The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

“I’ll reach you. Sit down. I’ll see myself out.”

  “Yeah, sure, pleasure doing business with you.”

  After leaving the office, he closed the door, stood to the side for a moment, and heard the slime say “Fucking rich kid.”

  Nightwing started using heroin in front of him on a regular basis. Snorting the first few times, then skin-popping.

  I don’t mainline, cutie. That’s how you really get fucked up.

  But ten dates later, she was shooting it into a vein behind her leg.

  I can handle it.

  He’d read plenty of medical books on addiction, knew. she was full of shit, biochemically hooked, but didn’t say anything. When she nodded off, he used the time to explore her body. She knew what he was doing, smiled and made little cat sounds while he poked and probed and nibbled and tasted.

  One night, while parked on a side street in the hills, Nightwing sprawled across the front seat of the Plymouth, he heard racing engines, saw red lights—pair of cop cars speeding by, on their way to check out something in one of the hill houses. Break-in? Silent burglar alarm? If so, the cops would be back, cruising the hills, looking for suspects. He thought of the heroin in Nightwing’s black vinyl purse and began to freak out.

  A bust for dope—the perfect life blown to bits!

  He put the Plymouth in neutral, coasted downhill with his lights off. Nightwing stayed fast asleep, rolling with the motion of the car, snoring like a little sow. At that moment he saw her as filth, hated her, wanted to open her up, dive in, clean her. Then love thoughts took over and replaced the scientific ones.

  He coasted all the way to Nasty, turned the engine and headlights on, merged with the traffic, and tried to calm down. But he stayed freaked at the thought of being busted for dope, had read about prison in psychiatry books, and knew what happened to fresh young white meat.

  Deprivation-induced homosexuality: Locked in a cell with psycho niggers who’d ream his ass. His hold over Doctor loosened, the fucker’d be in charge of the lawyers, be able to keep him there as long as he wanted. Maybe even hire some nigger to slice him with a homemade shiv.

  He pulled off the boulevard, drove six blocks, parked, and reached over for Nightwing’s purse. The strap was under her ass. He tugged. She stirred but didn’t wake.

  Quickly, frantically, he rummaged through gum wrappers and tissues, plastic wallet, comb, makeup, breath-mint roll, foil rubber packets, and all the other crap she kept in there, before finding the little glassine envelope. Tossing it out of the car, then driving another half mile before feeling safe.

  He pulled over again, under a street light, cut the engine. The purse was in his lap. Nightwing was still sleeping.

  As he calmed down, curiosity overpowered his fear. He opened the purse, removed the plastic wallet.

  Inside was a driver’s license, picture of Nightwing without Vampira makeup, just a pretty, dark girl, Sarah-twin.

  Lilah Shehadeh. Five two, hundred and fourteen. Birth date that made her twenty-three. Address in Niggertown, probably from her days with BoJo.

  Shehadeh. What the hell kind of name was that?

  When she awoke, he told her about ditching her dope. She sat up sharply, started to get all pissed.

  Oh, shit! That was China fucking White!

  What was it worth?

  Hundred bucks.

  Bullshit, babe.

  Fifty—and that’s no bullshit. China White’s heavy duty—

  Here’s sixty. Buy yourself some more. But don’t carry it when you’re with me.

  She snapped up the money. Fun guy, you are.

  Flames of rage seared him from throat to asshole. The bad-machine noise grew deafening.

  He gave her a long, heavy stare, totally scornful, just like the one he’d used to whip Fields into shape.

  This is our last date, babe.

  Panic under the mile-long lashes: Aw, c’mon, cutie.

  It’s not fun for me either, babe.

  She reached out, ran her long black fingernails over his forearm. He felt nothing—being cool was easy.

  Aw, c’mon, Dr. Cutes. I was just kidding. You’re real fun, the best. Grab. The biggest.

  He removed her fingers, shook his head sadly.

  Time for both of us to move on, babe.

  Aw, c’mon, we been having so much fun. Don’t let a little—

  She was whining. The bad-machines echoed in his head, making him feel hollow. Useless.

