Butcher's Road

by Lee Thomas

  “Greetings,” Rabin said. “No games now, Paddy. I left all my patience in a hospital room.”

  “Is that a joke?” Rory asked.

  “You’re a quick one,” Rabin said. “Where is Butch Cardinal?”

  “I don’t know,” Rory replied.

  Rabin’s eyes flashed with a furious light. His lips pulled in tight across his teeth. “That’s a lie. You only get one.”

  “Why don’t you put down that gun and fight like a man?”

  Rabin’s face flickered with amusement and he exhaled hot breath over Rory’s cheek with a growling hiss. He hissed a second time before saying, “That’s one idea. Would you like to hear mine?” Rabin ground the gun barrel into Rory’s temple. “My idea would be to put a hole in your head and then go upstairs to fuck your daughter with my knife. How’s that sound?”

  The statement, brutal and vulgar, shocked Rory so badly his skin went cold and shriveled tight to his muscles. He closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at the madman, so he would have a moment to think clearly. A level of savagery was to be expected from a man like this, but the glee behind Rabin’s words and the raw animal hate that suffused that glee like venom were unnatural. Rory felt as if he were facing a cobra, a rabid dog, or a shark. Reason was beyond this creature, and knowing this hollowed Rory out.

  “You strike me as a close family,” Rabin said. “I’ll bet she knows exactly what you know, but I might have a better time getting the information from her. Can you imagine me slipping a hunting knife into her—”

  “Stop it,” Rory whispered. He still had Molly’s first pair of shoes, the first ribbon Maureen had ever tied in their child’s hair. This monster had no right to share the same world with Molly, let alone the same room. He would do anything to keep Rabin away from her. “She doesn’t know anything.”

  “Then tell me what I want to know. Point me to Cardinal and I’ll save the good stuff for him.”

  Rory opened his eyes. The face in front of his had lost its crazy contortion. Instead, it rested in a serene, even bland, expression. But the eyes were cold and dark and threatened to pull Rory into their depths like twin wells, hard-edged and bottomless. “He’s in New Orleans,” Rory said.

  His thoughts jumbled and frayed. They blurred. Guilt stabbed through the haze, but he’d had no choice. The man was threatening to force horrible things on Molly, and there wasn’t a doubt in Rory’s mind that the killer would follow through on them. He thought about his daughter—he had to protect her—and about Butch, for whom there could never be enough apology now, and he recalled memories of his wife and his great battles in the ring, and through it all, he heard a child’s voice, his voice, reciting the Lord’s Prayer as he’d once done every night before bed.

  Our Father in heaven,

  hallowed be your name.

  Your kingdom come…

  “New Orleans is vague,” Rabin said. He twisted the gun barrel painfully into the soft skin at the side of Rory’s head. “Give me the name of a hotel. Give me an address.”

  “I don’t know,” Rory said. “I don’t know.”

  “How much of your daughter’s blood would it take for you to remember? Maybe a flood pouring from between her legs? Hmm, Paddy? You think a flood would do it? It’d feel good on my hands.” Rabin licked his upper lip with a flicking tongue. “It’d feel great on my cock.”

  Rory silently begged Butch to forgive him, and then he prayed his Lord would show similar pardon. “He’s not in a hotel. He’s staying with a friend. Hollis Rossington. He lives at—”

  A gunshot filled the room with deafening noise. The blast silenced Rory’s frantic babbling, and he squeezed his eyes closed, certain that Rabin had decided to end his interrogation. But Rory felt no pain, no sudden lurch from a bullet’s trespass. When he opened his eyes, he didn’t see Rabin. He saw Molly. Standing on the far side of the gym, aiming down the barrel of the Colt he’d given her.

  “Son of a bitch,” Rabin rasped at his side. The shot had sent the killer spinning into the wall.

  Molly fired a second time. A spray of plaster rose up from where the bullet hit the wall, equidistant between the heads of Rory Sullivan and Paul Rabin.

  Then Rory was being shoved forward. Rabin’s arm wrapped around his neck and a sharp point, like the tip of a spike, pressed under his chin. He didn’t know what had become of the killer’s gun, and though he felt a moment of gratitude to know Molly was safely distanced from the animal, the point at his chin meant the threat to Rory was still very present.

