When The Butterflies Come

by Rosemary Ness Bitner

  “You’ve got to be putting me on. You’re talking about murder, drugs, prostitution, loan sharking, a hidden altar, insects and spiders? All this and phony invoices too? Are you sure you’re not delusional?” Bob shook his head as if he could shake off the truth.

  “Not delusional. I saw these things with my own eyes. I took pictures of all the stuff in David’s secret room. I’m telling you, Bob, the man is not in his right mind.”

  “You’re talking about my best friend, Barbara. First you say there’s a phony invoice problem, and okay, maybe David tries to keep taxes down, but now this? Why are you doing this?” Bob didn’t want to believe her. He wasn’t expecting this and he wasn’t ready to hear it. Her assertions were an affront to his world view and his status as the fair-haired boy and son to inherit the throne. Bob was torn. The father he always wanted was being attacked by the woman he loved. There had to be some mistake.

  “Because you’re living in an illusion. You need to see the truth.”

  “But David has always kept his word to me, Barb. How can I turn against him?”

  “You will not turn against him. He will turn against you.” Barb was confident.

  “How can you know that?” He wished what he was hearing wasn’t true.

  “I trust Chief. He knows animals and people very well. He’s an expert tracker. Chief and I talked. I showed him what I told you I saw. He has everything, all the file copies. I flew to Montana to see him last weekend.”

  “Let me guess. He also told you to be patient.” Bob was cynical.

  “You have no place to make light of one who tries hard to help you. Chief is good. You must always show respect. Always! And yes, he says we must still be patient. Bob, you may be in danger. You must not let on in the slightest that you know anything.” Barbara’s face was stern. Her consternation with Bob’s cavalier attitude flared.

  “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I apologize. But try to see things from my perspective. David is like a dad to me. We split serious money on a handshake. Now you want me to turn away from a man who’s been like a father to me and a special friend? How can I be that kind of person?”

  “That handshake was long ago, Bob, many years. You working on a verbal deal now or what? I have looked everywhere and found no evidence that you have anything other than a retail rep deal. But you’re not a retail rep. You’re wholesale. So what’s your deal, Big Horse?” Barb sought to draw Bob out.

  “I will inherit the operating companies when David dies. That’s my deal.”

  “Whoa! Really, Big Horse? You have that in writing?”

  “It’s in writing.” Bob’s clipped answer didn’t answer the question. Barbara caught the omission.

  “Bob, may I ask where this writing is?”

  “It’s in a safe deposit box.”

  Everything suddenly came together for Barbara. The scene she’d witnessed from her office window years before suddenly made sense.

  “Big Horse, is the writing in your safe deposit box or David’s?”

  “David’s.”

  “Big Horse, did David show you this writing?”

  “Yes.” Bob described the bank vault scene to Barbara. Now everything finally made sense.

  “So, Big Horse, you changed careers to build a company. You made a deal with David, he put the terms in a will codicil, and then he showed you the codicil. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is important, Big Horse. What did David say to you when you left the bank?”

  “‘See you later,’ I guess. I can’t remember.”

  “Yes, you can, Big Horse. Think. Did you and David come back to the office together?” Barbara wanted to shake Bob’s memory.

  “Yeah, we always come back together.” Bob looked at her but she just stared at him, her head cocked and eyes squinted in disbelief. Her look jogged Bob’s memory. “No, wait! I remember now. David told me he needed to go up the street to see an old friend about something. Yes, he did say that. I remember it clearly.”

  “Very good, Big Horse!” Barbara put her hands on his arms. “Now Sparrow must tell you something, but first you must promise to keep what I’m about to tell you to yourself. Promise me. It is very important for you to promise me.”

  “Okay, I promise I will keep to myself whatever it is you are about to tell me.” Bob thought this was getting corny.

