Butcher's Road (41 page)

He never expected to see the man again.

In his room, he closed the drapes and peeled off his wet clothes and then stood at the foot of the bed. The ceiling fan made slow revolutions above, sending a chill breeze over his scalp and shoulders, and Butch closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He imagined the house on good land, his oldest dream, only now he pictured Hollis there with him. His friend stoked the wood stove, stirred the contents of a pot on its scalding surface. He poured beer into glasses and carried them out to the porch where Butch waited, staring at a sunset woven of purple and crimson and orange. Hollis took a seat next to him. They said nothing. Nothing needed to be said.

Butch opened his eyes. After his skin had dried, he dressed in a pair of Hollis’s gray trousers, a white undershirt, and a pair of warm woolen socks. Then he left his room.

In the kitchen he put on a percolator of coffee, knowing it could be a long night. It could also be a very short night. There was no way for him to know. A killer might already be aiming a rifle at him through the kitchen window or a gang of thugs might be converging in the courtyard, having walked through the gate only seconds after Hollis had left the property.

Just leave,
he thought.
Walk into the rain.
Let Hollis believe the mobs had fed him to the gators so the man could get on with his life. He couldn’t let his friend give up everything for him, no matter how much he wanted it.

He could disappear the way Detective Lennon had suggested—a long, uneventful life on a Florida beach, tanning his skin and fishing and drinking rum until the sound of the ocean lulled him to sleep.

Butch decided that if he lived through the night, he’d consider it again. For the moment, he poured himself a cup of coffee and returned to his room. There he set the cup on the nightstand and performed a series of stretches to loosen his muscles. Feeling limber enough, he drank more of the coffee, sat on the edge of the bed, and thought the evening through.

• • •

They came for him at eight o’clock. The rain persisted, beating hard on the flagstones and the leaves of the succulent plants. Butch stood against the ivy-draped wall of the slave quarters, pushed deep into the shadows. He’d waited there for two hours, his mind numb to the downpour and the chill, ears adjusted to the marching rain, listening for the soft squeal of the hinges on the courtyard gate.

When it came, Butch tensed and made himself stand as motionless as a statue. A shadow appeared to his left and he saw the silhouette of a gun. Only a few steps into the courtyard, the man paused, turned back. For a second, he looked directly at Butch but must have only seen the camouflage of bushes and gloom. The man tested the door to Hollis’s bungalow and then leaned in close to peer through the window.

Satisfied that the building was empty, he turned to the big house and began creeping across the courtyard.

Butch launched himself away from the wall of ivy and hit the flagstones in a run. He was grateful to the rain for covering the sounds of his footsteps. He was only a few steps from the shooter when the man heard his approach. He looked up and swung in Butch’s direction. But Butch was already diving at the man. They landed hard on the flagstones. Butch leapt to his feet and brought his foot down hard on the man’s wrist, stomping again and again until the gun fell from his fingers. Butch retrieved the weapon and aimed it at the man’s face, which was still little more than a smear of pale skin.

The man on the ground kicked Butch in the stomach and tried to get to his feet, but the kick had been poorly delivered, ineffective. Butch kept the man in the gun’s sights.

“Did you come alone?” Butch asked.

“Fuck off,” the man said.

Butch fired the gun into the wall beside the killer’s head. The man squealed and covered his face with his arms.

“Did you come alone?”

“Two waiting in the car. If I don’t come out, they come in.”

He could handle two more. With the gun it would be easy enough. He wasn’t much of a shot, but he wouldn’t need to be if he could keep the element of surprise on his side.

“Let me go, buddy, and I’ll tell them I got the job done. You’ll be free and clear.”

“I’m finding it hard to trust you.”

“You better think this through. We don’t show after the job, and Remy’ll send a fucking army over here. You run and he’ll find you. He’ll hunt you till the day you die.”

“There’s a line already formed for that one. Get up,” he told the man.

After the man stood, Butch ordered him across the courtyard. He put his hand in the center of the man’s back and walked him toward the corridor beside the bungalow. The shooter wobbled on his feet, stumbling ahead like a drunk on sand. He paused and lurched and dipped to the side. Butch thought he might topple over.

