The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “All three of them in there?” asked the man.

  Shmeltzer nodded. “They entered just a minute ago. Do you know anything about the building?”

  “Not on any list I’ve seen,” said the woman. “Nice, for a street scrubber.”

  “She resembles the first three Butcher victims,” said Shmeltzer. “Small, dark, not bad-looking. We’ve been thinking they plucked their pigeons right out of the hospital, but maybe not. Maybe they make contact during medical visits, arrange to meet them later—money for sex.” He paused, looked back at the house. Two stories, fancy, carved stone trim. “Be nice to know who owns the palace.”

  “I’ll call in, put in for a Ministry of Housing ID,” said the woman, removing her radio from her purse.

  “No time for that,” said Shmeltzer. “They could be doping her up right now, laying her out for surgery. Call French Hill, tell them the situation and that we’re going in. And ask for backup—have an ambulance ready.”

  He looked at the man. “Come on.”

  They sprinted to the house, opened the gates, which were fuzzy with rust, entered the courtyard, Berettas drawn. A front-door back-door approach was called for but access to the rear of the house was blocked on both sides by Italian cypress growing together in dense green walls. Returning their attention to the front, they took in details: a single door, at the center; grated windows, most of them shuttered. Two front balconies, the courtyard planted nicely with flower beds. Maybe a subdivision into flats—most of the big houses in Jerusalem had been partitioned—but with only one door there was no way to know for certain.

  Shmeltzer waved his gun toward the door. The Latam man followed him.

  Locked. The Latam guy took out picks. This one was fast; he had it open in two minutes. He looked at Shmeltzer, waiting for the signal to push the door open.

  Shmeltzer knew what he was thinking. A place this fancy could have an alarm; if it were the kill spot, maybe even a booby trap.

  Too old to be doing this, he thought. And to save an Arab, yet. But what could you do—the job was the job.

  He gave the door a push, walked into the house, the Latam man at his heels. No ringing bells, no flurry of movement. And no shrapnel tearing through his chest. Good. Saved for another day of blessed existence.

  A square entry hall, round Persian rug, two more doors at the end. Shmeltzer and the Latam man pressed themselves against opposite walls, took one door each, jiggled the handles.

  The Latam guy’s was open. Inside it was a spiral staircase, uncarpeted stone.

  Shmeltzer walked up it, found the landing at the top boarded up, the air dust-laden and smelling of musty neglect. He tried the boards. Nailed tight, no loose ones. No one had come up here tonight.

  Back down to the ground floor, signal to the Latam guy to try the second door. Locked. Two locks, one on top of the other. The first one yielded quickly to the pick; the second was stubborn.

  The minutes ticked away, Shmeltzer imagined drops of blood falling in synchrony with each one. His hands were sweat-slick, the Beretta cold and slippery. He waited as the Latam man potchked with the lock, thought of the scrub-woman, naked on some table, head down, dripping into a rug. . . .

  Too damned old for this shit.

  The Latam guy worked patiently, twisting, turning, losing the tumblers, finally finding them.

  The door swung open silently.

  They stepped into a big dark front room, gleaming stone floors, heavy drapes blocking rear windows, swinging Dutch doors leading to a corridor on the right. A low-wattage bulb in a wall sconce cast a faint orange glow over heavy, expensive-looking furniture—old British-style furniture, stiff settees and bowlegged tables. Lace doilies. More tables, inlaid Arab-style, an oversized inlaid backgammon set, a potbellied glass-doored breakfront full of silver, dishes, bric-a-brac. A guitar resting on a sofa. Ivory carvings. Lots of rugs.

  Rich. But again, the senile, old-clothes smell of neglect. Set up like props on a theater stage, but not lived in. Not for a long time.

  The front room opened to a big old-fashioned kitchen on the left. The Latam man peeked his head into it, came back signaling nothing.

  The Dutch doors, then. The only choice.

  Damned things squeaked. He held them open for the Latam man. The two of them stepped onto an Oriental runner. Doors, four of them. Bedrooms. A hyphen of light under one on the left. Muted sounds.

  They approached the door, held their breath, listened. Conversation, Al Biyadi’s voice rising in excitement. Talking Arabic, a female replying, the words unclear.