  “Bob, dearest man I love. I hate to tell you this but it is truth you are about to hear. David did not go up the street to see an old friend that day. You came into the building. David walked one block up the street, crossed over to the other side of the street, walked another two blocks up the street, then crossed back to the bank side of the street and walked back into the bank. Sparrow watched the whole sequence from the window of the little room with the extra chairs and tables and lamps.”

  She looked deep into Bob’s eyes. He looked wounded by what he heard.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure, Bob. That codicil you saw was probably destroyed that very same day you saw it.”

  “But you don’t know why David went back to the bank.”

  “No, but the behavior fits.”

  “Fits what?” Bob’s hackles were raised. He didn’t want to believe the worst.

  “Look, Bob. Marty thought she was special as well. David let her get away with whoring all over the country as long as she was useful to him. She also had her mother’s protection while she was here. But where is Marty?”

  “Who the hell knows?” Bob still had lingering emotional pain over losing Marty. He was not ready to believe theories or innuendos.

  “Bob, you need to be smart here. Chief has theories about what happened to Marty and one of them is worst-case. She may be dead, Bob.”

  “Come on, Barb. Stop this. I know you didn’t like her, but dead?”

  “Think, Bob. Who decided to hold off on filing a missing person report?”

  “Susan and David both did.”

  “Yes, but did you ever think that Susan wanted to save her daughter from embarrassment? That explains her decision, but what about David’s? Why was he so nonchalant about one of his marketing stars going missing?” Barb raised her eyebrow.

  Bob had an answer. “By then I was doing sales nationally. We’d changed our marketing strategy.”

  “Sure, but suppose you failed? And what about continuing help for the locals? That was Marty’s area. Why wouldn’t David want her back right away working on local sales?”

  “But Barb, I was succeeding. Our sales were going up faster than ever before.”

  “You’re right! That’s what I could be missing, but that would give David even more reason to….”

  “You’re not suggesting what I think you are”

  “It’s one of Chief’s theories, an active theory. It fits everything so far, except a body. I saw some human heads in the green room, partially decomposed with insects crawling all over them. He uses insects to dispose of his victims’ bodies. One of those heads could have been Marty’s. And that’s not all, Big Horse. Chief and I did a little tracking work. David started a subsidiary under UGGA’s holding company to do real estate investing. But it’s just a front for money laundering.

  “He has an exclusive deal with a Mexican drug gang. They arrange contract murders through David, and he keeps the hit men separate from the contractors. Marks are killed by long-distance sniper fire from high-velocity target rifles with silencers. A separate unit immediately picks up the dead bodies and takes them to the barnyard for processing. No body, no crime. Just people disappearing. Sound familiar, Big Horse? David is paid cash for the hits. The remains are fed to the barnyard animals and the insects. Insects that need disposal are fed to his guinea hens. It’s an ingenious cycle. The real estate subsidiary also runs a string of whorehouses. Cash from prostitution and drugs is put in a lawyer’s escrow account and used to buy dilapidated houses in dodgy neighborhoods. Man Child goes along with the lawyer to the closings dressed as a simple carpenter who’
s going to rehabilitate them.

  “They get fixed up and the tops are popped. Then David brings in underage girls and boys from Cambodia, Thailand, and south of the border to do prostitution in those houses. They also sell drugs there, the hard, nasty stuff. Debbie keeps a secret set of separate books. I sent a copy of all these records to Chief. They run seven houses in the metro area and two houses in Springs. They make five million a year tax free. There’s a file page in the murder file with girls’ names, all Asian and Latino names with ages and house numbers next to the name. It’s like a human inventory sheet of girls that went bad, got disposed of, and needed replacement. Girls who get out of line are murdered and processed in the barnyard, then fed to the animals and the insects. David sees these girls as parts in a machine. He doesn’t see people as people. He’s completely disassociated from human feelings. The operation gives a whole new meaning to the word ‘insecticide.’