  The hard muscle of Rabin’s chest pushed against his shoulder blades. The killer’s blood, hot and wet, seeped through the back of Rory’s shirt.

  “Holy mother of fuck,” Rabin said into his ear. “I forgot how much this hurts.”

  “Let him go,” Molly called, positioning the gun so that it seemed to be aimed at Rory’s forehead.

  “Unlock the door,” said Rabin. He squeezed his forearm against Rory’s windpipe. “Do it or I’ll kill you both before I drop.”

  Molly cried, even though the face beneath the tears showed ferocity and resolve. Her hands shook violently, making the gun barrel bob and nod. Rory couldn’t count on her saving his life again…or her own.

  He reached out and turned the bolt lock on the front door.

  “Don’t,” Molly called. “Don’t you let him out.”

  “Think of her blood pooling on the floor, Paddy. Think of the things I’ll do to her,” Rabin said. His breath wheezed hotly on Rory’s neck. “Open the fucking door.”

  He did as he was told and turned the door handle, throwing it wide to let in a gust of freezing air. Rabin walked him forward, and then the arm left his neck and the point was gone from beneath his chin. Ahead, Rory saw Molly’s face contort with dread. She screamed. Rory spun, ready to confront the man who had invaded his business, his home.

  But Rabin was already halfway through the door, and he was driving an ice pick downward. The spike buried deep in Rory’s shoulder. It punctured his muscle and clicked against bone, sending a white-hot bolt across his chest and turning his legs to rubber. Rory fell forward, slamming the door with his weight before his legs failed completely, and he collapsed to the floor.

  Pain shot across his torso, and he knew it had nothing to do with the steel shaft sticking out of his shoulder. It felt like someone was laying into his ribs with brass knuckles, only from the inside of his chest. He imagined his heart made of glass. Shattered by the driving fist. Its edges cut and tore the nearby organs, and all of the pain he had ever known radiated from its jagged edges. He gasped for air. Tried to stand. Failed. He dropped onto his back and watched the ceiling swim and blur.

  Molly is safe, he thought. The beast is gone and Molly is safe.

  Please let her be safe.

  Chapter 25

  Shit on a String

  The day after meeting with Seward, the shopkeeper, Butch got an early start on the man’s list. The first place he visited was a house just outside of the French Quarter on Esplanade Avenue. It belonged to a woman named Mrs. Dauphine Marcoux. Bright blue paint slathered the siding of her home in an eye-aching hue. After ringing the doorbell, he fidgeted on the stoop, rocking back on his heels and making fists in his pockets. He drew his gaze upwards and noted the ceiling of the porch had been painted in a softer sky blue.

  Footsteps approached the door. Butch stopped rocking and removed his hands from his pockets. When the door opened, he found himself facing a beautiful, plump Asian woman. Her hair was tied back into a loose ponytail, and she wore a red silk robe. A poorly rolled cigarette dangled from her lips. She looked as though she’d just climbed out of bed.

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  “Dauphine?”

  The woman smirked and shook her head, releasing a thick cloud of smoke as she did so. “Do I look like a Dauphine?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well I don’t, and I’m not.” She drew on her cigarette, the end burning hot orange and fast, consumi
ng nearly a quarter of the smoke in a single drag. Her exhalation cast a blue-white cloud around her face. “What do you want?”

  Her voice surprised Butch. She spoke with a pronounced accent, but it had nothing to do with the Orient. She sounded more like a Brooklyn housewife than a China Doll, and Butch found this so intriguing he didn’t immediately reply.

  “Are you feeble?” she asked, annoyed.

  “No,” Butch said, taken aback. “I’m here to see Dauphine.”

  “Don’t you mean Mrs. Marcoux?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “And what is your business with Mrs. Marcoux?”

  “A man named Seward suggested she might be able to help me identify a piece of jewelry.”

  The woman licked her upper lip, and then plucked a bit of tobacco from her tongue with two talon-long fingernails, coated in ruby red polish. “She doesn’t take visitors before lunch. And you’ll need to make an appointment.”

  “Can I see her this afternoon?”

  “If you make an appointment.”

