Butcher's Road (36 page)

For Hayes, the facts didn’t mesh. Lonnie Musante had been shot, and though the details of that night remained a mystery to him, the man’s death had appeared to be quick and efficient. Whoever had murdered Humphrey Bell had taken joy in the execution. The duration of the torture and the carefully staged room suggested a killer who reveled in the art of murder, one who savored pain the way that others might savor a child’s laughter. What he knew of Delbert Keane’s death showed him something wholly different, and though Keane might have ended his own life at the first sign of torture, Hayes did not think that was the case. When he examined these three disparate crimes against the backdrop of what he’d gathered about Butch Cardinal, he came away with doubts, doubts he would certainly voice to Brand once his colleague’s emotions had calmed.

At the top of the house, he pushed open a door and began to climb the final flight of stairs to the attic. There he found a single trunk, a single rack of clothes. Though there were no vows made to poverty or moderation, the Alchemi did promote a simple existence, free from the weight of possessions. Hayes was glad to see Keane had taken this life view to heart. It would make his search considerably easier.

The rain stopped for the afternoon, but charcoal clouds tumbled in the sky, rolling toward the south like a pack of dogs wrestling over scraps. Butch waited on the porch of Dauphine Marcoux’s house for the second time, but neither the woman nor her secretary, the acerbic Asian woman, answered. Next door, a screen door slammed shut, and Butch turned to find a stooped woman with cotton-white hair and a dress the color of dishwater peering at him from beneath the eaves of her porch. She waved. Butch lumbered across Mrs. Marcoux’s porch to speak with the woman, whose face was as wrinkled as a crumpled newspaper.

She made chewing motions with her toothless mouth, her lips mushing together softly, reminding him of Lonnie Musante and the conversation they’d shared, a conversation that had marked the end of Butch’s life in Chicago. “Not home, that one,” the woman said. She pointed a boney finger over his shoulder.

“I know,” Butch replied.

“Then why you standing around on her porch? Ain’t you got nothing better to do with your time?”

Not really,
Butch thought. Hollis was at the club. The bungalow was too quiet without him.

“Ma’am, do you know when Mrs. Marcoux plans to return?”

She chewed for a moment. “Nah.” Her face pinched, exploded with wrinkles. More chewing and she said, “I think that Oriental girl told me they was going to Baton Rouge. That was a few days back now, and she said it would be a few days. Hope it’s soon. Got no one to play rummy with when that Oriental girl goes away. I don’t suppose you play rummy, young man?”

“No, ma’am. I never learned.”

After smashing her lips together like she was working through a steak, she put her hands on her hips and looked up at the sky. “Funeral weather,” she said, and then turned and yanked open the screen door; its hinges squealed like an injured cat before it crashed closed.

“Thank you,” Butch called, wondering on her hasty departure.

Instead of walking back to Hollis’s place, Butch took advantage of the break in the weather and after returning to the Quarter he followed Burgundy Street to St. Anne, where he made a left and walked toward the river. The city’s residents had emerged from their homes and shops to enjoy the respite. A fat man in an A-shirt stood on a balcony across the street and leaned on the wrought-iron railing, smoking a cigarette and looking at the sky. A plump black woman swept the sidewalk, for no purpose Butch could see but to move the wet around. At the corner of Chartres Street he stopped and glanced over his shoulder, thinking he might return the way he’d come, but the sight of two men who had stopped midway along the block behind him changed his mind. Both men, who now faced one another with their chins down as if in secretive conversation, were slender and wore good suits and hats. They carried umbrellas. One of the men nodded in Butch’s direction and the other shook his head. Hollis’s comments about the corruption in New Orleans, the way it tied back to Chicago’s syndicates, skittered into his thoughts and began to gnaw. What if Lowery had put it together? What if he’d sniffed out the kind of men who would take interest in Butch’s story? The chatting men could have been nothing more than a couple of businessmen out for a late afternoon stroll, or a couple of tourists. They could also be syndicate men or cops—not that there was much difference between the two. Whatever the case, they were putting on a good show, not looking his way, even though they’d clearly been headed toward him only moments ago. Butch faced forward and set off toward the river, walking at a brisk pace until he reached Decatur. The train station stood a short ways down the street. He didn’t have enough cash to go far, but he had enough to get out of town. Should he run, again? Hide? Start all over even if it meant sharing a Hooverville tent for the next ten years? Eventually, he might be able to learn a trade and practice it in some small burg off the syndicate’s map.

All of these thoughts came at once like a swarm of worked-up bees. His paranoia had disturbed the hive, sent the ideas to buzzing. But when the two men came around the corner only a minute after Butch, they were laughing, clapping one another on the back. They tossed glances Butch’s way but the sight of him caused no reaction, not so much as a twitch of recognition. Chattering happily, the two men walked through the doors of a diner, never giving him a second look.

Butch exhaled. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath until it blew from him in a noisy
shush
. Rubbing the back of his neck, a nervous gesture he’d employed since childhood, he shook his head.

He needed to get Rory on the phone, needed to know if his friend had found the money in Butch’s apartment, needed to get a read on what was happening back in Chicago.

Beneath the roiling black sky, Butch strolled to the end of the block and turned back into the heart of the Quarter. When the rain resumed, he opened his umbrella, but he kept his pace slow and steady, even as the men and women around him dashed here and there, scurrying through gates and doorways to get out of the rain.

• • •

Early the next morning with sweat drying on his belly, Butch slid up on the bed and propped against the headboard. Next to him, Hollis sipped a drink. Butch reached over and took the glass from his friend and emptied the whiskey into his mouth. Then he handed it back for a refill.

“You’ve certainly made yourself comfortable,” Hollis said.