  “Some of the money goes to bribe politicians and police to look the other way. They have four hundred johns on their list of regulars. The regulars even have credit accounts up to fifty thousand dollars. Then, if they don’t pay up in cash, the Mexican drug guys do enforcement work. Many johns are prominent Plaintown politicians and businessmen. All the houses pay expenses in cash wherever possible. What must be paid by check, like real estate taxes, is paid by the UGGA subsidiary. It’s a big operation, and it’s growing so fast it will soon be bigger than UGGA’s investment management business.

  “And it’s not just about making money. There’s also a subsidiary within the real estate subsidiary that sells worthless junky consumer products. The come-on is that if the customer doesn’t like the product, they can get their money refunded by sending it back. So people buy all sorts of junky products made in China and Vietnam. Then they don’t want them. They try to send back their mechanical exercise machines and espresso machines and mail-order motor scooters. None of this stuff works. None of it! The hitch is they need to call the company to get an authorization number to send the crap back. When they call, they get put on hold for an hour and then the call disconnects. For David, this is all a great big yuk. He just loves screwing people. That’s what juices his life.”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  “David loves to pit people against each other. UGGA is like his personal amusement park. He has girls in the office fighting minor turf wars over stupid stuff all the time. He has different ones order different amounts of pencils and then sets them up to blame each other for which one of them made a ten-dollar mistake. He puts two different people in charge of the same thing and then makes sure the project fails so he can watch them blame each other and fight about it. He loves fights. He loves watching people fight.

  “And Bob, as I told you, it extends to insects too. He loves to watch tarantulas and scorpions fight to the death. He loves watching spiders eat grasshoppers and crickets. He loves watching a scorpion paralyze a roach and eat it. I’m telling you the man is sick. He also loves to destroy young girls with his whorehouse rental business. He destroys children in the schools through his drug distribution business. He destroys employees’ homes and marriages by loaning them money and then cutting their pay for some idiotic reason or another so they can’t pay him back. He does the same sorts of dirty tricks to people he loans monies to outside the companies. He loves to destroy. He is a classic sociopath, a monster. He just hides it well behind this image of a benevolent man who runs UGGA. It’s all bullshit, Big Horse. It’s a disguise for what he really is. He’s a destroyer of everything. He drains the work, the careers, and the lives out of everyone he comes into contact with. And people trust their money to this monster.

  “Now Bob, what makes you believe a man like this wouldn’t pit you and Marty against each other to see who would defeat the other? Can’t you see it? Weren’t the two of you fighting initially before you started screwing her?”

  “Yes. We were at odds. She tried to block everything I tried to do at first, but she failed. I leapfrogged her blocks by going nationwide.”

  “Yes, and that worked. That showed David you were smarter than her. Don’t you see it? He tested you both. He probably instructed her to give you a hard time to see what you were made of. She failed. You succeeded. He looked at the two of you as sort of gladiators. She lost, so she had to die. Don’t you get it?”

  “It’s pretty crazy, Barb.”

  “Is it? What if the two of you got married? What if that kept you here in Plaintown and not on the road selling? Can’t you see what a threat your marriage would be to sales growth? David whips you constantly for more sales. I see it. He wants to squeeze the life out of you. He’s got you becoming a Jew for more sales. He’s got you on the road and working you to near death. You’re out in the rain and the snow. He’s here playing with his homosexual boyfriends and laughing at you. Bob, listen to me. Chief and I talked about this. Chief is wise. He believes the father-son business David did with you was just a sales job to take advantage of you. It has caused you to make decisions to work like a dog for David, not out of logic but out of emotion. Chief thinks David made you into an emotional cripple.”

  “I’m an emotional cripple?”

  “Yes, you are, Bob. Marty was emotionally crippled also. He used emotions to cripple both of you like he cripples insects by taking some of their legs off; then you, like the insects, are at his mercy and dependent upon him for your survival. He uses you as he pleases, then gets rid of you. But you are not to worry, Big Horse. Sparrow loves you, truly loves you, and Sparrow and Chief and the people will help you heal. We will, Big Mighty Horse I love. But you must see what has happened for yourself before you can heal.”

