The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Come-a-here, come-a-here. Pu-uss . . .

  The cat was still frozen, smelling the cracker but not knowing what to do, dumb dickhead.

  He took a step backward, as if he didn’t give a flying fuck. The cat watched him.

  Out came the Treet again. Another lick, a big smile. Like it was the best thing he’d ever eaten in his life.

  The cat took a couple of cautious steps, rocking the bed.

  Lick.

  Yum yum.

  He waved the Tuna Treet, put it between his teeth, and started to leave the room.

  The cat jumped off the bed and landed silently on the white carpet, stepping on her to do it, using her grossed-out belly as a diving board. She was so out of it she didn’t even feel it.

  He kept walking toward the door, real casual.

  C’mere, sweetie.

  A piece of the Treet broke off in his mouth—actually it didn’t taste that bad.

  Maybe I’ll eat it myself, you furry little piece of shit.

  The cat was following him from a distance as he backed out of the room, smiling and licking the Tuna Treet.

  They were out on the landing now. He closed the door to the ice palace.

  The cat meowed, making like it was his friend.

  Beg, dickhead.

  He kept walking backward, nibbling on the Tuna Treet. Not bad, actually. Kind of like fried fish.

  The cat followed him.

  Here, kitty, stupid, fucking kitty.

  Walk, follow, walk, follow.

  A look-down to see what the maids were doing.

  Still blabbing and vacuuming. The coast was clear.

  Into his room, licking, waving.

  In came the cat.

  Close the door, lock it, grab the furry fucker by the neck and throw it hard against the wall.

  Thud. It cried out and slid down the wall and landed on his bed, alive but something was broken. It just lay there looking funny.

  He unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk, pulled out the hypodermic needle that he’d prepared. Lidocaine from one of the little rubber-topped bottles Doctor kept in the library closet, along with boxes of disposable needles, packages of gloves, bandages, and the empty doctor’s bag—a Gladstone bag, it was called—which made this fantastic thunk when you opened and closed it. A couple of times he’d taken stuff, put it in the bag, and brought it up to his room.

  Big smile: Hi, I’m Dr. Terrific. What seems to be the problem?

  He’d used lidocaine on bugs and worms and the mouse that he’d found half-dead in the trap in the cellar. Mostly it killed them right away, so he figured it was too strong. But bugs were no fun anyway—so small, just sticking them with the needle fucked them totally up. And the mouse had been all crushed, almost dead when he found it.

  A cat, now that was a different story—a step forward, real science.

  In school, he was flunking science because it wasn’t real science—the teacher was a lame-o, all words, no reality.

  The cat tried to crawl off the bed, stopped, just lay there.

  This was real. He’d been real scientific, taken the time to plan everything. There was a pediatrics book in the library—he read it for hours before finding a drug dosage chart for newborn infants, then used it to dilute the lidocaine, then added even more water, mixing all of it together in a juice glass, hoping he hadn’t ruined the lidocaine.

  Only one way to find out.

  The cat was trying to get off the bed, again. Its eyes were all cloudy and its back legs were dragging.

  Fuck you, dickhead, messing things up like that!

  He picked it up by the scruff, stuck the needle in its chest, and shot in the lidocaine. Did it a bunch more times, the way it said in the book, trying to get pinpoint anesthesia.

  The cat made squeaky sounds, struggled for a while, then shuddered and then went all stiff.

  He placed it on his desk, belly-up, on top of the layers of newspaper he’d spread all over.

  It wasn’t moving—shit! No fair!

  No, wait . . . Yeah, there it was, the chest going up and down. Fucker was still breathing, weak, you could barely see it, but still breathing!

  All right!

  He opened the bottom drawer again, took out the two knives that he’d chosen from the box in the library: the biggest scalpel and a curved bistoury. He held them in his hands, watching the cat breathe, knowing this was real science, not any bugs or half-dead mouses.

  Hi, I’m Dr. Terrific.

  What seems to be the problem, Mr. Cat, Mr. Snowball? Mr. Little Dickhead who almost ruined my life?

  The cat just lay there.

  Big problems for you.

  Things got all red in front of his eyes.

