The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  A psychic partition, thought Daniel, that separated him from the darker side of life.

  It had caused him to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, swept along, inevitably, with the sewage from Lippmann.

  Gideon had played from his own script. There was no reason to feel guilty about what had happened. No reason for Daniel to apologize for doing his job.

  He looked at his watch. What time was it in Melbourne? Eight hours later, well into the evening.

  An embassy party, perhaps? Gorgeous Gideon sticking close to the ambassador, manicured fingers curled around a cocktail glass as he charmed the ladies with flattery and clever anecdotes. His evening jacket tailored to conceal the 9 mm.

  Executive attaché. When all was said and done, he was just a bodyguard, a suit and a gun. He had to be miserable.

  As opposed to me, thought Daniel. I have plenty to be happy about. A killer on the loose, bloody rocks, and heroin. Mad Hassidim and korbanot and strange monks and missing whores frightened by flat-eyed strangers.

  Sitting in this white cell, trying to put it all together. Half a kilometer southeast of Ammunition Hill.

  CHAPTER

  47

  A sticky summer. He was seventeen, three months away from eighteen, when he walked into the library and asked Doctor for a car. Had to ask twice before the fucker looked up from his surgical journal and paid attention.

  “What’s that?”

  “A car.”

  “Why do you want one?”

  “All the kids have their own.”

  “But what do you need one for?”

  “Go places, get to school.”

  “School’s that important to you, huh?” Smile.

  Shrug.

  “I mean, you’re flunking most of your subjects. I didn’t think school meant that much to you.”

  Shrug.

  “No, I don’t see why I should get you a car just like that.”

  Smiling in that fucking superior way. The asshole had two cars of his own, a big soft one and a low-slung sports job that looked like a hard-on, neither of which he let anyone else drive. Her car was a big soft one, too, big bucks, but it hadn’t been out of the garage for a long time; Doctor had had the crankcase drained, put it up on blocks.

  The fucker was loaded, all that money, all those cars, and he’d had to learn how to drive on a jalopy that belonged to one of the maids, a rusty clunker with no power steering, a real bitch to park—he’d failed the test twice because of it.

  “Loan me the money. I’ll pay you back.”

  “Oh, really?” Amused.

  “Yeah.”

  “And how do you propose to do that?”

  “I’ll get a job.”

  “A job.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what kind of work do you deem yourself qualified to perform?”

  “I could work at the hospital.”

  “At the hospital.”

  “Yes.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Anything.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  Doctor talked to the head janitor—a nigger retard—and got him a job in maintenance. The nigger hadn’t liked the idea; he and Doctor had discussed it while he waited a few feet away. The two of them talking about him as if he were invisible.

  “I dunno, Doc, it’s a dirty job.”

  “That’s fine, Jewel. Just fine.”

  The nigger put him to work, mopping up vomit and piss off sickroom floors, emptying catheter bags and taking out garbage—not much to find there.

  After two weeks of it he smelled bad, carried the smell with him all the time. When he went near Doctor, the fucker winced.

  Then the director of personnel found out about it and transferred him out of there, not wanting the son of the head honcho heart surgeon doing shitwork like that.

  He got sent to the mail room, which was excellent. He didn’t even have to stand around and sort—just serve as a courier, taking stuff from place to place.

  He did it all summer, got a real good feel for the hospital—every office, every lab.

  It was amazing how careless people were, leaving stuff unlocked—petty cash drawers, their purses out on the desk when they went to the john.

  He pilfered small amounts of cash that added up to big bucks.

  He stole prescription blanks and drugs, always in small amounts. Demerol and Percodan and Ritalin and Seconal and stuff like that, sold it to the junkies who roamed Nasty Boulevard, just a few blocks away.

  Sometimes he opened envelopes that had checks in them and sold them at five percent of face value to the junkies. Once in a while someone was stupid enough to send a cash donation to the hospital charity fund. That belonged to him immediately.

  He opened book cartons and took the interesting ones home—fancy medical texts about sex and cutting. Once he found a stack of porno books in one of the lockers in the interns’ lounge—white men fucking nigger women and vice versa—took it home and cut up the women until he could work up some good scream-pictures, stared at it until it turned him on and he could really get off.

  Slowly but surely, he turned the minimum-wage situation into something excellent.

  The key was to be careful. To make a plan and stick with it and clean up well afterward.

  He smiled at everyone, was prompt, courteous, always willing to do favors for people. Very popular. A couple of the nurses seemed to be ogling his dick; also one of the orderlies, who he was sure was a fag. But none of them interested him, unless they could scream it was borrrring.

  A great summer, very educational. He delivered mail to the pathology department—those were cool fuckers, eating their lunch with stiffs all around. The head honcho pathologist was this tall guy with a British accent and a clipped white beard. He chain-smoked menthol cigarettes and coughed a lot.

  One time he delivered a package of gloves to Pathology. No one was in the office. He started opening the drawers of the secretary’s desk, looking for stuff, when suddenly he heard this buzzing from down the hall—one of the labs that adjoined the offices.

