Cross

so at least he was an equal opportunity jacker. The driver was in back, trying his best to recover from a slit throat.
    There was a picture of his girlfriend, or wife or whatever she was, on the dash, and the lady was almost as ugly as the dying driver. The Butcher couldn’t have cared less about the incidental murder. He felt nothing for the stranger, and truthfully, everyone was a stranger to him, even his own family most of the time.
    “Hey, you okay back there?” he called over the rumbling, rattling noise of the truck.
    No answer, nothing from the back.
    “I thought so, buddy. Don’t worry about it—the mail and whatnot must go through. Rain, snow, sleet, death, whatever.”
    He pulled the big brown delivery truck up in front of a medium-size ranch house in Roslyn. Then he grabbed a couple of bulky delivery boxes off the metal shelf behind the driver’s seat. He headed to the front door, walking fast, hurrying like the Boys in Brown always do on TV, even whistling a happy tune.
    The Butcher pressed the doorbell. Waited. Still whistling. Playing the part perfectly, he thought.
    A man’s voice came over the intercom. “What? Who’s there? Who is it?”
    “UPS. Package.”
    “Just leave it.”
    “Need a signature, sir.”
    “I said, leave it, okay. Signature’s not a problem. Leave the package. Bye-bye.”
    “Sorry, sir, I can’t do that. Real sorry. Just doing my job here.”
    Then nothing more over the intercom. Thirty seconds went by, forty-five. Might need a plan B here.
    Finally, a very large man in a black Nike sweatsuit came to the door. He was physically impressive, which made sense since he’d once played football for the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins.
    “Are you hard of hearing?” he asked. “I told you to leave the package on the porch. Capisce?”
    “No, sir, I’m Irish American actually. I just can’t leave these valuable packages without a signature.”
    The Butcher handed over the electronic pad, and the big ex-footballer angrily scrawled a name with the marker.
    The Butcher checked it—
Paul Mosconi,
who just happened to be a mob soldier married to John Maggione’s little sister. This was
so
against the rules, but you know what, were there really any rules anymore? In the mob, government, churches, the whole messed-up society?
    “Nothing against you personally,” said the Butcher.
    Pop.
    Pop.
    Pop.
    “You’re dead, Paul Mosconi. And the big boss is going to be really pissed at me. By the way, I used to be a Jets fan. Now I go for New England.”
    Then the Butcher stooped down and slashed the dead man’s face over and over again with his scalpel. Then he cut his throat, crisscross, right on the Adam’s apple.
    A woman popped her head into the living room, dark hair still in curlers, and she started to scream. “Pauli! Pauli, oh my God! Oh, Pauli, oh, Pauli! No, no, no!”
    The Butcher did his best little bow for the distraught widow.
    “Say hello to your brother for me.
He
did this to you. Your big brother killed Pauli, not me.” He started to turn away, then spun around. “Hey, sorry for your loss.”
    And he took another little bow.

Chapter 95
    THIS COULD BE IT. The end of a long and winding road after Maria’s murder.
    Sampson and I took the Long Island Expressway to the Northern State, all the way out to the tip of Long Island. We followed Route 27 and finally found the village of Montauk, which until that moment was just a name I’d heard and occasionally read about. But this was where Michael Sullivan and his family were hiding out according to Anthony Mullino. Supposedly they had just moved here today.
    We found the house after twenty minutes of searching unfamiliar back roads. When we arrived at the address we’d been given, two boys were tossing a bloated-looking football on a small patch of front lawn. Blond, Irish-looking kids. Pretty good athletes, especially the littlest guy. The presence of kids could make this a lot more complicated for us though.
    “You think he’s staying out here?” Sampson asked as he turned off the engine. We were at least a hundred yards away from the house, and pretty much out of sight now, playing it safe.
    “Mullino says he’s been moving around a lot. Says he’s here now for sure. The kids are the right age. There’s an older boy too, Michael Jr.”
    I squinted to see better. “Car in the driveway has Maryland plates.”
    “Probably not a coincidence there. Sullivan was supposed to be living somewhere in