  The roar in his head got louder.

  He took a deep breath. A bunch of them, until things got clear again.

  Hello, Mr. Cat.

  Time for surgery.

  CHAPTER

  37

  Friday. Daoud’s nights keeping Roselli under surveillance had been as productive as tilling concrete.

  For the past week, the monk had remained within the walls of Saint Saviour’s, taking only one brief walk Wednesday night, shortly after midnight. Not even a walk, really. Fifty steps before turning on his heel—abruptly, as if he’d experienced anxiety, a sudden change of heart about venturing out—and heading back quickly for the refuge of the monastery. Daoud had just begun to trail him, walking maybe ten meters behind, disguised as a Franciscan, the hood pulled down. After Roselli changed direction, Daoud kept on going and, as they passed each other, retracted his head into the brown folds of his robe and stared downward, as if lost in contemplation.

  When Roselli had gone twenty more steps, nearing the curve at Casa Nova Road, Daoud permitted himself a half-turn and a look back. He watched the monk round the bend and disappear; then Daoud headed swiftly toward the monastery on silent, crepe-soled feet, getting to the curve just in time to see his quarry vanish behind the large doors. He stopped, listened, heard retreating footsteps, and waited in the darkness for an hour before satisfying himself that Roselli was in for the night.

  He kept the surveillance going until daybreak, shuffling back and forth on St. Francis Road, down Aqabat el Khanqa to the Via Dolorosa, reading the Arabic Bible that he’d brought for a prop, always keeping one eye on the tower of the monastery. He stuck it out until the city awoke under a golden banner of sunlight, watched early risers emerging from the shadows, and, tucking the Bible under his arm, started walking away in an old man’s halting pace, blending in with the burgeoning stream of workers and worshippers, allowing himself to be carried along in the human flow that exited the Old City at the New Gate.

  Engine roars and bleats and guttural commands filled his ears. Fruit and vegetable vendors were unloading their cargo; flocks of sheep were being herded toward the city walls for market. He inhaled the rotten sweetness of wet produce, made his way through dancing spirals of dung-laden dust, and walked the two kilometers to his car, still dressed as a monk.

  The night-watch assignment was a little boring, but he enjoyed the solitude, the coolness of dark, empty streets. Took strange pleasure in the coarse, heavy feel of the robe, the large, leather-bound Bible he’d brought from home. As he drove home to Bethlehem, he wondered what it would have been like had he devoted his life to Christ.

  Shmeltzer continued the week’s routine of double-checking doctors, finding them arrogant, stingy with their time, a real bunch of little princes. Friday morning he had breakfast with his Shin Bet friend at the Sheraton, watched her eat buck-wheat pancakes with powdered sugar and maple syrup, and asked the tape recorder in her purse to contact Mossad and check out Juliet Haddad’s Beirut brothel. Afternoon was more record-searching and collating, the detailed, patience-straining work that he found enjoyable.

  Friday evening he spent, as he had the past five evenings, with Eva Schlesinger, waiting in the corridor at the Hadassah Oncology Ward, then taking her arm as she walked shakily out of the
room where her husband lay unconscious, hooked up to monitors and nourished by tubes.

  Shmeltzer leaned against a gurney and watched people hurrying up and down the hospital halls, oblivious to his presence. Nurses, technicians. More doctors—he couldn’t get away from them. Not that they were worth a damn. He remembered their reactions to Leah’s aneurysm, the damned shrugs and false sympathy.

  One time he’d peeked into Schlesinger’s room, amazed at how far the old man had faded in so short a time. The tubes and needles were all over him, like the tentacles of some kind of sea monster—a giant jellyfish—wrapping themselves around what remained of his body. Meters and machines beeping away as if it meant something. All that technology was supposed to be life supporting—that was the story the white-coats told—but to Shmeltzer it seemed to be sucking the life out of the old palmahi.

  A couple of times the hospital visits had been followed by tea at a café, an hour or so of winding down from the damned hospital ambience, small talk to hide from the big issue. But tonight Eva told him to take her straight home. During the drive back to French Hill, she was silent, sitting up against the passenger door, as far from him as possible. When they got to her door, she turned the key in the lock, gave him a look full of anger—no, more than that: hatred.

