorrow night they’d close again, and then it would all be over. Everything would be in place, all the relationships assured, the reins securely in the right hands, and no more possibility of anything lousing up, or of anybody making trouble.

Parker, for instance. If he came back after tomorrow, if he really was stupid enough to come back to this town, it wouldn’t matter how much noise and fuss and trouble he made. The entire local organization could shut down for a day or two and go find the bastard like a thousand cats looking for one rat in a barn, and that would be the end of him. If he ever came back. Which wasn’t in any case going to happen.

There was a tap at the door. Calesian glanced over at Dutch, and saw him sitting there with his eyebrows lifted, waiting to find out whether he should let the person in or not. His own den in his own house, and he was letting Calesian tell him whether or not to say Come in; that was how far Calesian had come into control, and he resisted the impulse to smile as he nodded: Yes, you can let the person enter.

“Come in,” called Buenadella, and Dr. Beiny walked in, looking disgruntled and sleepy. But that was the way he always looked—except for those moments when he’d got himself in deep water again, when he would look wide awake and terrified.

Calesian said, “How is he?”

“Breathing,” the doctor said. “That’s about all.”

“What about the finger?”

Dr. Beiny looked puzzled. “What finger?”

“You’re supposed to take one off.”

The doctor looked to Buenadella, and Buenadella said, “I told him not to, Hal.”

Mutiny? Calesian said, “What the hell for?”

“He said it was too dangerous, the guy could die of shock maybe. And we don’t know where Parker is, how to even send the thing to him.”

The pleading note in Buenadella’s voice reassured Calesian; not quite a mutiny. And it was true they didn’t know where Parker was, or how to get in touch with him. Messages had been left at Al Lozini’s house, and with Jack Walters and Nate Simms, but so far the guy hadn’t popped to the surface anywhere. Maybe he wouldn’t, maybe he’d had enough and just ran away. Calesian tried to suit that action to his memory of Parker, and as time went on, it seemed to him more and more likely that a run-out was just what Parker had done. So, magnanimously, he told Dutch and the doctor both, “That’s okay, then. We’ll leave the guy alone for now. But, Doctor, if we hear from Parker I want you on tap. I want you to get over here with your little saw double fast.”

“Whatever you say.”

Buenadella said, “But what if it kills him?”

”After tomorrow,” Calesian said, “we don’t need him alive anyway.”

“I don’t want to hear that,” Dr. Beiny said. He was suddenly in a nervous hurry. “I’m going home,” he said. “If you need me. call me and I’ll come right back.”

Calesian gave him a mocking smile. “Good of you to make house calls, Doctor,” he said.

Beiny bowed himself out, closing the door behind him, and Dutch said, “You figure to kill him, don’t you?”

Thinking the doctor was meant. Calesian frowned at Dutch and said, “What? What for?”

“You keep saying we don’t need him alive after tomorrow.”

“Oh, Green. Well, what the hell, he’s dead already, isn’t he? If it wasn’t for our doctor, he’d be dead a long time ago.”

“He’s alive, Hal.”

“Not if nobody takes care of him,” Calesian said. “Besides, we don’t have to kill him. All we have to do is pick him up out of that bed, put him in a car, and drive him out of town. Leave him beside the road, the way he and Parker left poor Mike Abadandi. Mike died, didn’t he?”

“A lot of people are dying,” Buenadella said gloomily. “And where the hell is Frankie Faran?”

“Under a rock,” Calesian said. “He’s deep in hiding, a bottle and some broad. Don’t you worry about Frank Faran, that’s one guy that runs when he sees the whites of their eyes.”

“He should have said something.” Buenadella fidgeted with papers and pencils on his desk. “He shouldn’t just run away like that.”

“Relax,” Calesian told him. “We’re on top of it. Tomorrow’s the election, and then it’s all over.”

“I wish it was Wednesday,” Buenadella said.

Calesian laughed. He wished the same thing, but he couldn’t admit that to Dutch. So he laughed, and condescendingly said, “Poor old Dutch,” and walked over to gaze in easy unconcern out the French doors at the floodlit lawn. He looked up toward the sky, but the bright lights kept him from seeing anything but blackness. He kept looking up anyway, his stance deliberately carefree as he gazed upward as though watching a milk-white full moon ride across the sky.