Butcher's Moon

Forty-five

Calesian dreamed of white skis on a black mountainside. He couldn’t see the skier, only the black-clad legs, the white skis, the glistening black slope, the featureless gray-white sky. The skier raced at a downward angle, moving very fast, the wind whistling with his passage, rushing on and on and yet never seeming to get anywhere, sailing across a slope like some gigantic pool ball, empty and alone.

The sound of the phone confused his mind, which tried to interpolate it into the dream as church bells. But there was no church, the image broke down, and he awoke, dry-mouthed and disoriented, to hear the phone ring a second time. He didn’t need to switch the light on to find the receiver on the bedside table. Lying on his side, hearing the beating of his heart in the ear pressed into the pillow, he held the phone to his other ear and said, “Hello?”

“Calesian?” It was an angry voice, and a voice he recognized, though he couldn’t immediately put a name to it. But he knew it was someone of power; the tone of voice alone was enough to tell him that much.

He said, “Yes? Who is it?”

“This is Dulare, you simple bastard. Wake up.”

Dulare. “I’m awake,” Calesian said, feeling a sudden flutter of nerves in his chest. Lifting his head from the pillow, hiking himself up onto an elbow, he repeated, “I’m awake. What’s the problem?” And blinked in the darkness; though the curtains were open at his bedroom window, no moonlight shone in. It seemed black as a closet out there.

”I’ll tell you the problem,” Dulare said. “Six guys just knocked over the Riviera.”

“Did what?”

“You heard me, goddammit.”

“Robbed—”

“It had to be your friend Parker,” Dulare said. “There’s no way it’s anything else.”

“Good Christ.”

“Christ doesn’t come into this.” Dulare was raging; his words were made out of sharp pieces of metal, shaped and flung. “No two-bit heist artist is going to take me for fifty thousand dollars, Calesian.”

“I don’t—” Calesian rubbed his face with his free hand, trying to think. He was now sitting up completely on the bed, the dream forgotten. “Six of them, you said?”

“He’s brought in friends,” Dulare said. “The son of a bitch is starting a war, Calesian. You’ve mishandled this thing every way you knew how, you and that goddam moron Buenadella.”

“They got away clean?” It was a stupid question to ask and Calesian knew it, but he couldn’t find anything sensible to say and silence would have been even worse.

“I’m going over to Buenadella’s,” Dulare said. It was a bad sign that he was calling Dutch by his last name. “I don’t want any of you damn fools here at my place, not with Parker after your asses. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, and you be there, too.”

“Of course,” Calesian said, but Dulare had already hung up on him.

Calesian cradled the phone, then got out of bed and stood there for a second in the darkness, reluctant to turn the light on, face the reality, start moving.

He should have known. He should have guessed that Parker would pull something like this; it’s why the bastard dropped out of sight. The way he’d applied pressure to Lozini last week, hitting the New York Room and the brewery and that downtown parking garage. Only this time, instead of three small annoying stings, taking useless credit-card papers and checks, he’d done one big punch, hitting for fifty thousand dollars.

One big punch? All at once, with the conviction of a revelation, he knew there were going to be more punches than one. Looking toward the window, Calesian thought, He’s out there somewhere, right now, hitting again. Where in hell are you, Parker?

Still in darkness, he turned his head toward the phone he couldn’t see. Call someone, warn somebody? Who? He had no idea where the hit would come, or even if it would be something his own people, the police, would be able to do anything about. A robbery out at the Riviera would be outside local law jurisdiction anyway, even if they reported it. And if there hadn’t been any injuries or too many civilians upset, they probably wouldn’t report it at all.

Fifty thousand. And it was only the first.

Calesian moved over to the window, looked out at the dark city under the moonless sky. The spotted streetlights, aping the stars, emphasized the darkness rather than cutting it. Calesian sensed Parker out there somewhere, scurrying in the dark with his army.

He looked up at the sky. Why the hell wasn’t there a moon, for Christ’s sake? The air would be hot just the other side of the window glass, but the air-conditioning was on in here, and he shivered slightly from the coolness of it. And the unrelieved darkness. A hell of a night to die, he thought.