Hog Butcher: 2nd Edition

by Andrew Sutherland

  To be a good sniper, a successful sniper, you needed to be stubborn and patient. To stay committed to getting payback on people for almost a decade and a half, that took something beyond stubbornness, beyond patience. It took grim will. Eric had that sort of grim will. He got in place and focused on the spot where Lance had stood the day before.

  Even in the pre-dawn hours, people were bustling here and there with equipment: lights, explosives, and what seemed like a million feet of cable. There was enough cable to stretch to the moon and back. He mused that he never got a chance to work in the movies. He thought he might be good. He thought he could do stunts, if nothing else. He had very little fear of anything and sometimes got an almost orgasmic rush when his adrenal glands dumped their precious cargo into his system. Eric watched them set up for and shoot the long shots. The wide angles showed where all of the major action would happen before things blew up. You had to film those first because on the tight shots, you ruined things. You couldn’t un-destroy a building, so you shot all of the stuff you needed to with the buildings intact.

  At about 11:00am, Eric got his chance. Lance had maneuvered himself into the position he’d been in the day before. They went through the action a couple of times, then it was “go time.” There were three cameras on set. That way, they would have the highest chances of catching all of the explosions from different angles and, hopefully, edit them into a montage that looked like several different explosions even though it was only one filmed from different angles. Lance stood in front of a Quonset hut, and they started filming.

  Lance took three big exaggerated running steps then stopped. He held up his gun and fired blanks in three different directions, as if on three distinct targets. They would edit in him killing three separate people later. The he turned as if to face the Quonset hut. A fake bullet hit him in the right arm and another in the right leg. Fake blood sprayed from the wounds. Then Lance turned and fired his grenade gun, turned away from the hut, and took two limping steps away from it.

  The Black Hills 175-grain match hollow-point load tore through the right side of Lance’s chest as the first explosive went off in the hut. The second hollow point round hit the left side of Lance’s chest, vaporizing his heart an instant before the second explosion ripped another piece of the hut’s outer skin off. For a moment, Bannerman could only stare. It looked almost like his bullets had caused the explosions. He knew they hadn’t, but it looked super cool. He watched long enough for someone to call “cut” or whatever they said in movies these days. He saw some commotion start when Lance didn’t immediately get up. Eric backed up the way he’d come. Once he felt safe, he sprinted to the rental and sped off directly away from the filming site.

  He dropped pieces of his gear all over between the shoot and the hotel he had pre-arranged in Salt Lake City. He had changed clothes and thrown away the long-range-shooter clothes. After he had checked into the hotel, he shucked off the clothes he had been wearing for under an hour. He took a shower, dried off, ordered a steak from room service, and turned on CNN. He waited with that same grim resolve. This time he wasn’t waiting for his quarry; he was waiting for the story to hit the TV. At 3:00, a breaking news story hit about an accident that killed action star Lance Henderson, They said they had just received word that the accident had happened while filming near Logan, Utah. When they had details, they would update the audience.

  Eric clicked off the television. He had done it and had gotten away scot-free. He ate his last French fry and placed his room service tray outside his door. It was early still, but he was bushed. He was getting up early and flying back to Chicago in the morning.

  Three little Indians left.

  40

  Ted managed to free up enough time to get them to the airport the next day. They flew out at 1:00 pm. Ted told Al he’d be in touch. “And don’t go flashing that badge to get free cigars or blowjobs.” He smiled shyly at Edith and said, “Beg pardon, ma’am.”

  Edith took a step over to the tall lawman and kissed his cheek. “I promise I will not give him a blowjob if he coerces me with his badge.” She smiled as Ted turned a deep shade of crimson.

  “I’ll keep it low. I may use it here and there, but I’ll try to only use it in situations that would justify its use or in situations that provided…”

  “Plausible deniability.” Ted and Edith said at the same time.

  “Well, shit. I gotta get some new material.”

  “Just stay alive, Al. Plenty of dancing left to do before we finish the party.”

  “I know. Thing is, this party never ends.”

  “Amen, brother.”

  Ted hugged Al and kissed Edith’s hand then was climbing into a Lincoln Town Car and heading out of the Hattiesburg airport.

