Butcher's Road (30 page)

“Like?” Butch asked.

“It might be of personal value to someone. An heirloom passed down through a family with an interesting history. Or it could be an icon.”

“Come again?”

“An object a coven or mystical sect would use in rituals. There are hundreds of such icons. Nearly every early culture had its charms and runes. The Gaul. The Germanic with their Thull mythology. Pagans certainly. Even our own local brand of magic, Voodoo, comes with a set of talismans.”

“So it’s just symbolic?” Butch asked. Seward had said something similar to him. Talk of the occult and mysticism. “It doesn’t really do anything?”

“More than likely,” Keane said. He opened a metal box on the tabletop and withdrew a cigarette. Keane handed the necklace across the table. “Can I ask where you came across this piece?”

“A friend.”

“And what makes you think it has any value at all?”

“Certain people seem very eager to have it.”

“Really?” Keane asked. His eyebrows rose with interest. “Maybe you should leave it here. I can test the metal and see if there’s something I’m missing. Check my books.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Of course,” Keane said. He quietly smoked his cigarette and looked at the sky.

With no useful information to be had, Butch grew frustrated. Keane was pleasant enough, didn’t seem to be as crazy as Mercer, but if Butch had hit a dead end, he needed to turn around and get moving. “Long story short, you don’t know what this thing is?”

Keane lazily shook his head. He put his cigarette in the ashtray at the center of the table and then stood. With a look of startled humor he said, “But I’m being a terrible host. Can I get you a coffee or a beer?”

“I don’t want to waste any more of your time,” Butch said.

“No trouble at all. I insist.” Keane stood. He walked across the court, climbed the steps and entered the gloomy interior of the house.

So that’s it, Butch thought. His life hadn’t come undone over a charm of incomparable value; it had been bartered for a bit of junk. The only other name on his list belonged to some broad in the spook rackets, and she was going to be about as helpful as tits on a boar. Aggravation welled in him, and he considered abandoning the courtyard, leaving Keane’s home, and then perhaps leaving the city of New Orleans altogether. Nothing good was going to come from remaining here.

• • •

Delbert Keane held the earpiece of the phone and looked out the window, keeping an eye on Butch Cardinal who had leaned his head back to look up at the sky. The operator told him to hold while she attempted to patch through his call to Jackson, Mississippi. His nerves jangled like a prisoner’s chains and his foot tapped an arrhythmic beat on the tiles of his kitchen floor. The percolator sat on the stove’s fire, but there was no coffee in the filter, because he had no interest in hospitality; he’d just needed an excuse, time to make the call.

He could never have imagined finding the Rose under these circumstances. Holding the sacred piece proved all but overwhelming, and he’d struggled to maintain his composure and the steadiness of his hand so he didn’t give too much away to Cardinal. Had his lies been detected? He didn’t think so.

The telephone connection snapped and crackled in his ear. Impatient, he set the earpiece on the counter and raced across the first floor of the house. In his study, he opened the top drawer of his desk and removed the knife he kept there. This he carefully slid into his belt at the small of his back, and then he returned to the phone, returned to watching his guest.

Cardinal struck him as an oddity—a man somehow incongruous with himself. Obviously, he had stolen the Galenus Rose, though he claimed to have no understanding of its power, and this claim seemed to be validated by his appearance at Keane’s home (though he wondered who had sent Mr. Cardinal to him in the first place). Keane held no doubt that violence, perhaps murder, was involved in the theft of the invaluable charm, yet Cardinal didn’t carry himself like a killer, certainly not a calculating, experienced murderer of men. If anything, he seemed cowed, frightened, which were emotions discordant with his obvious strength and vitality. Further, if he had stolen the Rose with some inkling of its gifts and had only come to Keane for verification or elucidation, then why was he behaving so civilly? Wouldn’t he be waving a gun and demanding answers? Wouldn’t he be threatening violence? Veins of peculiarity wove throughout the entire encounter. Not that it mattered. Not really. The Galenus belonged with the Alchemi. This was not even an issue for argument. Keane simply found Cardinal’s behavior interesting, considering the circumstances.

