garage. Its lights went out, and Schaeffer understood. He had called Tosca well after midnight with Cavalli's phone. Tosca had known enough to call some of his men in New York. But it took them time to find a van and drive up from New York to the bridge over the St. Lawrence to Canada. Now was the earliest the crew could come for the body and begin the difficult job of cleaning up.
He was trapped. They were already putting a key into the lock on the front door. He could hear the door open and two men with New York accents in midsentence. '…smells like a fucking slaughterhouse.'
'Yeah, I know. You can always smell that. I think it's the blood smell, mostly. At least he's not that old yet. And some of them shit. That's the worst.'
'Jesus. Don't go on about it. I got to work in here.'
Schaeffer moved back up the hall, away from the guest room. They would have to scour that room of evidence that Cavalli had been here. He moved to the large bedroom at the end of the hall and sat on the bed. He heard grunts and complaints that sounded as though the men were lifting the body, then heels scraping on a rough wood surface that could be a box, then the bang of a hammer as they nailed it shut. He heard the door open again, and from the window he saw them carry a flat, three-foot-wide wooden box out through the garage to the back of the van. They put what seemed to be a false floor over it, then went back into the house. In a moment they came back carrying the big chair that Cavalli had been sitting in, put it in the van, and closed the doors. The next sounds he heard were the careless banging of a bucket or pan in a sink, then water running. He could tell they were washing the floor and the walls.
The cleanup was taking a long time. Schaeffer moved cautiously, walking across the floor of the master bedroom only when the men made trips outside carrying things. He explored the master suite, searching in the dark for anything that might help him narrow the list of places where the meeting could be. But he found nothing in the bedroom that had anything to do with travel. It was possible that Tosca hadn't even slept here since the arrangements had been made.
He checked the two pistols he was carrying. He had assembled them in the car in the dark, but they were fine and their magazines were fully loaded. He pulled back their slides to put a round in the chamber of each one.
He was beginning to get impatient. He would have to get on a flight to Arizona as quickly as he could after those two left. That meant getting to an airport and waiting for a flight. And Tosca knew he had come here and killed Cavalli. Tosca might have people watching for him in the Toronto and Montreal airports. He resisted the idea of driving all the way back to the United States and still having to wait for a flight. It wouldn't do him any good to arrive in Arizona after Tosca and the others had left.
He heard the two men clomping up the stairs, and he felt relief. That meant they had completed the major chores. They had been working hard for nearly two hours, and he could tell by their heavy footsteps that they were tired. They went into the guest room and after a second, he heard the click of the light switch and saw the dim glow under the master bedroom door.
He stood slightly to the side of the master bedroom door listening with a gun in each hand. He heard grumbling. They had driven all the way up to Canada, and now they were risking arrest trying to clean up a crime scene and smuggle the victim across an international border. They seemed to be feeling a bit unappreciated. He heard latches being clicked, and then heard one of them drop the suitcase on the hardwood floor.
'Let's take a look in Tosca's room.'
'What for?'
'Look, dumb ass. If something is missing, will he think we took it? Hell no. He'll think that psycho took it after he killed Cavalli.'
'You're so right. I'm a dumb ass. It's funny, though. All the guys who came up with me who weren't dumb asses are dead. Can you possibly think that anybody who comes back from Frank's house on a job like this isn't going to be searched?'
'Tosca isn't going to be around to worry about it. He's all the way out in Arizona, probably already asleep on a feather bed at that fucking dude ranch.'
'The Silver Saguaro isn't a dude ranch, genius. It's a resort. And he left Mike Pascarelli in charge. He'll have guys watching us for just this kind of thing. This week it's Cavalli. Next week, they'll find you naked in the trunk of your car with two extra holes in your head. Tosca's bedroom is right there, the door on the end. I'm not going in, but be my guest.'
Schaeffer heard a set of footsteps receding down the hall. The second set of feet shifted on the hardwood floor, making it creak. Finally, a voice just outside the bedroom door called, 'I'm not going in, even to look around, if you aren't. I know you'll rat me out.' The second set of feet heel-stomped away down the hall and then hurried down the staircase, the man moving fast to prove to the other that he hadn't had time to go into the bedroom and steal anything.
Schaeffer stepped to the side of the window, moved the curtain slightly, and looked down. The van pulled away from the garage, and after a moment, a car pulled out after it. He decided they must have hot-wired Cavalli's rental car because he had the keys in his pocket. It was possible they would have done that anyway. They would abandon it somewhere in Canada before they crossed the border to bolster the idea that Cavalli had been killed by a stranger.
He put the two guns in his coat pockets and looked at his watch. It was after six A.M. He went downstairs and looked at the place where he had left Cavalli's body. It was about as clean as it could be and smelled like chlorine and lemons. If the cops sprayed luminol around, they would see all the blood spots appear bright purple under UV light, but there was nothing visible. They had taken the chair out so there was no place to sit and watch the television mounted on the wall. He went upstairs and left the rental-car keys and Cavalli's wallet at the back of a dresser drawer in Tosca's room where Tosca probably wouldn't find them, but a police search would.
He slipped out the door on the river side, walked down the beach to the edge of the water, and threw the two pistols as far out into the river as he could. He jogged along the shore, then crossed the road to the place where he'd left the car. He hoped he had given the two cleanup men enough of a head start. He drove off to the east, the direction they had gone, heading for the bridge over the St. Lawrence.
13
It was getting to be morning, and Elizabeth was still staring at the computer screens in the basement of the Robert F. Kennedy Building. It was impossible not to wonder whether she had made a mistake. Maybe she should have told the Butcher's Boy everything she knew. It would only have amounted to 'They seem to be heading for the Southwest, probably near Phoenix.' She hadn't said that because he knew things that she couldn't even guess. If she had said 'Phoenix,' he might know of some Mafioso she'd never paid much attention to, who owned a house, some piece of land, some remote ranch outside Phoenix.
She knew that what she should have done was set a trap for him. She should have said, 'We know the city is Durango, Colorado,' and then told the FBI he was on his way and to detain any man who fit his description. If she got them to detain all the possibles, she might have to look at a hundred photographs tomorrow, but one of them would be his.
Instead she had been stupid and slow, and made a self-righteous speech about not helping him kill people. That had accomplished nothing except to remind him that she was a law enforcement officer and he was a criminal, and that nothing could ever make her his ally. She had been unforgivably stupid. He had given her some valuable information, and in return she had shown him there was no reason for him to give her any more.
He was potentially the best witness against organized crime in forty years, and she had thrown him away in an attack of bitchiness. A witness like that had to be cajoled into believing that the officer handling him felt at least some mild favoritism toward him, some conviction that she believed he was better than the people he was telling her about. He had already told her that the agenda of the meeting included Frank Tosca asking the assembled leaders of the twenty-six families to kill the Butcher's Boy. He had very strong reasons to believe that a minor tip from her might enable him to prevent that and give him a chance to save his life. And what had she said? I'm not helping you.
She felt a wave of resentment toward Hunsecker. If only he'd had a mind equal to the complexity of
