Butcher's Road by Lee Thomas Page B

or some shit. Hell, I wish someone would pay me for looking into a drained tea cup or at their palm for a few seconds.”
    “But Marco believed Lon was legit?”
    “Medieval witch shit in the bright and shiny city,” Valentino muttered. Then he barked a sharp laugh and lit a cigarette of his own. “Lon couldn’t have been all that good or Marco would have made his mint at the track instead of running booze. Hell, if Lon had been any good he wouldn’t have been home the other night, you know?”
    “And that’s it? Lonnie didn’t work the rackets?”
    Valentino shrugged. A thick film had fallen over his eyes and his chin lazily bobbed as if he were trying to stay awake.
    “I’m asking you a question.”
    “Nah,” Valentino said. “He ran some numbers, but even that was more than Lon could handle. The guy was pretty much useless. They should have just done it and saved everyone the headache.”
    “Done what?”
    “After the Canadian import went south—or didn’t —Marco sent Lonnie an invitation.” He drew on his cigarette and released the smoke slowly so that it oozed over his upper lip. “It’s one of those invitations that you don’t refuse—to an event you usually don’t leave.”
    “So Impelliteri did order a hit on Musante?”
    “Yeah,” Valentino said. “Then he called it off the next day. Never heard of that happening before. Nobody talks their way out of an invitation to the dance, but Lon did. No dancing for Ol’ Lon. So maybe he had a different kind of leverage. Hard to say.”
    “Then what?”
    “Then the Bug sends the Wrestler to kill the Fortuneteller, and my good friend Lennon asks me to lunch.”
    Valentino barked another laugh, drew on his smoke, ground it in the crystal ashtray and began looking around the restaurant again, presumably to have his drink refilled. After a quick wave to the gray-haired waiter, he turned his muddled eyes back to Lennon.
    “You look like you’re about to fall over,” Lennon said.
    “Perhaps a visit to the gents,” Valentino muttered.
    “You do that,” Lennon said. He stood and withdrew his money clip and counted bills onto the table. “Tell me something before you go.”
    “Hmm? Sure?”
    “Where do pretty boys go when they aren’t pretty anymore?”
    “Straight to hell, detective.”
     
     

Chapter 9
A War on Crime
     
     
     
    Hours later and miles away, Marco Impelliteri, a man whose cunning business sense and quiet brutality had earned him a position near the apex of the Chicago syndicates, strolled across his office to his expansive mahogany desk and lifted the ringing telephone. He’d been in a lousy mood for days, ever since watching flames consume Lonnie Musante’s coffin and its contents: a man he’d known since childhood. The street war wasn’t helping his disposition. He’d called it, wanted it, but the fucking Irish were doing too good a job of dodging his boys’ bullets. He was sending messages, but nobody was listening.
    He picked up the phone, cleared his throat, and said, “Yeah?”
    “Marco, this is Lou.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Powell’s goons took out two of my boys this afternoon. Frank isn’t happy. Your vendetta is drawing too much attention, and nobody but you is missing that fuck Musante. Frank says to shut it down.”
    The line went dead and Marco Impelliteri looked at the conical earpiece as if it were the statue of a sainted martyr that had just whispered obscenities into his ear. He slammed the thing into the cradle and broke the metal arms loose. Marco lifted the telephone off his desk and threw it on the floor. It was the sixth phone to be scrapped in as many months.
    Marco went to the window and put his brow against the cold glass. He didn’t like what he saw outside. The electric lights in his back yard illuminated a field of melting snow with great patches of brown grass appearing like lesions all across the ground. It looked horrible. It looked like rot.
    Frank said. Frank said. Bullshit.
    Nitti was