  “How do I—”

  “What time to do you want to see her?” the woman asked testily. She drew on her cigarette again, and blew smoke in Butch’s face, waiting for his reply.

  “Two o’clock?”

  “No. She’s busy at two o’clock. Come back at three-thirty, and maybe she’ll see you. She’s preparing for a trip, so you’ll just have to take your chances.”

  And then the door closed in his face.

  • • •

  Over the years Butch had visited New Orleans a number of times, but he only remembered it in darkness. Nighttime. After an exhibition bout or a meet-and-greet with local snobs who happened to be sports enthusiasts, he’d gone out to Bourbon Street, seeking the sweet drinks, lively jazz, and sociable women the city provided in abundance. Those were wonderful days.

  At three in the morning he might share a plate of oysters with a young lady or a particularly entertaining drunk. He might walk the lamp lit streets from Canal to Esplanade, admiring the façades of homes and shops, none of which looked quite real to his eye—all seeming to be part of a child’s toy village. One evening he stood on the corner of Chartres and Ursuline, holding a bottle of Scotch, head cocked back, counting stars. On the bank of the Mississippi River, he finished that bottle as he gazed in amazement at the motionless moon, hanging steadfastly above the rushing current. The air was scented with cayenne and cumin and cinnamon. Other nights, he joked and laughed in rundown clubs. He stomped his foot in tempo with the trombone player and the drummer who hit his skins with stripped tree branches. In a room made gray by cigar smoke, he played poker with four lawyers and a toothless old hag named Penny, who the lawyers treated with absolute reverence. He made love to a woman whose Creole accent was so thick he couldn’t understand a word she said.

  He had many fine memories of the city, but sunlight touched none of them.

  He remembered the people being friendly and boisterous, but he had seen little of that throughout his recent visit, and he wondered if it was the night itself that brought joy to the city.

  The second address on his list denoted a location on the southwest corner of the Quarter, only a few blocks from Seward’s tiny shop, near the train station. Butch walked the streets in a zigzagging pattern, passing clubs that reeked of sickness and sour booze, and restaurants that pumped pure ambrosia into the air. Trash cluttered the gutters and as he approached the river he caught the dense stench of mule shit. When he reached his destination, a small antique shop with the name Mercer painted in gold across the window, he again found himself fidgeting before reaching for the handle and letting himself into the shop.

  A fog of dust roiled in the door’s wake. Butch coughed heartily.

  On first glance, everything in the shop appeared to be common for such an establishment. Armoires, desks, leather chairs, Chinese screens, bronze and marble statuary, but as Butch looked closer at the items, he noticed oddities: a hat stand that seemed to have been constructed of bone; a chest of drawers with intricate carvings covering its surface, but no pulls for any of the drawers; an armoire that wore a wig of Spanish moss; a marble bust of a grinning man whose teeth were sharp and angled like those of an alligator; a severed arm in a glass case with a black tattoo running from wrist to elbow. The thick symbols etched in the skin meant nothing to Butch but they made his skin pucker nonetheless.

  “Good morning, sir!”

  Butch turned away from the painted arm. The voice had come from a counter on the far side of the shop. Behind it, a wiry little man in a white suit with oil-polished hair stood straight-backed with his hands folded behind him.

  “Good morning,” Butch said.

  He made his way down the aisle. Though he tried to keep his attention on the man ahead, he occasionally noticed the details of the displays around him: a hand mirror ringed in what appeared to be human teeth; a piece of furniture that might have been a desk or dining table, but which more than anything looked like a funeral slab; the skull of a goat with some kind of star carved into its brow.

  “Lovely morning,” the proprietor said. “Might get us some rain later this afternoon, but that’s a future we cannot know.”

  Butch smiled. Despite the questionable, even repugnant, items that filled the shop, at least he was faced with a courteous soul.

  “It is a fine day,” Butch agreed.

  “And what can I do for you?” the man asked, pushing on the bridge of his wire framed glasses.

  “Are you Edmund Mercer?”

  “Indeed I am.”

  “I was told you might be able to help me with something.”

  “Something to sell? Something to buy?”

  “No,” Butch said. “Mostly just telling me what something is.”

  “I see.” Mercer made it sound like the most interesting proposition he’d ever heard. “And what is the nature of this item?”

