Cross

seemingly innocent activity down at the shoreline, one of the fishermen slipped under a wave and then scrambled to recover some of his dignity. That water had to be damn cold.
    I hoped that didn’t happen to Sampson and me tonight.
    We shouldn’t be here like this—but we were.
    And we were exposed, weren’t we?
    And this killer was one of the best we had ever faced. Maybe the Butcher
was
the best.

Chapter 99
    SIMPLE STUFF REALLY, the basic ingredients of a professional murder, committed by a professional: This time out it was a jug of high-octane gasoline, propane, a stick of dynamite for ignition. Nothing too hard about the prep. But would the plan actually work? That was always the $64,000 question.
    In a way, it almost seemed like a prank to the Butcher—some stunt that he and Tony Mullino and Jimmy Hats would have tried to pull off in the old days, back in the neighborhood. Get a few crazy yuks out of it. Maybe put some chump’s eye out with a cherry bomb. Most of life had seemed like that to him—pranks, stunts, getting revenge for past wrongs.
    That was what happened with his father, how he came to kill the sick bastard. He didn’t like to think about it too much, so he didn’t, just closed off the compartment. But one night, long ago in Brooklyn, he’d cut the original Butcher of Sligo into little pieces, then fed Kevin Sullivan to the fish in the bay. The rumors were all true. Jimmy Hats had been out on the boat with him, and so had Tony Mullino. The guys he trusted.
    Tonight wasn’t that different in one respect—it was all about getting revenge. Hell, he’d hated Junior Maggione for twenty years.
    He took a fire escape down from the roof of the building next to the social club. Once he was at street level he could hear gruff men’s voices coming from inside the club. A ball game was playing—Jets and Pittsburgh on ESPN. Maybe the game was why everybody was preoccupied on this cold, overcast Sunday night.
Bollinger drops back! Bollinger stays in the pocket!
    Well, he was in the pocket too, the Butcher was thinking to himself. Perfect protection for the play, all the time he needed to execute it. And he hated these bastards inside the club. Always had. They’d never really let him inside their little society, not to this day. He’d always been on the outside.
    He set his highly combustible bomb next to a wooden wall in an alleyway that looked out to the street. Through the alley, he spotted a couple of Maggione’s soldiers posted across the way. They were leaning against the hood of a black Escalade.
    He could see them, but they couldn’t see him in the darkened alley.
    He backed away into the alley and took shelter behind a Dempsey Dumpster that stunk like rotting fish.
    An American Airlines jet roared overhead, heading into LaGuardia, making a noise like thunder shaking the sky. The timing was excellent for what came next.
    The roar of the plane was nothing compared to the earsplitting explosion against the rear wall of the social club; then came the screams and cursing of men inside.
    And fire! Jesus! The flames were dancing out of control in a hurry.
    The rear door burst open, and two soldiers, Maggione’s personal bodyguards, had the boss in their grasp like he was the president of the United States and they were the Secret Service, hurrying him to safety. The bodyguards were bleeding, coughing from the smoke, but they were moving forward, heading toward the boss’s Lincoln. They tried to clear smoke from their eyes with their shirtsleeves.
    Sullivan stepped out from behind the Dumpster and said, “Hey there, assholes! You guys suck.” He fired four shots. The bodyguards fell to the pavement, side by side, dead before they hit the cement. The checkered sports jacket of one of them was still on fire.
    Then he ran up to Junior Maggione, whose face was cut and burned. He stuck his gun barrel up against Maggione’s cheek.
    “I remember you when you were just a little kid, Junior. Uptight, spoiled little fuck back then. Nothing’s changed, huh? Get in the car or I’ll shoot you dead right here in the back alley. Shoot you between the eyes, then cut them out, stick ’em in your ears. Get in the car before I lose it!”
    And that’s when he showed Junior Maggione the scalpel.
    “Get in, before I use it.”

Chapter 100
    SULLIVAN DROVE THE MOB boss along the familiar streets of Brooklyn—New Utrecht Avenue, then Eighty-sixth Street—riding in the don’s own car, loving every