The Butcher's Boy

19

There was the climate-controlled humming tube of the airplane’s interior; and then the two stewardesses standing at their station next to the Formica kitchenette like a pair of dancers from the chorus line brought out for a last bow in front of the curtain; and then the white, searing sunshine of the Las Vegas Saturday morning. Elizabeth squinted as she stepped down the portable stairway, staring down at her feet to avoid a glaring sun that seemed to explode at her from every direction at once.

There were no knots of happy relatives waiting at the terminal entrance for the passengers to arrive—everyone was a stranger here—only sober-faced preoccupied porters. As she looked about her for some sign that would tell her where to find her suitcase, a man’s voice came over a loudspeaker.

“Elizabeth Waring, please come to the United Airlines Courtesy Desk, Elizabeth Waring. Elizabeth Waring, please come to the United Airlines Courtesy Desk, Elizabeth Waring.”

Brayer. No question about it, she thought. No doubt he’d forgotten to tell her something, and it wouldn’t occur to him to wait until she got to the hotel. She approached the desk, and said, “Elizabeth Waring.”

The man handed her a note, which said, “Please telephone John Brayer as soon as possible.” The please had to have been the airline’s amendment. She went to the bank of pay telephones on the wall across the lobby and dialed. He answered on the first ring.

“Something’s going on there, Elizabeth,” said Brayer. “I’m not sure yet what it is, but we’ve got an agent down.”

“Oh God,” said Elizabeth. “Are you sure? Who is it?”

“The Las Vegas police phoned a half hour ago. They found DiGiorgio this morning when they were going over a burned-out house. He’s alive, but there were five dead men in the yard, and they’re not sure if there were others inside.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Sit tight for a few minutes. There’ll be a police officer at the United desk to take you to the hospital. If they’ll let you talk to DiGiorgio find out what you can. If they won’t, get everything the police have and get back to me. When you’ve done that I should have a better idea. For the moment work through me. Don’t try to get in touch with any of the field agents. I don’t know what the hell is going on and I don’t want anybody spotted until I do.”

“John,” said Elizabeth, “I see the policeman at the desk now. I’d better get going.”

“Fine. Get back to me when you can. We’ve got people all over Las Vegas and if they’re in danger we’ve got to know it.”

Elizabeth hung up and moved toward the desk just as the policeman turned to approach her. “I’m Waring,” she said. The policeman nodded and touched the polished brim of his hat as they set off toward the door. He was tall and his first two strides left her a yard behind.

“My luggage,” she said apologetically. “I haven’t picked it up.”

“Where are you staying?” he asked.

“The Sands.”

He looked a little surprised, but said, “If you’ll give me your stub I’ll have it sent on.” He returned to the desk and gave the stub to the United man. He joined her at the curb outside, where his patrol car sat idling, its front door open and the radio squawking and sizzling.

She got in beside him and he swung out into the drive. “How’s DiGiorgio?” she asked.

“Critical,” said the policeman, his face stony. She decided that he didn’t like women, but that it didn’t matter whether he did or not, so she forgot about it. “He lost a lot of blood before they found him. Upper chest. One shot from close up, small caliber.”

Elizabeth thought about it for a moment, but it didn’t mean much. “Does anybody know what happened?”

The policeman’s eyes shifted to her face for an instant, then flickered back to the road. “We’d hoped you might help us there, ma’am.” There it was again, she thought. The exaggerated politeness reserved for outsiders. Outsiders and women. “He’s your man.” It sounded like a reproof.

“He was assigned to surveillance,” she said. “But it was supposed to be remote. He wouldn’t have initiated any contact.”

The policeman nodded. “That’s what we thought.” Then he added, “Of course, we didn’t know he was here. We were pretty surprised when we found his identification.” So that was it, she thought. A federal agent turns up and the local police didn’t know he was there—the implicit assumption that somebody is probably on the pad. She let the thought lie there between them, because there wasn’t anything she could do with it. It was just the way things were done and they both knew it and neither one was responsible for it, though it carried with it an insult to what he was and what he did.

He seemed to have thought through it before she arrived, and so he recovered first and determined to do his job. He went into his recitation. “The house belonged to Salvatore Castiglione, so we’re assuming that was who Agent DiGiorgio was observing.”

“Belonged?” she said. “Is the house destroyed?”

“No,” he said. “Castiglione is dead. So are five other men who were apparently staying there. Four of them were shot with a high-powered rifle. We found the rifle in the swimming pool. Agent DiGiorgio and Castiglione and one other man were shot with something smaller. Maybe by each other. We won’t know until they finish with the ballistics reports and the autopsies.”

