Butcher's Road

by Lee Thomas

  Humphrey shook his head. This fact had been established early on.

  “You were sent to find Cardinal, as I was. But you don’t work for the police or the Irish or the Italians. You don’t work for anyone in Chicago.” This had also been established. “So, we know what you’re not. I want to assure you, we will be together until I find out what you are.” He lifted the ice pick and placed the point against the skin beneath Humphrey’s lower eyelid. A moment later, the man was trembling violently as if he were riding a carriage over rough roads. Tears spilled from his eyes like rain from a gutter spout. The reaction interested Rabin greatly.

  “You have sincere eyes,” he said. “I’d like to keep them in a jar as a reminder of our time together.”

  With that, the tremors shaking Humphrey’s body became a series of convulsions. Wet, clear snot bubbled from his broken nose; it drained over his lip and was quickly absorbed into the filthy gag. He swung his head from side to side and panted frantically, releasing a high-pitched whine through his nose.

  Every man had a particular weakness, a fear that overpowered all pretensions to bravery. Rabin was glad he’d stumbled onto Humphrey’s.

  He pulled the ice pick away and slapped the back of Humphrey’s head with a palm. “You’ll want to pay attention, Humphrey,” he said. “I’m going to count to five. At the count of five, I will either learn what I came here for, or I will puncture your eye.” Rabin stepped around and knelt down so that he could meet Humphrey’s gaze before he said, “And I’ll do it slow, Humphrey. So…very…fucking…slow.”

  The young man’s eyes grew comically wide and white. His convulsions returned in spasms that rocked the chair, making its legs click against the floor like the feet of a brain damaged tap dancer.

  “One,” Rabin said.

  Humphrey shook his head violently from side to side.

  “Three,” Rabin said. The fact he’d skipped the number two had not been missed by Humphrey, whose face had turned as red as a beet beneath the film of greasy sweat covering it. The stink of ammonia rose as Humphrey’s bladder released a stream of piss into his trousers.

  “Just nod your head, Humphrey. Tell me something fascinating. No one else ever needs to know.”

  Then as if what remained of his strength had drained away with the urine, Humphrey’s body relaxed and slumped.

  “Four,” Rabin whispered, just loud enough to be heard over the music.

  Humphrey nodded his head. Rabin nodded, too. He stood and walked around behind the chair. With the ice pick back in his pocket, he set his fingers to work on the knot of the gag. “You know what will happen if you call out. You know what will happen if you lie to me.” The young man nodded again. Rabin pulled the filthy scrap of shirt free and threw it on the floor.

  Humphrey gasped for breath. He coughed and wretched dryly. Finally, he managed to say, “The Alchemi.”

  “Pardon me?” Rabin asked, returning to his place in front of the chair.

  “The Alchemi,” Humphrey whispered.

  “What is that?”

  “We gather the metals and protect them.”

  Rabin felt a tide of rage rising behind his face. The punk kid was playing him for a fool. In a swift motion, he yanked the ice pick free and lunged forward, pressing the point against the soft flesh beneath Humphrey’s eye. “What did I say about lying?”

  “Cardinal stole the Rose,” the young man babbled. “It was stolen from the Alchemi and sold to Lonnie Musante and then Cardinal murdered Musante and stole the Rose. I was sent to find him, sent to find the Rose.”

  Rabin pressed the ice pick deeper until the dimpled skin nearly broke. Through the crimson haze of his anger, he remembered something that swine Conrad had said about a necklace that was incredibly important to Marco Impelliteri. Was this “Rose” the item in question?

  No, he thought. The little fucker is testing me. Take his eye. Take it right fucking now!

  Disturbed by the screeching voice that suddenly filled his head, Rabin pulled away and took a deep breath. He needed a moment to clear his thoughts, to silence the shrill demands for violence. Blood would come soon enough, but he had visited Humphrey with a purpose. Once he’d gotten what he needed, then he could entertain the needs of that scraping voice. Until then, his thoughts had to be lucid. He wasn’t an animal.

  “Tell me again,” Rabin said.

