Cross

was pretty typical—straight chairs, card tables, makeshift bar, guineas coming out of the woodwork.
    “No welcoming committee for us? No brass bands?” asked Sullivan, who lived for confrontation of any kind, verbal or physical. It had always been him and Jimmy Hats against everybody else, ever since they were fifteen and ran away from their homes in Brooklyn.
    “Who the hell are you?” asked a foot soldier, who rose like steam from one of the rickety card tables. He was maybe six two, with jet-black hair, and weighed 220 or so, obviously worked out with weights.
    “He’s the Butcher of Sligo. Ever hear of him?” said Jimmy Hats. “We’re from New York City. Ever hear of New York City?”

Chapter 3
    THE BUFFED-UP MOB SOLDIER didn’t react, but an older man in a black suit and white shirt buttoned to the collar raised his hand like the pope or something and spoke slowly and deliberately in heavily accented English. “To what do we owe this honor?” he asked. “Of course we’ve heard of the Butcher. Why are you here in Baltimore? What can we do for you?”
    “We’re just passing through,” Michael Sullivan said to the old man. “Have to do a little job for Mr. Maggione in DC. You gentlemen heard of Mr. Maggione?”
    Heads nodded around the room. The tenor of the conversation so far suggested that this was definitely serious business. Dominic Maggione controlled the Family in New York, which ran most of the East Coast, down as far as Atlanta anyway.
    Everybody in the room knew who Dominic Maggione was and that the Butcher was his most ruthless hit man. Supposedly, he used butcher knives, scalpels, and mallets on his victims. A reporter in
Newsday
had said of one of his murders, “No human being could have done this.” The Butcher was feared in mob circles and by the police. So it was a surprise to those in the room that the killer was so young and that he looked like a movie actor, with his long blond hair and striking blue eyes.
    “So where’s the respect? I hear that word a lot, but I don’t see any in this club,” said Jimmy Hats, who, like the Butcher, had a reputation for amputating hands and feet.
    The soldier who had stood up suddenly made his move, and the Butcher’s arm shot forward in a blur. He sliced off the tip of the man’s nose, then the lobe of an ear. The soldier grabbed at his face in two places and stepped back so fast he lost his balance and fell hard on the wood-plank floor.
    The Butcher was fast, and obviously as good as promised with a knife. He was like the old-time assassins from Sicily, and that’s how he had learned knife play, from one of the old soldiers in South Brooklyn. Amputation and bone-crunching had come easily to him. He considered them his trademark, symbols of his ruthlessness.
    Jimmy Hats had a gun out, a .45 caliber semiautomatic. Hats was also known as “Jimmy the Protector,” and he had the Butcher’s back. Always.
    Now Michael Sullivan slowly walked around the room. He kicked over a couple of card tables, shut off the TV, and pulled the plug on the espresso machine. Everyone suspected that somebody was going to die. But why? Why had Dominic Maggione unleashed this madman on them?
    “I see some of you are expecting a little show,” he said. “I see it in your eyes. I
smell
it. Well, hell, I don’t want to disappoint anybody.”
    Suddenly, Sullivan went down on one knee and stabbed the wounded mob soldier where he lay on the floor. He stabbed the man in the throat, then in the face and chest until there was no movement in the body. It was hard to count the strokes, but it must have been a dozen, probably more.
    Then the strangest thing of all. Sullivan stood up and took a bow over the dead man’s body. As if this was all a big show to him, all just an act.
    Finally, the Butcher turned his back on the room and walked unconcerned toward the door. No fear of anything or anyone. He called over his shoulder, “Nice meetin’ you, gentlemen. Next time, show some respect. For Mr. Maggione—if not for myself and Mr. Jimmy Hats.”
    Jimmy Hats grinned at the room and tipped his fedora. “Yeah, he’s
that
good,” he said. “Tell you what, he’s even better with a chain saw.”

Chapter 4
    THE BUTCHER AND JIMMY HATS laughed their asses off about the St. Francis of Assisi Social Club visit for most of the ride down I-95 to Washington, where they had a tricky job to do in the next day or two. Mr. Maggione had ordered them to stop in Baltimore and