  “It’s a necklace,” Butch said, and then added, “Well, here, I have it right here.”

  He freed the necklace from his collar and presented the pendant on the flat of his palm.

  Mercer leaned over the counter. He pulled a hand from behind his back and asked, “May I touch it?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Mercer wrapped his palm around the pendant and closed his eyes. Butch stood perplexed, wondering why the shopkeeper was holding the thing rather than looking at it. Finally, Mercer opened his eyes and released the pendant and stepped away.

  “Is this a joke?” Mercer asked good-naturedly.

  “No,” Butch replied.

  “I’m afraid it must be if you think you can pawn such a thing off on me.”

  “You didn’t even look at it. Besides, I’m not trying to pawn anything. I just want to know what it is.”

  “Well, as far as I’m concerned it’s a piece of junk,” Mercer said. His good nature had apparently been tested. The smile vanished. Indignation rose on the man’s face, a pink sheen that grew deeper as his voice grew louder. “And I have no idea why you’d think it had any value at all. It’s clearly worthless, just a chunk of bronze or pewter stained red. I am a respectable merchant. I buy and sell precious items. I’m not a rubbish man. I am not a joke. I am respectable. Who sent you to me?”

  “Okay, that’s fine,” Butch said.

  “Did Elspeth put you up to this? This has her stench all over it. Sending you in here with shit on a string and trying to pass it off as arcane. She has always been jealous of my collection. Always! Well you can tell her I am not to be toyed with. I am not.”

  Butch thanked the man, though Mercer was too busy shouting to notice. He walked out of the store as the lunatic shopkeeper’s voice reached a shrill, nearly incoherent screech. On the sidewalk, he smiled at Mercer’s preposterous behavior. And then he chuckled, which became a laugh—a great booming laugh, like warm bubbles of amusement coursing up his throat.

  • • •

  Angry gray clouds began to creep across the sky as Butch waited fo
r the streetcar on St. Charles Avenue. Initially, he’d been amused by Edmund Mercer’s outburst. Obviously the twerp had a serious self-image problem and it took little to tease it from him. But now, on a small thatch of overgrown grass, waiting for the streetcar, he felt what little optimism he’d regained slipping away. If the necklace was garbage, as Mercer suggested—as all of the clerks at the traditional shops had suggested—then Butch was wasting his time. Marco Impelliteri had simply wanted him dead, along with Lonnie Musante. Butch didn’t know why and he had no one to ask.

  The streetcar’s brakes squealed, and Butch climbed inside.

  Arcane. Strange word. It began to gnaw at him. Mercer had used the word casually, but Butch had heard it before, plenty of times. The old broads in the spook rackets whispered it to the chumps on the far side of their crystal balls, making it sound dangerous and mystical.

  As a boy he’d believed in magic. He had needed to believe in something grander than the dirty walls surrounding him, the misery on his mother’s face, and the pain that came from his father’s tongue and knuckles. Evenings, when it wasn’t too cold outside, his sister would walk with him to the creek and she’d tell him stories. Often enough Clara recited old fairy tales—fanciful myths she’d heard in school or from their mother before their father had put an end to such things. Butch had wanted to steal Jack’s golden goose, had wanted to awaken Sleeping Beauty with his kiss, had dreamed of saving Hansel and Gretel from the witch before he devoured her sweet, sticky house.

  More thrilling than the stories were the times that Uncle Spencer had come to visit. Spencer worked the tracks, a conductor with the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, and while he had dozens of funny and shocking stories to tell about his travels, he also knew magic. He could pull coins from behind Butch’s ears and produce fire from his fingertips, and he could always guess what card Butch had taken from the center of the deck. One evening Uncle Spencer gave Butch a rusted key and told Butch it could unlock invisible doors—doors that were hidden throughout the world; doors that entered into impossible landscapes of beauty and danger. And holding that key in his chubby palm, Butch had seen those doors. Really seen them. It felt like the rusted metal had been made of pure electricity and grasping it had sent signals to his brain, showing him portals made of wood and glass and gold—some over the water, others in the middle of busy streets. He had not wanted to return that key to Uncle Spencer, because it had many more secrets to reveal, Butch knew, but Spencer had demanded its return.