  “I belong to the Alchemi. We gather the thinking steel and harbor it, protect it.”

  “What is thinking steel?”

  Humphrey seemed confused as if Rabin had asked him to define air or water. “Long ago, the sky rained ore. It fell like God’s wrath all over Europe and the Orient.”

  Rabin considered the possibility that he’d already done too much damage to the young man. Perhaps Humphrey’s mind had snapped from fear and trauma. Whatever the case, Rabin wasn’t accustomed to forgiving regardless of the excuse. “I’m losing my patience, Humphrey,” he said.

  “It’s the truth. Or I think it is. It’s what we’re taught. The ore rained down on the earth, and it was discovered by the tribes of men. They used the raw ore to create alloys and from these they fashioned weapons and icons. Over time, the items were lost, or they were hoarded by immoral men who exploited the powers of the metal. The Alchemi was formed to protect the thinking steel.”

  “Your eyes must mean very little to you.”

  “I can prove it,” Humphrey said. “I can. Just wait.”

  “What kind of proof?” Rabin asked.

  “I was just sent to watch, so they didn’t give me a weapon, but I have something else. You took it out of my pocket when…it’s there, on the counter.”

  Rabin looked about the room and saw the low pile of items he’d removed from Humphrey’s pockets: a wallet, some loose change, a handkerchief, a cheap spring blade knife, a ring that held two simple house keys, and yes, there was something else. Something strange. It was an arced metal band, no longer than Rabin’s pinkie finger. Attached to this simple arm was a sheer plate of metal that ran diagonally from the bend. He crossed to the thing and lifted it. He remembered taking this from the inside pocket of the young man’s overcoat but he couldn’t remember having asked Humphrey about the item, though it certainly was odd enough to warrant such an inquiry. More than likely he hadn’t thought to ask because the device had not appeared to be a weapon, at least not a useful one. He lifted the thing from the counter and rubbed it between his fingers. The metallic surface was cold and presented an uncommon velvety texture.

  “What is it?” Rabin asked.

  “It’s for listening,” Humphrey said quickly. “You see that depression near the bottom of the angled arm? That goes in your ear. You can hear everything.”

  “That’s your proof? That’s your magic? A hearing assistant?”

  “Put it on,” Humphrey said. “The band goes over your ear like a spectacle stem. You’ll understand.”

  Rabin gave the device a thorough examination, searching for some hidden lever or spring mechanism that might identify the thing as a trap, but it had no moving parts, just two lengths of metal no wider than a cigar band attached by a thick and clumsy weld. Seeing no apparent danger, Rabin slid the arced band over his ear and positioned the flat metal over his left ear.

  At first, he heard only crackling like sturdy paper crumpled in a strong fist, and then a blast of noise punched the side of his head. He squeezed his eyes against the roar and quickly realized it was the tinny music from the radio amplified to ear splitting volume. Furious, he snatched the device from his head, but the screaming music echoed in his head like tortured souls, only far less pleasant. A groan escaped his throat, and he drove a fist into Humphrey’s cheek for not having warned him about the radio. Shock came and went quickly over the young man’s face.

  Then Rabin’s prisoner smiled. The pathetic little shit actually smiled, revealing a grin of bloody teeth. As the din of shrill horns and thundering drums faded, the voice of Rabin’s monster picked up the song, screaming wretched
orders, demanding punishment for the trick that had been played on them both. Rabin lifted the ice pick and struggled against his every instinct, fought to keep from driving the metal rod into the punk’s eye socket and through to his brain. The monster wanted the asshole dead, wanted his eye juice and blood to warm his fingers to slick everything up good and proper for the other socket, but Rabin battled the urge. He took deep breaths and pushed them through his teeth, sending flecks of spit showering over Humphrey’s face.

  “It needs time to adjust,” Humphrey said. “After it adjusts everything is okay. I swear it is.”

  Rabin punched Humphrey a second time, which seemed to placate and silence the monster for a time. After all, the young man hadn’t lied. The device, a simple strip of metal, had indeed acted as an amplifier, and were it not for the radio, which was already playing at an excessive volume, Rabin might well have found the device effective. This did not mean that he accepted Humphrey’s fairy tales, but a kernel of belief had been planted.