It was a ruse, and the shooter, whipped around, knocking the gun aside. Butch recovered quickly and threw an elbow to the man’s jaw, sending him to the wall. The shooter pushed himself from the brick wall. Butch took two awkward steps backward.

Gunfire erupted. The cracking reports cut through the rain’s clatter in a staccato thunder. It came from the gate at the end of the corridor.

Butch scurried to the center of the courtyard out of the line of fire, but the shooter danced back and forth as a barrage of bullets entered his chest and face. The man collapsed. The glass of the French doors along the ground floor of the main house shattered. Butch raced toward the big house and took up a position behind a potted plant in the corner of the portico.

All of this happened in seconds. Reflex guided his actions more than rational thought, but he was still breathing. Through pure dumb luck, his would-be killer had saved his life. Butch just hoped the luck would hold. The gunfire quieted, leaving only the sound of the beating rain. He looked through the leaves of the plant and saw movement, but it was the motion of shadows on shadows. He could not place where the men were standing with any certainty.

“I think we shot Colin,” a man said.

“Son of a bitch. Remy ain’t gonna like hearing that.”

“We’ll tell him the wrestler done it.”

Butch tried to get a bead on the voices. It should have been easy enough as the mouth of the corridor that opened onto the courtyard wasn’t that wide, but he didn’t want to waste the bullets he had. The other men weren’t so worried about conserving their ammunition. They opened fire a second time, strafing the French doors and windows behind Butch as if they found glass offensive. One bullet passed through the lip of the pot giving him cover, and fragments of ceramic flew in the air amid a puff of mud. Butch lay down flat on the ground until the second wave of gunfire ended.

From what Butch could tell, the men had positioned themselves against the wall of the corridor, using the corner for cover. He might get lucky with a shot, but he had no faith in his marksmanship, and as it stood the men seemed uncertain of his exact location in the courtyard. A few bad shots would give him away and do more harm than good.

Even so, he couldn’t stay where he sat. Eventually the men would dare the courtyard. They would find him.

He got his feet under him and duck-walked backward into the house, wincing at the sound of the glass crunching under his feet. He made it halfway across the foyer before the men caught sight of him and the barrage of gunfire resumed. Butch bolted, making for the stairs on his right. Bullets followed him across the room, never quite reaching him, and he threw himself over the banister. He hung in the air for a moment, feeling the dread of exposure. Then he dropped hard. One of the stairs dug deep into his ribs. He didn’t stop to entertain the pain, but rather got to his feet and raced up the stairs. He went to the window on the landing and looked out.

The men had moved into the center of the courtyard, surveying the destroyed wall of glass. Butch carefully aimed the pistol at the man on the left, and he took a deep breath before he began to pull the trigger.

Before he could fire, a blur caught his eye. The pale smudge came from the corridor the men had recently vacated, and it moved swiftly to their backs like an eager phantom. It took a moment for Butch to realize the smudge was a man. Butch squinted to make out the details of the scene through the rain, but his eyes never quite caught up with the action. One moment the two gunmen were facing the house, holding their weapons at the ready, and the next, they were in pieces on the ground. Their torsos had been cleaved in half and blood poured into the puddles of rainwater. Their severed arms still clutched their guns.

Butch struggled to keep his eyes on the scene below.

Though he told himself it wasn’t possible, Mr. Brand, the man Detective Lennon had shot that afternoon, stared up at Butch. In his hand he held the copper staff. With a flick of his wrist, the staff drooped like a ribbon and then climbed up the man’s skinny arm, wrapping itself like a snake as it rose to his bicep. Mr. Brand saluted Butch and then made his way into the house.

Light blossomed from the crystal chandelier hanging over the foyer. Butch blinked away the sudden glare. A moment later Brand appeared in the foyer. He walked to the bottom of the stairs and looked up.

“Mr. Cardinal,” he said.

“You should stay down there,” Butch replied.

“I intend to,” Mr. Brand said. “And you’ll come and join me.”

Butch aimed the gun. “I don’t think so.”

“You’d better be a good shot,” Mr. Brand said. “Better than your friend at any rate.”

“So you’re invincible?”

Mr. Brand laughed. He parted the lapels of his shirt, revealing a bib of golden metal beneath. “No, Mr. Cardinal, just very well prepared.”

