A Dance at the Slaughterhouse

by Lawrence Block

  Tom was right next to the door, propped into a sitting position against the wall. His face looked bloodless, but then he was always pale. Mick set down the sacks of money, picked Tom up in his arms, and carried him out to the car. Andy had the door open and Mick tucked him into the back seat.

  Mick came back for the money while Andy opened the trunk. I tossed in everything I was carrying, and Mick returned and added the sacks of cash and slammed the trunk lid hard. I went back into the arena and checked the room where we’d done the killing. They were both dead, and I couldn’t spot anything I’d overlooked. At the top of the stairs I found the two guards, and they were both dead, too. I wiped the whole area where Tom had been sitting on the chance he’d left his prints there, and I dug most of the chewing gum out of the lock so that it wouldn’t be stuck open. I wiped the lock, and parts of the door we might have touched.

  They were motioning to me from the car. I looked around. The neighborhood was deserted as ever. I ran across the pavement. The Ford’s front door was open, the front passenger seat empty. Mick was in back with Tom, talking softly to him, pressing a wadded-up cloth against his shoulder wound. The wound seemed to have stopped bleeding, but I didn’t know how much blood he’d already lost.

  I got in, closed the door. The engine was already running, and Andy pulled away smoothly. Mick said, “You know where to go now, Andy.”

  “That I do, Mick.”

  “We don’t want a ticket, God knows, but step as lively as you dare.”

  MICK has a farm in Ulster County. The closest town is Ellenville. A couple from County Westmeath, a Mr. and Mrs. O’Mara, run the place for him, and their name appears on the deed. That’s where we went, arriving somewhere between three and three-thirty. Andy drove with the radar detector switched on, and even so didn’t stray too far over the speed limit.

  We got Tom inside and made him comfortable on a daybed in the sun parlor, and Mick went out with Andy and woke up a doctor he knew, a sour-faced little man with liver spots on the backs of his hands. He was with Tom for almost an hour, and when he came out he stood for a long time washing his hands at the kitchen sink. “He’ll be all right,” he announced. “Tough little bastard, isn’t he? ‘I been shot before, Doc,’ he tells me. ‘Well, my boy,’ I said, ‘will you never learn to duck?’ I couldn’t get a smile out of him, but he’s got a face that doesn’t look as though it’s smiled much. He’ll be all right, though, and live to get shot again another day. If you’re on speaking terms with the Creator you might want to thank Him for penicillin. Used to be a wound like that’d turn septic on you, kill you a week or ten days down the line. Not anymore. Innit a wonder we don’t all live forever?”

  While the doctor worked the rest of us sat at the kitchen table. Mick cracked a pint of whiskey, and most of it was gone by the time Andy ran the doctor home. Andy made a beer last as long as he could, then had a second one. I found a bottle of ginger ale in the back of the refrigerator and drank that. We just sat there and nobody said much of anything.

  After Andy dropped off the doctor he came back for us and pulled up next to the house and tapped the horn. Mick rode up front with him and I sat in the back. Tom stayed at the farm; the doctor wanted him to spend the next several days in bed, and planned to see him again over the weekend, or sooner if he got feverish. Mrs. O’Mara would nurse him. I gathered she’d performed that function before.

  Andy got on the Thruway and retraced our route. We picked up the Saw Mill and the Henry Hudson and wound up in front of Grogan’s. It was six-thirty in the morning and I had never been more wide awake in my life. We carried the sacks of money inside and Mick locked them in the safe. We gave Andy our guns, the ones that had been fired; he’d drop them in the river on his way home.

  “I’ll settle with ye in a day or so,” Mick told him. “Once I count it all and figure out shares. ‘Twill be a decent sum for a good night’s work.”

  “I’m not worried,” Andy said.

  “Go on home now,” Mick said. “My love to your mother, she’s a fine woman. And you’re a grand driver, Andy. You’re the best.”

  WE sat at the same table again, with the doors locked and only the light of dawn for illumination. Mick had a bottle and a glass but he wasn’t hitting it hard. I had drawn a Coke for myself and found a piece of lemon to cut the sweetness some. Once I got it the way I wanted it I barely touched the damned thing.

  For over an hour we spoke scarcely a word. When he got to his feet around seven-thirty I got up and went with him. I didn’t have to ask where we were going, and he didn’t have to go in back for his apron. He was still wearing it.

  I went with him to collect the Cadillac and we rode in silence down Ninth Avenue to Fourteenth Street. We parked in front of Twomey’s, mounted the steps, entered the sanctuary of St. Bernard’s. We were a few minutes early as we took seats in the last row of the little room where they hold the butchers’ mass.

  The priest this morning was young, with a smooth pink face that looked as though it never needed a shave. He had a thick West-of-Ireland brogue and must have been a recent arrival. He seemed confident enough, though, before his tiny congregation of nuns and butchers.