  Shmeltzer and the Latamnik looked at each other. Shmeltzer motioned him to go ahead. The guy was younger—his legs could take the punishment.

  The Latam man kicked in the door and the two of them jumped in, pointing their Berettas, screaming: “Police! Drop down! Drop! Drop down! Police!”

  No murder scene, no blood.

  Just Al Biyadi and two women standing open-mouthed with astonishment in a bright, empty room full of wooden crates. Most of the boxes were covered by canvas tarpaulins; a few were bare. Shmeltzer saw the words FARM MACHINERY stenciled on the wood in Hebrew and Arabic.

  A crowbar lay on the floor, which was littered with packing straw. A crate in the center of the room had been pried open.

  Filled to the brim with rifles, big, heavy Russian rifles. Shmeltzer hadn’t seen so many at one time since they’d taken the weapons off the Egyptians in ’67.

  Al Biyadi was holding one of the rifles, looking like a child caught with his hand in the biscuit bin. The women had dropped to the floor, but the shmuck remained standing.

  “Drop it!” Shmeltzer screamed, and pointed the Beretta at his snotty, sheikh face.

  The doctor hesitated, looked down at the rifle and up again at Shmeltzer.

  “Put it down, you fucking little rat!”

  “Oh, God,” said Peggy Cassidy from the floor.

  Al Biyadi dropped the rifle, a second short of dying.

  “On the ground, on your belly!” ordered Shmeltzer. Al Biyadi complied.

  Shmeltzer kept his gun trained on Al Biyadi’s spine, advanced carefully, and kicked the rifle out of the bastard’s reach. He was to find out, moments later, that the weapon had been unloaded.

  CHAPTER

  65

  So pretty, thought the Grinning Man, eyeing the young cop’s body laid out naked on the table.

  Every muscle outlined in relief, like fine sculpture, the skin firm and smooth, the facial features perfectly formed.

  Adonis. No hook-nose.

  Hard to believe this one was kikeshit. He’d searched the dumbfuck’s pockets, hoping to find a non-kike ID, something indicating he was an Aryan who’d somehow been duped into working for the kikes.

  But there was no wallet, no papers. Just a Star of David on a thin gold chain stuffed into one of the pockets.

  Hiding the kikeness. The dumbfuck was kikeshit.

  It was wrong, an insult.

  The dumbfuck was a genetic fluke, sneak thief of Aryan genes.

  But pretty. The last time he’d seen anything male that looked this good was years ago, back in stinkhole Sumbok. Fourteen-year-old Gauguin Boy brought in dead to the Gross Anatomy Lab—sold for small change by his family, ninety pounds of medical research material.

  Ninety pounds of prime protoplasm: coppery skin, smoky long-lashed eyes, glossy black hair. Little slant had died from acute bacterial meningitis; once he’d sawed open the skull and exposed the cerebral cortex, the damage was obvious, all that yellow-green mucus clogging the meninges.

  But, despite the brain-rot, the body remained beautiful, firm, smooth as a girl’s. Smooth as Sarah. Hard to believe he was a hundred percent slant—hard to believe he was male.

  But rotten to the core, even in death:

  The little slant bastard had ruined his plans!

  It reaffirmed his code:

  Males were to be finished fast: the kill-blow to the face or a tracheal-rupture death-choke. The power-
jolt, that final look of surprise before the lights went out.

  Now you know who’s in charge.

  Bye-bye.

  Females were to be savored. Saved. For real science.

  But this one on the table was pretty. Near-female.

  Female enough?

  His first impulse after cold-cocking the dumbfuck had been to finish him off as he lay there, one good boot-stomp to the face, leaving him behind the reporter’s building along with the other kikeshit.

  Then he looked at the face, the body, saw something that made him shake.

  So pretty.

  He got hard.

  Disturbing thoughts, as painful as bee stings, darted around in his head:

  Pretty as a faggot?

  Girl or boy?

  He swatted away the thoughts, concentrated on the dumbfuck lying inert, under his control.

  Dumbfuck was a faggot.

  The SS had known what to do with faggots.

  Grandpa Hermann had known what to do with faggots.