Finally his call was put through, and the distant phone rang, and he checked on Cardinal again—
He looks like he’s dozed off
—before a stern male voice said, “437 House. Mr. Evanston, speaking.”

Delbert said hello to Ramsey Evanston, but he did not instigate the niceties of banter. As quickly as he could he explained the situation and demanded that Evanston tell him whatever he could about the theft of the Galenus and the man who had stolen it.

“That would be inappropriate,” Evanston said. “That is business kept within the Alchemi and as you are—”

“He’s here,” Keane said, interrupting the man’s overly pompous explanation. “A man calling himself Butch Cardinal has come to my home, and he has the Rose. I need information before I proceed.”

The silence on the other end of the phone line left Keane listening to the crackle and hiss of the connection. His foot tapped frantically as he waited for some response from his former colleague, and his hand slid around to the small of his back to touch the hilt of his knife.

“Mr. Keane,” Evanston said, finally, “Cardinal is suspected of murdering two of our associates—Lonnie Musante and Humphrey Bell—in addition to his theft of the Galenus Rose. At this time, your priority is to take possession of the Rose, regardless of the means necessary to do so. I will forward your message to 213 House. Please contact us immediately once you have the Rose in your possession.”

“Thank you, Mr. Evanston.” Keane hung up the phone.

His hand wrapped around the handle of the knife and he squeezed it tightly. The grip had always fitted his palm well. Keane walked to the stove and turned off the flame, and then he breathed deeply to settle his frantic nerves before taking his first step out of the house.

The decision to help Butch Cardinal came to Roger Lennon as he watched the sheet drop over the body of Terry McGavin, though Lennon didn’t know that was the decision he was making at the time. Lennon had done as he’d promised and called the Feds, but in the hour it had taken them to get their paperwork together, McGavin had been murdered and then returned to a cell.

Like the government agents, Lennon listened to the story Detective Glaser wove with furious incredulity. After his interrogation, McGavin had returned to his cell and committed suicide by beating his head against the edge of his cot. It was ludicrous. Impossible in every regard. The Feds didn’t buy it, but the sworn statements of four officers who corroborated Glaser’s fairy tale meant they wouldn’t bother with a costly and ultimately futile investigation. He should have stayed with McGavin until the agents arrived, but he’d been called back to Wenders’ office to once again be warned against spreading his story about Curt Conrad’s involvement in Lonnie Musante’s murder. By the time he’d made it to McGavin’s cell the M.E. was already on the scene, draping the Irishman’s body in a rough white cloth.

And Lennon knew it was his fault, not for any single reason or act, but because of a pattern of behavior he had practiced for as long as he could remember. He had taken money from the Italians. He was complicit in their crimes. He was as guilty as Conrad and Glaser and every thug on the street.

He couldn’t make it right, not all of it. There was no way in hell he could dismantle the Chicago machine, but if he could do something—any
one
thing—to fight the twisted system he had helped construct, then he might be able to consider himself human again.

His opportunity came after a rough, sleepless night; it came in the form of an elderly gymnasium owner by the name of Rory Sullivan.

At the station, holding a cup of coffee that tasted like one part battery acid and three parts spit and leaning against a counter dazed from exhaustion, he heard a uniformed officer mention “Ripper’s Gym” in regard to a crime scene. Though he’d not been an official investigator on the Lonnie Musante case, he’d pored over the file they’d compiled on Butch Cardinal a dozen times, and the name of the gym had stuck. After questioning the officer, who seemed confused by Lennon’s babbling interrogation, Lennon had deposited the mug of foul coffee on a filing cabinet and left the station.

