Butcher's Road (18 page)

Then Rabin’s prisoner smiled. The pathetic little shit actually smiled, revealing a grin of bloody teeth. As the din of shrill horns and thundering drums faded, the voice of Rabin’s monster picked up the song, screaming wretched orders, demanding punishment for the trick that had been played on them both. Rabin lifted the ice pick and struggled against his every instinct, fought to keep from driving the metal rod into the punk’s eye socket and through to his brain. The monster wanted the asshole dead, wanted his eye juice and blood to warm his fingers to slick everything up good and proper for the other socket, but Rabin battled the urge. He took deep breaths and pushed them through his teeth, sending flecks of spit showering over Humphrey’s face.

“It needs time to adjust,” Humphrey said. “After it adjusts everything is okay. I swear it is.”

Rabin punched Humphrey a second time, which seemed to placate and silence the monster for a time. After all, the young man hadn’t lied. The device, a simple strip of metal, had indeed acted as an amplifier, and were it not for the radio, which was already playing at an excessive volume, Rabin might well have found the device effective. This did not mean that he accepted Humphrey’s fairy tales, but a kernel of belief had been planted.

He returned to the radio and switched it off, and then he crossed to the chair. Again he slid the device over his ear. In his other hand, he held the ice pick to his lips:
shhh.

Another moment of static was followed by two distinct pulsing rhythms, and soon enough Rabin identified those stuttering thuds as his heart and that of his prisoner. Then he heard more scratching, only instead of random static, Rabin understood the sound came from the walls, or rather the insects moving behind them. And then he heard voices, a choir of them crept into his ear. In a room at the end of the hall, a couple fucked on the floor, and he could hear the sound of flesh slapping flesh and he could hear the woman’s moans and the man whispering, “Fucking bitch. Fucking bitch,” in a soft rhythmic chant that almost sounded tender. And in a room above and to the north someone urinated and the sound filled his ear like the crashing of a waterfall, and more conversations—arguments over bills, children spouting irrelevancies—and more private moments poured into his head. Rabin considered the value of such a toy, understood the secrets he could gather like gold if he were in the vicinity when such valuable information was shared.

He removed the device and slid it into the pocket of his suit jacket, and Paul Rabin smiled, which was an expression generally reserved for his wife. With a nod of his head he patted Humphrey’s shoulder.

“Now you’re going to tell me about the necklace Cardinal stole,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

• • •

At least Humphrey hadn’t begged for his life like so many of the men Rabin had encountered over the years. That was admirable on the young man’s part, and completely rational by Rabin’s estimation. He grabbed the back of the chair and dragged it into the corner, next to the radio, and once he was out from behind it, he shoved the chair to the wall with his foot. Humphrey’s body rocked forward, spilling more of the viscous red tears from the holes in his eyes. Once satisfied with the position of the body, Rabin went to the window and opened it wide. A gust of icy wind blew over him. It felt soothing. Pleasant. With the window open and the room’s temperature already dropping, Rabin turned the knob on the radiator off and then yanked the window shade down and closed the curtains. The eager wind tossed the window coverings about, but would sufficiently obstruct a prolonged and direct view into the room. This finished, he pulled the blanket off of the bed and tacked two corners above the door jamb, and then he tacked the lower edge of the blanket to the door itself, making sure to leave enough play in the fabric for him to exit. Between the cold and the bedding, it could be weeks before anyone noticed a suspicious odor emanating from the room. Of course, a landlord or caretaker would be in sooner than that if the rent wasn’t paid through the month, but Rabin wasn’t interested in secreting the body forever, just long enough for anyone who might have seen him entering or exiting the building to forget his face.

Satisfied with his preparations, he turned to Humphrey, who appeared to be gazing into his own lap, and Rabin stared at the top of the young man’s head.

Why didn’t you beg for your life?
he wondered.
Do you believe glory awaits you wherever you’ve been sent?

