Cross

the house for about twenty minutes. One of the things he noticed was that the garage door was closed. And maybe there was a fine red Mercedes convertible in the garage.
    So—once again—who owned the black Porsche?
    Careful to stay under the cover of thick branches, he put a pair of German binoculars to his eyes. Then he slowly scanned the east and south windows of the house, each and every one of them.
    No one seemed to be in the kitchen—which was all darkened windows, no one moving about.
    Or in the living room, either, which was also dark and looked deserted.
    But somebody was in the house, right?
    He finally found them in a corner bedroom on the second floor. Probably the master suite.
    Melinda, or Mel, Steiner was up there.
    And some blond dude. Probably in his early forties, presumably the owner of the Porsche.
    Too many mistakes to calculate,
he was thinking to himself.
A real cluster-fuck of errors.
    What he could also calculate was that his seventy-five-thousand-dollar fee for this job had just doubled, because he never did two for the price of one.
    The Butcher started to walk toward the country house, gun in one hand, toolbox in the other, and he was feeling pretty good about this job, this day, this life he had for himself.

Chapter 108
    THERE WAS VERY LITTLE IN LIFE that could beat the feeling of having confidence in your ability to do a job well. Michael Sullivan was thinking about the truth in that statement as he neared the house.
    He was conscious of the amount of land surrounding the white Colonial house, three or four acres of secluded woods and fields. Off in the back he saw a tennis court that looked like green clay. Maybe it was Har-Tru, which the tennis buffs back in Maryland seemed to favor.
    But mostly he was focused on his work, on the job to be done, on its two working parts.
    Kill someone named Melinda Steiner—and her lover, since he was definitely in the way now.
    Don’t get killed yourself.
    No mistakes.
    He slowly opened the wooden front door of the house, which wasn’t locked. People did that a lot out in the country, didn’t they?
Mistake.
And he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get much resistance once he got upstairs, either.
    Still, you never know, so don’t get cocky, don’t get sloppy, don’t get overly cute, Mikey.
    He remembered the fiasco in Venice, Italy, what had happened there. The mess, and how he could have gotten tagged. La Cosa Nostra would be looking all over for him now, and one day they’d find him.
    So why not today? Why not right here?
    His contact for the job was an old friend, but the mob could have easily gotten to him. And then set the Butcher up.
    He just didn’t think so.
    Not today.
    The front door hadn’t been locked. They would have locked it, especially if this was a trap and they wanted it to look good.
    The couple he’d spotted in the bedroom had looked too natural, too much in the moment, and he didn’t believe anybody—except maybe himself—was slick enough to create that kind of setup and honey trap. That couple was upstairs humping their brains and vital fluids out; there was very little doubt about it in his mind.
    As he climbed the front stairs, he could hear the pleasing sounds of their screwing drifting down to him. Bedsprings coiling and releasing, the headboard hitting the bedroom wall.
    Of course, it could be a recording.
    But the Butcher doubted it, and his instincts were usually very, very good. They had certainly kept him alive so far, and they’d made a lot of other people dead.

Chapter 109
    AS HE REACHED THE SECOND FLOOR, his heart was beating a lot faster, the moans and assorted bed noises had gotten louder, and he started to smile in spite of himself.
    Peculiar thought. He was remembering a scene in this movie called
Sideways
that had completely cracked him up at the time. The shorter character, who was basically a drunk, had to retrieve the other schmuck’s wallet, and he needed to sneak into a bedroom where a couple of tubby lowlifes were rutting like pigs in a trough. The scene was pretty great—hilarious, totally unexpected too. Just like this was going to be. For him anyway.
    So he turned a corner and peered into the bedroom, and he thought to himself,
Surprise, you’re both dead.
    The man and woman were in pretty good shape. Well toned and athletic, nice tight asses. Kind of sexy together. Smiles on their faces.
    They seemed to like each other, which made it good for them. Maybe they were in love. They