  Real science. The prospect of adventure: That’s what had made him hard.

  He took a deep breath, held it; the bee-sting thoughts flew away. Quickly, he went through the pockets of the faggot’s designer jeans, found car keys, confiscated them along with the gun the faggot had dropped, then gave the faggot a nighty-night shot of H to keep him quiet. Then, out front to the street, trying car doors until he found the lock that matched the keys.

  Taking risks but enjoying the endocrine-rush. His Mideast safari almost over, why not squeeze out every bit of pleasure before moving on to the next project?

  He found the car soon enough: beat-up VW bug—faggot had left it unlocked. He drove it back to the alley, dumped the faggot’s unconscious body in the trunk. Found costume changes, identity changes—dumbfuck thought he knew how to play that game! Then a five-minute drive to the German Haus, the VW stashed in the garage next to his Mercedes. Another five minutes and Faggot Adonis was stretched out and tied up on the dining room table.

  Kike Adonis. Too pretty—very wrong. An affront to the Schwann-code, it was up to him to avenge it.

  Improvise.

  And why not? Improvisation was fine if you did it with style. After all, his final act would be a grand improvisation, the ultimate fuel-jolt that really got Project Untermensch off the ground.

  Surprise, surprise. Let the games begin.

  The dumbfuck stirred on the table, made a clicking sound from deep in his throat.

  He reached over, checked the faggot’s pulse and respiration, made sure he wasn’t about to vomit and choke on it.

  All systems functioning normally.

  Dumbfuck was quiet again. Pretty.

  Yes, definitely pretty enough for a real science excursion.

  Exploring the faggot cavity—Grandpa Hermann would approve.

  Expand the boundaries: males, females, dogs, cats, rats, reptiles, Arachnida, Coelenterata—all soft tissue and pain receptors. The differences were minor when you got right down to it. Arbitrary. When you opened a body, looked into the welcome hole, the visceral mural, you realized the sameness. Everyone was the same.

  In terms of meat.

  Not mind.

  A fine Aryan Schwann-mind was in a different cognitive sphere from untermensch hollow-head brainscum.

  And this young, naked one on his table was ikey-kikey faggot kikeshit, wasn’t he?

  Pretty.

  But male.

  More bee stings:

  He’d explored a male before. It had ruined his plans.

  Since then he’d been disciplined. The males finished lightning-fast, the females for exploration.

  But he’d come a long way since then. Learned how to be careful, how to clean up perfectly.

  Sting.

  Swat.

  Fuck it! He was in charge; no need to be hemmed in any longer by what Gauguin Boy had done to him.

  Just the opposite: He needed to break free of constraints. Liberate himself. Dieter Schwann and Grandpa Hermann would want that, would be proud of his creativity.

  Suddenly he knew why the young cop had been delivered to him: The dumbfuck was there to save him, to be savored by him. Dessert after the final act. A bouquet of roses tossed onstage after a bravura performance.

  Roses from Dieter, a message: Free thyself.

  His decision was clear.

  Keep the dumbfuck tied up nice and snuggly-wuggly; pump him with enough H to keep him calm; then, after the final curtain had fallen, come back, wake him up, give him some more H—no, curare, just like the dog. Motor paralysis accompanied by total mental awareness!

  Lying frozen as ice, corpse-helpless, but hearing and seeing and smelling. Knowing!

  Exactly what was going on.

  Exactly what was being done to him.

  The terror all in the eyes.

  Bow wow wow.

  A superb plan. He finalized it in his head, started preparing a batch of new needles, thinking:

  This will free me forever from Sumbok memories.

  But as he thought about it, Sumbok memories bore through his mind, making high-pitched bad-machine noises, like termites crunching through masonry.

  He touched himself, stroked himself, trying to get past the noise. Dropped a glass syringe on the floor and barely heard it shatter as he grappled with images. Doctor’s smug, puffy face:

  Well, I finally found a place for you. Not much of a med school, but a med school. Cost me a fortune to convince them to take you. If you manage somehow to get through four years and pass the foreign graduate exam, you might be able to find an internship somewhere.

  Fucking smugsmile. Translate: You’ll never do it, stupid.

