The Killing of Butterfly Joe

by Rhidian Brook

  Joe started to pace the room, covering it in three strides there, three strides back.

  ‘She can’t know. Ma can’t know.’

  ‘I’ll tell Edith . . . something.’

  ‘Oh Gee. Isabelle won’t go with you. Under false pretences.’

  ‘I’ll talk her round, Joe.’

  ‘This is . . . this is . . . gonna be trouble, Rip.’

  ‘Joe. You’re going to jail if we don’t find him and if we don’t get you out of here this deal is dead.’

  – Lew?

  – Julia?

  – Oh my.

  – That bad?

  – Well. You look like you could use some sunshine. Are they treating you OK?

  – It’s not as bad as you’d think.

  – You sure?

  – I went to boarding school. The food’s nicer here and there’s no Latin. I’m fine.

  – You’re being stoical.

  – I am and it’s not easy for a hedonist to be a stoic. Although the hedonists were more pragmatic than people think.

  – I talked to Robert Peabody, my attorney. He’s looking at some kind of extradition. It’s all so . . . unjust. But we’ll get you out of here, Lew.

  – No hurry. There are little pleasures to be found. I’ve had time to think. And sleep. The guard, Larson, has been a good friend to me. And I’m getting the book done, you’ll be pleased to know. Prison’s good for writing.

  – Do I get to read it?

  – Maybe.

  – Garton is fascinated by your situation. Thinks there’s the basis of a book in it.

  – I hope not.

  – I didn’t mean for him. For you.

  – Well. I don’t know. The ending’s not clear.

  – It’ll come. I still feel . . . this is my fault somehow, Lew. When you told me you had got this job I thought it sounded great. I should have . . .

  – What?

  – I don’t know. Asked more questions. Something.

  – You weren’t to know. Things took a turn.

  – But these people, Lew. How . . . I mean. They sound . . . crazy. Real freaks.

  – Ha!

  – Is that funny?

  – More than you know. But they weren’t all crazy. I’d say eccentric. It’s hard to explain. Without meeting them.

  – Not sure I want to!

  – Well. I’m sad you won’t get to. Especially Joe.

  – He sounds like he was the craziest of them all.

  – Well, maybe.

  – You got mixed up in something.

  – I’m not innocent, Julia. I did my bit. I’m a people-pleaser. It’s my hamartia.

  – Your what?

  – My tragic flaw.

  – That’s not true, Lew. You’re charming. That’s not a flaw.

  – It is. I want to have my cake and eat it.

  – You’re a young man. It’s what young men do.

  – That sounds like something my mum would say.

  – She called again.

  – You didn’t tell her, did you?

  – I did as you asked. I said you were travelling all over. She said she got a post card from Niagara, and then Mount Rushmore. Just last week.

  – I bought them on the road. I’ve been sending one every two weeks. Larson posts them for me. I don’t want her to worry about me, Julia. She’s had enough to deal with. What with Dad.

  – I don’t know how long I can keep lying to her, Lew. She wants to come over.

  – What did you say?

  – I said maybe the summer. She’d get suspicious if I said no. She really has no idea about you, Rip. She didn’t know about you selling butterflies, or these butterfly people. Didn’t you even say?

  – I told her I had a job selling hand-made products. It sounded too weird saying butterflies. I tried to write and tell her about it – several times – but I couldn’t find the words.

  – That doesn’t sound like you.

  – I almost didn’t want to tell her – or anyone – about it in case they didn’t believe me, or laughed at me or dismissed it. I wanted to preserve it, in my head, to keep it from flying away. Anyway. She’ll have something to read soon enough. You all will.

  V.

  Oh, My!

  America:

  What have you done?

  You raised my hopes

  And from the heights you had them flung.

  You’re a stage for a hero that never comes

  I bought a ticket for the show

  That always runs:

  The synthetic myth

  Of the one who saves the day.

  Now I’m through with your fake transcendencies

  The full-fat promises, the endless what-if-you-sees.

  Get me back to cups of tea

  And nothing to achieve

  A hero-free town of mediocrity

  And Ordinary Joes.

  Spare me the thrills of your wide extremes

  And keep your dreams

  Where they belong:

  In dreams.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  In which I persuade Isabelle that there’s a time for lying and a time for truthing.

  I was brought up to believe – and do believe! – that you deceive only yourself with the deceiving, that a lie will find you out. I am as aware as the next person of the consequences. Of how lies give birth to other lies which elope with each other and have baby lies that you don’t even know you’ve spawned until they turn up on your doorstep, asking for a grandfather’s help! But there is a time for lying and there is a time for truthing. The truth may set you free, but it was going to take a few more lies to get Joe out of jail.

  It was dusk by the time I reached the winding road to the house. The mauve sky was clear, the mountains cleanly outlined, and the hemlock trees muttering to themselves, making judgements about me: ‘There’s the guy who’ll say what it takes to get what he wants.’ Well, it’s all right for trees. How wonderful it must be to live without choices, without conscience. To be natural all the time. Oh to be a tree for a day!