  I don’t remember the service. I was there and I was not there. I stood when others stood, sat when they sat, knelt when they knelt. I made the indicated responses. But even as I did these things I was breathing in the mixed scent of blood and cordite, I was watching a cleaver descend in its furious arc, I was seeing blood spurt, I was feeling a gun buck in my hand.

  And then something curious happened.

  When the others queued up to receive Communion, Mick and I stayed where we were. But as the line moved along, as each person in turn said Amen and received the Host, something lifted me up onto my feet and steered me to the end of the line. I felt a light tingling in the palms of my hands, a pulse throbbing in the hollow of my throat.

  The line moved. “The Body o’ Christ,” the priest said, over and over and over. “Amen,” each person said in turn. The line moved, and now I was at the front of it, and Ballou was right behind me.

  “The Body o’ Christ,” the priest said.

  “Amen,” I said. And took the wafer upon my tongue.

  Chapter 24

  Outside the sun was bright and the air crisp and cold. Halfway down the church steps Mick caught up with me and gripped my arm. His smile was fierce.

  “Ah, we’ll burn in hell for sure now,” he said. “Taking the Lord’s Communion with blood on our hands. If there’s a more certain way of getting into hell I don’t know what it is. My sins unconfessed for thirty years, my apron still wet with that bastard’s gore, and I’m up at the altar as if I’m in a state of grace.” He sighed at the wonder of it. “And you! Not a Catholic, but were you ever baptized anything at all?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Sweet Jesus, a fucking heathen at the altar rail, and I’m following after him like Mary’s lost lamb. Whatever got into you, man?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The other night I said you were full of surprises. By God, I didn’t know the half of it. Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I want a drink,” he said. “And I want your company.”

  We went to a meatcutters’ bar on the corner of Thirteenth and Washington. We had been there before. The floor was covered with sawdust, the air thick with smoke from the bartender’s cigar. We sat at a table with whiskey for him and strong black coffee for me.

  He said, “Why?”

  I thought about it and shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “I never planned it. Something picked me up off my knees and set me down in front of the altar.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Oh?”

  “Why were you out there tonight? What sent you to Maspeth with a gun in your hand?”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Well?”

  I blew on my coffee to cool it. “That’s a good question,” I said. />
  “Don’t tell me it was the money. You could have had fifty thousand dollars just by letting him have the tape. I don’t know what the shares’ll be, but they won’t reach fifty thousand. Why double the risk for a smaller reward?”

  “The money didn’t have all that much to do with it.”

  “The money had nothing to do with it,” he said. “When did you ever give a shit for money? You never did.” He took a drink. “I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t give a shit about it either. I need it all the fucking time, but I don’t really care about it.”

  “I know.”

  “You didn’t want to sell them their tape, did you?”

  “No,” I said. “I wanted them dead.”

  He nodded. “You know who I thought of the other night? That old cop you told me about, the old Irishman you were yoked up with when you first started out.”

  “Mahaffey.”

  “That’s the one. I thought of Mahaffey.”

  “I can see how you would.”

  “I thought of what he’d said to you. ‘Never do something you can get somebody else to do for you.’ Isn’t that how it went?”

  “That sounds right.”

  “And I said to myself that there was nothing wrong with that. Why not leave the killing to the men in the bloody aprons? But then you said you wanted more than a finder’s fee, and for a moment there I thought I had you wrong.”

  “I know. And it bothered you.”

  “It did, because I couldn’t see you as a man with that kind of money hunger. It meant you weren’t the man I thought I knew, and that did bother me. But then in the next breath you cleared the air again. Said you wanted to earn a full share, said you wanted to go in with a gun.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “It seemed easier that way. They’d be expecting me, they’d let me in the door.”

  “That’s not the reason.”

  “No, it’s not. I guess I decided Mahaffey was wrong, or that his advice couldn’t apply in this particular situation. It didn’t feel right, leaving the dirty work to somebody else. If I could sentence them to death the least I could do was show up for the hanging.”

  He drank and made a face. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “I serve a better glass of whiskey at my own bar.”

  “Don’t drink it if it’s no good.”

  He tasted it again to make sure. “I couldn’t call it bad,” he said. “You know, I don’t care much for beer or wine, but I’ve had my share of both, and I’ve had beer that’s thinner than water and wine that’s gone to vinegar. And I’ve known of meat that’s turned and eggs that are off, and food poorly cooked and poorly made and spoiled. But in all my life I don’t think I’ve ever had bad whiskey.”

  “No,” I said. “I never had any.”

  “How do you feel now, Matt?”

  “How do I feel? I don’t know how I feel. I’m an alcoholic, I never know how I feel.”

  “Ah.”

  “I feel sober. That’s how I feel.”

  “I bet you do.” He looked at me over the top of his glass. He said, “I’d say they deserved killing.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “If anyone ever did.”

  “I guess we all deserve killing,” I said. “Maybe that’s why nobody ever gets out of here alive. I don’t know where I get off deciding who deserves killing and who doesn’t. We left four people dead back there and two of them I never even met. Did they deserve killing?”

  “They had guns in their hands. Nobody drafted them, not for that war.”