Elizabeth thought for a moment. Castiglione dead. She tried to put it together. DiGiorgio is spotted, Castiglione orders him killed, and DiGiorgio puts up a fight, killing—six men? And besides, there was the rifle in the swimming pool. And Castiglione had been watched for years. It was a fact of his life. He wouldn’t panic now. No. Try again. DiGiorgio is watching Castiglione’s house, and for some reason a fight breaks out between the men in the house. Shooting starts, one of them has a rifle; DiGiorgio goes to stop it and gets hit. But what about the fire? Try again. DiGiorgio is watching the house. Men come and try to burn the house, to kill Castiglione. Castiglione’s men fight back. DiGiorgio is there, tries to stop it or at least to apprehend somebody, and is wounded. She kept trying the combinations, trying desperately to ignore the one that kept coming back into her mind: DiGiorgio is standing outside the darkened house with a high-powered rifle in his hands, waiting for the old man to come through the door to escape the fire. DiGiorgio has spent too many years sitting in cold cars outside fancy restaurants, checking license numbers on parked limousines, translating taped conversations into English. DiGiorgio is an avid hunter.

The policeman had the microphone in his hand and said, “Go ahead.”

The radio clicked and farted, then the voice said, “You may proceed to the hotel directly.”

The policeman said, “Copy,” and slipped the microphone into its slot.

“What’s that about?” said Elizabeth.

“I guess your man didn’t make it.”

“THAT WAS QUICK,” said Brayer. “What have you got?”

“Not much,” said Elizabeth. She was standing at the glass door to the balcony. It overlooked the swimming pool, where people were lying immobile in long deck chairs, their bodies glistening with oil as though they were being rendered for their fat. But what she was thinking about was that the layout was just like the room where Senator Claremont had been killed. She edged along the wall to catch the light so she could study the finger smudges on the glass. “DiGiorgio died before I could get to the hospital. I just got off the line with the local homicide people and they said he’d been in a coma since shortly after they brought him in.” She waited, but he didn’t say anything. She added, “I’m sorry.”

“So he didn’t tell them anything either.” Brayer’s voice was gruff.

“Nothing anybody can use,” she said. “In the ambulance he was just raving. I think what he said was ‘a fucking war.’ ”

“What?” said Brayer.

“A fucking war. Over and over again. It could have been that it reminded him of something in Viet Nam. I didn’t know him well, but he was an ex-marine, wasn’t he? Although from what I’ve been told, that wouldn’t be too far off. You wouldn’t have to be delirious to make the connection. There were six besides DiGiorgio, and the house was a ruin.”

“Including Castiglione,” said Brayer. He paused for a moment. Then he said, “Look, Elizabeth. There’s the possibility that he was just describing what it looked like. Agreed. But there’s also a chance he was describing what he thought was happening. What if this Orloff character was involved in something? Say he was working for Castiglione, and somebody, maybe Toscanzio or Carl Bala, decided to take over and killed him? Then there was that family killed in their car. A reprisal? And there was another shootout in front of the Tropicana last night. Nobody knows what happened because when it was over the ones who were left standing put the ones that were hit into cars and drove off. But there was blood all over the pavement. So far nobody has been reported missing and no doctor within a hundred miles of Las Vegas has treated anybody for gunshot wounds. We’re monitoring for it. What’s it sound like to you?” He didn’t wait, just kept talking. “I’ll tell you what it sounds like. ‘A fucking war.’ ”

“You think so?” asked Elizabeth. “But who? And what do we do about it?”

“Well, obviously Castiglione was on one end of it. And I’ll bet whoever comes up top dog is on the other end. God knows what we’re supposed to do about it. I’ll tell you what I’d like to do. I’d like to pull all our people, you included, about a thousand miles eastward and let those bastards kill each other off. If it weren’t for the chance that it has something to do with Senator Claremont I think I’d damned well do it.”

She said, “That and your curiosity.” She heard him give a humorless little chuckle.

“You’re probably right,” he said. “And DiGiorgio.”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth, “I’m sorry about that, John. I didn’t know him well, but I guess you must have.”

“Oh. Yes,” he said, without inflection. Then his voice became animated again. “Jesus,” he said, “I think what bothers me most about it is that he had no business there in the first place. He was supposed to sit tight and watch, no matter what happened. He probably died trying to save that old piece of scum from something he had coming to him for years.”

Elizabeth said nothing. She didn’t see any reason to remind him that DiGiorgio was the only one found at the scene who hadn’t lived there, that he’d been found in the yard, not in his car, where every regulation, every procedure of the department insisted he should be. She knew Brayer had been thinking about that since he’d received the telephone call in the early morning.

“Now we’ve got to find out as much as we can without wasting time,” said Brayer. “But don’t do anything stupid.” He said it as though he had something specific in mind. “You find out what you can about the company and that’s all. The minute you see or hear anything that might be illegitimate you report it. And if it looks like it might be more than that you get on a plane and talk to me about it in person. You got that?”

“Got it,” said Elizabeth. “Don’t worry, John. I’m no hero.”

“I’ll be satisfied if you’re not a fool.” He hung up.