  Showed how much he knew, the lame fuck. For all practical purposes, he was already a doctor; all that was left was to make it legal by matching his Dr. Terrific hands-on experience with boring books, paper formalities. Then, claim his birthright:

  Dieter Schwann, II., M.D., Ph.D., Aryan conqueror of the welcome hole. Mengele-magician-artisan, painting the visceral mural.

  The seed preserved!

  He’d filled out the application forms with a sense of joy and purpose, readied himself for the adventure, masturbating to happy graduation pictures: himself ten feet tall, in black satin doctor’s robes collared with velvet, a satin mortarboard tilted with just the right cockiness. Collecting certificates of honor, delivering the valedictory, then dedicating the Dieter Schwann, M.D., Chair in Surgical Pathology and Visceral Exploration at the University of Berlin.

  Bravo.

  Living off those pictures for two butt-numbing days of air travel to Djakarta, only to feel the joy die inside of him as the rattling shuttle prop landed on that putrid, humid shithole of an island.

  A lumpy brown patch. Water all around, like some cartoon. Sand and mud and droopy trees.

  Where are we?

  The pilot, a rotten-toothed half-breed, had turned off the engine, opened the door, and tossed his luggage out onto the landing strip.

  Welcome to Sumbok, Doc.

  Reality: mosquitoes and swamps and grass huts and pock-marked Gauguin-scum hobbling around in loincloths and T-shirts. Pigs and goats and ducks living in the huts, mounds of shit everywhere. On the south side of the island, a muck-filled stagnant bay, jellyfish and sea slugs and other disgusting things washing up on the beach, putrefying, sliming the sand. The rest of it jungle: snakes, nightmare bugs as big as rats, rats as big as dogs, hairy things that gibbered and shrieked in the night.

  The so-called school: a bunch of rusting Quonset huts, cement-floored wooden cabins for dormitories, the bunks hooded with mosquito netting. One big, crumbling stucco building for classrooms. In the basement, the Gross Anatomy Lab.

  A hand-painted tin sign over the front door: The Grand Medical Facility of St. Ignatius.

  Big joke, ha ha.

  Except that he was living it.

  The so-called students: a bunch of losers. Morons, dopers, chronic complainers, perverts of sullied ethni
c origin. The faculty: slant creeps with M.D.’s from dubious places. Delivering their lectures in pidgin accents no normal person could understand, taking delight in insulting the students, insisting on being addressed as Professor. He felt like hate-beaming into their slant-eyes, smiling:

  Heavy starch in the shirts, One Hung Low.

  Total scam, no one gave a shit. Most of the students gave up and went home after a few months, forfeiting two years’ tuition paid in advance. The others got the energy leeched out of them and turned into bums—pissing away days sunning themselves on the beach, nights given over to smoking dope, jerking off under the mosquito netting, wandering the island trying to seduce twelve-year-old Gauguin-girls.

  Depraved. He knew if he let himself be sucked into their apathy, he’d be sidetracked from the Schwann mission. Wondered how to insulate himself, decided an identity change was in order—identity changes always cleansed the mind, renewed the spirit.

  And he knew which identity to assume, the only one that would enable him to float above it all.

  He went and talked to the dean. Slantiest slant of all, nasty little shit with greasy Dracula hair, oily yellow skin, pig eyes, pencil-line mustache, potbelly as if he’d swallowed a melon. But with a fancy Dutch name: Professor Anton Bromet Van der Veering, M.D., D.Sc.

  Pretentious little scrotebag.

  Sitting behind a big, messy desk, surrounded by books he never read. Smoking a meerschaum pipe carved in the shape of a naked woman.

  Slant took a long time to light the pipe, made him stand there for a while before acknowledging his presence. He filled the time by visualizing smashing the scrote’s face, meerschaum chips atop the bloody yellow pulp like confectioners’ sugar on a lemon tart. . . .

  Yes, what is it?

  I want to change my name, Dean.

  What? What are you talking about?

  I want to change my name.

  Surely this is a legal matter, to be taken up with—

  Legal matters don’t concern me, Dean. This is a personal issue.

  Talking low and serious, one doctor to another, the way he’d seen Doctor confer with his associates while discussing a case.