FOUR O'CLOCK ON A COLD, rainy morning, and his two younger boys were crying their eyes out in the backseat of the car. So was Caitlin up in front. Sullivan blamed Junior Maggione and La Cosa Nostra for everything, the huge, ugly mess that was happening now. Somehow, Maggione was going to pay for this, and he looked forward to the day of retribution.
So did his scalpel and his butcher's saw.
At two thirty in the morning he had piled his family into the car and snuck away from a house six miles outside Wheeling, West Virginia. It was their second move in as many weeks, but he had no choice in the matter. He'd promised the boys they would return to Maryland one day, but he knew that wasn't true. They wouldn't ever go back to Maryland. Sullivan already had an offer on the house there. He needed the cash for their escape plan.
So now he and the family were running for their lives. As they left their 'Wild West Virginny Home,' as he called it, he had a feeling that the mob would find them again – that they could be right around the next bend in the road.
But he rounded the next curve, and the curve after that, and made it out of town safe and sound and in one piece. Soon they were singing Rolling Stones and ZZ Top tunes, including about a twenty-minute version of 'Legs,' until his wife put her foot down about the nonstop high-testosterone noise. They stopped at Denny's for breakfast, at Micky D's for a second bathroom break, and by three in the afternoon, they were somewhere they had never been before.
Hopefully, Sullivan had left no trail to be followed by a crew of mob killers. No bread crumbs like in 'Hansel and Gretel.' The good thing was, neither he nor his family had ever been in this area before. It was virgin territory, with no roots or connections.
He pulled into the driveway of a shingle-style Victorian house with a steep roof, a couple of turrets, even a stained-glass window.
'I love this house!' Sullivan crowed, and he was all fake smiles and hyperenthusiasm. 'Welcome to Florida, kiddos,' he said.
'Very funny, Dad. Not,' said Mike Jr. from the backseat, where all three boys were looking grim and depressed.
They were in Florida, Massachusetts, and Caitlin and the kids groaned at another of his dumb jokes. Florida was a small community of less than a thousand, situated high in the Berkshires. It had stunning mountain views, if nothing else. And there were no Mafia hit men waiting in the driveway. What more could they ask for?
'Just perfect. What could be better than this?' Sullivan kept telling the kids as they started to unpack again.
So why was Caitlin crying as he showed her their new living room with the sweeping views of big bad Mt. Greylock and the Hoosic River? Why was he lying to her when he said, 'Everything is going to be all right, my queen, light of my life'?
Maybe because he knew it wasn't true, and probably, so did she. He and his family were going to be murdered one day, maybe in this very house.
Unless he did something dramatic to stop it. And fast. But what could that be? How could he stop the Mafia from coming after him?
How could you kill the mob?
Chapter 90
TWO NIGHTS LATER, the Butcher was on the move again. Just him. One man.
He had a plan now and was traveling south to New York City. He was uptight and nervous but singing along with Springsteen, Dylan, the Band, Pink Floyd. Nothing but Oldies and Greaties for the four-hour ride south. He didn't particularly want to leave Caitlin and the boys at the house in Massachusetts, but he figured they'd probably be safe there for now. If not, he had done the best he could for them. Better than his father ever did for him, or for his mother and brothers.
He finally pulled off the West Side Highway at around midnight; then he went straightaway to the Morningside Apartments on West 107th. He'd stayed there before and knew it was just out of the way enough to suit his purposes. Convenient too, with four different subway lines going through the two nearby stations.
No air- conditioning in the rooms, he remembered, but that didn't matter in November. He slept like a baby safe in a mother's womb. When Sullivan woke at seven, covered in a light sheen of his own sweat, his mind was focused on a single idea: payback against Junior Maggione. Or maybe an even better idea: survival of the fittest and the toughest.
Around nine that morning he took a subway ride to check out a couple of possible locations for murders he wanted to commit in the near future. He had a 'wish list' with several different targets and wondered if any of these men, and two women, had an idea that they were as good as dead, that it was up to him who lived and died, and when, and where.
In the evening, around nine, he drove over to Brooklyn, his old stomping grounds. Right into Junior Maggione's neighborhood, his turf in Carroll Gardens.
He was thinking about his old buddy Jimmy Hats and missing him some, figuring that Maggione's father had probably popped Jimmy. Somebody had, and then made the body disappear, as if Jimmy had never been born. He'd always suspected it had been Maggione Sr., so that was another score for the Butcher to settle.
It was building up inside him, this terrible rage. About something. Maybe about his father – the original Butcher of Sligo, that piece of Irish scum who had ruined his life before he was ten years old.
He turned onto Maggione's street, and he had to smile to himself. The powerful don still lived like a mildly successful plumber or maybe a local electrician, in a yellow-brick two-family house. More surprising – he didn't spot any guards posted on the street.
So either Junior was seriously underestimating him, or his people were damn good at hiding themselves in plain sight. Hell, maybe somebody had a sniper rifle sight pinned on his forehead right now. Maybe he had a couple of seconds to live.
The suspense was killing him. He had to see what was going on here. So he hit his car horn once, twice, three times, and not a goddamn thing happened.
Nobody shot him through the skull. And for the first time, the Butcher let himself think, I might win this fight after all.
He'd figured out the first mystery: Junior Maggione had moved his family out of the house. Maggione was running too.
Then he stopped that train of thought with just one word – mistake.
He couldn't make any – not one misstep from now until this was all over. If he did, he was dead.
Simple as that.
End of story.
Chapter 91
IT WAS LATE, and I decided to go for a drive in the R350. I was loving the car. The kids felt the same way. Even Nana did, praise the Lord. I found myself thinking about Maria again. The long investigation into her murder I had conducted and failed at. I was messing with my own mind, trying to picture her face, trying to hear the exact sound of her voice.
Later that night, back at home, I tried to get to sleep but couldn't. It got so bad that I went downstairs and watched Diary of a Mad Black Woman again. Actually, I found myself cheering like a crazy person at the flickering TV screen. Tyler Perry's movie matched up perfectly with my frame of mind.
I called up Tony Woods at the director's office around nine the next morning. Then I swallowed my pride and asked Tony for some help on the rape and murder case. I needed to find out if the Bureau had anything on the
