way usually have some kind of cover-an office, a company that takes in money and issues paychecks. Maybe there's something earlier on the tapes that will tell you where Buffone went to make his payoff, or if he spoke with the go- between on the tapped phone, or some detail we can use.'
'I'll let you know if we find anything,' he said.
'Thank you, John. I really appreciate your keeping me up on this. The taps were on two unrelated cases, and they would have been missed if you hadn't noticed. I'll talk to you soon.' She hung up, and she felt a headache begin around her eyes and expand and intensify. She had been in Chicago all weekend, away from her children and putting herself in danger, which she had no right to do. She had just told herself that she wasn't going to try to go off alone and ad lib a plan after she was in the street between an angry professional killer and a bunch of armed gangsters. But the Butcher's Boy might be the most promising informant in forty years. And he wasn't worth anything dead.
29
It was Tuesday, before first light on the West Coast. The mockingbirds had been singing sleepily for some time, perched unseen in the canopies of the tall sycamores, not showing themselves or flying just yet because the last of the owls were still out, gliding silently above the trees and searching for one last catch before sunrise. There were specific boundaries in time that they all had to fear. If an owl was still in flight when the sun rose, he risked having a gang of crows attack him. When they did, it was five or six of them at once, wave after wave, hurling themselves into him, trying to corner him, blinking and defenseless.
He was on foot on Marengo Avenue in Pasadena, walking along in a gray hooded sweatshirt and jeans. There were tall, old trees along the parkway and flanking the big houses that were set far up and back on their lawns. The street curved so as he walked, he saw new views, but the curves gave him a bit of invisibility too. The Lazarettis in New York had ordered the leaders of their western incursions in the 1920s to buy houses in places like this, where the quiet, the wealthy, and the respectable lived. And when the eastern bosses came for their visits, they wanted places to stay that were quiet and elegant.
He had chosen the Lazarettis. They seemed to him to be a convenient group to use to cause trouble. In the 1940s the other four New York families had given them a monopoly on the drug trade in Los Angeles, with the others as silent partners. The L.A. branch supplied all five New York families with a reliable stream of cash that required no effort from them, and the others would be very concerned if that flow were interrupted. There had always been jealousies and resentments from the eastern families that didn't share in the drug business. The division had made a certain rough sense in the 1940s and 50s. The five families were each big and powerful, and together they would have been an irresistible force. Since they wanted the drug business, they got it without much discussion. But now that those families had been weakened by decades of prosecutions and the loss of most of their percentages on businesses like construction, linen supply, and garbage disposal even in New York itself, it seemed to some of the other families that the division of spoils was archaic.
The five families were no more capable of controlling the drug trade in Los Angeles than they were of controlling the weather or the tides. The drug business had become absurdly larger than they were. If they tried to control drugs now, one part of the job would be to control the hundred thousand members of the Los Angeles street gangs, who were all more or less involved in drugs, and more or less independent. Another part of the job would be to track the physical movement of drugs and money that comprised most of the economic production of six or seven countries. The Lazarettis were just one purveyor among hundreds, a brand name in a big marketplace.
As Schaeffer walked, he looked at the big houses and spacious grounds. This was what had happened to the Mafia. It wasn't defeat, it was victory. They had gotten what they wanted and they were choking on it. He had just begun to look ahead for the first Lazaretti house, the big one that belonged to Tony Lazaretti, when something whizzed past his cheek.
The first shot should have killed him. It was silenced, and the velocity was slower than the speed of sound, so there was no crack as it passed by the hood of his sweatshirt and pounded into the trunk of the tree beside him. Bark exploded off the tree, but the hood protected his ear and eye from being spattered. He dropped low, touched the ground with his palms, and spun to get behind the tree.
What the single shot had told him was not good news. The rifle had been silenced, and judging from the effectiveness of the silencer, he would guess it was factory made. Those were manufactured in small numbers for military snipers. A silencer also acted as a flash suppressor, so he hadn't seen the muzzle flash: he didn't know where the sniper was. The shot had also told him that the shooter was probably not some Lazaretti underling who spent most of his days persuading the maids on cruise ships to smuggle heroin in cases of soap or shampoo. This was somebody who had enough experience to know where to expect him and to have some idea when he would choose to arrive. The shooter had silently placed a bullet within inches of his head in the dark, had not been heard or seen, and was still out there waiting for a second opportunity now that he had the range and angle figured out.
Schaeffer considered his options. He could stay behind this tree and let the shooter try to improve his angle to get a better shot. Either the shooter would succeed or he would fail, and he might make a mistake that let Schaeffer know where he was. It was only a half hour or so before dawn. At that point the shooter would have to leave or risk being seen and caught in a police blockade that closed off all the streets. Schaeffer could try to get to better cover than this tree trunk. There were several spots not far away-a stone house was behind him and to his left, but it was set far back from the street. And there were other trees he might use as way stations for a move up the block to the next corner.
As he considered, a delivery truck appeared up the block to his left and came toward him. He looked to his right to spot any obstacles. As the truck approached, he tried to see as much as he could of the area where the shooter must be. He still couldn't see anything conclusive, but there was a thick hedge that ran along the side of the big house across the street.
He judged the speed of the delivery truck, pushed off his tree, and ran beside it. He could see the side of it now, and the logo said it was from a bakery. The truck was going about twenty miles an hour when it passed him so he couldn't quite keep up with it. But a few seconds later the brake light beside him glowed and the truck began to slow for the stop sign at the next corner. He was with it now, fully hidden by it. He had not heard the sound of a bullet hitting anything yet, but he was sure the shooter must know that he'd left his tree.
The truck reached the end of the short block and stopped for the stop sign, but he kept running, sprinting across the intersection. The truck caught up with him and he ran with it for a few yards. But the long block gave the truck driver a chance to increase his speed, and the truck accelerated away from Schaeffer, revealing an alarming sight. A man had been running with him on the other side of the truck, and he was clearly the sniper. The man held a short rifle with a silencer, and he was just slowing down, turning his head to see whether he had outrun his prey.
Schaeffer was slightly behind him, and before the man could turn and bring the rifle around, Schaeffer shot him twice in the back and once in the head. Schaeffer's shots were loud, and there was a flurry of wings as a flock of frightened birds flew off above him. He turned to the right and ran. He had left his car three blocks away in a lot beside a closed restaurant on Fair Oaks, and now he ran as though he were an early morning jogger. He kept up a steady pace with his head up and his strides long, and he was there in under two minutes. He got in and drove north toward the freeway entrance. He noticed a small piece of paper, like a business card, under his windshield wiper. At the first red light he opened the door, snatched the card, and tossed it on the seat beside him, then drove. He got on the freeway, checked his mirrors frequently for a few minutes, and then began to think about what had just happened.
The man he had just killed was a professional shooter. One of the families-probably the Lazarettis-had gotten smart and realized that they probably shouldn't sit around waiting for him. They had also apparently admitted to themselves that the middle-aged, overweight former legbreakers they had been depending on weren't going to be able to protect the bosses from a determined attacker. All the families must have learned he had killed the Castigliones by now, and they had gone into protective mode. One of the families had hired a pro.
Schaeffer hoped the man had been a solitary operator, as he had once been. He didn't want to have to begin worrying about ambushes, booby traps, and assault weapons, but for the moment, at least, he would have to. His
