The Power Of The Dog (45 page)

Sal had it delivered.

He doesn’t tell her all that. What he says is stupid and obvious: “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

She laughs. “I thought it was a present for me. I was feeling guilty for opening it.”

“Siobhan—”

“You’re back into it again, aren’t you?” she says. Gray eyes hard as stone. “You’re doing another job.”

“I have to.”

“Why?”

He wants to tell her, but he can’t let her carry that weight around with her the rest of her life. So he says, “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand,” she says. “I’m from Kashmir Road, remember? Belfast? I grew up watching my brothers and uncles leave the house with their little Christmas boxes, going out to kill people. I’ve seen machine guns under the bed before. It’s why I left—I was sick of the killing. And the killers.”

“Like me.”

“I thought you’d changed.”

“I have.”

She gestures down to the box.

“I have to,” he repeats.

“Why?” she asks. “What’s so important it’s worth killing for?”

You, he thinks.

You are.

But he stands there mute. A dumb witness against himself.

“I won’t be here when you come back this time,” she says.

“I’m not coming back,” he says. “I have to go away for a while.”

“Jesus,” she says. “Were you planning on telling me? Or were you just going to go?”

“I was planning on asking you to come with me.”

It’s true. He has two passports, two sets of tickets. He digs them out from the bottom of the desk drawer and lays them on top of the box, at her feet. She doesn’t pick them up. She doesn’t even look at them.

“Just like that?” she asks.

A voice inside him is screaming, Tell her. Tell her you’re doing it for her, for the both of you. Beg her to come. He starts to tell her, but then he can’t. She would never forgive herself, being part of it. She’d never forgive you.

“I love you,” he says. “I love you so much.”

She gets up from the chair.

Comes close and says, “I don’t love you. I did, but I don’t now. I don’t love what you are. A killer.”

He nods. “You’re right.”

He walks past her, puts his ticket and passport into his pocket, closes the box and hefts it over his shoulder.

“You can live here if you want,” he says. “The rent’s paid.”

“I can’t live here.”

This was a good place, though, he thinks, looking around the small apartment. The happiest, best place of his life. This place, this time, here with her. He stands there trying to think of the words to tell her that, but nothing comes out.

“Get out,” she says. “Go murder somebody. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

He gets out in the street, it’s raining like hell. A cold, icy rain. He pulls up his collar and looks back up at the apartment.

Sees her still sitting by the window.

Bent over, her face in her hands.

The tree lights blinking red and green and white behind her.

Her dress sparkles in the lights.

A sequined top of red and green.

Very Christmasy, Haley had said, very sexy.

Très décolleté.

In fact, Jimmy Peaches can’t help looking down her dress.

Otherwise she has to admit that he’s acting the gentleman. Cleans up surprisingly well in his steel gray Armani. Even the black shirt and tie don’t seem horrible. A touch of goombah chic, perhaps, but not entirely gross.

Same with the restaurant. She expected some gaudy Sicilian horror show, but Sparks Steak House, despite the prosaic name, turns out to be done in understated good taste. Not her taste—the oak-paneled walls and hunting prints, basically the English look, are not her thing, but it’s tasteful all the same and not at all what she expected from a mob hangout.

They arrived in several limos, and a doorman held an umbrella to cover the two feet between the car and the long green awning. They make quite an entrance, the wise guys with their dates on their arms. Diners sitting at tables in the big front room stop eating and openly stare, and why not, Nora thinks.

The girls are fantastic.

Haley’s best, served to order.

Chosen by their hair color, their faces, their figures.

Cool, lovely, sophisticated women without a touch of the whore about them. Elegantly dressed, impeccably coiffed, beautifully mannered. The men practically blush with pride as they make their entrance. The women don’t—they take the adulation as their birthright. They take no visible notice of it.

A properly obsequious headwaiter shows them to the private room in the back.

Everyone watches them go in.

Well, not everyone.

Not Callan.

He misses their entrance. He’s around the corner, on Third Avenue, waiting for the word to move in closer. He sees the limos come, working their way through the thick rush-hour holiday traffic, then turning right onto Forty-sixth toward Sparks, so he figures that Johnny Boy and the Piccones and O-Bop have arrived for the sit-down.

He checks his watch.

It’s 5:30—dead on time.

Scachi’s there to greet them, all the wise guys and the girls in turn. He’s the host, right, he set up the meeting. He even (sneaking a glance down her dress) kisses Nora’s hand.