Such a strange thing, begging for one’s life. For a good man, a religious man, death should have been considered welcome, an early jump on blissful eternity. For most of the men Rabin encountered—falsely religious and in no way good—their begging was ludicrous, because they had to know their ends had come. What was more rational, begging to live through days and days of agony or having two slugs behind the ear, having fear and pain turned off like a light? Rabin understood even if he found it puzzling. It was Hope. It was that ridiculous light at the end of the tunnel that men and women reached for, and they’d crawl over glass and through lakes of shit in the service of Hope. People were willing to endure battering and burns and cuts to the bone for hours and days, and they begged to be allowed to live to continue enduring their torment because Hope tricked them into believing some different, and wholly irrational, outcome might be seconds away.

But this young man, this Humphrey, he hadn’t begged for his life.
Why?
Rabin wondered.

The thought followed him out of the room and down the stairs of the apartment and it lingered like smoke around his head as he walked to his car. And then the wonder was gone. Rabin thought about Irene and decided to pay his wife a late visit, after stopping by the florist for a spray of brightly colored blossoms. He would have to go home first and change his clothes and wash his hands a little more thoroughly, and he would need something to eat. His stomach was growling and kicking for sustenance, so, yes, he’d stop at the deli before going to the florist, and then he’d spend a leisurely afternoon with his wife.

And though he thought about what Humphrey had told him, even grew excited at the possibilities of what he’d been told the Rose could do, he never again thought of Humphrey or why he hadn’t begged for his life. To Rabin, the young man had been a conduit of information, no more important than a phone line stretching across the plains of Kansas.

After another day of vague reality and vivid delusion, Butch woke to find his breath came easier and the ache in his head had receded, more a memory of pain than a true ache. Sweat cooled on his brow and neck, and it felt good after so much heat. With some effort, he managed to sit up in the bed. The room was murky, shadows on shadows. The space between the drapes was dark. He listened for sounds in the house, but he only heard the distant clopping of hooves on stone.

Sliding his legs around to dangle off the side of the bed, Butch took a cautious breath, filled his lungs. The air rattled in his chest, and the fluid there bubbled. He coughed painfully and brought up a thick wad of muck. On the table beside his bed he found a ceramic bowl and he spit into it and managed another deep breath, which along with the cool sweat were the only pleasant sensations he could feel. His body hurt all over. He couldn’t remember a single wrestling bout or bar fight that had left him so thoroughly miserable. Even when the Hungarian, Dobos, had snapped Butch’s wrist, the pain and incapacitation had been isolated, and he’d felt healthy despite the injury. Now he simply felt weak and beaten, but he was on the mending side of the sickness, whatever it had been. He was certain of that.

Butch eased off the bed and stood. The floor wobbled beneath his feet, but he managed to stay upright. He took a step and then another until his stride had competence if not confidence.

Uncomfortably aware of his nudity, Butch felt his way around the room, searching for his suit. He didn’t want to put it on; simply wanted to know it was there if he needed to dress in a hurry. When he reached the armoire he leaned against it and took several shallow breaths, orienting himself before opening the wardrobe. Though his eyes had not fully adjusted to the gloom, Butch could see that his suit was not inside. He felt around, regardless, and his fingers slid across a panel of silk. Butch removed the dressing gown from the hook and wrapped himself in it. Though a bit tight in the shoulders, the robe fit, and once it was secured he closed the doors and leaned back against them.

It then struck him that if his suit was gone, then so was his wallet, and worse still, so was the necklace: his only leverage against the men who wanted him dead.

Uneasy, he made his way across the room and turned the light switch. Three weak bulbs from an overhead fixture bathed the room in grim, yellow light. Not a pleasant glow, but useful. He returned to the armoire and opened the doors, but it was, as he’d known, empty. He searched the desktop and even lowered himself to his knees to check under the bed, but there was no sign of his belongings. A flare of panic lit in his chest and Butch walked on unstable legs to the archway. He left the room and entered a parlor with walls so red they looked as if they’d been hosed down in blood. Again he listened.

A noise from above caught his attention but he couldn’t identify it. A gasp? A hiss?

The house struck him as oddly constructed. It seemed to be comprised of two broad hallways stacked atop one another with partial walls to separate living spaces. In the kitchen, the gasping, hissing sound came again and he cocked his head toward the spiral staircase. Though he questioned the courtesy of wandering through a stranger’s house, the need to find his belongings compelled him. He crossed to the spiral stairs and hunched over to begin the climb. The metal rungs were like ice beneath his feet, sending a chill up to the base of his neck. Halfway up the twisting case he paused to catch his breath.

