Butcher's Road (21 page)

“Butch, let’s look at your normal world. Men are standing in soup lines, stripped of every ounce of dignity. They are killing each other over bits of bread crust. Then you’ve got the moguls and politicians who designed this fucking nightmare and are living above it, riding it out, wholly amused by the festival of shit they’ve staged. And let’s look at your good friends in Chicago, the
real men
who toss bullets like wedding rice, not giving a fuck where those grains land. Those are the
men
who decided what was natural, and what was normal, and what good has it done you? Did following their rules do you any good when Simm was bum-rushing you out of the sport? Did it keep you from being the patsy of a couple of booze thugs? You ask me, you’re stuck to the bottom of normal’s shoes and you’re about to get scraped off, so why the hell are you defending it? What’s it ever done for you?”

“Right and wrong don’t change,” Butch said, though his confidence had paled.

Hollis leaned in close. “You think throwing fists for Bugs Moran was
right
?”

“I didn’t work for… never mind,” Butch said. “I needed the work.”

“But you didn’t. You had a job with Mack Mack McCauley, playing strong man and doing exhibitions. And if not with Mack then with any of a dozen other outfits on the circuit. You didn’t need work. You wanted easier work and more money for it. And to get it, you made a conscious decision to break the law. In that regard you’re no different from Capone or Moran or any petty thief on the street.”

Butch pulled his shoulders back, his brow furrowed and his jaw went tight, but even so his eyes held questions, confusion. He looked trapped and maybe a little scared. Then the defiance vanished in a blink, and Butch’s face collapsed into sad perplexity. Hollis pulled away and walked to the end of the bed. He grabbed one of the posters and leaned against it.

“There are millions of ways to live a good life,” he said. “You need to understand that.”

“But it can’t be chaos. There have to be rules.” Butch mumbled the words. Fumbled them. He struggled as if each word had to be voiced in an exact way to make the statement true.

“Maybe so,” Hollis said, “but your short life is going to be nothing but misery if you think the people making those rules are following them. They aren’t. Not even a little. Politicians and churches tell us to shut up and take it; toe the line and one day—one glorious day—we’ll get ours, as long as we don’t cause any trouble along the way. Ideologies are just the armies they use to clear and quell crowds so the assholes who promote them can get where they’re going with minimal trouble.”

“You sound ridiculous.”

“I accept that as very likely,” Hollis said. “But I don’t think a man has to live within the tight little grooves he’s been trained to follow. I didn’t, and for the most part I live better than the majority of guys who trudge their trenches from cradle to casket. Rory understood this. Hell, he taught me to think this way.”

“Rory wouldn’t have let that punk stand.”

“You’re wrong, Butch. Completely wrong.” Hollis waited for a response, but Butch gazed at the wall, his features leaden, his mouth locked in a frown, his eyes lost. Hollis had broken Butch’s handhold, and the man was sliding again with yet another of his beliefs having failed to support him, and that was a good thing. Hollis figured Butch would find firmer ground farther down the slope. “Rory understood and enjoyed the company of people who were uncommon. He’s the most regular guy on the planet but he doesn’t attack or degrade those who don’t share his beliefs.”

“Whatever,” Butch muttered distractedly. He lifted his hands to the back of his head, and with his fingers clawed, he scratched his scalp in a clear demonstration of frustration. “I’m sorry, Hollis. None of this makes sense to me. Not Chicago and not here. Maybe no place will make sense. It’s like I woke up one morning and everyone was yelling at me in a foreign language, you know? And every word out of my mouth just makes them yell louder. But it’s not words. It’s everything. Ever since Simm every damn step I take breaks through the floor. Do you have any idea what that’s like? Being afraid of every move but knowing you can’t stand still?”