“A pleasure,” he says. God, he can see why Peaches would want her for his last ride. An incredible beauty. They all are, but this one …

Johnny Boy takes Scachi by the arm.

“Sal,” he says, “ just wanted to take a minute to thank you for setting this up. I know it took a lot of diplomatic work, a lot of details. If we get the result we hope for tonight, maybe we can have peace in the family.”

“That’s all I want, Johnny.”

“And a place for you at the table.”

“I’m not looking for that,” Scachi says. “I just love my family, Johnny. I love this thing of ours. I want to see it stay strong, unified.”

“That’s what we want, too, Sally.”

“I gotta go out, check on things,” Sal says.

“Sure,” Johnny Boy says. “Now you can call and tell the king he can make his entrance, now that the peasants are here.”

“See, that’s just the kind of attitude—”

Johnny Boy laughs. “Merry Christmas, Sal.”

They hug and exchange kisses on the cheeks.

“Merry Christmas, Johnny.” Sal puts on his coat and starts to go. “Oh, and Johnny?”

“Yeah?”

“Happy fucking New Year.”

Sal steps outside under the awning. Miserable fucking night. Sheets of rain coming down, threatening to turn into an ice storm. The drive back to Brooklyn’s going to be a bitch and a half.

He takes the small walkie-talkie from his overcoat pocket and holds it under his collar and against his mouth.

“You there?”

“Yeah,” Callan says.

“I’m calling the boss in,” Sal says. “So the clock’s on.”

“Everything’s good?”

“Just like we talked,” Sal says. “You got ten minutes, kid.”

Callan walks over to a trash can. Drops the box into it, slides the gun under his coat and starts to walk down Forty-sixth Street.

Into the rain.

The champagne flows over the glass.

To laughs and giggles.

“What the hell,” Peaches announces. “Champagne we got.”

He fills all the glasses.

Nora lifts hers. She won’t really drink it, but she’ll take a sip for the upcoming toast. Anyway, she likes the bubbles in her nose.

“A toast,” Peaches says. “Hey, we got some bad stuff in our lives, but we got some good stuff, too. So don’t nobody be sad this holiday. Life is beautiful. We have plenty to celebrate.”

In this season of hope, Nora thinks.

Then all hell breaks loose.

Callan opens his coat and swings the gun out.

Pulls back the bolt as he aims through the driving rain.

Bellavia sees him first. He’s just finished opening the car door for Mr. Calabrese and he looks over and sees Callan. There’s a small glimmer first of recognition and then of alarm in the man’s piggish eyes, and he starts to ask What are you doing out here but then he realizes the answer and goes for his own gun inside his coat.

Much too late.

His arm is blasted away as the 9-mm Parabellum rounds stitch across his chest. He falls back against the open door of the black Lincoln Continental, then slumps onto the sidewalk.

Callan turns the gun on Calabrese.

Their eyes meet for half a second before Callan pulls the trigger again. The old man staggers, then seems to melt into a puddle with the rain.

Callan steps in and stand above the two crumpled bodies. Holds the barrel near Bellavia’s head and squeezes the trigger twice. Bellavia’s head bounces off the wet concrete. Then Callan places the barrel to Calabrese’s temple and pulls the trigger.

Callan drops the gun, turns around and walks east toward Second Avenue.

The blood flows down the gutter after him.

Nora hears the screams.

The door flies open.

The headwaiter comes in yelling that someone’s been shot outside. Nora stands up, they all do, but they don’t know why. Don’t know whether to run outside or stay where they are.

Then Sal Scachi comes in to tell them.

“Everyone stay put,” he orders. “Someone killed the boss.”

Nora’s like, What boss? Who?

Now the keening of sirens drowns out everything else, and she jumps as—

Pop.

Her heart is in her throat. Everyone startles as Johnny Boy, still sitting, pours the champagne into his glass.

A car’s waiting at the corner.

The rear passenger door opens and Callan gets in. The car turns east on Forty-seventh, goes to the FDR and heads uptown. There are fresh clothes in the back. Callan takes his own clothes off and wriggles into the new ones. All the while, the driver doesn’t say nothing, just efficiently works his way through the brutal traffic.

So far, Callan thinks, it’s gone just the way they’d planned it. Bellavia and Calabrese arrived expecting to find a crime scene, their colleagues brutally murdered and the stage set for their own weeping and gnashing of teeth and cries of We came here to make peace in our family.