Cross (Alex Cross 12)

“We’re just passing through,” Michael Sullivan said to the old man. “Have to do a little job for Mr. Maggione in DC. You gentlemen heard of Mr. Maggione?”

Heads nodded around the room. The tenor of the conversation so far suggested that this was definitely serious business. Dominic Maggione controlled the Family in New York, which ran most of the East Coast, down as far as Atlanta anyway.

Everybody in the room knew who Dominic Maggione was and that the Butcher was his most ruthless hit man. Supposedly, he used butcher knives, scalpels, and mallets on his victims. A reporter in Newsday had said of one of his murders, “No human being could have done this.” The Butcher was feared in mob circles and by the police. So it was a surprise to those in the room that the killer was so young and that he looked like a movie actor, with his long blond hair and striking blue eyes.

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p; “So where’s the respect? I hear that word a lot, but I don’t see any in this club,” said Jimmy Hats, who, like the Butcher, had a reputation for amputating hands and feet.

The soldier who had stood up suddenly made his move, and the Butcher’s arm shot forward in a blur. He sliced off the tip of the man’s nose, then the lobe of an ear. The soldier grabbed at his face in two places and stepped back so fast he lost his balance and fell hard on the wood-plank floor.

The Butcher was fast, and obviously as good as promised with a knife. He was like the old-time assassins from Sicily, and that’s how he had learned knife play, from one of the old soldiers in South Brooklyn. Amputation and bone-crunching had come easily to him. He considered them his trademark, symbols of his ruthlessness.

Jimmy Hats had a gun out, a .45 caliber semiautomatic. Hats was also known as “Jimmy the Protector,” and he had the Butcher’s back. Always.

Now Michael Sullivan slowly walked around the room. He kicked over a couple of card tables, shut off the TV, and pulled the plug on the espresso machine. Everyone suspected that somebody was going to die. But why? Why had Dominic Maggione unleashed this madman on them?

“I see some of you are expecting a little show,” he said. “I see it in your eyes. I smell it. Well, hell, I don’t want to disappoint anybody.”

Suddenly, Sullivan went down on one knee and stabbed the wounded mob soldier where he lay on the floor. He stabbed the man in the throat, then in the face and chest until there was no movement in the body. It was hard to count the strokes, but it must have been a dozen, probably more.

Then the strangest thing of all. Sullivan stood up and took a bow over the dead man’s body. As if this was all a big show to him, all just an act.

Finally, the Butcher turned his back on the room and walked unconcerned toward the door. No fear of anything or anyone. He called over his shoulder, “Nice meetin’ you, gentlemen. Next time, show some respect. For Mr. Maggione—if not for myself and Mr. Jimmy Hats.”

Jimmy Hats grinned at the room and tipped his fedora. “Yeah, he’s that good,” he said. “Tell you what, he’s even better with a chain saw.”

Chapter 4

THE BUTCHER AND JIMMY HATS laughed their asses off about the St. Francis of Assisi Social Club visit for most of the ride down I-95 to Washington, where they had a tricky job to do in the next day or two. Mr. Maggione had ordered them to stop in Baltimore and make an impression. The don suspected that a couple of the local capos were skimming on him. The Butcher figured he’d done his job.

That was a part of his growing reputation: not just that he was good at killing, but that he was reliable as a heart attack for a fat man eating fried eggs and bacon.

They were entering DC, taking the scenic route past the Washington Monument and other important la-di-da buildings. “My country ’tis of V,” sang Jimmy Hats in a seriously off-key voice.

Sullivan snorted out a laugh. “You’re a corker yourself, James m’boy. Where the hell did you learn that? My country ’tis of V?”

“St. Patrick’s parish school, Brooklyn, New York, where I learned everything I know about the three Rs—readin’, ritin’, ’rithmetic—an’ where I met this crazy bastard named Michael Sean Sullivan.”

Twenty minutes later they had parked the Grand Am and joined the late-night youth parade traipsing along M Street in Georgetown. Bunch of mopey-dopey college punks, plus him and Jimmy, a couple of brilliant professional killers, thought Sullivan. So who was doing better in life? Who was making it, and who wasn’t?

“Ever think you shoulda gone to college?” asked Hats.

“Couldn’t afford the cut in pay. Eighteen, I was already making seventy-five grand. Besides, I love my job!”

They stopped at Charlie Malone’s, a local watering hole popular with the Washington college crowd for no good reason Sullivan could figure. Neither the Butcher nor Jimmy Hats had gone past high school, but inside the bar, Sullivan struck up an easy conversation with a couple of coeds, no more than twenty years old, probably still in their late teens. Sullivan read a lot, and remembered most of it, so he could talk with just about anybody. His repertoire tonight included the recent shootings of American soldiers in Somalia, a couple hot new movies, even some Romantic poetry—Blake and Keats, which seemed to appeal to the college ladies.

In addition to his charm, though, Michael Sullivan was a looker, and he knew it—slim but nicely toned, six one, longish blond hair, a smile that could dazzle anybody he chose to use it on.

So it was no major surprise when twenty-year-old Marianne Riley from Burkittsville, Maryland, started making none-too-subtle goo-goo eyes at him and touching him in the way forward girls sometimes do.

Sullivan leaned in close to the girl, who smelled like wildflowers. “Marianne, Marianne . . . there used to be a song. Calypso tune? You know it? ‘Marianne, Marianne’?”

“Before my time,” the girl said, but then she winked at him. She had the most gorgeous green eyes, full red lips, and the cutest little plaid bow planted in her hair. Sullivan had decided one thing about her right away—Marianne was a little cock tease, and that was all right with him. He liked to play games too.

“I see. And Mr. Keats, Mr. Blake, Mr. Byron, weren’t they before your time?” he kidded her, with his endearing smile turned on bright. Then he took Marianne’s hand, and he lightly kissed it. He pulled her away from her barstool and did a tight Lindy twirl to the Stones song playing on the jukebox.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “Where do you think we’re going, mister?”