  He returned to the radio and switched it off, and then he crossed to the chair. Again he slid the device over his ear. In his other hand, he held the ice pick to his lips: shhh.

  Another moment of static was followed by two distinct pulsing rhythms, and soon enough Rabin identified those stuttering thuds as his heart and that of his prisoner. Then he heard more scratching, only instead of random static, Rabin understood the sound came from the walls, or rather the insects moving behind them. And then he heard voices, a choir of them crept into his ear. In a room at the end of the hall, a couple fucked on the floor, and he could hear the sound of flesh slapping flesh and he could hear the woman’s moans and the man whispering, “Fucking bitch. Fucking bitch,” in a soft rhythmic chant that almost sounded tender. And in a room above and to the north someone urinated and the sound filled his ear like the crashing of a waterfall, and more conversations—arguments over bills, children spouting irrelevancies—and more private moments poured into his head. Rabin considered the value of such a toy, understood the secrets he could gather like gold if he were in the vicinity when such valuable information was shared.

  He removed the device and slid it into the pocket of his suit jacket, and Paul Rabin smiled, which was an expression generally reserved for his wife. With a nod of his head he patted Humphrey’s shoulder.

  “Now you’re going to tell me about the necklace Cardinal stole,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

  • • •

  At least Humphrey hadn’t begged for his life like so many of the men Rabin had encountered over the years. That was admirable on the young man’s part, and completely rational by Rabin’s estimation. He grabbed the back of the chair and dragged it into the corner, next to the radio, and once he was out from behind it, he shoved the chair to the wall with his foot. Humphrey’s body rocked forward, spilling more of the viscous red tears from the holes in his eyes. Once satisfied with the position of the body, Rabin went to the window and opened it wide. A gust of icy wind blew over him. It felt soothing. Pleasant. With the window open and the room’s temperature already dropping, Rabin turned the knob on the radiator off and then yanked the window shade down and closed the curtains. The eager wind tossed the window coverings about, but would sufficiently obstruct a prolonged and direct view into the room. This finished, he pulled the blanket off of the bed and tacked two corners above the door jamb, and then he tacked the lower edge of the blanket to the door itself, making sure to leave enough play in the fabric for him to exit. Between the cold and the bedding, it could be weeks before anyone noticed a suspicious odor emanating from the room. Of course, a landlord or caretaker would be in sooner than that if the rent wasn’t paid through the month, but Rabin wasn’t interested in secreting the body forever, just long enough for anyone who might have seen him entering or exiting the building to forget his face.

  Satisfied with his preparations, he turned to Humphrey, who appeared to be gazing into his own lap, and Rabin stared at the top of the young man’s head.

  Why didn’t you beg for your life? he wondered. Do you believe glory awaits you wherever you’ve been sent?

  Such a strange thing, begging for one’s life. For a good man, a religious man, death should have been considered welcome, an early jump on blissful eternity. For most of the men Rabin encountered—falsely religious and in no way good—their begging was ludicrous, because they had to know their ends had come. What was more rational, begging to live through days and days of agony or having two slugs behind the ear, having fear and pain turned off like a light? Rabin understood even if he found it puzzling. It was Hope. It was that ridiculous light at the end of the tunnel that men and women reached for, and they’d crawl over glass and through lakes of shit in the service of Hope. People were willing to endure battering and burns and cuts to the bone for hours and days, and they begged to be allowed to live to continue enduring their torment because Hope tricked them into believing some different, and wholly irrational, outcome might be seconds away.

  But this young man, this Humphrey, he hadn’t begged for his life. Why? Rabin wondered.

  The thought followed him out of the room and down the stairs of the apartment and it lingered like smoke around his head as he walked to his car. And then the wonder was gone. Rabin thought about Irene and decided to pay his wife a late visit, after stopping by the florist for a spray of brightly colored blossoms. He would have to go home first and change his clothes and wash his hands a little more thoroughly, and he would need something to eat. His stomach was growling and kicking for sustenance, so, yes, he’d stop at the deli before going to the florist, and then he’d spend a leisurely afternoon with his wife.

