The Butcher's Boy (37 page)

From the pasture side it looked as though every light were on. Cautiously, he sidestepped closer along the rail. Balacontano's caretaker wouldn't have all those lights on, and grooms and stableboys wouldn't be inside the main house. In spite of the cold he began to sweat. He leaned over the fence and stared at the snow on the driveway. It was crossed with what looked like a dozen treadmark patterns. There were the thick jagged impressions of truck tires, at least two different patterns of studded snow tires, and a few ruts made by the smoother treads of road tires. Shit, he thought, he's here right now, and he's got some of his people with him. Of course he'd be here. Nobody can get within three hundred yards of the house without being seen. He looked at the house again and thought, there might be twenty or thirty of them sitting around in there to protect him. In New York City he'd have to make do with two or three.

He bent his knees and hung down behind the fence to keep from showing a silhouette. The area around the house was impossible. It had to be another way. He inched along the fence, with his body away from the house. It would have to be the stables. It was another ten minutes before he made it to the fence beside the long, low stable building. He studied the ground inside the exercise yard. There were only a few patches of snow, and the rest looked like mud. He cautiously tested the earth with one foot and smiled. It was mud all right but it was frozen solid into an uneven mold of hoofprints and footprints, ruts where wheelbarrows had passed, and tire tracks from what must have been a tractor. He set both feet on the ground and stood erect.

He walked along the fence across the yard to the stable. He could smell the strong acidic scent of the animals; he could feel their presence. He walked around the building and the scent grew stronger, almost overpowering in the 180

cold, still, night air. He heard a horse's hoof clop on a wooden surface somewhere inside, and then a low neigh. They can smell me too, he thought. It's because I don't smell like horseshit.

He stood still for a moment to let the animals quiet down. As he waited he looked around. A few feet away was a mound of earth about ten feet high. No, he realized suddenly. That's not dirt. It's horseshit. That's why the smell is so strong on this side of the stable. It's a compost heap.

He moved away from the building to the other side of the mound. As he came near he sensed a very slight steam coming from the mound. He took off his glove and held his hand six inches above the mound. It was actually warm.

Keeping low, he took out the shovel and began to dig. The manure wasn't frozen, nor was the ground under it. He dug down about two feet before he hit the frost. He thought, sorry, Edgar. This is it. He put the pistol inside the other plastic bag, tossed in Orloff's checkbook, and buried the bundle. He took the shovel and headed back the way he'd come.

When he reached the corner of the stable, he heard a horse neigh again, and then something else. He stood perfectly still. It was footsteps. A man.

Suddenly, above his head, a light came on. The whole yard was bathed in brightness. He moved back into the shadow of the stable and waited. If only he'd brought a second pistol, he thought. I'm here, half a mile from the road, with a shovel, and the bastards are awake.

Suddenly he heard other footsteps behind him, coming along the back of the stable. He opened a door, stepped into the stable, and found himself standing next to a horse. The animal seemed gigantic. The horse turned its long, wise face to stare at him, its eyes rolling to fix him in its gaze. Outside, footsteps scraped on the frozen ground. They passed and he could hear voices. One of them said, "I don't give a shit what he thinks. If Toscanzio sends somebody it won't be through the stable. If he's so worried he should come out here and slide around on the horseshit himself."

"Relax," said the other one. "We'll just make the rounds and go back inside."

Guards, he thought. Balacontano has them doing regular patrols. The horse seemed to be getting nervous. It blew out a sputtering sigh and edged away from him in the stall. Just a few more minutes and I won't trouble you, he thought. Just a few more minutes and I'll be out of here, you big dumb son of a bitch. He thought, you're supposed to talk to them to calm them down. I can't risk it. He decided that patting the horse would help. It seemed so huge, looming beside him in the dark. He reached out and patted the horse's flank gently. He felt the skin quiver beneath his hand, then settle, but it was too late. The horse in the next stall seemed to sense his fear or the nervousness of the horse beside him. It whinnied and kicked the wall behind it. The noise was like a shot in the still night air.