  He went over and took a look. The door was open; the room was cold. Whitebeard was standing over this stiff. The stiff lay on a stainless-steel table—a man; it had a dick. Its skin was a dull green-gray.

  Whitebeard was using an electric saw with a little rough wheel—it looked like a pizza cutter—to lop off the top of the stiff’s skull. There was this weird burning smell. He stood there smelling it. It sickened him but really turned him on.

  “Yes?” said Whitebeard. “What have you there?”

  “Box of gloves.”

  “Put it over there.”

  Whitebeard started sawing again, looked up, saw him staring. All the knives and tools. The Y-shaped cut in the stiff’s chest, pinned back, the body cavity hollow, all the good stuff scooped out—you could see the spine. An older guy, the dick all shriveled; he needed a shave. On the steel tables were organ samples in trays—he recognized them all, felt good about that. A bucket of blood, vials of fluid, not that different from his experiments, but a nice big room, all out in the open.

  Real science.

  Whitebeard smiled. “Interested?”

  Nod.

  Whitebeard continued to saw, pulled off the top of the scalp like a kike’s beanie cap. Funny if the stiff had been a kike—the dick was too shriveled to tell.

  “The cerebral cortex,” said Whitebeard, pointing. “The cosmic jelly that creates delusions of immortality.”

  What shit.

  He wanted to say: I know what it is, asshole. I’ve seen plenty of them, scooped them out just as cool as you’re doing.

  Instead he just nodded. Play dumb. Play it safe.

  Whitebeard lifted the brain, weighed it in a scale that looked like the one they used for vegetables in the supermarket.

  “Heavy,” he said. A smile. “Must have been an intellectual.”

  He didn’t know what to say, just nodded and stared,
until Whitebeard got this uptight look on his face and said, “Don’t you have something to do?”

  His drug sales alone were quadruple his shitty salary. It turned out to be a very profitable summer. In more ways than one.

  For the first time in his life he got to watch Doctor in his natural habitat. The fucker was an even bigger asshole than he’d imagined—ordering people around, never passing a mirror without looking at himself, though why the hell would he want to look at that hook nose and that potbelly, the skin getting all red and blotchy? Red skin meant he was sick—fucker was probably going to drop dead of a heart attack one day, not be able to cut himself open and cure himself, that was for sure.

  Drop dead and probably leave all the money to Sarah. Dr. Sarah, soon. But she wanted to be a psychiatrist, no cutting. Unfuckingbelievable.

  He checked Doctor out real good, got to know him for the first time. Fucker never knew he was being studied. They could have been standing next to each other and he wouldn’t have noticed.

  To Doctor he was a freak. Weird. Some piece of shit that didn’t exist.

  It made him invisible, which was excellent.

  Doctor liked the young ones. He found out there was truth to all her screaming about him fucking candy-stripers.

  Fucker flirted with all of them, got serious with one in particular. Audrey, this little brunette, seventeen years old, fucking high school student just like Mr. Invisible. But she knew her way around.

  Short but curvy—big ass, big tits, wore her hair in this ponytail and wiggled a lot when she walked.

  Doctor could have been her father.

  Yet they were doing it, he was sure of it. He watched her go into Doctor’s office after the secretary had gone home. At first she knocked and Doctor answered; later she started to use her own key. After a half hour, she’d peek her head out to see if the coast was clear, giggle, then wiggle out the door. Wiggle down the hall, swinging her purse, with this bouncy little high school walk that said I’m a winner.

  Thinking no one saw.

  Someone saw.

  The invisible man, carrying a big carton that blocked his face. Even if he’d been visible he was safe. Pow.

  He would have loved to cut her up, clean her up.

  Mind picture.

  Scream-picture.

  Once Doctor and Audrey had a close call: One of the janitors got to work early, opened Doctor’s office, and was immediately escorted out by Doctor, looking pissed. No white coat for the fucker now. Just pants and a shirt, the tie loose, the buttons not done right.

  After that they started leaving the hospital. Going out, once or twice a week, to a motel just off Nasty Boulevard. Dirty-looking place, three dozen rooms around a sunken motor court, hand-painted signs on the roof advertising water beds and electric massage.

  Really filthy. It offended him that people could stoop so low.

  He followed them, walking because he still had no car, but it was close to the hospital, five blocks. He had long legs—no problem.

  He set up his position behind a tall bush, squatted, and watched.

  Doctor always drove. But he parked his car half a block away, on a dark side street, and the two of them walked to the motel, Doctor’s big arm over her shoulder, Audrey wiggling and giggling. They were predictable: always went into the same room, number twenty-eight, way at the end. Borrring.

  The clerk was this skinny slant, all yellow and sunken-cheeked, like he spent his off hours in an opium den. He had a small bladder, went to the bathroom every half hour or so. Or maybe he was shooting up—the guy wore long sleeves.

  The room keys hung in duplicate from hooks on a particle-board rack just behind the reception desk.

  He laid out his plan, ran it through his head for three weeks in a row. Just watching, trying to ignore the roaring in his head that got louder when he thought of what they were doing in there.

  The key was to plan.