  Wrong time, wrong place, he thought, and braced himself for something unpleasant, feeling like an idiot for getting involved in a no-win situation, for getting involved at all. But instead of spitting out her pain, Eva bored her eyes into his, breathed in deeply, took his hand, and pulled him into the apartment. Moments later they were lying next to each other in her bed—Tell it straight, shmuck: their bed, hers and the old man’s. Schlesinger wouldn’t be sleeping in it again but Shmeltzer still felt like an adulterer.

  They remained that way for a while, naked and sweating atop the covers, holding hands, staring at the ceiling. Both of them mute, the words knocked out of them, a mismatched pair of alter kockers, if he’d ever seen one. He, a scrawny bird; she, all pillows, wonderfully upholstered, her breasts heavy and flattened, thighs as soft and white as hallah dough.

  She began crying. Shmeltzer felt the words of comfort lump up in his gullet, congealed by inhibition. He lifted her hand, touched dimpled knuckles to his mouth. Then, suddenly, they were rolling toward each other, slapping against each other like magnets of opposite polarity. Cleaving and clawing, Shmeltzer cradling her, listening to her sobs, wiping wet cheeks, feeling—and this was really crazy—young and strong. As if time were a pie and a large slice had been restored by some compassionate god.

  The Chinaman spent another Friday night in and around the Damascus Gate, alternating between joking around with the lowlifes and pressuring them. Receiving promises from all of them, Arabs and Jews, that the moment they saw or heard anything, blah blah blah.

  At one in the morning a series of behind-the-hand whispers steered him to a petty sleaze named Gadallah Ibn Hamdeh, and known as Little Hook, a diminutive, crook-backed thief and swindler who sidelined by running girls out on the Jericho Road. The Chinaman knew him by sight but had never dealt with him personally and wasn’t familiar with his haunts. It took an hour to find him, halfway across the Old City, in Omar Ibn el Khatab Square, inside the Jaffa Gate. Talking to a pair of backpackers at the top of the steps that led down to David Street, just past the facade of the Petra Hotel.

  The Chinaman stood back for a moment and watched them conferring in the dark, wondering if it was a drug deal. Ibn Hamdeh was bowing and scraping, gesticulating wildly with his arms as if painting a picture in the air, reaching back every so often to touch his hump. The backpackers followed every movement and smiled like trusting idiots. Except for a solitary street sweeper who soon turned down the Armenian Patriarchate Road, the three of them were alone in the square; the Aftimos Market and all the other shops on David Street, dark and shuttered.

  Too conspicuous for dope, decided the Chinaman. Had to be some kind of swindle.

  The backpackers looked to be around nineteen or twenty, a boy and a girl, tall and heavily built, wearing shorts and tank tops and hiking boots, and carrying nylon knapsacks supported by aluminum frames. Scandinavian, he guessed, from the goyische features and blond, stringy hair. They towered over the little hunchback as he kept jabbering on in a steady stream of broken English. Laying on the shit in a high, choppy voice.

  When the boy pulled out money, the Chinaman approached, nodding at the backpackers and asking Little Hook, in Arabic, what the hell he was up to. The hunchback seemed to shrivel. He backed away from the money and the detective. The Chinaman whipped out his arm and grabbed him by the elbow. A look of protective aggression came into the male backpacker’s eyes. He had peach fuzz on his chin, a narrow mouth set in a perpetual pucker.

  “He’s my friend, man.”

  “He’s a crook,” said the Chinaman in English, and when the boy continued to look hostile, showed him his police badge. The backpackers stared at it, then at each other.

  “Tell them,” the Chinaman commanded Little Hook, who was grimacing as if in agony, doing a little dance, calling the Scandinavians “my friends, my friends,” playing the part of victim, outrageously overacting.

  “Hey, man,” said the backpacker. “We were seeking a place for the night. This fellow was helping us.”

  “This fellow is a crook. Tell them. Hook.”

