The Butcher's Boy Read Online Free PDF

That way there were only a few hours a year when anything could happen to you. The rest of the time you really were an insurance salesman or a truck driver or a policeman, and you weren't in any more jeopardy than anybody else. If you slipped once your other life would go a long way toward saving your ass. Besides, it gave you something else to think about.
    Eddie was a butcher.

    Of course that had all happened in the days before the trade got so busy.
    Nobody had that kind of time anymore. You were crazy if you passed up the kind 17

    of business you could get. It was easier now too. Everybody was a stranger, and everybody traveled. The only cover you needed was to look like the others and do what they did when they did it. Right now people were eating. He walked down Colfax looking for a restaurant that was crowded enough.

    "Don't be a jackass, Carlson," said the old man. "If I'm in any danger it's not from some guy with a gun, it's from some big corporation afraid of a bill that would take away its tax advantage. Criminals don't give a good goddamn about tax reforms because they don't pay any taxes."

    "What I'm saying, Senator, is that things aren't that simple or predictable," said Carlson, a man in his thirties who was so tastefully dressed and well groomed as to appear abnormal. "You're a national figure now. Your picture is on the television every night. The exact composition of your politics isn't what we're talking about. It's the visibility in the media. That alone makes you a target. If your picture happens to be on the screen at the moment some borderline case finally gets his big headache, you're going to need security."

    "Fine," Claremont said. "Get me some security, then. Meanwhile get the hell out of my way and let me do my job."

    "Right, Senator," said Carlson, opening the door of the limousine for Claremont and climbing in after him, still talking. The black automobile moved away from the curb and into the traffic so quickly that it looked as though the two men had barely caught it in time.

    The plane touched down at Los Angeles International and Elizabeth began to prepare herself for whatever came next. Five hours in the air after a full day of work, and now at least one more hour before she could be alone and take her shoes off. She wondered what she must look like by now, then put it out of her mind. She probably looked like a woman who had just worked a thirteen-hour day, she thought, and there wasn't a whole lot she could do to hide it.

    Elizabeth went over the notes she had taken during the long flight. First stop in the morning would be the Ventura police. Hart would handle the postmortem on the remains of the truck and the lab reports and the interview with the technicians. Elizabeth would read through the full report and interview whoever had written it, then follow whatever leads looked promising.

    As the no-smoking light flickered and the engine wound down she wrote an additional note on her pad: bank records. If Veasy had a business relationship with organized crime there would be something that didn't fit. He would have made some surprising deposits or some surprising withdrawals. Or if not, there would be a discrepancy between the bank accounts and the way he had lived—
    maybe a sign that he had a source of money that didn't pass through the accounts. She added safe deposit box? to her notes, then put the pad in her purse.

    Elizabeth was glad to be able to move again. Airplane seats are small for a woman five feet five. She wondered what it must be like for Hart.

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    They joined the line of passengers moving past the stewardesses and out the door into the movable corridor that carried them to the terminal. Then they were in an airport lobby. Hart led her down another corridor to a second lobby, where there was a check-in desk for Golden West Airlines. He had a few words with the desk manager and then waited while the man picked up a telephone and turned his back. He hung up and said,