Butcher's Road (13 page)

When the waiter, a squat black man named Williams, came for his order, Hollis said, “I was supposed to meet a friend here. Perhaps he’s come and gone?”

“Yes, Mr. Rossington,” Williams said. The corners of his mouth ticked down as he nodded his head toward the back of the restaurant. “I was just coming over to direct you to his table.”

“He’s here?” Hollis asked.

“Yes, Mr. Rossington.” Again, Williams nodded to the back of the café.

This time Hollis looked over his shoulder in the direction the waiter had indicated, but he saw no one in the corner, except for the dozing bum. Hollis smiled, certain there had been some kind of mistake. “No,” he said, “the man I’m looking for…” But he let the sentence trail away.

The man he was looking for had been on the run for at least three days and had traveled more than a thousand miles, likely without a change of clothes or a toiletry kit. He’d expected to be overwhelmed by Cardinal’s size, yet on his first glance he hadn’t noticed how completely the man was slumped in his chair. His unshaven chin pressed deeply into the lapels of his filthy shirt. And hadn’t he said something about having caught a bug? Why had Hollis imagined Cardinal would be scrubbed and photograph ready after such an ordeal?

“Thank you, Williams. I’ll have a café au lait, and bring us a couple orders of beignets, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes, Mr. Rossington.”

Hollis stood and wove his way through the tables. As he approached Butch Cardinal he caught the sound of a wet, wheezing snore. The sleeping man looked too old. Beaten. An overwhelming sadness fell over Hollis as if he’d stumbled across a saint lying in a gutter, covered in his own vomit. Only common people were allowed such blatant weakness. In fact, they excelled at exhibitions of it, but a man like this, a
wrestler
like Butch Cardinal, deserved respect. He deserved some goddamn dignity.

Hollis gently shook Butch until a grinding hiccup replaced the rough snoring. A moment later, Butch reared back and fixed wild eyes on him, looking like a rabbit with the scent of a coyote in his nose.

The wildness in his eyes remained until Hollis said, “Hey, Butch,” as if they were dear old friends. “Settle on down. I’m Hollis.”

It seemed the name didn’t immediately mean anything to the dazed man, but it sank in slowly and Butch’s expression shifted and melted into fatigue. He managed a fraction of a smile; it pushed at the edges of his mustache. “Yeah. Hi. Sorry.”

The voice was incredibly weak. Now that the surprise had passed, Butch looked as if he could barely keep his eyes open. Hollis extended his hand in greeting. They shook, and Rossington noted the sweaty, grimy texture of Butch’s palm.

“Hell of a week,” he said, taking a chair.

“Mmmm,” Butch replied with a shallow nod. “A few more days like this and they’ll have to bury me.”

“Well, let’s not have it come to that.” Hollis couldn’t even force a comforting smile. Butch’s eyes were filmy and his skin was pale and sapped, like a fired clay mask. Spit had dried in the corners of his mouth. The bandage on the tip of his ear was a rainbow of foulness—yellow and brown and rusty red. The ear beneath was inflamed with infection. “I know a doctor. He’s discreet.”

“Mmm,” Butch said. “I just need a good night’s sleep.”

“You need more than that,” Hollis said. “Exactly how much trouble are you in?”

“How much is there?”

“You feel like sharing the details?”

“Rory didn’t tell you?” Butch asked.

The man inhaled shallowly, and Rossington caught the ratcheting wheeze ticking away in his chest. The sound disturbed him. He knew bad lungs when he heard them. His father had died of tuberculosis. Hollis remembered sitting by the old man’s bed, hearing the persistent grinding and bubbling that accompanied his father’s every breath as he drowned in his own blood.

Clearly this wasn’t the time for conversation. Butch could tell his story some other day. When Williams arrived with his order, he pointed at Butch’s empty cup and nodded before dropping a bill on Williams’ tray.

“Look, Butch,” he said, “We’ve got something of a problem here.”

“Good,” he mumbled. “Can’t get enough of those.”

“No, listen to me. You need a doctor, and you need someone to keep an eye on you. The hospital is too risky. They find out who you are, and we got fat ladies singing.”