He heard one of the voices say, "What the hell was that?"

The other said, "We'd better look in the stalls. Something's bothering 181

them."

He had no time to think. He opened the stable door and watched the horse turn and make its decision to go outside. As it passed him he leaped astride it and it trotted out into the yard. He was high in the air now, bouncing on the animal's back. Behind him he heard one of the men shout, "Look." He didn't know what to do, but he had to do something. He leaned forward. With his left hand he grabbed the horse's mane, and with his right he smacked the horse's flank with the flat of the shovel. "Go," he hissed. Before he was prepared for the response, he felt the animal's massive muscles tense as it leaped forward, almost unseating him. He clung to its mane with a grip that wrenched the muscles in his hand, and his legs hugged the horse's sides.

The men had left the gate open and the horse headed for it. He hung on with all his strength as it galloped through the opening and out across the pasture. Behind him he heard a shot, and the horse, terrified at the sound, dashed forward still faster, out into the darkness. He didn't dare look back for fear he'd fall off. At the far side of the pasture he saw the fence looming before him, a white barrier getting closer and closer. He said to the horse, "Calm down, you bastard. Stop." But the horse seemed to pick up speed as it neared the fence.

He thought, if I jump off I'll be hurt and they'll find me. He thought of hitting the horse over the head with the shovel, but there was no way to know what the horse would do, so he just hung on. And then suddenly he was airborne, and the fence floated past beneath him. He braced for the shock, but the horse landed easily and kept going, out across the second pasture at full speed.

When he saw the second fence he thought, I'm in for it again. But this time the horse ran up to the fence, slowed down, and trotted along it toward the far corner of the pasture. It doesn't like the road, he thought. It just wants to be away from the lights and noise. When it reached the corner the horse stopped.

He jumped off and climbed the fence. His legs were sore, and for some reason his rib cage hurt almost as much, but he managed to bring himself to a run.

The important thing was to cover as much ground as possible. He sprinted in the direction he'd come from, but as far from the road as he could go. He was already to the next farm before he saw the first headlights on the highway. They were moving fast, at least sixty miles an hour, racing for the entrance to Route 87. The second set of headlights moved along the road at a slower rate. That would be the one searching for a parked car, he thought. He was careful to stay in the wooded areas now. A few minutes later more cars followed, but none of them stopped. There would be others moving off in the opposite direction too, he knew. None of them would try to follow on foot.

When it came it wasn't the way Elizabeth had imagined it. She was sitting in the Bureau office going over the morning field reports when the secretary came through and left the first of the afternoon communications in a stack on the table beside the door.

Elizabeth stood up and walked to the table. She was getting tired of being the one who had to come in here every day and suffer the silent enmity of a building full of people. All morning nobody had found it necessary to speak to her. And now the secretary had taken to leaving the reports in a stack by the door, as though Elizabeth were a prisoner in solitary confinement, or a pet that had to be fed but didn't require attention.

It was the sheet on top of the pile. It said, "The following personnel will report to the office of the Organized Crime Division, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., by 0800, February 28: Dornquist, William; Kellogg, Bertram; Smith, Thomas H.; Feiler, Eleanor; Goltz, Ann K.; Waring, Elizabeth. Travel authorized: air only."

She read it through a second time. February 28. That was tomorrow morning. And now it was already two thirty. She looked at the timer readout on the transcript—it had only come in at 2:15, which meant 5:15 Washington time.

That would be fifteen minutes after most of the people in the Washington office had gone home for the night. At least it wasn't just Elizabeth. It looked as though they were pulling out everybody still on detached service in Las Vegas.

So they weren't necessarily calling her home to fire her. They were giving up on the operation.

She picked up the telephone and made a reservation on the next flight, then packed up her reports and her notebooks. For a moment she thought of leaving without saying anything to anyone, but it seemed too crude somehow.

She walked down the hall to the Bureau chief's office.

He said, "I heard you were leaving."

Elizabeth said, "Yes, it just came in over the wire."

He tapped a pencil on his desk and cleared his throat. "I suppose congratulations are in order."

