The Butcher's Theater
Page 69
He let go. Carter coughed, gulped air.
“Where is she?”
“Wh-who?”
Slapping the monster hard. Handprints materializing like Polaroid images on the pale Nazi flesh.
Choking the monster again.
Carter’s eyes rolled backward.
Daniel let go. “Where is she?”
Carter shook his head, tried to scream, produced more squeaks.
“Tell me or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”
“Wh—”
“My daughter!”
“I don’t kn—”
Slap.
Tears, gasps.
“Where is she!”
“I swear . . .” gasp-gulp . . . “I don’t kn-know wh-what . . .” gasp . . . “you’re talking about.”
“My daughter! A beautiful girl! Green eyes!”
Carter shook his head frantically, began sobbing, coughing, retching.
“Cohen,” said Daniel. “Nash. Fatma. Juliet. Shahin. All the others, you filth!”
Raising his hand.
Carter cried out, cowered, tried to slide under the covers.
Daniel grabbed his hair, pulled up hard. The Nazi’s scalp hot, the hair greasy with sweat.
“Last chance before I blow your filthy head off.”
An acid smell filled the room, a wet stain spread on the sheet near Carter’s groin.
“Oh Guh-God,” croaked Carter. “I sw-swear it, please buh-believe me. Oh, shit—I do-don’t know what you’re ta-talking about.”
Hand around the throat again.
“Tell me, you—”
A voice at his back, female, indignant: “What are you doing? Get off him, you!”
Hands pulling on his shirt. He shook them loose, kept his knee on Carter, put the gun against the monster’s temple, and swiveled.
The movement knocked Catherine Hauser loose. The old nurse stumbled backward. She fell, legs spread, revealing tallowy thighs encased in white stockings. Sensible shoes.
She pushed herself up, brushed off her uniform. Her face was mottled. Her hands shook.
“Out of here,” said Daniel. “Police business.”
The old woman stood her ground. “What do you want with poor Richard?”
“He’s a killer. He has my daughter.”
Hauser stared at him as if he were mad.
“Nonsense! He’s killed no one. He’s a sick man!”
“Out of here right now,” Daniel barked.
“Gastroenteritis,” said Hauser. “Poor man’s been sick in bed for the last four days.”
Daniel turned and looked at Carter. The Canadian made no effort to move. His breath was rapid, shallow.
Identities.
Stage actor. Manipulator.
“Not that sick,” growled Daniel. “Early this morning he took a walk into the city and killed three men, then abducted my daughter.”
“Ridiculous!” snapped Hauser. “What time this morning?”
“He left around midnight, stayed away all day, returned just before six.”
“Absolute nonsense! Richard was in this room from eight until now—throwing up, diarrhea. I’ve been here myself, caring for him. I cleaned out the emesis basin at twelve-thirty, gave him sponge baths around two and four, and have been checking on him since then, every hour on the hour. I took his temperature twenty minutes ago. He’s got a fever—feel his forehead. Dehydrated. He’s taking antibiotics, can barely walk.”
Daniel removed the gun from Carter’s brow, touched the Canadian’s face with the top of his hand.
Burning.
Carter shook with sobs.
Hauser looked at him, raised her voice to Daniel.
“The poor man can’t walk two steps, let alone hike into the city. Now I’m warning you, Inspector name-is: The U.N. authorities have been called. If you don’t stop brutalizing him, you’ll be in serious trouble.”
Daniel stared at her, then at Carter, who was whimpering and breathing hard. His neck was red and raw, already starting to swell. He coughed, gurgled.
Daniel stepped away from the bed. Hauser moved between him and Carter.
“I’m sorry about your daughter, but you’ve tormented an innocent man.”
A hard-faced old woman.
He stared at her, knew she was telling the truth.
Carter was vomiting onto the sheets. Hauser brought a metal basin, held it under his chin, wiped him with a washcloth.
Sick as a dog. Four days in bed.
Not Carter on the nightwalk.
Shifting identities.
A manipulative psychopath.
Carter rocked and shook violently. Spit up clear mucus and groaned.
