Schaeffer didn't know any of them. At one time he had known a great many made men across the country and a fair proportion of the bosses. But nearly all the faces he saw tonight were new. It had been twenty years ago when he had last been around people in the families. Even the oldest of these soldiers had been children then, ten or fifteen years old. None of them had ever seen him.
There were few of the older men in evidence outside the lodge. A lot of the men who had known him were probably dead by now, and others had been convicted of something and been given those comical sentences of four or five hundred years, as Carl Bala had. There were probably two hundred men gathered at the resort tonight for the conference where one of the topics was his death, but he guessed there were fewer than forty present who had ever seen him.
He carefully made his way down the hill after stowing the rifle, the scope, and the poncho underneath a ledge. He picked his way between thick bushes and rocks, trying to stay as invisible as possible. At the edge of the resort and up a short drive by itself was a cabin with a dim light glowing in a window and a rental car parked beside it. He went to the back of the building and looked in the window. There was a bedroom, and he could see a suitcase open on a folding stand and some clothes hanging in an open closet. He went to the woodpile, picked up a piece of firewood, wrapped his hat around the end to muffle the sound, broke the upper pane of glass, reached in, and unlocked the latch, then climbed in.
He went to the closet and picked out the sort of outfit that the men outside were wearing-a pair of blue jeans and a shirt, with a nylon windbreaker intended to keep off the night chill of the mountains and conceal a weapon.
He changed into the clothes, searched the suitcase, and found a brand-new Springfield Armory. 45 pistol, still in the box, and a full box of. 45 ACP ammunition. These people must have flown into southwestern cities, then driven straight to gun stores operated by friendly owners to pick something out so they wouldn't feel powerless. Probably when they went back to catch their flights home, they would drop the guns off where they had picked them up. He already had the sentry's gun, and it was more concealable than the. 45, so he left this one alone.
Through the front window he watched a group of younger men coming along the lighted drive toward the lodge. He had never seen any of them before. He waited until they were just past him, then opened the door and hurried to the road to follow them. If someone looked at him from a distance, he would seem to be a straggler from the main group.
He was very watchful, trying to avoid coming face-to-face with any older men because they were the ones who might have seen his face years ago. When he was young, not long after Eddie Mastrewski had died, he had worked for the Albanese family in Detroit for a time. By then he had a reputation, and so a few times the Albanese capo, Johnny Sotto, had used Schaeffer's face. He had gone along with an Albanese soldier to collect debts. People might stall the soldier, but as soon as he walked in the door, the money would appear very efficiently and without any discussion. After a few months he left and never did that kind of work again because he didn't like having so many people see his face.
He had also resisted the camaraderie that some of the capos who had hired him tried to foster. He had kept his distance, done his job, collected his pay, and left town before buyer's remorse set in. He made it clear that he was a free agent and that he was nobody's friend.
The group of men kept moving down the drive leading to the lodge. There were already many men gathering there. He knew that he couldn't take the chance of going inside, where the men who had seen him would be. He preferred to stay outside with the young men who had no idea who he was. The young ones would find out what was going on inside as soon as it happened anyway. They absorbed every word the old men said, analyzed it, and repeated it.
A couple of them had turned their heads and noticed him, and now they slowed to walk with him. The bigger one held out his hand. 'Vic Malatesta, from Buffalo.' Then he tapped his companion's shoulder. 'This is my brother- in-law, Joe Bollo.'
He shook their hands. 'Mike Agnelli, Calgary.'
'Calgary? Holy shit,' said Malatesta. 'Nice of you to come.'
Bollo said, 'You're showing your ignorance. Of course we got crews in Calgary. You think we'd leave Canada to the fucking Eskimos?'
Schaeffer smiled, and said to Malatesta, 'The Castiglione family has been in Canada since Prohibition.'
Malatesta seemed to wilt a little. The Castiglione family was a major power, holding the biggest piece of Chicago since Al Capone went to jail, and had colonies in lots of distant places sending tribute to the home base.
The group kept walking. Schaeffer said, 'What do you think of this sit-down so far?'
'I don't know,' said Bollo. 'Maybe when I hear what Frank Tosca has to say, I'll have an opinion. Or more likely, when I hear what Mr. Visconti's opinion is.'
'That sounds safe.'
'How about you?' Malatesta said.
'I don't have an opinion yet either. I'm waiting to hear what any of us has to gain by helping Frank Tosca kill somebody and take over the Balacontano family. What's he give the rest of the families? Do they get to taste some of the profits?'
'That would be more like it,' said Malatesta.
'Well,' said Bollo. 'Maybe even without that, making him strong might do the rest of us some good.'
'Some guys are saying he's the one to run the whole country.'
'Do you know him?' asked Schaeffer.
'No,' said Malatesta, 'but I've been hearing about him for a long time. He's supposed to be a good earner, and a little bit of a wild man too. And that doesn't hurt when something is up. People used to hear the Italians wanted a piece of their action, and they'd get maybe a little chill in their spines. It wouldn't hurt to have some of that again.'
'No question,' Schaeffer said. 'But maybe the way to do that isn't to send the whole organization out after one small guy that nobody's seen in ten, twenty years. It doesn't feel right to me. Not in proportion, you know? Not dignified.'
'It's not going up against him that's the problem. It's finding him. That's what takes a lot of people.'
Schaeffer chuckled. 'If he's that hard to find, maybe he's not that big a problem. Maybe he's an anaconda.'
'An anaconda?'
'Yeah. You don't ever want to tangle with one of those bastards. They're twenty, twenty-five feet long. They wrap themselves around you and squeeze you to death. Only thing is, there aren't any around here, so they aren't a problem unless you go where they are and look for them.'
'I see what you mean.'
The group moved closer and closer to the lodge, and he slouched a little to change his walk and keep his face down to avoid the light from the lamps along the eaves of the lodge and from the tall windows of the big banquet room.
He had not yet decided what he was going to do. He was outnumbered by hundreds to one, and his only way out would be overland, down from the mountain and across the desert to his car. He couldn't predict how the old men were going to react to Frank Tosca's request for their help and support, and that would make all the difference.
He said, 'I got a feeling that we need to know a lot more about this before it happens. My bosses ask me what I think, and I have to say I don't know. Either of you guys know which cabin Tosca is staying in?'
'You're just going to pop in and ask him to explain it to you?'
'Not to just me. Maybe I'll ask one of the Castigliones to come too. But I go back a ways with Tosca. I knew him a little bit in New York when we were twenty. He'll probably remember me.'
'Cabin nine,' Malatesta said. 'Or ten, maybe. They're both together over that way. One is his, and the other is a couple of guys he brought with him.'
'Thanks. I'll see who I can get to go with me.' He stepped aside and headed across the road toward the lodge. He knew it was dangerous to get too close to the building where all the attention was focused, but he needed to know more. He devoted a portion of his attention to each face that turned his way. So far they were all the faces he had hoped for, the men in their twenties and thirties who had been brought along to carry the luggage
