Chapter 44
H E FOLLOWED MARTIN and Marcia Harris as they walked arm in arm through a dark, narrow, and very typical Venetian alleyway They entered a gateway into the Bauer Hotel. He wondered why John Maggione wanted them dead, but it didn’t really matter to him.
Moments later, he was sitting across the bar from them on the hotel terrace. A nice little spot, cozy as a love seat, it overlooked the canal and the Chiesa della Salute. The Butcher ordered a Bushmills but didn’t drink more than a sip or two, just enough to take the edge off of things. He had a scalpel in his pants pocket, and he fingered it while he watched the Harrises.
Quite the lovebirds, he couldn’t help thinking as they shared a long kiss at the bar. Get a room, why don’t you?
As if he were reading the Butcher’s mind, Martin Harris paid the check, and then the couple left the crowded, subdued terrace lounge. Sullivan followed. The Bauer was a typical Venetian palazzo, more like a private home than a hotel, lavish and opulent at every turn. His own wife, Caitlin, would have loved it, but he could never take her here, or ever come back himself.
Not after tonight and the unspeakable tragedy that was going to happen here in a matter of minutes. Because that’s what the Butcher specialized in ? tragedies, the unspeakable kind.
He knew that there were ninety-seven guest rooms and eighteen suites in the Bauer, and that the Harrises were staying in one of the suites on the third floor. He followed them up the carpeted stairs and immediately thought, Mistake.
But whose ? mine or theirs? Important question to consider and be ready to answer.
He turned out of the stairwell ? and it all went wrong in a hurry!
The Harrises were waiting for him, both with guns drawn, and Martin had a nasty smirk on his face. Most likely, they were going to take him to their room and kill him there. It was an obvious setup
by two professionals.
Not too shabby a job, either. An eight out of ten.
But who had done this to him? Who had set him up to die in Venice? Even more curious ? why had he been targeted? Why him? And why now?
Not that he was thinking about any of that now, in the dimly lit corridor of the Bauer, with two guns pointed toward him.
Fortunately, the Harrises had committed several mistakes along the way: They’d made following them too easy; they’d been careless and unconcerned; and too romantic, at least in his jaded opinion, for a couple married twenty years, even one on holiday in Venice.
So the Butcher had come up the stairs with his own pistol drawn ? and the instant he saw them with guns out, he fired.
No hesitation, not even a half second.
Chauvinist pig that he was, he took out the man first, the more dangerous opponent in his estimation. He got Martin Harris in the face, shattered the nose and upper lip. A definite kill shot. The man’s head snapped back, and his blond hairpiece flew off.
Then Sullivan dove, rolled to the left, and Marcia Harris’s shot missed him by a foot or more.
He fired again ? and got Marcia in the side of her throat; then he put a second shot into her heaving chest. And a third in her heart.
The Butcher knew the Harrises were dead in the hallway, just lying there like sides of meat, but he didn’t run out of the Bauer.
Instead, he whipped out his scalpel and went to work on their faces and throats. If he’d had the time, he would have stitched up the eyes and mouths too ? to send a message. Then he took a half dozen photographs of the victims, the would-be assassins, for his prized picture collection.
One day soon, the Butcher would show these photos to the person who had paid to have him killed and failed, and who was now as good as dead.
That man was John Maggione, the don himself.