On the second floor the gasping announced an occupant in the room ahead, and he walked toward it. He thought to say something, to declare his presence, but a wave of dizziness crashed behind his eyes, forcing him to turn to the railing. He grasped it tightly and peered down into the kitchen, which swirled and blurred. The vertigo passed a moment later, but it left Butch breathless, clutching the railing with white knuckles. A fresh icy layer of sweat covered his face and neck. He breathed deeply until he regained his composure and then he turned toward the room ahead. The door (it seemed to be the only door in the house) had been left open.

At the threshold to the room, he stopped. He blinked. He tried to comprehend the sight before him.

A man with a gnarled gray beard, dressed like a tramp in tattered layers of clothes and a hat with a brim that looked as if it had been gnawed by rats, stood at the end of the bed. The gasping noise emerged from his parted lips. A younger, thickly built man, knelt before the grizzled hobo. His head moved back and forth in smooth motions, his lips sliding along the hard shaft of the older man’s cock.

Butch’s head grew light again, only this time it was not the whirling sense of vertigo, but rather the heart-racing sensation of plummeting from a great height. Butch’s face burned hot and the uneasy fire spread through his whole body. He told himself he was disgusted, but he couldn’t look away.

The old man, whose eyes had been fixed downward on the scalp of the boy servicing him, groaned and gasped and then lifted his head. He noticed Butch and a flicker of concern skipped across his face before vanishing. He raised his grimy hand and waved Butch forward.

The foul invitation startled him out of his dazed state. Butch flinched and backed away and made for the spiral staircase as quickly as his feet would carry him.

Back in his room, Butch stomped from one wall to the other. His fists clenched tightly. His heart pounded in his chest. The perverse act he’d witnessed above was wholly unspeakable. He couldn’t get the weathered hobo’s face, mouth, and filthy beckoning hand from behind his eyes.

Had Rory known what kind of a place he was sending Butch to? Had he known that Rossington was lodging a fairy? Was Rossington a fairy himself? Butch remembered so little about his meeting with the man he couldn’t even conjure a face to go with the name. Still he refused to believe Rory would knowingly have sent him here. Maybe it was just the kid. Rossington might not know a thing about what the punk got up to when he wasn’t home. If he didn’t then someone needed to tell him, needed to wake him up and set him straight. If he did know…

All of the pacing burned away his minimal energies, and Butch forced himself back into the bed. He pulled the blankets up high on his chest, just under his chin. He closed his eyes but the wrinkled face with the rat’s nest beard surfaced against the dark screen of his eyelids. Then he was seeing the man’s cock, thick with pronounced veins, and the punk’s lips sliding over it. More memories emerged, older memories. A summer’s night on the edge of the lake near his father’s house, lying on the still-hot rocks and looking at the sky, talking to his older cousin Michael as the two of them masturbated. Gazing at the stars, lost in the miracle of speckled lights, Butch grew nervous when he felt his cousin’s hand moving over his belly and taking over the task of stroking… A freezing night in a rundown boarding house in Indianapolis. Touring with Mack Mack McCauley’s Traveling Wonder Show, he shared a room with a comic named Hatteras. On stage, Hatteras was all energy, dancing and sliding from wing to wing as he delivered off-color jokes and sang songs that would have been inappropriate in legitimate theaters. Off stage, Hatteras presented a different personality. Quiet. Sullen. Behind his back the other performers had taken to calling the comic “The Weeping Clown.” He drank excessively and snorted cocaine when he could get it. One night, when the weather was so brutal it hadn’t allowed excursions outside, Butch had joined Hatteras in a binge. In the early morning hours, Hatteras began to undress Butch, whose moral cloth was saturated with bad whiskey. Then Hatteras undressed himself, revealing a surprisingly toned body. He sat Butch on the edge of the bed and proceeded to perform the same act Butch had just witnessed upstairs. In the morning it had been easy to write the incident off as drunken tomfoolery. He’d been out of his mind, soused. It was all the excuse he needed, until it happened again and a third time.