Not acting.
“Please leave, Inspector,” said Hauser.
Not Carter. Then who?
Oh, God, who?
Then he thought of the watchman’s warning: When Mr. Baldwin returns you’ll be in big—
When Mr. Baldwin returns from where?
According to the surveillance log, the administrator hadn’t left the Amelia Catherine since Sunday morning.
Shifting identities.
Exchanging identities.
Dr. Terrific.
Runs the place. Boss over the doctors.
Takes on an alter ego when he goes out to kill.
Carter on nightwalk—but not Carter.
False Hassid.
False Arab driving a white Mercedes diesel. Carrying cardboard boxes labeled RECORDS. No beard.
Judged possibly large enough to conceal a human body if the body was bent to the point of contortion.
Or small.
A child’s body.
He granted Hauser her wish. Ran for the door labeled BALDWIN,S. T.
Locked.
He aimed the Beretta, shattered the lock, stepped in, ready to kill.
A large room, tile-floored and whitewashed, twice the size of Carter’s.
Blueprint recall: storage pantry.
Big, cast-iron bed. The covers drawn and tucked military tight. Neat and clean, everything in its place.
A Hassid’s clothes folded neatly on the bed. False red beard, eyeglasses.
Something shiny and green.
A butterfly pin, silver filigree with malachite eyes.
Not a sign of the monster.
No Shoshi.
He followed the Beretta into the bathroom.
No one.
Luggage in the corner: three suitcases, packed tight and fastened.
A messy one, Danny.
Swallowing his fear, he opened them.
Only clothes in the two bigger ones, neatly folded. He scooped his hands under the garments, tossed them out, opened the smallest.
Toiletries, a shaving kit. False mustaches, wigs, more beards, bottle of hair dye, tubes of theatrical makeup.
In the shaving kit was a one-way ticket on a Greek-registered ship to Cyprus, leaving tomorrow from Eilat Harbor.
He faked us out, Pakad.
He searched the closet: empty.
Looked for attic passages, trapdoors.
Nothing.
Where? The cave? Border Patrol staked out down there—he would have been notified.
He sank to his knees, looked under the cast-iron bed. Silly ritual, like checking for ghosts.
Saw brass hinges, a rise in the tile. Wood.
Trapdoor in the floor.
Blueprint recall: the auxiliary wine cellar.
Moving the bed.
The door a solid hardwood rectangle stretching from the center of the room to one wall. The doorknob had been removed, the hole plugged with wood.
Pry marks around the edges. A crowbar or something like it.
He looked for the tool. Nothing—bastard had taken it down with him.
He struggled to pry it open, lost his hold several times, mashing his nails and tearing skin from his fingers. Finally he managed to pull up hard enough. Opened the door, then stepped back.
Darkness below.
Abba’s coming!
CHAPTER
70
He descended silently, frantically, on narrow stone stairs. A score of them, pitched steeply.
The darkness absolute, dizzying. Touching moist stone walls for support and orientation.
Please, God.
The passageway twisted, shifting direction, then more stairs, a dank chill rising from unseen depths.
He sped down blindly.
A deep cellar. Good—perhaps the sound of the gunshot hadn’t penetrated.
Another twist. More steps.
Then the bottom, gripping the Beretta, extending his bad hand. Metal. He explored, fumbling with damaged fingers, holding his breath. A low metal door, rounded at the top. Sheet metal—he could feel the seams, the bolts. Took hold of a handle, turned, and pushed.
Opening. Silence. No monster.
But he was assailed by icy white light.
Momentarily sightless, he stepped back reflexively, shielding his eyes and blinking. His pupils constricted painfully. When they were partially adjusted, he took a step forward, saw that he was in a small, cavelike room, empty save for a troughlike double sink and two floor drains encrusted with something unhealthy-looking.
The floors, walls, and ceilings were rough-hewn stone, the entire space scooped out of bedrock. Age-blackened rock streaked with greenish-blue mold and overlaid with a warped wooden exoskeleton—widely spaced pine laths laid cross-hatched over the walls; knotted overhead beams from which hung panels of fluorescent tubes on chains.