Was he supposed to believe that a thin mesh of metal had stopped Lennon’s bullet? And then he did believe it, because there was no other explanation. After the things he’d seen, was this really so miraculous?

“Where’s your pal?”

“He’s crossing the courtyard now. Would you rather speak with him?”

“I’d rather you both left.”

Hayes stepped into the foyer and surveyed the house with a slow, sweeping glance. Though not as badly injured as his friend, Hayes’s jaw was swollen and the color of a plum.

“We should talk first,” Mr. Brand said. He cocked his head to the side and continued smiling, eyeing Butch as he might a dog doing tricks. “It’s become clear that we’re on the same side.”

“I suppose you attacking me with a knife this afternoon kind of threw me off.”

“That’s when we realized we were on the same side, Mr. Cardinal,” Mr. Hayes said, stepping up to the side of his companion. “The metals live for you, the way they live for us.”

“And that automatically makes me a good guy?” Butch asked.

“Not in and of itself,” said Hayes. “But we tracked down your detective friend after he left you this afternoon. He clarified several issues for us.”

“He’s okay?” Butch asked.

“We didn’t harm him, if that’s what you’re asking. We had a pleasant chat. He seemed extremely relieved and grateful to find Mr. Brand in such good health.”

“Okay, so you’re the Alchemi,” Butch said.

“We belong to the Alchemi, yes,” Hayes said. “I imagine Mr. Keane told you about us.”

“Not really. He didn’t say much of anything useful.”

“Well, we’d be glad to answer any questions you might have. If you’d rather not chat, we would be happy to take the Galenus Rose and be on our way. We have no interest in harming you, unless you interfere.”

“The Rose is a fake,” Butch said.

“I can assure you it’s not,” Hayes replied.

Butch kept his aim on Hayes and fished beneath his shirt until he had the worthless piece of metal in his fist. He yanked, snapping the chain, and tossed the necklace down the stairs. Hayes caught it. His eyes lit with excitement and then dimmed. Hayes frowned.

“You’ve made a replica,” he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“No,” Butch said, “I didn’t. That is the same piece that Musante gave me in Chicago. I didn’t even know what it was supposed to do until this afternoon.”

The men at the bottom of the stairs exchanged a glance. Neither looked happy. Hayes turned his attention back to Butch. “Then I suppose we can guess what’s become of the original.”

“I think so,” Butch said. “Lonnie Musante. He didn’t die in Chicago, or if he did, he didn’t stay that way.”

• • •

The standoff on the staircase lasted only another minute. Butch lowered the gun. He didn’t exactly trust the men, but he knew they believed his story. Killing him wouldn’t get them what they wanted, and if Dauphine Marcoux was right, they’d want him on their side. Butch put the gun in his waistband and walked down the stairs. He remained tense through the introductions, shaking the men’s hands, but they made no suspicious moves. They followed him into the parlor on the far side of the foyer. Both men stood as Butch sat on the red velvet settee. He’d been on his feet for hours, and fatigue was setting in hard.

“You understand it is difficult for us to believe Mr. Musante succeeded in keeping the Rose for himself?” Hayes asked. “The idea presents a number of questions.”

“I think he screwed his boss, too,” Butch said, ignoring Hayes as he tried to put things together. “The way Musante set this up, it wasn’t just to throw your people off his tail. My guess is Impelliteri paid a good deal of money for the Galenus Rose. That’s why I’ve got every hood in the country looking for me. He doesn’t know I’ve got a fake.” Butch noted the frustration on the men’s faces and found it insulting. They’d lost their bauble and a bit of their time; he’d lost his entire life because of Musante’s game. He was further aggravated to realize he’d played the game exactly as Musante had intended. “The whole time I was in Musante’s place he was warning me about what was going to happen. He told me there was a shooter outside, told me we were both about to die. He kept on about it, and I couldn’t figure out why, and the simple answer was, he wanted me to escape. Musante knew I’d be framed for the crime because he had a cop execute the hit, and the cop had to blame someone. He also knew that would mean my name would be in the papers fast so Impelliteri had himself a target. He wanted all eyes on me—cops, Impelliteri, you guys—so he could do whatever was necessary to vanish forever. It didn’t matter if I got caught a day later or a year later or never got caught at all. He just needed a window of time and a decoy.”