  His hand was around her neck in a flash. Thin neck, soft neck, nice and fragile under his grip. He pushed her back against the door of the car. Saw the terror in her eyes and felt his hard-on grow gargantuan.

  A little pressure on the carotid, cut off the blood flow to the brain for a split second, then release, let her breathe. Let her know what he could do if he wanted. That she was a bug over a flame. Dangling in the grip of a pair of tweezers.

  Let her know who controlled the tweezers.

  Listen carefully, babe. Okay?

  She tried to talk. Fear had frozen her vocal cords.

  I’m perfectly happy to date you—you’re terrific. But we’ve got to come to an understanding. Okay? Nod if you agree.

  Nod.

  The beauty of this relationship is that we give each other what we need. Right?

  Nod.

  Which means both of us have to stay happy.

  Nod.

  I don’t care if you want to kill yourself with heroin. But I don’t want you putting me in danger. That’s fair, isn’t it?

  Nod.

  So no dope when you’re with me, please. A beer’s okay, one or two at the most. If you ask my permission and I give it. No surprises. I respect your rights and you respect mine. Okay?

  Nod.

  Still friends?

  Nod, nod, nod.

  He let go of her. Her eyes stayed big with fear—he could see the respect in them.

  Here, babe. He gave her an extra fifty. This is for goodwill, let you know I only want the best for you.

  She tried to take the money. Her hands were shaking. He tucked it between her tits. Pointed at his crotch and said, I’m ready to go again.

  After they finished, he asked her:

  What kind of name is Shehadeh?

  Arabic.

  You’re an Arab.

  Fuck, no, I’m an American.

  But your family’s Arab?

  I don’t want to talk about them. Defiantly. Then looking at him in panic, wondering if she’d pissed him off again.

  He smiled inside. Thought: The relationship’s climbed to a new level. Still casual dating and true love, but now the roles were set. Both of them knew their parts.

  He held her face in his hands, felt her tremble. Kissed her on the lips, no tongue, just friendly. Gentle—letting her know everything was okay. He was merciful.

  They’d have a long, happy life together.

  He met with Fields three weeks after giving the slime the assignment. Grubby little fucker was surprisingly thorough, had a thick file labeled SCHWANN,D. clutched in his grubby little hands.

  “How you doin’, Doc?”

  “Here’s your money. What do you have?”

  Fields stuffed the money in his shirt pocket. “Good news and bad news time, Doc. The good news is I found out all about him. The bad news is the sonofabitch is dead.”

  Saying it with a twinkle in his eye that signed his own death certificate.

  “Dead?”

  “As a doorknob.” Slimeball shrugged. “Sometimes in these bad-debt cases you can sue the estate in probate court, try to collect, but this Schwann was a foreigner—goddamned Kraut. His body was shipped back to Krautland. Try to collect from over there, you’re gonna need an international lawyer.”

  Dead. Daddy dead. His roots completely severed. He sat there, numb, flooded with pain.

  Fields mistook the numbness for disappointment over the debt, tried to comfort him with “Tough luck, eh, Doc? Anyway, guy like you, being a doctor and all that, should be able
to write it off, pay less taxes this year. Could be worse, eh?”

  Babbling. Making things worse for himself.

  The slime was staring at him. He shook himself out of the numbness.

  “Give me the file.”

  “I got a report for you, Doc. All summed up and everything.”

  “I want the file.”

  “Eh, usually I keep the file. You want a copy, I got Xeroxing charges, extra expenses.”

  “Would twenty dollars take care of it?”

  “Uh, yeah—thirty would be more like it. Doc.”

  Fields took the three tens and held out the folder.

  “All yours, Doc.”

  “Thanks.” He stood up, took the folder with one hand, picked up the old-fashioned desk calendar with the other, and slammed the fucker across the face with the rusty metal base.

  Fields went down without a sound, slumping on the desk. A red stain spread from under his face and saturated the blotter.

  He wrapped his hands in tissues, lifted the slime, and inspected him. The front of Fields’s face was flattened and bloody, the nose a soft smear. Still a weak wrist pulse.

  He put him facedown on the desk, slammed him on the back of the head with the calendar base, kept slamming him, enjoying it. Making him pay for Schwann, for the twinkle in his slimy eyes.