  When I entered the house I affected the pose of someone who had had a tough day at the office, my suit jacket slung over my shoulder, my electric-green tie loose at the neck. Everyone was in the factory, even Isabelle. Since Joe’s arrest it had been a case of all hands on deck to put together the five-hundred-case order for the Cleveland Gift Emporium. Joe’s day-old promise that no one would have to make a case again when the deal was done seemed like ancient history already. Ceelee saw me first and she ran to embrace me and pepper me with questions.

  ‘Is Joe in jail, Rip?’

  ‘Well, yes, just for a few days, Ceelee.’

  ‘Will he have those chains on his hands?’

  ‘They took them off, Ceelee.’

  ‘Does he get Hungry Jack in jail?’

  ‘I’m sure he does. He’s fine, Ceelee. He says hi. And that he’ll be home soon.’

  Edith brushed her hands and the production line came to a halt.

  ‘Give us the news,’ Edith said. ‘And leave out the sugar.’

  I started with truths: Joe had been given thirty – then forty – days for contempt and was to be moved to a correctional facility in Hudson.

  ‘Someday the Hudson!’ Edith said.

  I told them that if charged for selling Appendix I butterflies he could go to jail and the FWA impose a very hefty fine but that Joe was confident he could prove the butterflies were his to sell.

  I told them a lie about the truth that Joe had to prove provenance by saying that the FWA wanted to interview Isabelle in her capacity as curator of the collection, and that I needed to take her in for questioning as soon as possible.

  Isabelle looked startled but I reassured her that this was standard procedure. I tried to make a face at her, hinting that there was more I couldn’t say here.

  I then countered with the good news – still true at this point – that the deal was still alive.

  ‘How’s that?’
/>   ‘I managed to buy time from Roth’s people. They were very understanding. I told them Joe . . . well, I told them that he . . . was indisposed.’

  ‘Indisposed? Talk American, Rip.’

  ‘I told them he had died.’

  Isabelle shook her head and then left the room whilst I was talking (not for the first time). I was a constant disappointment to her. At least in this I was consistent.

  ‘You did that?’ Edith asked.

  ‘I had to give them a damn good reason for Joe not being there. One that would stop them asking too many questions. And with the hearing being scheduled for his release in forty days, it needed to be a proper excuse.’

  Edith started to laugh, mercifully unruffled. ‘You been taking too many leaves from that boy’s book. But you killed him before I did, you little fucker!’

  ‘He obviously needs to stay dead – so to speak – until we complete the deal. So if Roth’s people call about the collection we all need to have our story straight. Joe died whilst lepping in the mountains. He fell into the ravine near the falls. When it’s safe, we’ll resurrect him.’

  ‘You bad, Mr Rip!’ Elijah said, getting loquacious.

  For now I’d won favour. In just twenty-four hours I had morphed from being someone ready to quit this whole circus to someone who thought they could save the day! There is nothing quite like feeling you have the capacity to rescue people from themselves. No wonder Saviours look so smug. This self-belief hadn’t come from nowhere. I think I’d found my voice in that leather-padded office in Manhattan, Killing Joe so convincingly – and all with words!

  Having delivered the good and bad news, I went to look for Isabelle. I found her checking the inventory of the collection in the library. The task gave her an excuse not to look up when I entered, but she was expecting me. Her first lines sounded rehearsed.

  ‘Is there nothing you won’t say to get what you want? To say something like that, to manipulate someone with that kind of lie. It’s not OK.’

  ‘It’s no different to what I’ve been doing on the road, selling cases with lies and exaggerations and stories.’

  ‘You can’t see the difference?’

  I shrugged. Given Isabelle’s position on lying, it was going to take all my powers of persuasion to get her to accept the necessity of the next lie I needed to tell. I closed the library door behind me and continued just one up from a whisper.

  ‘Look, Isabelle, I’m sorry I killed Joe but I had to.’

  ‘This is all a joke for you, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. Well. I can see the funny side, and I’m not going to apologize for that. Look, it just came to me in the moment and I went with it. But it’s the least of our problems. There’s a more serious issue.’

  Isabelle stopped leafing through the index. She’d been making a pretence of checking off the inventory, but it was all displacement activity, to stop her facing me, and whatever it was I was going to tell her next.

  ‘I lied just now to your mother – about Joe being released.’

  ‘I could tell.’

  ‘You could?’

  ‘When you’re not telling the truth, you do this thing with your mouth.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Yes. You make this little twist. And pout a bit. I noticed it when you argued with me all those weeks ago.’

  ‘And to think I actually believed what I was saying then.’

  Be completely straight, Rip. Go on! See if you can manage that.

  I continued, trying not to think about the shape of my mouth. ‘The guy who arrested him – Moroni – thinks Joe could get twenty years. And they can impose a fine that would bankrupt you.’

  ‘But . . . the butterflies were his to sell.’

  ‘As usual, Joe thinks this is just “another storm at a tea party”. That it will blow over and we’ll carry on; but this guy has been following him for nearly two years, he’s built a case, photographs – even a tape of Joe boasting about the bugs he has. He says Joe will go to jail. He’s sure of it. Unless he can prove these butterflies were caught twenty years ago. The magistrate judge says Joe has to prove provenance.’