  “But did they deserve it? If we all got what we deserved—”

  “Oh, Jesus forbid it,” he said. “Matt, I have to ask you this. Why did you shoot the woman?”

  “Somebody had to.”

  “It needn’t have been yourself.”

  “No.” I took a moment and thought about it. “I’m not sure,” I said at last. “There’s only one thing I can think of.”

  “Let’s hear it, man.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said, “but I think maybe I wanted to get some blood on my apron.”

  SUNDAY I had dinner with Jim Faber. I told him the whole story all the way through, and we never did get to a meeting that night. We were still in the Chinese restaurant when they were saying the Lord’s Prayer.

  “Well, it’s a hell of a story,” he said. “And I guess you could say it has a happy ending, because you didn’t drink and you aren’t going to go to jail. Or are you?”

  “No.”

  “It must be an interesting feeling, playing judge and jury, deciding who gets to live and who deserves to die. Like playing God, I guess you could say.”

  “You could say that.”

  “You think you’ll make a habit of it?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think I’ll ever do it again. But I never thought I would do it at all. I’ve done unorthodox things over the years, both on and off the force. I’ve fabricated evidence, I’ve distorted situations.”

  “This was a little different.”

  “It was a lot different. See, I saw that tape during the summer and I never really did get it out of my mind. And then I ran into the son of a bitch by pure chance, recognized him from a gesture, the way he smoothed a boy’s hair back on his head. Probably something his own father used to do.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because something or other turned him into a monster. Maybe his father abused him, maybe he was raped in childhood. That’s one of the ways it works. It wouldn’t have been all that hard to understand Stettner. To sympathize with him.”

  “That’s something I noticed,” he said. “When you were talking about him. I never got the feeling that you hated him.”

  “Why should I hate him? He was quite charming. His manners were good, he was witty, he had a sense of humor. If you want to divide the world into good men and bad men, he was certainly one of the bad ones. But I don’t know if you can do that. I used to be able to. It’s harder than it once was.”

  I leaned forward. “They would have kept on doing it,” I said. “They were recreational killers, they did it for the sport of it. They enjoyed it. I can’t understand that, but there are plenty of people who can’t understand how I can enjoy watching a boxing match. Maybe what people do and don’t enjoy is yet another area that’s beyond judgment.

  “But here’s the point. They were doing this and getting away with it, and I got on their case and got lucky and figured out what they did and how they did it and who they did it to, and it didn’t mean squat. No indictment, no arrest, no charges brought, not even an investigation. A pretty good cop found the whole thing so frustrating he drank himself stupid. I wasn’t prepared to do that myself.”

  “Well, you got that part right,” he said. “And then you decided, well, letting the Universe work this out on its own is just not something I can safely do. God’s in deep shit, you told yourself, unless He’s got me to help Him out.”

  “God,” I said.

  “Well, whatever the hell you want to call it. Your Higher Power, the creative force of the Universe, the Great Perhaps. That’s what Rabelais called it. The Great Perhaps. You didn’t figure the Great Perhaps was equal to the task confronting Him, so it was up to you to take over.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not how it was.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I thought, I can let go of this, I can turn this over, and it will all work out the way it’s supposed to. Because everything always does. I know that on the days when I seem to believe in the Great Perhaps, and I still know it when my Higher Power is the Great Perhaps Not. And one thing I always know for sure—whether or not there’s a God, I’m not it.”

  “Then why did you do what you did?”

  “Because I just plain wanted them dead,” I said. “And I just flat out wanted to be the sonofabitch who did it to them. And no, I’m not going to do it again.”

  “You took the money.”

  “Yes.
”

  “Thirty-five, you said it was?”

  “Thirty-five a man. Mick’s end must have run to a quarter of a million. Of course there was a lot of foreign currency. I don’t know how he’ll make out when he unloads it.”

  “He gets the lion’s share.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what do you do with yours?”

  “I don’t know. For now it’s in the safe-deposit box, along with the cassette that got the whole thing started. I’ll probably give a tenth of it to Testament House. That seems like a logical place to donate it.”

  “You could give it all to Testament House.”

  “I could,” I agreed, “but I don’t think I will. I think I’ll keep the rest of it. Why the hell shouldn’t I? I worked for it.”

  “I guess you did at that.”

  “And I ought to have a little money of my own if I marry Elaine.”

  “Are you going to marry Elaine?”

  “How the hell do I know?”

  “Uh-huh. Why’d you go to mass?”

  “I’ve gone with Ballou before. I guess the current term for it is ‘male bonding.’ All I know is it seems to be an occasional part of our friendship.”

  “Why’d you take Communion?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must have some idea.”

  “No,” I said, “I really don’t. There are lots of things I do without knowing why the hell I do them. Half the time I don’t know why I stay sober, if you want to know the truth, and back when I drank all the time I didn’t know why I did that either.”

  “Uh-huh. What happens next?”

  “Stay tuned,” I said. “Don’t change the channel.”

  Acknowledgments