“No hospital,” Butch said. He barked out a flurry of damp coughs and snatched the napkin from the tabletop to press against his mouth. “I’ll get by.”

“The thing is, I have something of a rare domestic situation,” Hollis said.

Butch hummed again and performed the shallow head bob, which Hollis took as agreement but the distance and murk in the wrestler’s eyes suggested he might well have missed every word Hollis had spoken. His head lolled, and he drew in another ratcheting breath. “I’ll get by,” he repeated.

“No doubt,” Hollis said with false merriment.

He’ll be dead by morning,
Rossington thought.
If he doesn’t get someplace warm and get some medicine in him, he’s going to die.

When Williams came back with a second cup of coffee for Butch, Hollis waved him away. He had to get the man back to his house. He’d manage the inevitable conflict over Lionel when it arose.

Hollis stood and walked around the table, where he put his hand on Butch’s back. “Come on, pal,” he said. “We’ll get a taxicab out front.”

“Where are we going?”

“To my house,” Hollis said as if it had been the plan all along.

Butch tried getting to his feet and dropped back into the chair. On his second attempt, Hollis slid close and helped the man up and wrapped an arm around his back. He was glad Butch’s legs held him this time. Even in top shape, Hollis would have had trouble holding up a guy Butch’s size. But between the two of them, they managed to make it through the restaurant, past the interested and humored gazes of the other patrons, and onto the walk in front of the café, where Rossington waved his hand at a man sitting in a mule-drawn carriage.

Lennon sat on a stool at a counter in the evidence cage three floors below his office. Once a block of narrow holding cells, the cage was grim and cold. The stone floor, fenced in by rusting bars and chipped brick walls, was covered by any number of unwholesome stains. The place had been little more than a dungeon and it felt as if it still held many of the emotions loosed by the caged men who’d spent time there. Anger, fear, and hate were as palpable as mist. Squinting through the dim light added to his persistent headache, as did a frequent clicking behind the damaged bricks, which might have been a leaking pipe or the teeth of persistent vermin. Lennon imagined a prisoner lost over the decades, trapped behind the stone and attempting to dig his way free. The notion brought tingles to his neck, but he couldn’t shake it whenever he heard the
click, clickety, click
.

He picked through the contents of two cardboard boxes—items removed from Lonnie Musante’s home. Thumbing through the carton, he found the victim’s belongings: cigarettes, matches, anything that wasn’t nailed down and might belong to the killer. A banged-up Mauser 1914 lay in a small box, nestled among a handkerchief and a pair of gloves. The gun’s handgrip was cracked and the barrel was scratched to hell. This was the murder weapon Butch Cardinal had dropped after shooting Musante. Nothing special. The German firearm was common enough. He and Conrad had pulled one off a vagrant just last month, after the guy had used it to hold up a grocery.

Lennon held the weapon, turned it in his palm. Satisfied that he had the all of it in his head, he replaced the gun in the evidence box, and reached in for a stack of cards. They were large with a white frame surrounding a field of black. He flipped one over and saw an intricate painting of a midnight sky with crimson dogs lifting their muzzles to howl at a silver moon. Over the years he’d heard about cards like these—the tarot, they were called. Carnie fortunetellers hauled them around. He considered what Valentino had told him, and Lennon couldn’t help but wonder if a thug like Marco Impelliteri actually cut his path through life based on what Musante had seen—or at least, claimed to have seen—in a tarot deck? He found it hard to believe that anyone so firmly entrenched in the guns and blood of Chicago’s outfits would hold close to such nonsense.

Medieval witch shit in the big and shiny city.

He flipped another card, showing a man in sapphire and emerald harlequin garb performing an exaggerated bow. The word
Fool
was written at the bottom. Lennon smiled, figuring that was the only card a deck like this one needed, then he replaced the cards in the box. Next he withdrew a brown leaflet with a number of holes punched through: a train ticket from Milwaukee. He turned it over and saw the date matched the day Lonnie Musante was murdered.

Lousy thing to come home to,
Lennon thought.