“Yeah, I know that feeling,” Rossington said, thinking about Florida and Croger and the months following one poorly chosen question. That had been his slope, and he’d muddied it with booze and frequent indiscretions, but he’d slid low and found a solid place to put his feet. If he had anything to do with it, Butch would too. “That’s why I let Rory tell me where to step, and that’s why I listened. Rory’s not here, but maybe I can get you on the right track.”

“There may not be time,” Butch said.

“Should be plenty of time. You’re safe here. But we can’t have any more trouble. Do you understand that? You’re the one who has to adapt.”

“I don’t know,” Butch said.

“So you’d rather run and fight for every damn thing under the sun? You don’t have to live that way. In this house, we make our own rules for how we live. Be courteous and kind, and you can be anything you want to be here.”

Silence moved between them like a draft. Hollis waited to see some sign of understanding on Butch’s face, but the man was looking at the floor. He shuffled from foot to foot nervously and then shoved his hands in the pockets of the dressing gown.

“Jesus,” Butch said. “I don’t… Look, this is your house and even though I haven’t done a damn thing to prove it, I am grateful for what you’ve done for me. The rest of it…? I guess it’s none of my business, and I need to keep my mouth shut.”

The words were encouraging. They implied progress. Still, Hollis didn’t understand why all of this meant so much to him; it had to be more than his promise to Rory, more than saving a soul as lost as his own had been. It would have been foolish to deny his attraction to Butch, just as it would be foolish—perhaps devastating—to ever act on this attraction. Fortunately, Hollis wasn’t a schoolboy, made feeble by romance and lust. If anything, acknowledging the way he felt allowed him objectivity. Control. So why? he wondered. Was it one thing or all of the things in his head and heart that made him determined to protect this man?

Butch walked to the window. As if mimicking Hollis’s earlier performance, he turned his face into the bath of morning sun.

“We’d better try and get you figured out, then,” Hollis said.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you want? Are you here just to hide? I suppose that’s fine if that’s what you want to do.”

“No, I don’t just want to hide,” he said. “There’s this necklace, and someone thinks it’s important. Or I think they do. Either way, I have to figure out what it is.”

Hollis reached deep into his slack’s pocket and grasped the chain and charm. He pulled it free. “Do you mean this?”

“Yeah,” Butch said, lunging forward to take it from Hollis’s hand. “I thought that punk had pinched it while I was out cold.”

“Okay, I can help you with that.” Hollis knew a number of people that dealt in jewelry and antiquities. “I can put a list together of the people you need to see. What else? You said you were tapped?”

“Flat broke,” Butch admitted. “I’ll need to find work, need to scrape up money in case I have to disappear for good, and I’ll have to lay pretty low while I’m here.”

“That isn’t going to work,” Hollis said. “Not in this city.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

He really is naïve,
Hollis thought. The guy was thinking like a rube right off the carrot cart.

“Butch, you ran from Chicago, a mob-woven spider’s web. And where did you go? New Orleans, which is just another web. We have as many runners and gunners as Chicago, and they’re all connected, so if you try to get work in one of the clubs here, you’re shaking hands with close cousins to the folks who want you dead. You could try humping crates at the docks, but that’s not much different.”

“Shit,” Butch hissed. He lowered his head.

“Don’t worry about the job,” Hollis said. “You’ve got a roof and food.”

“Yeah,” Butch said. He didn’t sound convinced.

“And on that note, I’d better go talk to Lionel. I have a feeling it will be a rather unpleasant conversation.”
Cheating bastard.
“When you’re feeling up to it, get dressed and fix yourself something for breakfast. We should have plenty in the cabinets and icebox. We keep the devil’s hours around here, so you probably won’t see me until two or three this afternoon.”

“Okay,” Butch said. He moved away from the window and held out his hand for Hollis to shake.

The man looked miserable, frustrated, beaten, but Hollis felt certain he was on the right track. He shook the hand and offered a tight smile. As an afterthought, he clapped Butch on the shoulder before saying, “Take care.”

