The Informant: A Butcher's Boy Novel by Thomas Perry; Michael Kramer

Author:Thomas Perry; Michael Kramer
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781400149551
Publisher: Tantor Media
Published: 2011-05-05T06:00:00+00:00

19

ELIZABETH HAD A STRANGE, disconnected feeling as she looked down at Washington from the air. She wasn't feeling the way she usually did when she flew into Reagan International--a mixture of comfortable familiarity and pride at how beautiful the place was. She was somewhere else in her mind, and she realized that she was feeling what the Butcher's Boy must be feeling.

He had killed Frank Tosca in the midst of the biggest conference of bosses in fifty years. He must be wondering, as she was, what kind of reaction the old men were having. Most of them were probably busy dealing with the problem of being detained in Arizona. Even if nothing else was lost, each of the old men would be aware that he had been made to look ridiculous--not only careless, but gullible. He must be feeling very alone right now.

Looking foolish was a very serious matter if you were trying to keep a couple of hundred soldiers cowed and respectful. Looking weak had probably been the foremost cause of death in their families for the past five generations. Who would they be blaming today for what had happened in Arizona? The one who had insisted on the meeting was Frank Tosca. But it must be terribly unsatisfying to be angry at a dead man.

Most of them would have no choice but to settle on the Butcher's Boy. He was safe to hate. He was an outsider. None of them would have to deal with retaliation from his cousins and in-laws. When he had killed Tosca, he had robbed the meeting of its purpose. He had contributed to the number and gravity of their potential legal troubles. He had also contributed to the spectacle they presented as a group of impotent, half-senile old men trying to reconstruct a past that could never return. It had been one against two hundred, and once again, the two hundred looked like idiots. That alone would make them want him dead.

She knew, and the Butcher's Boy must know too, that the death of a man like Frank Tosca wasn't entirely bad news to the other bosses. They were the veterans of a great many vendettas and coups. The older ones had lived through a couple of disputes that in some countries would have seemed like civil wars. They knew that a strong man like Tosca might revitalize an organization that had been stagnating for years. But the more success Tosca had and the more people flocked around him, the less power the other bosses would have. He would become the first among equals, and then, ultimately, the boss of bosses-- Il capo di tutti capi. Soon they would have been paying percentages to him for the privilege of running businesses, and after that, they would have begun to take orders from him and serve at his pleasure. Many of them must have been delighted that he had not made it home from Arizona.

None of that would help his killer. Getting the killer would be a way to overcome their new image problem and keep their power from leaking away.

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