  No pulse—how could there be? The medulla oblongata had been turned to shit.

  Looked out the window: only neon, and pigeons on the roof. He drew the shade, locked the door, searched for any mention of his or Schwann’s names in any other file or in the calendar, then wiped his hands and everything he’d touched clean with a handkerchief—the important thing was to clean up properly.

  A little blood had spattered on his shirt. He buttoned his jacket; that took care of that.

  Picking up the Schwann file, he left the fucker lying there leaking, stepped out into the hallway, and walked away casually. Feeling like a king, the emperor of everything.

  Dr. T.

  Those good feelings grew as he drove home on Nasty. Looking at the geeks and pimps and junkies and bikers, all thinking they were bad, so bad. Thinking: How many of you losers have gone all the way? Remembering what Fields’s face had looked like after being slammed. The weak pulse. Then nothing.

  One giant step for Dr. Terrific.

  Back home, he put the Schwann file on his bed, stripped naked, masturbated twice, and took a cold bath that made him angry and hungry for bloody mind pictures. After toweling himself dry, he jerked off some more, came weakly but nicely, and, still naked, went in and got the file.

  Noble Schwann, dead.

  Cut off at the roots.

  The bad-machines started grinding.

  He should have taken his time with Fields, really punished him. Brought the slime’s body back here, for exploration, real science.

  Except the guy’s body would have had to be putrid, a real stinker. So no loss.

  Anyway, no use crying over spilt milk . . . spilt blood, ha ha.

  He grinned, took the file into the stale, empty space that had once been the Ice Palace, sat on the bare wooden floor, and began to read.

  CHAPTER

  53

  Fourteen minutes before Thursday night surrendered to Friday morning, Brother Roselli exited the Saint Saviour’s monastery and began walking east on St. Francis Street.

  Elias Daoud, swaddled in a musty Franciscan habit and concealed in the shadows of the Casa Nova Hospice, was not impressed. The farthest Roselli had ever gone was down the Via Dolorosa, tracing Christ’s walk in reverse, to the doors of the Monastery of the Flagellation. Hesitating at the shrine, as if contemplating entry, then turning back. And that was a long-distance hike—usually Roselli walked no farther than the market street that bisected the Old City longitudinally, separating the Jewish Quarter from the Christian Quarter. And the moment he got there, he jerked his head back nervously and turned around.

  Hardly worth the effort of following him.

  Strange bird, thought Daoud. He’d come to resent the monk, deeply, for the numbing boredom he’d brought into his life. Sitting, hour after hour, night after night, as inert as the cobblestones beneath his feet, wearing the coarse, unwashed robes or some beggar’s rags. So stagnant he feared his brain would soon weaken from disuse.

  Feeling the resentment grow as he thought about it, then plagued by guilt at harboring anger toward a man of God.

  But a strange man of God. Why did he stop and go like some wind-up toy? Setting out purposefully, only to reverse himself as if manipulated by some unseen puppeteer?

  Conflict, he and Sharavi had agreed. The man is in conflict over something. The Yemenite had told him to keep watching.

  He’d begun, eventually, to resent Sharavi too. Keeping him away from the action, stuck on this dummy assignment.

  But let’s be truthful: It wasn’t the boredom that bothered him. A week wasn’t that long—he was patient by nature, had always enjoyed the solitude of undercover, the shifting of identities.

  It was being excluded.

  He’d done his job well, identifying the Rashmawi girl. But no matter—now that things had gotten political, he was unwanted baggage. No way would they trust him with anything of substance.

  The others—even young Cohen, little more than a rookie, with no judgment and no brains—banded together as a team. Where the action was.

  While Elias Daoud sat and watched a strange monk walk two hundred meters and turn back.

  He knew what was in store for him when this assignment ended: Off the Butcher case, back to Kishle, maybe even back in uniform, handling tourists’ purse-snatches and petty squabbles. Maybe another undercover some day, if it wasn’t political.

  Working for the Jews, everything was political.

