Chapter 96
THE BUTCHER WAS SEEING RED, and that usually wasn’t good for the world’s population numbers. In fact, he was getting more pissed off by the minute. Make that by the second. Damn it, he hated John Maggione.
Distractions helped some. The old neighborhood wasn’t much like Sullivan remembered it. He hadn’t liked it then, and he cared for it even less now. Feeling a little bit of deja vu, he followed Avenue P, then took a left onto Bay Parkway.
As far as he knew, this general area was still the main shopping hub of Bensonhurst. Block after block of redbrick buildings, with stores on the ground level: greaseball restaurants, bakeries, delis, greaseball everything. Some things never changed.
He was flashing images of his father’s shop again ? everything always gleaming white; the freezer with its white enameled door; inside the freezer, hooks with hanging quarters of beef; bulbs in metal cages along the ceiling; knives, cleavers, and saws everywhere. His father standing there with his hand under his apron ? waiting for his son to blow him.
He made a right at Eighty-first Street. And there it was. Not the old butcher shop ? something even better. Revenge, a dish best served steaming, piping hot!
He spotted Maggione’s Lincoln parked in the rear lot of the social club. License ? ACF3069. He was pretty sure it was Junior’s car anyway.
Mistake?
But whose mistake? he wondered as he continued up Eighty-first Street . Was Junior such an arrogant bastard that he could just come and go when he liked? Was it possible that he had no fear of the Butcher? No respect? Not even now?
Or had he set a trap for him?
Maybe it was a little of both. Arrogance and deception. Hallmarks of the world we live in.
Sullivan stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts at the intersection of New Utrecht and Eighty-sixth. He had some black coffee and a sesame bagel that was too doughy and bland. Maybe this kind of shit food played somewhere in Middle America, but a half-assed bagel had no place being sold in Brooklyn. Anyway, he sat at a table, watching the car lights pass back and forth out on New Utrecht, and he was thinking that he wanted to walk into the club on Eighty-first Street and start blasting. But that wasn’t any kind of plan ? it was just a nice, violent fantasy for the moment.
Of course, he had a real plan in mind.
Junior Maggione was a dead man now, and probably worse than that. Sullivan smiled at the thought, then checked to make sure that nobody was watching, thinking he was a crazy person. They weren’t. He was. Good deal.
He took another sip. Actually, the Dunkin’ coffee wasn’t half-bad. But the bagel was the worst.