• • •

He drove through a light snowfall to the hospital. Inside, he found the hallways poorly lit, and the stink of ammonia burned his nostrils. Lennon hurried past the information desk, waving away a question thrown his way by the bald old man behind the desk. He didn’t need directions. All crime-related victims ended up on the second floor in the west wing of the hospital, unless they went directly from the emergency lobby to the morgue. The officer had said that Sullivan took a shiv to the shoulder and had then proceeded to have a heart attack, but he was alive or had been two hours ago.

Lennon jogged up the stairs and turned left on the landing. Immediately a shadow fell over him as he passed into a short unlit corridor of stone walls. After twenty feet the hall opened into a ward with only slightly better illumination. He stopped at the nurse’s station and asked for directions to Sullivan’s room.

When he stepped into the room, a beautiful young woman with blue eyes, red hair and a murderous look accosted him. She lifted her hand and held it firmly to Lennon’s chest.

“You can just keep yourself in the hall,” she said. “My father needs his rest.”

Over her shoulder Lennon saw Rory Sullivan lying motionlessly on the bed, bathed in a cone of sickly, yellow light. A gray blanket covered the lower half of his body. He wore a sleeveless hospital gown, revealing thickly muscled arms, lined with pronounced veins, and were it not for his current location and prognosis, Lennon would have thought the man an exceptionally healthy specimen, but with his lips parted, and his eyes closed, he could have been nothing more than an impressively formed corpse.

Lennon returned his attention to the young woman. He introduced himself and learned that her name was Molly. “I’m with the Chicago Police Department.”

“All the more reason for you to leave him alone.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared, daring him to try getting past her. “I’ve told your friends everything there is to tell. My father needs his breath for living.”

“Then you’ll have to tell me.”

“I don’t
have
to tell you anything.”

“I see it differently,” Lennon said. The sleepless night had frayed his nerves and he found himself overly aggravated with the woman’s attitude. Normally, he knew how to manage a beautiful woman, but rarely had the type he’d met exhibited such strength, and while he might admire the trait, it was seriously grating behind his eyes. He tried to think his way out of the anger, but his temper scratched the inside of his skull like a rat trying to escape.

“See it anyway you please,” Molly said, fixing him with a scowl. “Now, get out of my father’s room.”

Lennon shot out his hand to grab Molly’s arm. He’d shake the information loose if he had to. But he didn’t get that chance.

Molly snapped her arm across her body in a smooth, powerful swipe that knocked Lennon’s hand away before he could fix his grip. Then she slid to the side and with a motion that looked like an underhand toss, she planted her hand in Lennon’s crotch and squeezed until he doubled over. Nausea rolled around his gut and began climbing his throat.

Anger and embarrassment joined the sick feeling that roiled in his belly.

“Enough,” a weak voice said from the room in front of him.

“Dad?” Molly said, turning her attention away from Lennon, whose nuts she still held in her hand. “You’re awake.”

“Mmm,” the old man agreed. “I wish those were flowers you were holding.”

Molly turned back to Lennon, who was about to drop to his knees. Mortification blossomed across her face. Quickly, she snatched her hand away, and Lennon could breathe again.

He leaned back on the doorjamb and gasped in the stink of ammonia. A steady pulse, like drum beats, filled his ears. Over the years he’d grown uncomfortable, even contemptuous, of his wife’s compliance. Looking at Molly Sullivan, he knew a woman like this would never ask his permission for…well anything, and despite the ache in his groin, or rather because of it, he found himself admiring the young woman for more than her milk-white skin, fine bones, and a body of movie star proportions.

She crossed to her father’s bed and asked, “Why won’t you leave him alone?”

“Best listen to her, son,” Sullivan whispered, his voice quiet but harsh as gravel. “She’ll change your tune—baritone to soprano in under a second.”

“I noticed,” Lennon said. He tried to smile to make light of having been bested by a woman, but the expression felt false and he let it fade. “But I’m trying to help Butch Cardinal, and I think you have information I need.”