Butcher's Moon

The weather was warm tonight, more suitable to the California yard than the New England house. The watery smell of cooking vegetables hung in the air, mixed with the chatter of the women over by the pool. Lozini smiled at his handiwork, then smiled around in a general way at his guests, and they obediently smiled right back.

Lozini considered himself a gourmet cook, and there was no one in his circle to contradict him, either through greater knowledge or greater power. Pleased with his own cooking, and pleased as well with the status of power he had finally reached after many years of struggle, Lozini three or four times each week invited guests from among his subordinates and fed them dishes from Italy or Spain or France or China or almost anywhere; he was a gourmet with catholic tastes. It was considered an honor to be invited to a Lozini dinner, and a disaster to go too long without being invited. No one ever refused.

The vegetables were cooking; too slowly, but Lozini didn’t know that. He smiled paternally at them, stirred them a bit more, and looked up as Harold approached from the house. Harold’s white serving jacket was tailored so carefully that no gun was evident at all; Lozini’s wife didn’t like the look of guns, especially in the house.

Lozini waited, the wooden spoon in his hand, and his three guests stepped discreetly backward out of the way. Theirs was a world in which it was better not to overhear other people’s conversations.

Harold arrived. Leaning over the wok, his face in the upward current of thin steam, he said quietly, “Somebody on the phone for you, Mr. Lozini.”

“Who?”

”I don’t know, Mr. Lozini. He won’t give a name.” Lozini frowned. “Why should I talk to him? What does he want?”

“He said it’s about the guy in the amusement park, Mr. Lozini.”

Lozini squinted as though it were his own face in the steam, not Harold’s. “What guy in the—” But then he remembered.

“I don’t know, Mr. Lozini,” Harold said. He wouldn’t know anything about that, of course. “He just said I should tell you—”

“All right, all right,” Lozini said. He nodded briskly to shut Harold up, and stood squinting toward the house. The heist artist in the amusement park, hiding in there with the loot from an armored-car robbery. Lozini had sent some people in to get him, and they’d failed. That was a couple years ago—and who would want to talk to him about it now, on the phone?

Harold waited patiently, his face in the steam. The three guests were in a low meaningless conversation to one side. Lozini came to a decision. “All right,” he said, and turned toward the three men. “Nate?”

Simms, the former accountant, came over with his eyebrows politely raised. “Anything I can do?”

Lozini handed him the wooden spoon. “Stir this,” he said. “Don’t let it burn.” To Harold he said, “I’ll take it in the cabana.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Lozini.”

Harold went back to the house, and Lozini marched over to the cabanas, a row of three dressing rooms, each with its own cot and toilet and sink. The one at the end also held a telephone; Lozini went in there, switched on the light, closed the door, sat on the bed, and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Lozini?” The voice was somewhat harsh, but neutral.

“Speaking,” Lozini said, and heard the click as Harold hung up the kitchen extension.

“Last time you saw me,” the voice said, “you thought I was a cop named O’Hara. You thought I hurt my head.”

Lozini got it right away; it was the heistman himself, the one he’d helped hunt down in the amusement park. The bastard had gotten out dressed like a cop, palming himself off as one of Lozini’s tame cops. “You son of a bitch,” Lozini said, squeezing the phone, leaning forward over his knees. He wanted to say that three good men had been killed that time, and that the heister still had to pay for it, but he held himself in check; things like that weren’t said on the phone. “I want to see you again,” Lozini said. He was breathing hard, as though he’d run up a flight of stairs.

“You owe me some money,” the voice said.

That one left Lozini with nothing to say at all. He stared at the sink on the opposite wall, speechless. He couldn’t begin to think what the son of a bitch was talking about.

“Lozini?”

“Where—” Lozini cleared his throat. “Where are you?”

“This is a local call. You’ve got my money, I came back for it.”

“What money, you son of a bitch? I don’t have any of your money, that’s not the score we have to settle.”

“The money I left behind. You got it and I want it. Do you give it to me easy, or do you give it to me after I make trouble?”

“I won’t give you anything,” Lozini yelled, “but a one-way ticket!”

The voice was staying calm. It said, “Do you know a guy named Karns?”

“What?”

“He runs things,” the voice said. “Your kind of thing.”

“No, he doesn’t, that’s— Oh, I know who you mean.” Then Lozini remembered to be mad again, and said, “I don’t care who you know. I’m after your head, and I’ll get it.”

“Call Karns,” the voice said.