Poison Justice. Don Pendleton

more. Only Marelli enjoyed playing the big shot, stringing them along, feeding them just enough to have the FBI drag a river or dig up some earth in the New Jersey woods. Beyond cold-blooded murder he’d been granted full immunity for extortion, truck hijacking, assault, assault with intent, pimping, pandering and drug trafficking. There was also witness intimidation, tampering and execution. The deal was enough to make Peary wonder if the Justice Department had watched its balls go out the door with the change in administration, but he’d made his own plans well in advance to castrate the whole bull. The time to act, and get the hell out, had just about arrived.

      Shaking his head, Peary watched the hit man, decked out in a flaming Hawaiian shirt and white silk slacks, staring dumbly at the blaring television. He wondered what the world was coming to. He was getting sick of being forced to breathe the same air as the pampered killer.

      Suddenly Peary felt his hand inch toward his shoulder-holstered USP Expert .45. Ten hollowpoints in the clip, and a nasty little resolution to the noise problem flamed to mind.

      “Sir? It’s your move.”

      Peary laid an angry eye on Hobbs. The pink-faced kid was maybe two years out of Quantico, attached to the task force at the last moment when some desk-lifer at the FBI had, for reasons unknown, been able to catch and burn up the ear of the Attorney General. FBI, Justice, U.S. Marshals, everybody wanted in on this gig. It was a chance, he figured, a trophy for someone’s mantel on the climb up the pecking order. Problem was, all the headshed wanted to do was make sure The Butcher was coddled and comfortable, practically warning them all to be careful not to upset or press him too much for information on the Cabriano Family. What next? Bring on the strippers? Everybody chip in for the guy’s lap dance? All the big consideration and fawning the murdering asshole got, what happened to paying for your crimes?

      Peary watched the FBI rookie shrink into himself under his steely gaze, then checked the board. Back-gammon was the game, and they were playing for a four-hour watch, thirty minutes per win. But the way Hobbs had been rolling double fives and sixes on a whim and bumping him all over the board the past two hours, Peary figured he owed the kid two weeks’ worth of shift duty.

      “With all due respect, you need to relax, sir. Don’t let him get to you.”

      “What’s that?”

      The kid showed a weak smile. “It could be worse. It could be rap.”

      Peary hit the kid in the face with a fat cloud that could have choked half a city block.

      Hobbs flapped a hand at the smoke, making a face like he would puke. He coughed for another moment, then said, “I mean, he’s a thug, sir, and a pain in the ass, but he can cook.”

      “So, he can cook for the troops, Hobbs, that make him a goodfella to you?”

      “Well, what I meant—”

      “Let me tell you something, son. I operate on the general principle I don’t know a damn thing about another human being until they show me some cards. Just because you’re in love with his spaghetti and meatballs doesn’t mean he’s shown a damn thing to anybody. Let me tell you something else, junior. I’m not in this world to be popular or liked. Fact is, the more unpopular, the more disliked I am the better I stand in my eyes.”

      Hobbs cleared his throat, staring at the game. “With all due respect, sir, I think there’s a lot of anger in you.”

      Peary bared his teeth at the kid, wondering if he was serious or being a smart-ass. He looked at the board while running a hand over the white bristles of a scalp furrowed in spots by some punk’s bullets long ago. Double sixes might get him back in the game.

      He was shaking the dice when Marelli shouted an order for somebody to grab him a bottle of red wine from the cellar and some more cannolis while they were at it. Peary looked at Grevey and Markinson, wondering who would make a move as butler or if they had enough pride not to kiss ass. To their credit, he found both marshals with their faces buried in newspapers. They glanced at each other from their stools at the kitchen counter, passing the telepathy for the other to go fetch. Peary heard the thunder of his heart in his ears, then The Butcher cranked the volume high enough to bring down an eagle soaring over Windham High Peak.

      It was more than he could take. The kid had to have seen it coming, but Peary didn’t give a damn if a missile plowed through the roof. He was up and marching, the .45 out, the kid bleating something in his slipstream. The marshals were dropping their papers now, jowls hanging, but Peary was already sweeping past them.

      Marelli was squawking for someone to shake a leg, when Peary drew a bead on the giant screen TV. The peal of .45 wrath drowned out the shouting and cursing around him. Marelli leaped to his feet, dousing his flamingos and island girls with blood-red wine. Peary became even more enraged when he saw the picture still flickering behind the smoke and leaping sparks. One more hollowpoint did the trick.

      For what seemed like an hour suspended in time, Peary savored the shock and bedlam. He found less than ten feet separated himself from The Butcher and considered ending it right there. Marelli was bellowing, but it was clear to Peary he didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. The kid, the marshals and the other agents on sentry duty around the lodge were now swarming into the living room, hurling themselves into a buffer zone between him and the wise guy.

      Peary wrenched himself free of someone’s grasp. They were all shouting at him, arms flapping, hands grabbing whatever they could. Marelli was already launched into a stream of profanity, threats and outrage, interspersed with taking the Lord’s name in vain, among other blasphemous obscenities. He might have turned his back on Church and God, but he itched to shoot the hood for blasphemy alone.

      Peary heard them asking if he was nuts, what was wrong with him and so on. Turning away and heading for the door to grab some fresh air, he heard Marelli railing how he wanted a new and bigger television, and he wanted that lunatic bastard off his detail or he wasn’t talking to nobody. Peary encountered a marshal with an AR-15 who shuffled out of his path, but stared at him like something that had just stepped off a UFO.

      “What?” Peary shouted, holstering his weapon. “You never see a TV get shot before?”

      Peary rolled outside, breathing in the clean, cool mountain air. Alone, he laughed at the chaos he heard still bringing down the roof. What a few of them in there didn’t know was a lot, he thought.

      Losing a television was soon to become the least of Marelli’s woes.

      PETER CABRIANO TOOK a look at the bloody mass of naked flesh hung up by bound hands on the car lift, and believed he could read the future.

      The empire was either his to save, or his to watch go down in flames. That was the problem, he knew, with narcotics trafficking. It built kingdoms, but it also tore them down. For some time now, he’d been scrambling to avoid this day, branching out into other avenues for fast cash. But narcotics had been the Family’s bread and butter since the early eighties, and without the Colombians there would be no promise now of steering the Family into other business ventures, which he knew were the wave of the future.

      There was no time to dwell on rewards not yet earned; he needed quick solutions. One answer was already in the works, but where there was one loose tongue he feared a whole goddamn chorus of squealers was out there ready to bring the walls crashing down.

      Even though his Italian loafers were covered in rubber galoshes, he veered away from the oil splotches, found a dry spot in the bay, stood and considered the dilemma while his two soldiers watched him, awaiting orders. He was forty-six years old, but with a lot of life to live, two young sons to think of bringing into the business and worlds still to conquer. The keys to the kingdom were recently handed to him after his father died behind bars in Sing Sing from testicular cancer and complications of syphilis. The death three years earlier of his younger brother had left him sole heir, and no man who considered himself a man ever let a sister anywhere near the handling of Family business. He wondered how the old man would take charge of the present crisis. Two things he knew for sure. One, the old man would never snitch. Two, he would take the fight to his enemies. Part of the problem was figuring out who his enemies