“I am comfortable,” Butch replied. “I wish it could last a while.”

“But it won’t.”

“It might, but the odds aren’t in our favor.”

“The odds brought us together,” Hollis said.

“Rory brought us together because he knew I didn’t have anyplace else to go.”

“I still find it strange you didn’t have any friends or family who’d take you in.” Hollis reached over to put his hand on Butch’s cock. “You’re not such a bad guy.”

Butch chuckled. “Unfortunately, my friends are employed by the people who want me dead, and my family…well, that’s not an option anymore.”

“Something happen there?”

“Something,” Butch said. Having the subject broached made him uneasy. He shifted against the headboard, trying to relieve the pressure on his neck. “I have a sister. We were close as kids.”

“But not anymore?”

“After my career went south because of that Simm business, I found I had a little time off, so I went to visit her. She’d married this guy from town, a kid I went to school with: Myron Huckabee.”

“There’s a winner’s name,” Hollis said.

“Myron was a scrawny kid, and he grew into a scrawny man, but I never thought he was a bad guy. He worked hard. Had himself a job at a lumber mill and seemed to do well by Clara. I’d only seen them a few times since their wedding, and usually it was only for a day or so before I had to get back on the road.

“That last trip, I was there for more than a week, and I still hadn’t figured out where I was going next. Clara seemed to like having me around, and Myron didn’t put up a fuss. We went to the tavern together a few times so he could shoot pool with his buddies and he made it sound like I was a real big shot, even though those days were over.

“That last night, he drank a little too much and when I got him home he started yelling at Clara to make him eggs. I told him to settle down and I’d scramble some up. No reason to bother my sister, waking her and all. But there was nothing rational in that scrawny man. I don’t know if it was the booze or if something had been building up, but he was just nuts. He wanted eggs and Clara had to fix them.

“When she didn’t move fast enough, he hit her. He slapped her across the cheek, and I just stood there. Our father used to beat up on us, but mostly Clara. I think she took a lot of his hate so I wouldn’t have to, and I couldn’t believe she’d gone off and found another man like our dad to marry. But she did. After Myron slapped her, Clara lowered her head and closed her eyes, all calm and resolved, and I realized this was not a rare thing. It was a…I don’t know, a ritual or something. Then Myron hauls off and punches her in the mouth.

“Clara didn’t make a sound.”

Hollis rubbed his palm in a gentle circle over Butch’s stomach. His eyes, saddened but hungry for more of the story, locked on Butch’s face. “What did you do?”

“A few times in my life I’ve lost control. What do they call it? Seeing red? You know, when everything just becomes a blur and you want to know that someone else is hurting. The thing about wrestling is, what I loved about it, was that you couldn’t lose control. You had to stay focused no matter what the other fella was throwing at you. I liked that. I needed it. But with Myron, I saw red. I hurt him real bad.

“When my mind cleared some, I went to Clara, who was still on the floor from Myron’s punch and I held her and told her to pack a bag. I’d take her with me. She didn’t have to stay in that house. But…”

Butch looked at the ceiling.

“She didn’t want your help,” Hollis said, finishing his thought.

“No,” Butch said. “In fact, she slapped me, and she started screaming, telling me I had no right to treat her husband that way. Said I’d abandoned her in Burlington and I had no right to come back and mess with her life. She crawled across the floor to Myron and sobbed over that scrawny little prick like he was a heroic prince who’d nearly died protecting her honor. I didn’t know what was happening. How could she want that kind of life?”

“Sometimes there’s no figuring it,” Hollis said. “There are folks who get pain and love mixed up. Can’t separate them out.”

“Well, she gave me another good slap when I went over to help Myron up. I didn’t say anything else to her. I drove her and her husband to the doctor’s and then I kept driving. Haven’t heard a word from her since.”

“You miss her?” Hollis asked. He slid his massaging hand up to Butch’s chest.

“Yeah,” Butch said.

She had been the last, the
best
remnant of his childhood. Without her and his wrestling career, he’d felt wholly adrift from his past—
alone
, ice-cold empty and alone for the first time in his life. He’d felt that way before he and Hollis had become friends. Now he didn’t feel as though he were drifting. Instead he felt as if he had washed up on an unfamiliar shore in a place where fear was as much a part of the landscape as comfort.

He rolled over and kissed Hollis, hard and insistent. Intimacy served to occupy his thoughts. It shielded him from past and present traumas with physical exertion and narcotic sensation. When he was with Hollis the ugly, hard-edged world receded. Joy helped him forget. More and more, Butch needed to forget.

Roger Lennon had no idea he’d shared a train from Chicago to New Orleans with Hayes and Brand. He’d spent most of the trip in his sleeper compartment reading Hammett’s
The Glass Key
, which he found intriguing, though his thoughts wandered too often to allow any real immersion in the story. The gloom and rain greeting his train in New Orleans came as a surprise. He’d expected sunshine and warm temperatures, but he imagined a lot of things in this city would surprise him. Other than whispers about depravity and the entertainments a soft morality could offer, headlines about Huey Long, and frequent references to jazz music, Lennon had been all but oblivious to New Orleans. He’d prepared as best he could with maps and a tattered guide book. In his notebook he’d written two addresses: one for Hollis Rossington’s home, and the other for the Hotel St. Pierre on Burgundy Street, the closest accommodations he could find to Butch Cardinal’s hideaway.

In a small room that smelled of mold and jasmine, Lennon lay stretched on the bed, the Hammett novel open across his chest. When the rain began to let up, Lennon stood and stretched his back. At the front desk he asked where he might buy an umbrella, and the enthusiastic gentleman with the sparkling grin who had checked him in told him to wait, “Just a quick sec.”