far out over the edge and flung him screaming down into the bloody nightmare of his psychoses, this Spain kills without reason.
These split halves of the killer live in that ordinary-looking brick residence by the side of the lonely, gravel road. Spain the psychotic. The cold-blooded, trained assassin who is killing in a blood lust of revenge. The Spain who plots to take Ciprioni and Dagatina down. The one whose kills are premeditated. Carefully prepared.
Then the other half. Even more dangerous because he kills from some unknown, dark, and motiveless wellspring. Taking human lives at random. Lashing out without cause or fear of consequences, murdering blindly, spurred by some psychotic fountainhead that has burst within his soulless center.
Here, in the house that had heard the tortured screams of Blue Kriegal, the house of Ben Lowenstein's final agonies, in a murder laboratory less than two yards wide, this is where Angelina Russo's blindfold is removed. And the first thing she sees is the face of the smiling madman, and behind him the bloody wall of the charnel in which she now awaits his pleasure. And the split halves of Spain silence her scream in a steely-fingered grip telling her, 'Now now now now now. There now,' in his soft, measured speech, 'there, there now. Calm down. You could wake the dead.' And her tears flow and, angry now, she forces the crying to stop and spits in his face. And she knows she is dead and only hopes it will be quick and merciful as she says to herself. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of . . . And she sees him laughing as he carefully wipes her spittle from him and says to her, 'You should meet my wife. You and Pat have a lot in common. Perhaps later. Yes, very soon, in fact, I'll let you say hello to Mary Pat. And you and the bitch can talk over your mutual interests. She has a great thirst ... for companionship. And she's dying to meet you.' And he chuckles again and asks her, 'Do you believe in demons?' And her throat is very dry now and a faintness is coming over her like an ocean wave and he says, 'Would you be surprised to learn that I am what you would call in your quaint underworld patois a worker? That I was your society's chief enforcer for many years? That I was the cutting edge of your Capo di Tutti Capi and never in all the contracts went shy? Never. Would you be surprised to know that succubi transfuse me while I sleep? Do you believe in magic?' And he touched her then and she fainted.
'Did you have a nice rest?'
He slapped her viciously and spoke in his soft tones. 'You can make this hard, you know. Very hard. And your life will end for you in a soundless and tongueless scarlet sheet of awful, mind-mangling pain. Say hello to me missus.'
'Hu — hello.' The point of a knife was touching her throat. She imagined a trickle of blood.
'Say, Hello, Mary Pat.'
'Hello, Mary Pat.' She knew this was it. It didn't matter what he said to her. She could see the insanity and death in his hooded eyes.
'If you do as I say I will let you live. Otherwise, I will let her slake her thirst on you here —' He penetrated and she fought back a scream. 'And here.' Angelina cried out in pain.
'Now do as I ask or Mary Pat will SLICE AND CARVE AND TEAR UNTIL YOU ARE ANYTHING BUT RECOGNIZABLE, YOU GUINEA SLUT. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?'
'Yes.'
'Good.' He moved out of her vision for a moment and she heard a clicking noise and he held a piece of paper on it with a typed message. 'Read exactly what it says. If you fuck with me Mary Pat will rend the side of your face into pumping, dripping shreds of bloody meat.' His icy calm was more frightening than the screaming. She read as he held the small microphone to her mouth: ' 'I am alive and well. You must do as I say. Dagatina m-mus' die. Here is what you mus' do if you want me to live.' ' She had read almost all of the message before it occurred to her what she was reading. She figured the lunatic would play this for Joey, her older brother, to convince him to whack out the old man. Even then, she kept reading. Angelina did not want to die. Not here. Not now. Not like this.
It actually began with the most unlikely of sources, the one and only BeBop Rutledge, and a conversation between Bud Leech and his snitch along the lines of, 'You gotta help me, man, this ain't FAIR.'
'Life's a trade, BeBop. You gotta give to get.'
'I gave till it hurt, man. I come right to ya with it.'
'You ain't give us shit.'
'Murder fucking one.'
'You're goin' down behind that righteous coke bust and we both know it. I can't go to MY boss and get somethin' for you with no better'n this. I mean, I can talk to Her Honor for ya, but you want some heavy-duty clout you got to gimme. You got to bring some to get some.'
'I didn't SEE the fucker. Just that second or two in that funky light from the goddamn EXIT sign. I don't think I'd know the dude if I bumped into him.'
'That's a shame, BeBop. Dig it, my man: the lieutenant's got him a SLIDE into Wilma Smith. I mean, if you could really think, put your shit down tight for it and give us a better sketch. Shit, The Man would start talkin' and you'd start walkin'.'
'Aw, man. I guess I could sit down with the dude again. Whatsisname with the drawings.'
'Weyland. Yeah. That's it, my man, you need to sit down with the dude again. Concentrate. Think real hard. Maybe he'll come back to ya.' So it was that, fuliginous visibility notwithstanding, a refined Identikit got put together. Sort of. More or less. The more BeBop thought about Judge Smith stomping his grapes the better his retroactive vision became. He saw the light so to speak. And there is no vision with greater clarity than 20-20 hindsight.
With the exception of Eichord, perhaps held in check by the powerful fabric of SEE NO EVIL intuition, only the wise guys still worked to nail a lone assassin. The cops themselves appeared to no longer be interested or concerned with the mad enforcer — only that the thing, whatever it was, be contained from escalating into wide- open gang warfare throughout the inner families and ethnic fringe factions.
'The Two Tonys gang is a fuckin' memory,' Eichord heard one cop tell another, 'and that means you know what.'
'Turf up for grabs.'
'Fuckin' A.' It was times like these when a couple of defecting gunmen could start all-out war by themselves — never mind the 'lunatic chief enforcer' theory. But Jack did not share their preoccupation. He listened quietly as they talked.
'Russo torched the old man, right? So what have you got here? You got a power thing from the inside.' Sally Dago! The madman had managed to reach inside the prison walls. Soak the old man with oiled gasoline and torch him in his cell. Joey Russo righteous for it.
To Eichord it was so clearcut now. The enforcer had kidnapped Angelina. Somehow got through to the brother in the slams: either hit the old man or your sister dies. Some scenario along those lines. She'd told him how close they were. The watcher had been watching. Had he also been listening? Anybody with this level of skills would find audio surveillance little more than child's play.
Jack pulled Leech aside. 'How can I get to Tony Cypriot?'
'You tell me and we'll both know.' Leech laughed. Jack just looked at him. 'You're serious. Okay. I doubt if you can. Why?'
'I just want to get a message to him. On the telephone. How would I call him?'
'He'd never talk to you. You'd have to go through a million underlings. Shit. It'd take a week.'
'I don't got a week. How can I reach the man? Think.'
'If you had something he wanted. You could get one of his top people to get the word to him, I suppose. Maybe somebody in New York.' Leech sounded very unsure about it. Like it was a total timewaster.
'Humor me,' Jack said to the big man. 'Who would be somebody could reach Cypriot right now? Rikla?'
'Fuck, no.' Leech laughed. He thought for a moment. The wheels turned. 'Okay. There's a guy who's inside. Serving a twenty-to-life. If he thought it was in The Man's interest. You know.'
'Can you get a message to him quietly?'
'Does Oscar Peterson sweat.'
'Oscar Peterson? Oh, yeah, the guy plays basketball for Cincinnati?'
'He could play it if you'd hum a few bars.'