  Ibn Hamdeh hesitated. The Chinaman squeezed his arm and the little thief started crowing: “I’m crook. Yes.” He laughed, displaying toothless upper gums, lower incisors jacketed with steel. “I’m nice guy, but crook, ha ha.”

  “What did he tell you?” the Chinaman asked the backpackers. “That his sister has a nice place, warm bed, running water, and free breakfast—you give him a finder’s fee and he’d take you there?”

  The girl nodded.

  “He has no sister. If he did, she’d be a pickpocket. How much did he ask for?”

  The Scandinavians looked away in embarrassment.

  “Five American dollars,” said the girl.

  “Together, or each?”

  “Each.”

  The Chinaman shook his head and kicked Ibn Hamdeh in the seat of the pants. “How much money can you spend on a room?” he asked the backpackers.

  “Not much,” said the boy, looking at the bills in his hands and putting them back in his pocket.

  “Try the YMCAs. There’s one in East Jerusalem and one in West Jerusalem.”

  “Which one’s cheaper?” asked the girl.

  “I think they’re the same. The east one’s smaller, but closer.” He gave them directions, the boy said, “Thanks, man,” and they loped off. Stupid babies.

  “Now,” he said, dragging Ibn Hamdeh up David Street and pushing him against the grate of a souvenir shop. He flipped the little rascal around, frisked him for weapons, and came up with a cheap knife with a fake pearl handle that he pulverized under his heel. Spinning Ibn Hamdeh around so that they were face to face, he looked down on him, down on greasy hair, fishy features, the hump covered by a flowered shirt that reeked of stale sweat.

  “Now, Gadallah, do you know who I am?”

  “Yes, sir. The . . . police.”

  “Go on, say what you were going to say.” The Chinaman smiled.

  Little Hook trembled.

  “Slant Eye, right?” said the Chinaman. He took hold of Ibn Hamdeh’s belt, lifted him several inches in the air—the shmuck weighed less than his concrete-can barbell. “Everything you’ve heard about me is true.”

  “Most certainly, sir.”

  The Chinaman held him that way for a while, then lowered him and told him what he’d heard on the street, got ready for resistance, the need to exert a little pressure. But rather than harden the hunchback’s defenses; the inquiry seemed to cheer him. He opened up immediately. Laying on the sirs and talking fast in that same choppy voice about a man who had scared one of his girls the previous Thursday night, on the Jericho Road just before it hooked east, just above Silwan. An American with
crazy eyes who’d seemed to materialize out of nowhere, on foot—the girl had seen no car, figured he’d been hiding somewhere off the road.

  Eight days ago, thought the Chinaman. Exactly a week after Juliet’s murder.

  “Why’d you take so long to report it, asshole?”

  Little Hook began an obsequious dance of shuffles and shrugs. “Sir, sir, I didn’t realize—”

  “Never mind. Tell me what happened exactly?”

  “The American asked her for sex, showed her a roll of American dollars. But his eyes scared her and she refused.”

  “Is she in the habit of being picky?”

  “Everyone’s scared now, sir. The Butcher walks the streets.” Ibn Hamdeh looked grave, putting on what the Chinaman thought was a reproachful look, as if to say: You’ve not done your job well, policeman. The Chinaman stared him down until the shmuck resumed looking servile.

  “How’d she know he was an American?”

  “I don’t know,” said Little Hook. “That’s what she told me.”

  The Chinaman gripped his arm. “Come on. You can do better than that.”

  “By the prophet! She said he was American.” Little Hook winked and smiled. “Maybe he carried an American flag—”

  “Shut your mouth. What kind of sex did he ask for?”

  “Just sex, is all she told me.”

  “Is she in the habit of doing kinky stuff?”

  “No, no, she’s a good girl.”

  “A real virgin. What did he do then? After she refused?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “He didn’t try to force her?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t try to persuade her?”

  “He just walked away, smiling.”

  “Which way did he walk?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “She didn’t look?”

  “She may have—she didn’t tell me.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes, sir. If I knew, I would certainly tell you.”

  “What was wrong with his eyes?”

  Little Hook painted in the air, again, caressed his hump. “She said they were flat eyes, very flat. Mad. And a strange smile, very wide, a grin. But the grin of a killer.”