Curt Conrad unlocked the door to his apartment and stepped inside. After removing his gloves, he shoved them in the pocket of his overcoat, and then he removed his hat. He dumped his winter clothes over the coat rack by the door. The hat fell off. It hit the floor. Conrad thought about stooping to pick it up, but it was a flicker of a thought, quickly replaced by a decision to grab it later on his way out. For now, he wanted a drink and then some shuteye. Last night had been a late one; one of many. So he took his sleep where he could get it, even if it meant skipping out of the office a couple hours shy of his posted schedule.

Not that leaving the station early amounted to a tower of air. He hadn’t worked a full eight hours in three years; it was one of the perks of being a detective. The simple phrase, “Tracking something down,” was all it took to shut up his superiors and his partner, Lennon, who was becoming a serious pain in his ass.

The guy wouldn’t shut up about Musante. Conrad didn’t know why his partner was so hard for information on the shit-heel. A guy like Musante wasn’t worth the gray juice it took to think him over, and if Curt hadn’t pulled the trigger himself, he wouldn’t have given the dirty little wop a second thought.

A yawn erupted over his round face. Conrad removed his holster and swung it across the back of a chair and continued through the living room. In the kitchen he poured himself a shot and threw it back.

When he returned to the living room, he found Paul Rabin facing him. The man had removed Conrad’s service piece from its holster, and he aimed it at the detective’s chest.

“Greetings,” Rabin said merrily. Conrad flinched and stepped back. Rabin was dressed, as always, like a politician in a fine three-piece suit. Pressed. Slick. “Take a seat,” Rabin said. The three dry syllables rolled over a desert before leaving his mouth.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Conrad asked.

“Take a seat, detective.”

Tremors of fear began in his knees and worked their way to his throat, causing his voice to rattle when he said, “Impelliteri is going to tear your ass apart when he hears about this.”

“Then it’ll be our little secret. Now sit down. I won’t tell you again.”

He sat on the wooden chair, his father’s chair, by the window. Conrad didn’t know much about Rabin, but what he knew was enough to keep him from testing the man. A dozen times he’d delivered packets to Rabin; each envelope had contained a significant amount of money and the name of a guy who was never seen again. In remembering those envelopes, he couldn’t help but recall the cash he’d removed from them. He’d helped himself to a share of Rabin’s commissions, and the man knew it. But it was just money. Conrad could get his hands on plenty if he had to. He could fix this.

“Is this about money? I can get you money.”

“No,” Rabin said. He walked forward and stopped three feet in front of Conrad.

Conrad looked past the barrel of the gun at Rabin. His face was hard and flat like a death mask. His eyes glittered but it was the shimmer of candlelight on a polished coffin lid. Cold. Lifeless. These were the eyes his victims looked into for mercy.

“What do you want?”

“I’m confused,” Rabin said. “Why would Marco Impelliteri, our kind employer, hire you to murder his closest confidant?”

“You got some bad information. Cardinal killed Musante.”

A twitch tugged at the corner of Rabin’s lip. It was a subtle reaction—two rapid tics that came and went so quickly Conrad might have imagined them. But when Rabin stepped forward his movement was distinct and unmistakably odd. To Conrad it appeared as if Rabin were struggling, pushing forward, like the madman was walking while someone was trying to hold him back. “No. Cardinal was a pawn. Did you arrange his setup?”

“Come on, Rabin, I just go where I’m told. Same as you.”

“No.” Rabin lifted his foot and kicked it down between Conrad’s legs, where it rested on the edge of the chair. “Times have changed. So much of what I have believed has turned out to be false. I can’t afford to be wrong anymore. Who told you to go to Musante’s house?”

Sweat rolled down the back of Conrad’s neck and pooled at his collar before soaking into the starched fabric. Conrad had never had a bit of trouble throwing lies, but by comparison those had been small, all but meaningless fibs with little on the line. The lies he told now were important; they could keep the red under his skin where it belonged. “Marco told me, same as always.”