Elizabeth shifted in her chair and crossed her legs so the heavy reports wouldn't slide off her lap. "Not that I know of," she said.

He stared down at his desk and said nothing at first, but she could see he was angry.

"Have it your way. But just let me say one thing off the record. If you people would be a little less secretive things would be a lot easier for everybody."

"I know," said Elizabeth. "I've been wanting to tell you too, off the record, that I was against taking Palermo to Carson City. It was orders and I tried to follow them and I lost Palermo. If it's any consolation, I think when I get back to Washington the first thing they'll do is—"

"Damn it," he said quietly. "I'm not talking about Palermo. That was two or three days ago. I'm talking about now. Do you think we're idiots?"

Elizabeth said, "Of course not. What are you talking about?"

"Your whole team gets jerked back to Washington on a priority call, and then twenty minutes later, as an afterthought, they send us this message." He tossed it on the desk and Elizabeth leaned forward to pick it up.

She read it aloud. "Re: Edgar R. Fieldston. Disposition: Take no further action." She said, "So what? They know he's not here."

Now he was almost shouting. "So the case is closed and you're all on your way home. And nobody has the decency to tell us what in the hell's going on.

Either we're in on it or we're not."

"How can it be closed?" Elizabeth said. "We don't know any more than we did a week ago, or at least I don't. And you saw every report I filed since I got here."

He sat in silence for a moment, then stared at her. Very slowly, his expression changed. He said, "All right. Maybe I was wrong." He looked as though he wished he hadn't spoken to her. He added, "If I was wrong I apologize."

Elizabeth stood up, cradling the reports in her arms. "I'm sorry about Palermo. But honestly, that's the only thing we didn't cooperate about."

He looked a little sad, and more than a little embarrassed. He said, "I guess there's something else I should show you. Or maybe I shouldn't, I don't know. But a few minutes ago, when I asked our own headquarters what was going on, this came back." He handed her another transcript.

Re: Edgar R. Fieldston, F.G.E., and related matters: Effective immediately, second copy all reports to: Department of Justice, United States v. Carlo Balacontano Trial Team, Attention Padgett.

Elizabeth felt as though she'd been slapped. She looked at him, and saw he was now staring down at the desk. She said, "They arrested Balacontano? I didn't know."

He said, "I believe you didn't. I'm sorry."

She said again, "They didn't tell me."

The Department of Justice office building seemed quiet and cavernous at seven in the morning. The floors gleamed and sounds echoed and died among the out-of-date light fixtures along the high ceilings of the corridor. Post offices and museums had seemed this way to Elizabeth when she was a child. Even the smell seemed the same, a mixture of floorwax and dust and disinfectant and old paper; a substantial, official, governmental smell.

She walked into the empty office and over to her desk. It looked the way she'd known it would. When the accumulation of daily activity reports had grown too bulky for her desk they'd begun making a neat stack of them on the floor beside it. In a day or two somebody was going to have a lot of work to do.

She had only been there for fifteen minutes when she heard the first 184

footsteps in the hallway, the purposeful clopping of male leather-soled shoes resonating in the emptiness of the building. In a moment she realized it was two men. And then one of them spoke and she recognized the voice. Padgett. "Just let me get a cup of coffee and—" He came through the door and stopped. He said, "Elizabeth ! Terrific. Glad to have you back." He started to pour himself some coffee. It was then that the second man appeared. It was Martin Connors.

He said, "Good morning, Miss Waring." Then he frowned slightly. "I'd like to talk to you for a moment, if you don't mind."

"No," said Elizabeth and stood up. He was already walking down the corridor toward his office. Elizabeth had to trot to catch up.

Behind her she heard Padgett say, "I'll bring you a cup, Martin." Then he added, "You too, Elizabeth?"

She didn't bother to answer. They walked in silence. He unlocked the door to his office and ceremoniously stepped aside to let her pass, then pulled a chair away from the wall for her. There was something about his manner that made her uncomfortable. It wasn't that he had the gestures of his own generation, but those of the generation before.