  And though he thought about what Humphrey had told him, even grew excited at the possibilities of what he’d been told the Rose could do, he never again thought of Humphrey or why he hadn’t begged for his life. To Rabin, the young man had been a conduit of information, no more important than a phone line stretching across the plains of Kansas.

  Chapter 16

  The Hot and the Cold of It

  After another day of vague reality and vivid delusion, Butch woke to find his breath came easier and the ache in his head had receded, more a memory of pain than a true ache. Sweat cooled on his brow and neck, and it felt good after so much heat. With some effort, he managed to sit up in the bed. The room was murky, shadows on shadows. The space between the drapes was dark. He listened for sounds in the house, but he only heard the distant clopping of hooves on stone.

  Sliding his legs around to dangle off the side of the bed, Butch took a cautious breath, filled his lungs. The air rattled in his chest, and the fluid there bubbled. He coughed painfully and brought up a thick wad of muck. On the table beside his bed he found a ceramic bowl and he spit into it and managed another deep breath, which along with the cool sweat were the only pleasant sensations he could feel. His body hurt all over. He couldn’t remember a single wrestling bout or bar fight that had left him so thoroughly miserable. Even when the Hungarian, Dobos, had snapped Butch’s wrist, the pain and incapacitation had been isolated, and he’d felt healthy despite the injury. Now he simply felt weak and beaten, but he was on the mending side of the sickness, whatever it had been. He was certain of that.

  Butch eased off the bed and stood. The floor wobbled beneath his feet, but he managed to stay upright. He took a step and then another until his stride had competence if not confidence.

  Uncomfortably aware of his nudity, Butch felt his way around the room, searching for his suit. He didn’t want to put it on; simply wanted to know it was there if he needed to dress in a hurry. When he reached the armoire he leaned against it and took several shallow breaths, orienting himself before opening the wardrobe. Though his eyes had not fully adjusted to the gloom, Butch could see that his suit was not inside. He felt around, regardless, and his fingers slid across a panel of silk. Butch removed the dressing gown from the hook and wrapped himself in it. Though a bit tight in the shoulders, the robe fit, and once
it was secured he closed the doors and leaned back against them.

  It then struck him that if his suit was gone, then so was his wallet, and worse still, so was the necklace: his only leverage against the men who wanted him dead.

  Uneasy, he made his way across the room and turned the light switch. Three weak bulbs from an overhead fixture bathed the room in grim, yellow light. Not a pleasant glow, but useful. He returned to the armoire and opened the doors, but it was, as he’d known, empty. He searched the desktop and even lowered himself to his knees to check under the bed, but there was no sign of his belongings. A flare of panic lit in his chest and Butch walked on unstable legs to the archway. He left the room and entered a parlor with walls so red they looked as if they’d been hosed down in blood. Again he listened.

  A noise from above caught his attention but he couldn’t identify it. A gasp? A hiss?

  The house struck him as oddly constructed. It seemed to be comprised of two broad hallways stacked atop one another with partial walls to separate living spaces. In the kitchen, the gasping, hissing sound came again and he cocked his head toward the spiral staircase. Though he questioned the courtesy of wandering through a stranger’s house, the need to find his belongings compelled him. He crossed to the spiral stairs and hunched over to begin the climb. The metal rungs were like ice beneath his feet, sending a chill up to the base of his neck. Halfway up the twisting case he paused to catch his breath.

  On the second floor the gasping announced an occupant in the room ahead, and he walked toward it. He thought to say something, to declare his presence, but a wave of dizziness crashed behind his eyes, forcing him to turn to the railing. He grasped it tightly and peered down into the kitchen, which swirled and blurred. The vertigo passed a moment later, but it left Butch breathless, clutching the railing with white knuckles. A fresh icy layer of sweat covered his face and neck. He breathed deeply until he regained his composure and then he turned toward the room ahead. The door (it seemed to be the only door in the house) had been left open.