  “I barely met him, and I think he is one of the better men I’ve met.” Edith said this with a wistful tone. It was as if she harbored some sadness about the simple fact she would never live long enough to meet all the good men out the in the world. Until recently, she’d have guessed the number to be somewhere around “precious few.” They said hello to the pilots and got on board the plane.

  “So, Deputy Al, you have any revelations about our killer in Chicago? I figured since you’ve been a bona fide lawman for well over twelve hours now, you might have come up with something substantial.”

  “Oh, shit. I gotta check something.” He climbed back out on the tarmac as one of the pilots was about to close the doors. “I gotta make a call. I’ll be right back.”

  “Try to make it quick. Orders to drop you in Chicago then turn back for Lexington.”

  “Two minutes.” He walked a small way away from the plane and called Scotty Mac. “Hey, man. What’s the word on this Robbie guy?”

  Scotty Mac started to laugh. “He’s a two-bit hustler. He got kicked out of Atlantic City by a business associate of Trevor’s and warned not to try any of this ‘big time thug’ hustle. Evidently, he doesn’t learn real fast.”

  “Evidently. That or a really sincere death wish. Can I play this my way? I don’t want to piss any of the wrong people off.”

  “Trev says waste him or tell him he’s busted and has to go to ground. He makes absolutely no difference to anybody. He got kicked out of Atlantic City for fucking things up for the real mobsters. So yeah, do what you want. You having fun?”

  “Shit, yes. Gotta go, but I’ll tell you a story soon. Found a nice girl. She’s a force to be reckoned with on the computer, let me tell you.”

  “OK. Go have fun. I gotta go down to Party Tyme and act like a big shot.”

  “Oh, yeah. I have some good news on the tax front. Seems like due to a favor from an old friend, the IRS won’t be looking at us for a couple years. We can play it a little loose for now. Scout’s honor. I’ll tell you more on a safe line.”

  “Alright. Give ‘em hell.” And he was off the line. Al trotted back to the plane.

  “Thanks, man. We’re good to go if you are.”

  “Let’s get this going”

  Within ten minutes, they were airborne, headed back to the Windy City and ready to shake the tree. Al had a feeling if he shook it hard enough, long enough, a whole bunch of bodies were going to come crashing out of that tree, a whole metric fuck-ton.

  “So what’s up, Lawman?”

  “I wish you’d stop bringing up how awesome I am. My anemic little ego can barely handle it.”

  She reached over and gave his crotch a small squeeze. “You liked playing cops and robbers last night.”

  “Technically, we were playing deputy Marshal and computer hacker, and although I appreciate the squeeze, you got my parts a little sore last night.” They had spent much of the night swearing the last one was the last of the night, only to get tangled up with each other again a half hour later. “I haven’t had that much…friction since I was in college.”

  “Didn’t have the right playmate, that’s all. Seriously, what are you thinking? You’re all brow-furrowy.”

  “Disregarding the
fact that ‘furrowy’ is not a word, I just talked to my friend Scotty Mac about the guy who’s bracing Marty over at the theatre. He was kindly invited to leave Atlantic City for being a two-bit pain in the ass, and now he is pulling the same crap in Chicago. I’ve been given the information and the nod to oust his sniveling ass from the broad-shouldered metropolis, with a one way ticket to Obscureville, Arkansas.”

  “You’d do that to a person?”

  “What?”

  “Send them to Arkansas?”

  “It’s harsh, I know. Mississippi is kinda nice, but Arkansas…”

  She affected a bad Southern drawl. “Well, you gots to keep the peace if’n you’re a…”

  “…lawman. I know. The lawman thing is officially old. You are cordially invited to knock it off, or I’ll give you constant shit for being a hacker. Them’s the rules.”

  “Well, shit. There goes about four weeks of Wyatt Earp jokes, but, OK. How you gonna go at it?”

  “Head first, at a dead run. This guy is some little asshole who managed to grift friends of mine. That’s bullshit, my fine feathered friend.” He put his hand on her chest. “I’ll make a call tonight, meet this asshole tomorrow night, and it’ll be done.”

