Butcher's Road by Lee Thomas Page A

Marco’s,” Valentino said. He peered around the restaurant. “He gave everybody the jimjams. For that matter, he gave Marco the jimjams, but they had a history. I need a drink.” When this statement didn’t make a server magically appear, Valentino slid from the booth and walked to a plump waiter with a fringe of gray over his ears. He spoke, laughed, pointed at Lennon, clapped the waiter on the back, and then returned to the table. “You’d think a place that charged so much for a plate of spaghetti would be on the ball.”
    “You said Musante made people nervous.”
    “Not nervous exactly.” Valentino slid his palm across the hair above his ears to smooth it, even though it was already as smooth and shiny as a slab of wax. Then he started looking around the restaurant. “Where’s that goddamn drink?”
    “It’ll be here. Tell me about Musante.”
    “You know us Italians, a lot of superstitions.”
    “You’re not Italian,” Lennon countered.
    Valentino continued speaking as if he hadn’t heard. “Well, superstition doesn’t go away when you join the outfits. There’s still a lot of old country hokum in our heads.”
    “What’s that got to do with Musante?”
    The drinks arrived. Scotch. Valentino downed half of his with a gulp. He kept hold of his glass and turned in the booth, again searching the restaurant. Lennon couldn’t tell if the man was anxious, afraid, or just hopped up on a nose full of cocaine. His irises were like crickets on griddles, bouncing around and looking for a place to land.
    “Look, Lennon, there’s just not that much to tell. Musante came from an old family, and they had some sway in their day, but Lon fell from the tree and rolled way on down the hill, if you get my meaning. Marco and Lon grew up in the same Brooklyn neighborhood; that ties men together, you know? What’s the confusion? Musante’s dead. Let him rest.”
    “You haven’t answered my question. What did Musante do for Impelliteri?” Why had his death ignited a street war?
    Valentino rolled his eyes and shook his head. He lifted his glass and sipped this time, and then leaned back in the booth. “Eight months back, Lon was in a club, shooting his mouth off about a delivery: Scotch coming in over the Canadian line.” He hoisted his glass and swirled the whisky. “The delivery never made it. Some Fed overheard him and the whole shipment was stopped at the border. Six men collared. Two men toe tagged. These were members of Capone’s crew, part of Nitti’s pipeline, and everybody knew Musante had done the damage. So why was he still walking around? Still breathing? Anyone else would have been target practice in less than a day, but not Lonnie.”
    Lennon chewed over the information, sipped his own drink. “He must have had some serious leverage against the syndicate.”
    This made Valentino laugh. “We all have serious leverage, Lennon. But most of us are smart enough to never even consider using it. Lon had something else.”
    “I don’t follow.”
    “No, you really don’t. And I’m not the one to guide you, because I’ve always thought it was all a load of horseshit anyway.”
    “All of what?”
    “That mystic mumbo jumbo,” Valentino said, as if he’d already said it a hundred times.
    Lennon could see the lucidity leaving Valentino’s eyes. No longer crickets on a griddle, his irises bobbed slowly, eyeing his glass and then the table and then his glass again. Apparently his system was coming down from the dope.
    “One sentence, Valentino,” Lennon said, leaning on the table. “In one sentence, tell me what Musante did for Impelliteri.”
    Valentino stared into the oil lamp on the tabletop, eyes now glazed. “He read his future.”
    The statement hung between them. Lennon shook his head and lit a cigarette and leaned back in the booth. “Is that code for something?”
    “It is what it is,” Valentino said. His chin dipped toward his chest. “Marco kept Lon around as a spiritual guide