Chapter 108
T HERE WAS VERY LITTLE IN LIFE that could beat the feeling of having confidence in your ability to do a job well. Michael Sullivan was thinking about the truth in that statement as he neared the house.
He was conscious of the amount of land surrounding the white Colonial house, three or four acres of secluded woods and fields. Off in the back he saw a tennis court that looked like green clay. Maybe it was Har-Tru, which the tennis buffs back in Maryland seemed to favor.
But mostly he was focused on his work, on the job to be done, on its two working parts.
Kill someone named Melinda Sterner ? and her lover, since he was definitely in the way now.
Don’t get killed yourself.
No mistakes.
He slowly opened the wooden front door of the house, which wasn’t locked. People did that a lot out in the country, didn’t they? Mistake. And he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get much resistance once he got upstairs, either.
Still, you never know, so don’t get cocky, don’t get sloppy, don’t get overly cute, Mikey.
He remembered the fiasco in Venice, Italy, what had happened there. The mess, and how he could have gotten tagged. La Cosa Nostra would be looking all over for him now, and one day they’d find him.
So why not today? Why not right here?
His contact for the job was an old friend, but the mob could have easily gotten to him. And then set the Butcher up.
He just didn’t think so.
Not today.
The front door hadn’t been locked. They would have locked it, especially if this was a trap and they wanted it to look good.
The couple he’d spotted in the bedroom had looked too natural, too much in the moment, and he didn’t believe anybody ? except maybe himself ? was slick enough to create that kind of setup and honey trap. That couple was upstairs humping their brains and vital fluids out; there was very little doubt about it in his mind.
As he climbed the front stairs, he could hear the pleasing sounds of their screwing drifting down to him. Bedsprings coiling and releasing, the headboard hitting the bedroom wall.
Of course, it could be a recording.
But the Butcher doubted it, and his instincts were usually very, very good. They had certainly kept him alive so far, and they’d made a lot of other people dead.