Dozens of fluorescent tubes—half a hundred, emitting an eye-searing flood of light.
He heard laughter, turned toward it.
At the end of the room, beyond the light, was another door—old, flimsy, wooden, banded with rusty iron. He ran to it, nudged it open, stepped into another room, somewhat larger than the first, the light brighter, tinted an odd silvery lavender.
Cold air, chemically bitter. Another trough, more drains.
At the center was a long steel-topped table on stout metal legs that had been bolted to the floor.
Daniel stood at its foot, looking down on soft whiteness, white buds—the soles of two small feet. Two fragile calves, a hairless pubis, spindle ribs, concave belly, flat chest.
His baby’s naked body, the dusky skin blanched by the light.
She lay motionless in a nest of white sheeting, a pinpoint of red in the crook of one limp arm.
Her neck and shoulders had been propped up on several rolled pillows, thrusting the head back, chin upward, mouth open. Her lily-stem throat forced into the most vulnerable of convexities.
The sacrificial arch.
He yearned to rush to her, cover her, was stopped by the knife that caressed her trachea. Long-bladed, double-edged, pearl handled.
White on white.
So still. Oh, God, no—but no blood other than the needle mark, the body sculpture-perfect, not a wound. Her chest rose and fell in a shallow, narcotized cadence.
The gift of time . . .
Behind her, a mass of white. White hands—big hands, thick-fingered. One gripping the handle of the knife. The other submerged in her curls, entangled. Stroking, caressing.
Ugly laughter.
Baldwin, standing at the head of the table—looming, naked, Shoshi’s head shielding his chest, her life contingent upon the turn of a wrist.
Leering, confident.
The tabletop bisected him at the navel. What was visible of his upper torso was massive, armored with muscle, slathered with something oily.
The fluorescence had bleached him an unearthly lavender-gray. Despite the cold, he was sweating, his thin hair plastered in strands, like wet twine, across the bare gray crown.
His body was shaved girl-smooth and prickly with goose bumps, the flesh glowing moist, shiny, slick as some nocturnal burrowing grub.
He stood slightly right of table-center, left leg exposed. Swastika-shaped scars covered his thigh—malignant purple brands. A fresh swastika wound had been incised just above the knee, the surrounding skin rosy with smeared blood.
Staring at Daniel, the eyes cold, flat, twin peepholes into hell.
Laid out before him was a sparkling array of surgical instruments—knives, needles, scissors, clamps—on a precisely folded napkin of white linen. Next to the napkin was a hypodermic syringe half-filled with something milky.
Shoshi dead-still.
Abba’s here.
A carotid pulse bounced bravely under the knife blade. Daniel aimed the Beretta.
Baldwin pulled Shoshi’s head higher, so that her curls bearded his chin. He laughed again, unalarmed.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Terrific. What seems to be the problem?”
All at once the knife began sawing across Shoshi’s neck. Daniel stopped breathing, started to scream, pounce—but no blood.
Laughter.
A game. The grin widening. More sawing.
“Like my fleshfiddle, kikefuck?”
The pearl handle of the knife caught the light and tossed it back in Daniel’s face.
White on white.
On white.
A white swastika painted crudely on the dark stone floor. Painted words, familiar English block letters:
HEIL SCHWANN!! THE SCHWANN SEED LIVES!!!
Baldwin’s face constricted with ecstasy. Drunk on the game, not noticing as Daniel shifted to the right. Took a step. Another.
“Don’t move, kikefuck.”
The warning uttered around that sickening grin. A harsh voice. Mechanical. No trace of the cowboy drawl.
Deep, yet topped by a strident tentativeness—echoes.
The echoing screams of abandoned, victimized women. Daniel swore he could hear them, wanted to cover his ears.
Baldwin’s mouth spread the grin wider.
The fingers of his left hand fanned down over Shoshi’s face, spatulate tips fondling her cheekbones, her lips, as the right one held the knife in place. Baldwin moved it back and forth in a horror-tease.