  “Just like that? You’ll say frog and he’ll say jump?”

  “I’m a pretty persuasive guy. Tonight, we are dining with one of Chicago’s finest with his wife and kid around 6:00. He says the wife is OK, but the eighteen-month-old is a loudmouth. We’re going to Gino’s again. I may have to get salad after last night’s meal. You have the bacon for Shrek, right?”

  “In the mini-fridge. We should get it on ice when we get to Chicago. We’ll be there with a couple hours to kill. Wanna come see my place?”

  “Yes. On the condition that you let me nap with you now on the way back. Nap. No hanky-panky.”

  “No hanky-panky on the plane. I might have to show you the bedroom at my place. It’s cozy.” She snuggled in with his arm around her, and they were soon both getting some much-needed sleep.

  41

  Bud was on the way to Gino’s via his little brownstone when he got a call from one of his buddies on the Gary, Indiana, police force.

  “This is Detective Smythe.” He was driving the car and talking hands-free. On his salary, hands-free meant an earphone with a built-in speaker that didn’t identify the caller.

  “Bud, this is Jacob from Gary.”

  “Jacob. What’s the word, hummingbird?”

  “You know how you said to keep an eye out for any homicides involving actors. I mean ones that weren’t motivated by shitty acting.”

  This sort of thing passed for a joke with Jacob. “Yeah. You got something?”

  “It’s kinda weird and really, well, nasty. You didn’t hear this from me. The details aren’t supposed to leave the building.”

  “I’m part of the Blue Wall of Silence, man. I won’t tell anyone I’m not prepared to kill.”

  “OK. This local actress, Karen Lane, she lived here in Gary in her dad’s old house.”

  “He get a new house?”

  “Yeah. It’s about seven feet long and is located six feet underground. She inherited the place. Little two-bedroom in a neighborhood gone to seed.”

  “OK. Wait. Not OK. I gotta pull over and jot this down.” He pulled into a gyro stand parking lot. He needed to get his wife and the squirt so he wouldn’t be late to Gino’s. He hadn’t eaten anything but a small breakfast this morning and was going to try to eat three pieces of the combo by himself. He also didn’t want to forget anything or rear-end anyone. He pulled his ass-shaped notepad out of his back pocket, pulled the pencil, licked the tip and wrote Karen Lane-Gary. “OK. Shoot.”

  “Alright, Ms. Lane was at home Friday night. Someone broke into her house and killed her.” Bud wrote the word deceased after her name and replied. “So? That’s not really weird. I mean, people croak all the time. So why weird?”

  “She was tied to a chair with an Everclear IV dumping 190-proof booze into her system full-throttle.”

  “The fuck? Sorry, I thought you said she was tied to a chair with a 190-proof IV.”

  “That’s the story, Bud.”

  “Shit. OK. Any witnesses? Anybody see anything?”

  “We have a neighbor. She’s a shut-in and a hoarder. The only exercise she gets is spying on the neighbors.”

  Bud, who realized the value of these social outcasts said, “She witnessed something, but it points to bupkis. Am I right?”

  “Fuckin A. She’s an old woman, name’s Jolivette. She saw some guy she said was white, young, and hunky. He left and got into some kind of a panel van.”

  “I’m not saying he’s the killer, but what the fuck with the fuckin’ panel vans?” He tried to sound tired, but that carnivorous cop feeling was creeping up his spine. “She didn’t get a plate, I assume.”

  “She did. That’s the good news. The bad news is the plate was stolen. She also said he was dressed like a workman. Had a hard hat. She figured she had picked him up on the street because she was a good-for-nothing Godless tramp.”

  “Oh. So you’re saying Ms. Jolivette would make a stellar courtroom witness.”

  “Any prosecutor would hide her somewhere rather than put her on the stand. She’s a wacko.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  “Hundred and ten percent.” Hundred came out at hunnert, but Bud understood. Great information, disqualifying demeanor. Most witnesses in Chicago fit that description.

  “She get any kind of description aside from ‘hunky’? I mean height, anything?”

