an hour ago somewhere off in the direction of Cleveland. The diners all seemed to like to park in the lighted area near the door of the restaurant, so no one was near him in the back of the darkened lot. He opened the trunk of his car, took out his two metal posts, and brought them with him into the car. He emptied the posts onto the front seat, retrieved the frames from the floor near the gas pedal and the brake, and arranged the parts of his two guns for assembly.
The exercise brought him back again to his adolescence with Eddie Mastrewski. Eddie had been in the army, and he had been taught to fieldstrip and reassemble his rifle blindfolded. He had felt that blindfolded stripping and reassembling weapons was so valuable that he would always insist the boy do the same with whatever weapon he would be using on the next job. He had started him with a heavy Springfield Model 1911-A1. 45 automatic that was too big for his hand. The boy had protested that the whole idea was stupid, as everything teenagers didn't want to do was stupid. But after two hours of practice, he could accomplish the task quickly and efficiently. The next weapon was easier, and the one after that more so, and soon his hands were familiar with all of the minor differences between the common makes and models, the variations each company made in its products. He never forgot. As he assembled the guns tonight, he could practically see every part in the dark with his hands.
At midnight he reached the house. He went past it and drove a half mile farther down the road to an apartment complex that had not been there, could not have been there, in the old days. He parked in a space behind the building that was stenciled VISITOR, and walked back along the beach to Tosca's house. He stayed on the hard, wet stones along the line where the gentle waves sloshed in, not higher on the shore where there might be dirt that would hold his footprints.
He almost smiled. There was a light on downstairs. Someone was here. He stood still on the beach beyond the place where the glow could reach him and watched the windows. He reminded himself that he had a decision to make: Tosca was probably here, but if he was, his family could be here too. He didn't relish the idea of killing women and children, but leaving a witness alive would be insane. As he stared in the windows, he thought about it. He didn't see them. Maybe they were upstairs asleep, and he could do Tosca downstairs without waking them. He thought some more. Tosca had made a choice when he had sent his men to England to kill him. It had been Tosca's responsibility to remember he had a wife and children before he had done that.
He moved closer to the house. There were windows open on the river side of the house, with no protection except the screens. He understood the impulse. When a building on the shore had been closed for a while, the damp air seemed to find its way in through invisible cracks, or maybe moisture just precipitated out of the air trapped inside. The first thing people did was fling open the windows and let the fresh, sweet air from the water blow in and clear out the musty smells. All he could see from this window was an empty alcove. Beyond it was the dining room, furnished with fake-crude country-style furniture, half-lighted by the glow from a light in the living room.
He made a small incision in the window screen to the left, because the light from the next room was brighter on the right. He pushed the blade in, unhooked the screen, then pulled it outward and climbed in the window.
He was in an alcove off the living room. Since he had been here the room had been heavily remodeled to look like the house of an old ship's captain, with elaborate ship models, paintings of sailing ships getting tossed around on dark, angry waves, and glass cases full of scrimshaw and brass astrolabes and compasses.
There was a low conversation going on in the next room, and it rapidly rose to become two men yelling. He pulled out one of his pistols and walked toward the sound. The yelling stopped abruptly, and then was replaced by loud, brassy music. Someone was watching television.
Schaeffer took slow, quiet steps to the doorway and looked inside. He could see the head of an older man in a tall-backed leather chair facing away from him. He could see hair that was thin and white, with a few strands of black remaining. It wasn't Tosca. He stepped inside the room, and the man turned to look over his shoulder. 'You!' said the man. 'I never thought you'd come back a second time.'
It was Mike Cavalli, twenty years older but clearly recognizable. 'What are you doing in Tosca's house, Cavalli? You don't work for him.'
Cavalli sat back in his chair, facing the flat surface of the television screen mounted on the wall in front of him. 'None of your fucking business.'
Schaeffer took the remote control from the table beside Cavalli's hand and turned off the television set so the big glass surface went black. Then he took the cell phone that was beside it and put it in his pocket. 'Are you so old you don't remember who I am?'
'I remember you just fine. You'll kill me whether I tell you anything or not. You're a disease. Killing people is all you do.'
'I'm not here for you. I'm looking for Frank Tosca.'
'You can see he's not here.'
'When did he leave?'
'Yesterday. He was taking his wife and kids someplace. They stayed here for a night and then went on.'
'He didn't tell you where he was going?'
'No.'
Schaeffer raised the pistol and fired four times at the back of the chair. The bullets burst out of the upholstery of the backrest on either side of Cavalli's face, each tear in the leather blossoming beside his cheek so he could feel the leather lash his skin.
'He told, he told,' Cavalli said. 'All right, he told me.'
'Where is he?'
'He doesn't trust anybody to know where his family is, so he was hiding them himself. After that he was going to talk to a few of the old men.'
'What about?'
Cavalli laughed, his eyes squinting and his mouth half open while his upper body shook. 'What do you think? About this. About you.'
'How long has he known I was coming?'
'When Delamina got killed. That's when he knew. He had sent a bunch of guys out to look for you. Delamina was in charge of one crew. Over the past year, people went to the places where somebody thought you were- Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Bangkok, London. They talked to people, even met some of the guys people thought might be you. Tosca kept sending people out. I guess you found Delamina before he found you, huh?'
'Why is Tosca suddenly interested in me? I never had much to do with him.'
'I guess you haven't kept up with anything here. You been living in a cave in Afghanistan?'
'Tell me.'
'He's been making a bid to run the Balacontano family. Nobody can do that without Carlo Balacontano's blessing.'
'I'm amazed the old bastard is still alive.'
'Well, he is. And even from prison he's always going to be the head. Anybody who runs that family is working for him. Now, what do you suppose old Carl Bala wants most, both as a gesture of respect to him and to prove the guy deserves to run the family?'
'Me.'
'That's right. You're the one who dug the hole that got him sent away forever. He's always been pissed off that in twenty years, nobody has found you for him. He's going to be in prison until he dies, so the only thing that will make him happy is your head on a stake.'
'They're all as stupid as ever. He's in prison for life. They could have told him anytime that they'd got me and shut him up. Maybe he would have died in peace by now.'
'It's more complicated than that after all this time. The whole Balacontano family grew up hearing about you. You ended his life, but you ruined them too. The government got a lot of his money that would have found its way down to them. They lost soldiers, both to you and to the government, and those guys were their fathers, cousins, and uncles. People don't forget. Part of being in that family is wanting the chance to kill you. The kids pray at mass that they'll be the ones to get you.'
'And why are you here, babysitting Tosca's house? You're from Chicago. You were in the Castiglione family.'
'Did you forget you killed old Mr. Castiglione too?'
'He was older than God, living in a wheelchair in a place like a fort in Vegas. He hadn't run anything in a