The contents of the second box seemed to be the things the coroner’s office had removed from Musante’s pockets: a wallet with assorted bits of paper, mostly receipts; a money clip with three bucks pinched between tin fingers; a set of cheap false teeth as yellow as the front of a bum’s drawers; three cigar stubs; a tin flask—empty.

Lousy life to come home to,
Lennon added.

The scraping behind the wall returned, startling Lennon. He shook off the silly fear and rubbed his eyes, imagining it might remove a fraction of his headache. It didn’t.

After feeling certain he’d committed the items to memory, he closed the boxes and returned them to the shelves, then he left the cage and wished Sergeant Jones, the cage’s keeper, a good afternoon. Upstairs he sat behind his desk and looked at the collection of meaningless files, wondering all the while where Conrad had gotten to, but the afternoon passed with no sign of his partner, and then it was time to call it a day, but that meant going home to Edie and playing husband and father, even though he didn’t feel he was through playing cop for the day. Lennon lit a cigarette and stared through the smoke and the windowpane at the coming darkness. He considered heading to the Palermo Club or the Grand for a few drinks and the company of a woman that would speak to him without making him feel regret. Before he could commit to the plan, however, another idea surfaced.

Lennon picked up the phone and called home to tell his wife that he would be working late.

• • •

Lennon reached Lonnie Musante’s house after sunset. Pulling up before the darkened dwelling, a strange thought—perhaps a memory or some mental flotsam—played behind his eyes. He pictured Curt Conrad’s fat face dripping sweat in the freezing cold car; his partner shook his head furiously, mouthing protests. Lennon couldn’t remember the words, couldn’t say for sure that he remembered the incident at all, but Conrad seemed to be arguing with him. He struggled to recall the moment, but instead Butch Cardinal filled his mind’s eye—barreling down like a coal train draped in an overcoat.

Why did he drop his gun?
Lennon wondered.
He pops a couple in Lonnie, and Conrad busts in and Cardinal tosses his piece? Why? Had he suffered the panic of the inexperienced?

Leaving his car, Lennon strolled up the walk to Musante’s front door. The place had been secured with a two-by-four nailed to the jamb. It came free with a good tug and Lennon tossed it on the icy lawn before trying the door. He’d expected some kind of lock to slow him down, but the knob turned easily in his palm, and the door opened with a squeak of rusted hinges. Lennon reached in and felt along the wall for the switch. He gave it a twist but the house remained dark. A second later his flashlight beam cut a trough through the center of the living room, and Lennon stepped inside.

He played the light over the space. The chalk frame of Musante’s last pose remained on the floor, very white against the gray planks. Lennon noted the few pieces of shabby furniture and the bare walls. Thin clouds of breath rose from his nose and feathered the edges of the lantern’s beam. The place smelled of stale cigars, old milk, cheap whiskey, and mold. At the center of the room, Lennon stopped. He’d driven to Musante’s on a hunch, but now he couldn’t figure out what he had hoped to gain by the trip. This wasn’t his case. There was nothing for him to solve. So why was he here?

It was the near-empty house of a dead man: a box holding the trinkets of a life, likely misspent and certainly unenviable. Musante had been the pet mystic of a powerful man, with no ambitions of his own beyond scraping by at Marco Impelliteri’s heels, making himself useful by weaving superstition and fantasy for his boss’s…
what
? Amusement? Peace of mind?

But Musante had been free, Lennon thought: no mooring lines of guilt or obligation. Standing in the center of Musante’s home with its tattered furniture and sad wallpaper, Lennon had rarely found the exercise of independence so repulsive.

He wandered to the kitchen and peered out the back window. There he saw the dark heap of bricks beyond the porch. Patches of persistent ice and snow clutched the blocks like lichens. And again he pictured Butch Cardinal charging him, and he remembered swimming backwards, and the darkness rushing up to meet him. Lennon shook the oddly substantial memory away and left the kitchen. In the hallway, he kicked a door open with the toe of his shoe and darted the light around an empty room with a badly cracked wooden floor. Dust covered the planks like a carpet, only marred by a series of footprints, likely belonging to Lennon’s colleagues who had combed the place after Musante’s death.