Turning in at the curving blacktop driveway to Dutch’s house, he noticed the TV repair truck across the street, knew it meant either the Feds or the state CID were taking movies of his arrival, and didn’t much care. The cops already knew who he was, it hardly mattered whether he visited Dutch Buenadella or not. Besides, his main trouble wasn’t cops. At least, not the cops outside. His main trouble was Buenadella and his tame cop on the inside, Calesian.
It was one of Buenadella’s rougher-looking goons who led him through to the den, where Buenadella was sitting at his desk, looking uncomfortable and unhappy and even a little sick, while Calesian paced back and forth, a slow and measured tread, frowning at the floor, obviously thinking very hard. He looked up when Shevelly entered, and stopped in the middle of the room to say, “Hello, Ted.”
Shevelly felt it important to maintain the hierarchy. He didn’t know why he had that feeling, but he followed it. “Hello, Dutch,” he said to Buenadella, then turned to nod at Calesian. “Harold.”
But it was too late to maintain a chain of command. Calesian had taken over here, and Shevelly saw that right away. While Buenadella sat at his desk looking worried, his eyes never leaving Calesian, it was Calesian who did the talking, his voice hard and authoritative as again he paced back and forth. “We’ve got a problem, Ted,” he said. “It seems Parker and Green killed Al Lozini.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, Ted.” Calesian paused to touch Shevelly’s arm, then moved on. “I know you liked Al, I hate to have you hear it this way.”
“What the hell did—” Shevelly couldn’t encompass it. “What for?”
“I think they got impatient,” Calesian said. “I think that just comes down to it, they got impatient. They looked around, and decided Dutch here would probably be the number-one boy if Al checked out, so they dropped Al and got in touch with Dutch and told him he had twenty-four hours to cough up their seventy-three thousand or they’d kill him and deal with Ernie Dulare.”
“Holy Christ,” Shevelly said.
“It all happened this morning,” Calesian said. “Dutch called me, and between us we set up an ambush for them, Dutch told them to come here and collect the money. When they got here we shot one of them, but the other one got away.”
“Which one?”
“Parker.”
“You shot the wrong one,” Shevelly said.
Calesian shrugged. “They’re both hard cases,” he said. “Parker’s the more obvious, that’s all. The point is, he’s still out there. We need to finish him off before he makes more trouble. We’re in trouble enough with Tuesday’s election as it is.”
Shevelly rubbed a palm across his forehead. “Every goddam thing at once,” he said. “And Al— I can’t get over it.”
Buenadella finally spoke up. “I loved Al Lozini,” he said. His voice was trembling as he said it; Shevelly, looking at him, suspected the tremble was caused more by fear than by love, but he didn’t make any comment.
Calesian said, “The point is, we’ve got to get Parker. We need to bring him in again, and finish him off.”
Shevelly frowned at him. “Bring him in? How?”
“I know how to get in touch with him,” Calesian said. “I can make an arrangement with him, a meeting. You go to the meeting, you tell him the story, and he comes in.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Shevelly said. “Why’s he going to meet with me? He’ll think it’s another trap.”
“He’ll pick the spot,” Calesian said. “It won’t be a trap, so what do we care where you meet? The point is to tell him the story, that brings him in.”
“What kind of a story,” Shevelly said, “is going to make somebody like Parker come back in again where you can get your hands on him?”
“A story with evidence,” Calesian said. He strode to Buenadella’s desk and picked up a small white box, the sort of box that inexpensive earrings or cuff links come in, nestling on a bit of cotton gauze. Shevelly noticed Buenadella looking at the box with repugnance, his lips drawing back from his teeth as though he might suddenly throw up.
Calesian brought the box over to Shevelly. “This evidence,” he said, and opened the box, and inside, on the inevitable bit of cotton gauze, was a finger, severed just below the second knuckle.
Thirty-one
When Parker got back to Lozini’s place, the houseman told him, “There was a telephone message for you. Not from Mr. Lozini.”
No, not from Lozini. Parker said, “Who from?”
“Detective Calesian. He left a number for you to call him back.”
Parker looked at the piece of paper: a name, seven digits. “This number mean anything to you?”
“Yes, sir,” the houseman said. Sometime in the last hour he had either lost his fear or grown used to it; in any case, he was all right now, operating without that buzzing sense of tension. “That’s one of Mr. Buenadella’s home lines,” he said.
“All right,” Parker said. “Get me Dulare, Shevelly, Faran, Walters, and Simms. I want them to meet me here, all five of them, right now. I’ll use the hall phone here, you use a different one.”
The houseman looked doubtful. “Is this okay with Mr. Lozini? I don’t have any instructions about you.”
“You know those five names,” Parker told him. “Your boss wants them here.”
That made sense to the houseman. “Okay,” he said. “I just wanted to check, you know?”
Parker turned away to the hall phone, and after a second the houseman left. Parker dialed the number from the piece of paper, and on the first ring it was answered in Buenadella’s voice, sounding wary. “Yeah? Hello?”
”This is Parker.”
“Oh.” Buenadella sounded almost relieved, as though some other caller might have been even worse news. “Listen, Parker,” he said, “that wasn’t my idea. That was a mistake.”
Calesian’s mistake; Parker had already figured that out. And Calesian was in the room with Buenadella, which was why Buenadella had identified the caller by name.
“Parker?”
“I’m here.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“I didn’t know you were finished,” Parker said.
“I’m not—I’m not exactly finished.” Nervousness was coming into Buenadella’s voice, meaning some sort of lie or con or trap was about to be brought out. Buenadella’s problem was that he wasn’t mobster enough; he could run circles around somebody like Lozini when it came to politics and business, but a job like Lozini’s wasn’t the right slot for a politician or a businessman. Buenadella would have found that out sooner or later; he could consider himself lucky he found out before he tried on the crown.
“Parker?”
“If you have something to say, Buenadella, go ahead and say it.”
“About your partner—”
“That isn’t the subject.”
“All right. The money.”
Another goddam pause. What did Buenadella want, fill-in about the weather, how’s the wife and kids, what do you think of the Miami Dolphins? A fucking businessmen’s lunch, on the phone. “I’m in a hurry, Buenadella,” Parker said.
“I want to set up a meeting.” Which was said all in a rush; leaping into the lie, meaning the lie was in the form of an ambush.
“What for?”
“To—to explain things. To make another deal.”
“Where and when?”
“You say. And it won’t be with me, or Calesian, or any of my other people. You know Ted Shevelly, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
”He’s not my man, absolutely not. He’s Al Lozini’s man all the way.”
Parker believed that. It made sense to tether a goat out as bait. “All right.”
“He’ll carry the message,” Buenadella said. “You meet with him, talk it over, make your decision. Okay?”