  Isabelle closed her eyes; she’d worked it out.

  ‘There’s only one person who can prove the specimens were caught before the law. We have to get your father to come to the hearing.’

  The F-word caused Isabelle’s eyes to flicker, as if she were trying to blink him away. She put her head in her hands and rubbed her temples.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We can’t do that.’

  ‘I don’t see that we have a choice.’

  Isabelle stood up and started to pace the aisle of the mahogany canyon. I started my pitch.

  ‘You said you knew where he lived. And you told me he logged every bug he ever caught. I told Joe I’d go and find him, with your help. Even Joe accepted that it’s what we have to do – as long as Edith doesn’t find out.’

  ‘You had no right to do that! To tell him that.’

  ‘I had no choice! I had to. I’m sorry. Joe thinks this will magically disappear, but it won’t. I don’t want Joe to go to jail.’

  ‘You just want to save this deal!’

  Isabelle shouted this at me and I put a shushing finger to my lips.

  ‘Yes. I do want to save the deal, because the deal is a good thing.’

  ‘For you!’

  ‘And for you!’

  Isabelle started to walk up and down again, her face displaying proper anguish. ‘This is all wrong.’ I felt for her. She was a prisoner of her own conscience, incarcerated by loyalties and vows, blood ties and moral imperatives. And now she was caught between loyalty to her mother, needing to help her brother, and being open to the possibility of meeting her father.

  ‘Look. When you wrote to him all those years ago, you were doing something completely natural. You wanted to know what he was like!’

  ‘That was not for you to share.’

  ‘I will go and find him myself if necessary. But it might help if you come with me.’

  ‘No! No, I will not!’

  ‘Isabelle, keep it down. The walls have ears.’

  ‘I don’t care. I can’t do this.’

  ‘Why? Because of this stupid rule your mother made? I understand your loyalty to her. But this is an emergency.’

  ‘It’s not just about loyalty to her.’

  This was going to require a different tack.

  ‘Isabelle. You are an adult. Free to make your own choices. How bad can he be? Really? Are you going to live a life without ever meeting him? Only ever knowing him through your mother’s one-eyed description? Or his books? When you showed me the collection that first time it was obvious that you have a desire to know the man behind it. You’re suppressing your natural curiosity and that’s not good. What if he’s not got in touch out of respect for your mother’s wishes? That inscription you showed me. “For the ones that got away.” What if that is you? The point is you don’t even know that. Even if your mother is right about him maybe he’s changed? People change. Curiosity alone should get the better of loyalty here. I’m not even his child and I want to meet him!’

  She took a deep intake of breath and then exhaled in broken stutters.

  ‘I know my mother might be exaggerating, of course I do. And yes, I am curious and I think about it. A lot. But . . . this is not the way I’d want to meet him for the first time in twenty years.’

  ‘Then let me meet him.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Why? Why won’t you come with me? Are you afraid of being disappointed? Or rejected? Afraid he’ll be this Big Bad Wolf your mother makes him out to be?’

  Isabelle finally looked at me and there was a vulnerability in her I’d not really seen before.

  ‘I’m not afraid of him being a terrible person. I’m afraid of him not being a terrible person. I’m afraid that he won’t be a monster. I’m afraid I will like him. That he will be brilliant and handsome and charming and that I wi
ll want to get to know him and that he will want to get to know me and that my mother will be proved a liar and hate me for knowing the truth and that I will not be able to see her again.’

  I hadn’t thought of that. I’d been too caught up in my own scheming to think about such a thing, reading Isabelle’s resistance wrongly. In that flash of temper I saw her in a different light. Her aversion to subversion, her incapacity for mendacity – traits so irritating to me when I first met her – now made her more attractive.

  ‘OK. But. You have to break free. At some point. Look, Isabelle. I know you think me a chancer. What was it? “Willing to say whatever it takes to get what you want”. Maybe that’s half true. Maybe one hundred per cent true. But I need you to help me. I don’t want Joe to go to jail and, yes, I want this deal to happen.’

  ‘I’m not good at lying. Ma will see through me.’

  ‘Let me do the lying. I’ve got good at it these last few months.’

  ‘It still makes me a liar.’

  ‘It’s just a white lie.’

  ‘Lies are lies. There are no grades or shades.’

  ‘It won’t even be much of a lie. A lie of omission. I’ll say the FWA want to interview you. Which – they probably will want to do. We can kill all our ducks in a row.’

  She at least smiled at the Joe-ism. ‘Maybe we just tell her the truth.’

  ‘If we tell her the truth she will not allow it. And Joe will go to jail.’

  ‘I don’t want to believe that.’

  ‘Don’t be a Cordelia about this, Isabelle. Sometimes one little tweeny weeny lie – “Dad, I think you’re great, whatever the other two say” – can save a lot of trouble.’

  I was wearing her down with my wiliness. Absently, she started restacking the index books and opened the one at the top of the pile.

  ‘I kind of knew this would happen.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That the butterflies would lead us back to him. When I first took an interest in the collection Ma told me not to get too attached to it as it might make me want to meet him. She always said this thing: don’t think these beautiful bugs tell you what he’s like.’