  “Jesus, Bud. The reason you piss people off is because you say shit like that as if we didn’t think of it ourselves.” He paused. Bud waited. “Yes. She said probably a little over six feet tall and muscular. She also thinks he was bald.”

  “Thinks?”

  “He took off his hard hat when he got in the van and his head was shiny, like he’d broken a sweat or something. She said it could have been a skull cap hat of some kind, but she followed that by saying that ‘only a fag would wear a cap like that, and this guy wasn’t a fag because he was over there to have sex with that tramp.’ Her words.”

  “She sounds like a stellar humanitarian. So tallish and built like a football player.”

  “Roger that. We have someone looking into the panel van but it was unmarked and she put the color at anywhere from light beige to yellow to off-white. That area has the old-fashioned arc sodium streetlights. They’re so fuckin yellow, you can’t tell color at night. He drove away from her toward the next arc sodium. Color is anyone’s guess.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nope. No forced entry. No prints. Nada. She might have known him. He might have been posing as a utility worker. One thing for sure, he was pissed. There was an IV bag with a little V shaped thingy to inject drugs into. Our people say at least one injection of alcohol was made through that. When she was found, the bag was ripped open and the bottle of Everclear was stuffed into it, like he got pissed and just went for it.”

  “Thanks, Jacob. I’ll keep my mouth shut, but keep me in the loop.”

  “You got something?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I might. I’ll let you know.” Bud hung up and started driving home. They’d opened up the barrel safe from the bathtub guy, Dave Parcel’s, apartment. There was a picture in there from some kind of theatre workshop. There were names on the back behind each of the people. If you held it up to the light, the names had been written directly behind the corresponding heads. There were check marks next to several of the names. Eight out of thirteen had checks next to them. Bud had just gotten it today. He was planning to go over it with Al. He did remember the names Dirk Vanderbeek and Mary St. Claire had been there-with checkmarks. He thought he’d seen a Karen on the list, but couldn’t remember and didn’t have the file up front with him. It was in the trunk. He’d leave it for Gino’s, but the curiosity was killing him.

  He swung by and picked up his wife, Betsy, an
d the heir apparent, Buster. Buster was shaped exactly like a ball. He was eighteen months old and was a spitty little sphere with hands, feet, and a head poking out. Bud double-parked in front of the brownstone they rented half of and honked twice. Parking in his neighborhood was a pain in the ass, with or without a badge.

  In under three minutes, Betsy came out of the front door, toting a diaper bag and their little sphere of joy. He got out of the car to help load the kid in the seat in back. Some guy in a silver Acura pulled up behind them and honked. Bud stood up, pulled out his gun, opened the other side of his well-worn trench coat and pointed at the badge with the gun. Acura man got the message, backed up 200 feet, and took the alley. Wise move.

  Bud got to the restaurant at 6:15. Al and Edith were sitting in some chairs by the host station. They stood as the threesome came in. Buster, who was usually very apprehensive about strangers, saw Edith, made a grasping gesture with his pudgy little hand, and said what sounded like, “Have it.” It sounded enough like that to make them all laugh. She took Buster, and they walked to the table together. The place was only mildly noisy and smelled heavenly.

  They were led to a table. Al sat next to Edith and Buster. Edith had insisted on holding the little man for a while longer. On Al’s left was Bud, and across from Al was Betsy. They had some small talk, but Al could tell Bud was bursting at the seams to talk about work. They decided to order a large combination. It had vegetables on it, but they all agreed that it was a bit healthier than the meat bomb. The combo took a half an hour to cook so they had time to kill.

  Buster was happy to keep sitting on Edith’s lap. Betsy volunteered a couple times to take over, but Edith was having none of it. She loved kids, especially the ones that lived with other people. They ordered some breadsticks. Non-alcoholic beverages were distributed to all at the table. Bud started to order a beer but Betsy said, “You are driving home and you have a lovely bottle of Pinch at home.” She turned to Al, “Can you believe someone gave him a bottle of Pinch just as a thank you?”

  “Wow,” said Al, “Some people are just generous.” He turned to Bud. “You said you had something for me to look at. Is this something we can talk about here?”