Cross

Maryland before he and his family made their latest run. Makes sense that he was close to DC. Explains the rapes there. The pieces are starting to fall together.”
    “His kids haven’t seen us yet. Hopefully Sullivan hasn’t, either. Let’s keep it that way, John.”
    We moved, and Sampson parked two streets away; then we got shotguns and pistols out of the trunk. We hiked into the woods behind a row of modest homes, though still with a view of the ocean. The place where the Sullivans were staying was dark inside, and we hadn’t spotted anybody else so far.
    No Caitlin Sullivan, no Michael Sullivan, or if they were in the house, they were staying back from the windows. That made sense. Plus, I knew that Sullivan was a good shot with a rifle.
    I sat down with my back against a tree, huddled against the cold with a gun in my lap. I started thinking through the problem of taking down Sullivan without harming his family. For one thing, could it be done? After a while, I began to think about Maria again. Was I finally close to clearing her murder? I didn’t know for sure, but it felt like it. Or was that just wishful thinking?
    I took out my wallet and slid an old picture from a plastic sleeve. I still missed her every day. Maria would always be thirty years old in my mind, wouldn’t she? Such a waste of a life.
    But now she’d brought me here, hadn’t she? Why else would Sampson and I have come alone to get the Butcher?
    Because we didn’t want anybody to know what we were going to do with him.

Chapter 96
    THE BUTCHER WAS SEEING RED, and that usually wasn’t good for the world’s population numbers. In fact, he was getting more pissed off by the minute. Make that by the second. Damn it, he hated John Maggione.
    Distractions helped some. The old neighborhood wasn’t much like Sullivan remembered it. He hadn’t liked it then, and he cared for it even less now. Feeling a little bit of déjà vu, he followed Avenue P, then took a left onto Bay Parkway.
    As far as he knew, this general area was still the main shopping hub of Bensonhurst. Block after block of redbrick buildings, with stores on the ground level: greaseball restaurants, bakeries, delis, greaseball everything. Some things never changed.
    He was flashing images of his father’s shop again—everything always gleaming white; the freezer with its white enameled door; inside the freezer, hooks with hanging quarters of beef; bulbs in metal cages along the ceiling; knives, cleavers, and saws everywhere. His father standing there with his hand under his apron—waiting for his son to blow him.
    He made a right at Eighty-first Street. And there it was. Not the old butcher shop—something even better. Revenge, a dish best served steaming, piping hot!
    He spotted Maggione’s Lincoln parked in the rear lot of the social club. License—ACF3069. He was pretty sure it was Junior’s car anyway.
    Mistake?
    But whose mistake? he wondered as he continued up Eighty-first Street. Was Junior such an arrogant bastard that he could just come and go when he liked? Was it possible that he had no fear of the Butcher? No respect? Not even now?
    Or had he set a trap for him?
    Maybe it was a little of both. Arrogance and deception. Hallmarks of the world we live in.
    Sullivan stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts at the intersection of New Utrecht and Eighty-sixth. He had some black coffee and a sesame bagel that was too doughy and bland. Maybe this kind of shit food played somewhere in Middle America, but a half-assed bagel had no place being sold in Brooklyn. Anyway, he sat at a table, watching the car lights pass back and forth out on New Utrecht, and he was thinking that he wanted to walk into the club on Eighty-first Street and start blasting. But that wasn’t any kind of plan—it was just a nice, violent fantasy for the moment.
    Of course, he had a real plan in mind.
    Junior Maggione was a dead man now, and probably worse than that. Sullivan smiled at the thought, then checked to make sure that nobody was watching, thinking he was a crazy person. They weren’t. He
was.
Good deal.
    He took another sip. Actually, the Dunkin’ coffee wasn’t half-bad. But the bagel was the worst.

Chapter 97
    TWENTY MINUTES LATER, he was in position. Now here was the funny thing: He’d done this same kind of commando raid when he was just a kid. He and Jimmy Hats and Tony Mullino had climbed a rickety fire escape on Seventy-eighth, then sprinted over the tar-papered rooftops to a