A giggle: “Never had one this tender.”
Daniel moved another centimeter to the right.
“Drop the bang-bang or I’ll whittle on her.” Grin. Long white teeth. Purple tongue. Lavender lips.
Daniel lowered the Beretta slowly, watched Baldwin’s eyes follow the weapon down—poor concentration. He pushed forward with his toes. Another quarter-step, and another. On the right side of the table now. Closer.
“I said drop it, nigger-kike. All the way.” Baldwin pressed the flat side of the knife blade against Shoshi’s neck, obscuring the pulse. He stretched luxuriantly, gorging himself on power. But shifting to the right, simultaneously, in unconscious defense.
It exposed his crotch. His penis was semi-erect, a starched-white cylinder hovering tentatively above the branded thigh.
He removed his left hand from Shoshi’s body, lowered it to himself, began stroking himself. Leering.
“Two weapons.” Giggle. “Real science.”
Daniel lowered the gun until it was level with the organ. Took another step forward.
Baldwin laughed, quickened his stroke. Kept sawing the knife in counterpoint.
“Silly millimeter, bye-bye kikette.”
The voice rising in pitch, the erection hardening, tilted upward.
Power was everything with this one. Control, the key.
Daniel played along with it. Said, “Please.”
“Please,” laughed Baldwin. He masturbated a while longer, stopped, and ran his nail along the upper cutting edge of the knife. The lower edge still resting on Shoshi’s windpipe.
“This is a Liston amputator, kikescum. It knows how to fast-dance, cuts-through bone like butter.” Grin. Giggle. The knife lifted, then descended.
“Please. Don’t hurt her.”
“Blink the wrong way and we’ll be playing football with her fucking head.”
“Please. I beg you.”
Baldwin’s eyebrows arched. He licked his
lips.
“You really mean that, you insignificant piece of roach shit, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Forward.
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Begging, putting on a servile face and keeping Baldwin’s eyes off his legs. Moving close enough to Shoshi’s leg to grab her ankle, pull her away. But the knife was still kissing her flesh. A muscle twitch could sever her jugular.
“Yes, please, Herr Doktor Professor!”
“Yes, please, Herr Doktor Professor.”
Baldwin smiled, sighed. Then his face creased abruptly into a livid hate-mask.
“THEN DROP THE BANG-BANG, FUCKHEAD!”
Daniel lowered the Beretta further. Begging for mercy as he did it. Scanning the room and taking in the layout.
No more doors. This was the end point.
“Please, Doctor, don’t hurt her. Take me instead.”
Idiocy, but it amused the bastard, purchased time.
Shiny things hanging from a nail embedded in a lath. Gold hoop earrings. Three pairs.
In the corner, an ice cooler. Next to it a crowbar. Too far.
Wall racks holding two large flashlights, more sheets, pillows. Stacks of folded clothing: Dresses, undergarments. A white dress striped with blue, torn, a strip missing.
Next to the clothing, jars filled with clear liquid and labeled with gummed stickers. Soft, pinkish things floating within.
Two he recognized as kidneys.
Others, unfamiliar. Roundish, clearly visceral.
“DROP IT, SHITBRAIN, OR I CUT HER!”
Bellowing, but subtle aftertones of panic.
Cowardice.
A passive monster, picking off the weak. Even after he had them in his clutches, putting them to sleep before doing his dirty work—terrified of resistance. Cutting himself superficially, but Daniel knew he’d chance nothing that endangered him.
He lowered the gun all the way. Baldwin was distracted, again, by its descent.
Daniel moved closer to the head of the table, looked at Baldwin, then past him, at a stuffed animal perched on the rack below the jars. Then he saw the black patch over the eye, realized it was Dayan. Stiff as a toy. Dead. No—paralyzed, the big brown eyes moving back and forth, following him. Begging for rescue.
“ON THE FLOOR OR FOOTBALL!” screamed Baldwin, sounding like a child having a tantrum.
Daniel said, “Yes, Doctor,” and flipped the Beretta across the room, to the left. It hit the side of the sink-trough, clattered to the ground.