  Barb had Bob’s attention at that point. He was being worked to near death by David. He remembered his mother’s comments about how Gordy Goodman worked his father, Nevin, to death and then treated Estella no better than a stranger.

  “Have you noticed, Big Horse, that when you now fly between cities you are routed to take as many flights as possible? Did you ever think that maybe David changed Judith’s instructions to try to wear you out or possibly get you killed from all the takeoffs and landings? If you go to fifty cities in a year, you could normally do it on a hundred or a hundred and thirty flights, right? But Big Horse, you are taking four hundred flights. Doesn’t that make you stop and think David is trying to destroy you?’

  “Look, I admit it’s hard, but I sleep all right on planes. I try to keep costs down.”

  “Does anybody else try to keep costs down? UGGA and its subsidiary are gushing money. David and his boyfriends are always off partying in some hotel or bathhouse. They go to Las Vegas to the shows. Do you?”

  “Well, David’s worked all his life and he deserves a—”

  “Bullshit. David has fucked off all his pathetic sick life. You’re allowing yourself to be manipulated by this creep because you lost your father and you have a blind spot. I feel sorry for you about that but you must break free from it. You can do this. David is excellent at spotting human weaknesses, and he has your number. You believe you are special to him. He’s conned you into thinking that. He spotted your weakness right off. He’s good at that. That’s all he’s good at. You are not special to him, Big Horse. He keeps a file for you also. He has you set up with phony invoices and even has a photograph of you kissing some woman named Rita in a seedy bar. You are like tissue paper. He intends to blow his snot mess onto you and throw you away. You need to understand that you cannot take the words and behaviors of a sociopath and juxtapose them into explainable terms as if they were merely quirky oddities emanating from a normal person. A sociopath like David is far removed from normal. He is vile. He is evil. He is, at his core being, a hateful inhuman monster. He is the devil who walks among us. If you don’t come to grips with the character you are dealing with, he will find a way to destroy you because all he knows and understands is destruction. He has no capability for empathy or love or kindness or any other sort of normal human feelin
gs toward others.”

  Bob recoiled with alarm at Barbara’s description of David. He felt frightened and threatened. “Okay, so you think he killed Marty. You think he’s going to kill me next. You think I should break my deal. Are you going to the police with this? What else?”

  “Not the police. There’s a better way to deal with this.”

  “How?”

  “Leave this to me and Chief. You know nothing and you say nothing. Mark Sparrow’s words. You just play along with David. But always be careful and remember he is extremely dangerous.”

  Bob did not tell Barbara about his conversation with Old Mac. He was again in midair now, just like when he’d tempted fate at the dam breast when he was a boy. Again he put his trust in the unknown. Would his skates come down and bite into the ice and save his life? Would Old Mac be honorable and be there when the chips were down to save his deal to inherit the companies? He could only close his eyes and hope then. He could only close his eyes and pray now. He looked at Barbara without the slightest hint of concern. If anything, he was fearless and brave.

  “I’m not saying anything except be careful. Remember, you are simply being used like a piece of tissue paper. Just be careful!” She was emphatic. Bob knew she was serious. She cared about him, and she was taking a risk talking to him this way. “This is just one of Chief’s theories,” she continued. “Chief says we must both wait. If David has a card, he will play it because he must. Just be ready for it and do not be stupid, Big Horse. Chief and Sparrow are with you all the way on this. Chief’s theory is that David is unlikely to kill you. Marty disappeared. If something happens to you or you also go missing, that would be too suspicious. Chief says to just be careful and wait. David will act like a rat that must come out of his hiding spot. He will make his move.”

  Bob looked out the window of the coffee shop. The white snow and cold outside contrasted sharply with the dark coffee and warmth inside. The world always offered choices, and he reckoned it was his privilege to make one rather soon.