Schaeffer took slow, quiet steps to the doorway and looked inside. He could see the head of an older man in a tall-backed leather chair facing away from him. He could see hair that was thin and white, with a few strands of black remaining. It wasn't Tosca. He stepped inside the room, and the man turned to look over his shoulder. "You!" said the man. "I never thought you'd come back a second time."
It was Mike Cavalli, twenty years older but clearly recognizable. "What are you doing in Tosca's house, Cavalli? You don't work for him."
Cavalli sat back in his chair, facing the flat surface of the television screen mounted on the wall in front of him. "None of your fucking business."
Schaeffer took the remote control from the table beside Cavalli's hand and turned off the television set so the big glass surface went black. Then he took the cell phone that was beside it and put it in his pocket. "Are you so old you don't remember who I am?"
"I remember you just fine. You'll kill me whether I tell you anything or not. You're a disease. Killing people is all you do."
"I'm not here for you. I'm looking for Frank Tosca."
"You can see he's not here."
"When did he leave?"
"Yesterday. He was taking his wife and kids someplace. They stayed here for a night and then went on."
"He didn't tell you where he was going?"
"No."
Schaeffer raised the pistol and fired four times at the back of the chair. The bullets burst out of the upholstery of the backrest on either side of Cavalli's face, each tear in the leather blossoming beside his cheek so he could feel the leather lash his skin.
"He told, he told," Cavalli said. "All right, he told me."
"Where is he?"
"He doesn't trust anybody to know where his family is, so he was hiding them himself. After that he was going to talk to a few of the old men."
"What about?"
Cavalli laughed, his eyes squinting and his mouth half open while his upper body shook. "What do you think? About this. About you."
"How long has he known I was coming?"
"When Delamina got killed. That's when he knew. He had sent a bunch of guys out to look for you. Delamina was in charge of one crew. Over the past year, people went to the places where somebody thought you were-Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Bangkok, London. They talked to people, even met some of the guys people thought might be you. Tosca kept sending people out. I guess you found Delamina before he found you, huh?"
"Why is Tosca suddenly interested in me? I never had much to do with him."
"I guess you haven't kept up with anything here. You been living in a cave in Afghanistan?"
"Tell me."
"He's been making a bid to run the Balacontano family. Nobody can do that without Carlo Balacontano's blessing."
"I'm amazed the old bastard is still alive."
"Well, he is. And even from prison he's always going to be the head. Anybody who runs that family is working for him. Now, what do you suppose old Carl Bala wants most, both as a gesture of respect to him and to prove the guy deserves to run the family?"
"Me."
"That's right. You're the one who dug the hole that got him sent away forever. He's always been pissed off that in twenty years, nobody has found you for him. He's going to be in prison until he dies, so the only thing that will make him happy is your head on a stake."
"They're all as stupid as ever. He's in prison for life. They could have told him anytime that they'd got me and shut him up. Maybe he would have died in peace by now."
"It's more complicated than that after all this time. The whole Balacontano family grew up hearing about you. You ended his life, but you ruined them too. The government got a lot of his money that would have found its way down to them. They lost soldiers, both to you and to the government, and those guys were their fathers, cousins, and uncles. People don't forget. Part of being in that family is wanting the chance to kill you. The kids pray at mass that they'll be the ones to get you."
"And why are you here, babysitting Tosca's house? You're from Chicago. You were in the Castiglione family."
"Did you forget you killed old Mr. Castiglione too?"
"He was older than God, living in a wheelchair in a place like a fort in Vegas. He hadn't run anything in a generation."
"This isn't about losing a boss. It's about honor, losing face. You killed a lot of people and nobody made you suffer for it, and everybody knows it. So the feeling gets worse, because of the shame."
"So that's what Tosca is talking to the old men about?"
"He's asking them to make you their problem. He's reminding them of what happened years ago. You didn't just duck the ambush and get out of the country. You lashed out in all directions. Some of the old men had relatives you killed. They have wives and aunts reminding them once a week that they haven't got you yet." Cavalli grinned. "He's going to raise the whole country against you, and they'll hunt you until you're dead."
"Is he going to them one at a time, or did he ask for a meeting?"
Cavalli shrugged. "I can see why you would want to know. But that's not the way this will play out. You're not going to win this time."
"How do you know?"
"You've taken on too much importance for that. You're a symbol, like the Thanksgiving turkey. Whether you like it or not, this is going to be a celebration, and you're the guest of honor. Frank Tosca is the first young, strong, smart leader the families have produced in years. He's like all our grandfathers-crazy-ambitious, strong, tough. He's acting just like them. If he can get the Balacontano family under his control, the rest will start to turn to him too. There are people who have been waiting for this for a long, long time. It'll be like turning the calendar back, so La Cosa Nostra is young again. Everybody wants that. But first, he needs you dead."
Schaeffer looked at him in silence.
"Carl Bala isn't the only one who lives in time. I can tell you from experience that every year you slow down-you lose a step here and there. Your reactions aren't as fast, and pretty soon it feels like you're always walking on sand or deep snow instead of sidewalk. Then one day, you notice that your hearing and vision are a little worse too. Pretty soon, it's not so hard for somebody to come up behind you, the way you did to me tonight. They wouldn't have gotten you easily when you were a kid. But you're not a kid now."
"I'm about to leave, and I'm taking your cell phone with me. If Tosca wants to talk about a way for this to end without anybody else dying, he can call your number anytime in the next eight hours. After that, I throw it away, and he'll lose his chance."
"When he doesn't call, don't blame me. You know he's not going to stop looking. He can't. In the past couple of days you've killed six of his guys. He can't ignore that, or he'll lose the others."
"Just tell him."
He backed away from the chair, still holding the gun on Cavalli. He glanced over his shoulder to be sure he was heading toward the door. Cavalli said, "Sure you want that?"
He said, "It's too late to keep this a secret. Everybody in the country seems to know I'm here. So just sit tight for a few minutes, and then you can call whoever you want on the house phone."
He could see Cavalli's reflection in the darkened flat screen of the television set. Cavalli was watching him the same way. He started to turn to open the door, but Cavalli's hand went to his coat pocket and came out with a gun. "Don't try that," he said, but Cavalli dropped onto his knees on the floor and brought his right hand around the chair back.
Schaeffer aimed low on the chair back and pulled the trigger six times, until Cavalli's lifeless hand released the pistol and it dropped to the floor. He could see in the reflection on the black television screen that he had hit Cavalli at least once in the head. He put the gun into his belt and went out the door.