  Not a single Arab he knew would regret seeing the Jews disappear. Nationalistic talk had grown fashionable even among the Christians. He himself couldn’t muster much passion for politics. He had no use, personally, for the Jews, supposed an all-Arab state would be better. But, then again, without Jews to complain about, Christians and Muslims would surely turn on one another; it was the way things had been for centuries. And given that state of affairs, everyone knew who’d win—look at Lebanon.

  So it was probably best to have Jews around. Not in charge, to be sure. But a few, as a distraction.

  He stepped out on St. Francis Street and looked east. Roselli’s outline was visible a hundred meters up, just past Es Sayyida Road; the monk’s sandal-shuffle could be heard clear up the street. Daoud wore sandals, too, but his were crepe-soled. Police issue. The discrepancy concealed by the floor-length robes.

  Roselli kept walking, approaching the market intersection. Daoud stayed out of sight, flush with the buildings, prepared to duck into a doorway when the monk reversed himself.

  Roselli passed the Abyssinian monastery, stopped, turned right onto Souq El Attarin, and disappeared.

  It took a moment for the fact to register. Caught by surprise, Daoud ran to catch up, his boredom suddenly replaced by anxiety.

  Thinking: What if I lose him?

  To the east, the souq was ribbed with dozens of narrow roads and arched alleyways leading to the Jewish Quarter. Tiny courtyards and ancient clay-domed homes restored by the Jews, orphanages and one-room schools and synagogues. If someone wanted to lose himself at night, no section of the city was more suitable.

  Just his luck, he lamented, sprinting silently in the darkness. All those stagnant nights followed by split-second failure.

  A Thursday night, too. If Roselli was the Butcher, he might very well be prepared to strike.

  Constricted with tension, Daoud sped toward the souq, thinking: Back in uniform for sure. Please, God, don’t let me lose him.

  He turned on El Attarin, entered the souq, caught his breath, pressed himself against a cold stone wall, and looked around.

  Prayers answered: Roselli’s outline, clearly visible in the moonlight streaming between the arches. Walking quickly and
deliberately down stone steps, through the deserted market street.

  Daoud followed. The souq was deserted and shuttered. Rancid-sweet-produce smells still clung to the night air, seasoned intermittently by other fragrances: freshly tanned leather, spices, peanuts, coffee.

  Roselli kept going to the end of the souq, to where Attarin merged with Habad Street.

  Pure Jewish territory now. What business could the monk have here? Unless he was planning to head west, into the Armenian Quarter. But a Franciscan would have little more to do with the Pointed Hats than he would with the Jews.

  Daoud maintained his distance, ducking and weavering and maintaining a keen eye on Roselli, who kept bearing south. Past the Cardo colonnade, up through the top plaza of the Jewish Quarter, the fancy shops that Jews had built there. Across the large parking lot, now empty.

  Two border guards stood watch on the walls, turned at the sound of Roselli’s sandals and stared at him, then at Daoud following moments later. A moment of analysis; then, just as quickly, the guards turned away.

  Two brown-robes, nothing unusual.

  Roselli passed under the arch that, during the day, served as an outdoor office for the Armenian moneylenders, showing no interest in either the Cathedral of Saint James or the Armenian Orthodox monastery. Daoud followed him toward the Zion Gate, mentally reviewing the Roman Catholic sites that graced that area: the Church of Saint Peter of the Cock-Crowing? Or perhaps the monk was headed outside the Old City walls, to the Crypt of Mary’s Sleep—the Franciscans were entrusted with the tomb of Jesus’ mother. . . .

  But neither shrine proved to be Roselli’s destination.

  Just inside the Zion Gate was a cluster of Jewish schools—yeshivas. Newly built structures constructed on the sites of the old yeshivas Hussein had reduced to rubble in ’48, Arab homes built by the Jordanians confiscated in ’67 to make way for the rebuilding of the schools.

  The typical Jerusalem seesaw.

  Noisy places, yeshivas—the Jews liked to chant their studies for the world to hear. Black-coated longbeards and kids with skimpy whiskers hunched behind wooden lecterns, poring over their Old Testaments and their Talmuds. Reciting and debating without letup—even at this hour there was activity: brightly lit windows checkering the darkness; Daoud could hear a low sing-song drone of voices as he walked past.