  Week number four was action time. He’d brought his equipment, dressed in black like some ninja, feeling all tight and good and knowing he was fighting for a good cause.

  The first day it didn’t work. When the clerk went to pee/shoot up, there was another slant in the office, also looked like a junkie. Slant Two just stood around. When the clerk came out they talked to each other for a while.

  The second day, it happened. Slant One split. The minute the office was empty, he ran in, vaulted the counter, grabbed the duplicate to twenty-eight, and vaulted back. By the time One was back, he was outside the door to twenty-eight, all ready with his equipment.

  It was dark. There were a few cars; some of the other rooms were occupied, but all the drapes were drawn. No one was around—it was the kind of place you didn’t want to be seen in.

  He waited, with a giant hard-on, so hard he felt he could break down the door with it.

  Put his ear to the door and heard mumbling, what sounded like sex-noise.

  Waited some more until they had to be doing it, then slipped the key in, pushed, and ran in, turning on the lights and dancing around the room laughing and snapping pictures.

  He caught them in a good pose. Audrey was sitting on Doctor, playing the egg game, just like she used to. Her eggs were smaller and firmer and kind of tan, but it was the same game, in and out.

  Snap.

  Screams.

  What the hell— You!

  Snap.

  Audrey got hysterical, started crying, struggled to get off. Doctor holding on to her out of fear, shouting at him, but it ended up in her ear.

  Comedy.

  It looked like they hated each other, but they were still connected, couldn’t get free of each other!

  Excellent. Snap, snap! The mind pictures would be even better than the real ones, watching them struggle and scream, he was close to coming in his pants.

  Snap.

  They tried to disconnect. Fear made them clumsy, and they fell sideways.

  Snap, another pose.

  Snap snap.

  Finally Audrey was loose, running naked and sobbing to the bathroom. He kept snapping Doctor, heard her throwing up—probably a habit with women.

  Doctor’s face was deep purple, his hard-on fading. He grabbed at sheets, tried to cover himself.

  Snap.

  “You little—” Doctor sprang up and came at him.

  The guy was flabby, unhealthy. He pushed him on the chest and Doctor tumbled backward on the bed, ass to the camera.

  Snap.

  Doctor stood up again.

  He put the camera away, smiled, and sauntered to the door.

  “See you later. Dad.”

  The next day there was a note on his bed.

  What kind of car do you want?

  He got two. A Jaguar XKE Roadster for fun, a Plymouth sedan for when he didn’t want to be noticed.

  He drove them for a couple of weeks, let Doctor think that was it. Then walked, one afternoon, past the secretary, without even asking permission, opened the door marked PRIVATE, went in and shut it behind him.

  The fucker was at his desk, writing in a medical chart. He looked up, tried to look stern, put on the head-honcho look, but couldn’t pull it off. Obviously scared shitless.

  “What is it?”

  “We have to talk. Dad.”

  “Sure. Sit down.”

  There was a cedar humidor full of cigars on Doctor’s desk. Stupid for a heart surgeon, but the guy had never practiced what he preached anyway.

  He stared at Doctor, took a cigar out, licked it, and lit it.

  Doctor started to say something. Something parental. Then stopped himself.

  “What do you want?”

  Straight out with it, no “son,” no pretending it was anything other than business.

  He didn’t answer, let an ash grow on the cigar, flicked it on the carpet.

  Doctor clenched his jaw to keep from talking.

  He blew smoke rings.

  “Well, Dad,” he said finally, “the pictures are in a safe place with in
structions to open them if anything happens to me, so if you’ve been thinking that fucking me over will help you, forget it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Harming you is the furthest thing from my—”

  “Right.”

  “Believe me, all I’ve ever wanted for you—”

  “Cut the shit.” He leaned forward, dropped a gray worm of ash on the desk. On Doctor’s charts. Picked up a chart.

  “You can’t look—”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It’s confidential patient information.”

  “Tough shit.”

  Doctor sighed, put on a nicey-nicey tone: “Listen, I know our relationship hasn’t been—”

  “Cut the shit, I said!” He said it loud. Doctor looked nervously at the door.

  He leafed through the chart. No good pictures. Borrring. Put it down.

  “The photos are in packets. Dad. One addressed to Mom, one to Dr. Schoenfeld, one to Audrey’s parents. I can do anything I want to.”

  Doctor stared at him. His eyes got narrow.

  Neither of them said anything for a while.

  “What do you want?” Doctor finally said.

  “Favors.”

  “What kinds of favors?”

  “Whatever I want.”

  Doctor kept staring at him.

  The cigar was starting to taste like shit. He ground it out on the shiny wooden surface of Doctor’s desk, left the butt lying there like an old turd.

  “Not a lot of favors. Dad. Just a few important ones.”

  “Such as?” Trying to tough it out, but totally scared shitless.

  Now it was his turn to smile. “I’ll let you know.”

  He got up, walked around to where Doctor was sitting. Slapped him on the shoulder and smiled again.

  “We’ll be in touch, stud.”

  CHAPTER

  48

  At one-fifteen Daniel received news from Tel Aviv that Aljuni, the Gaza wife-stabber, had passed his polygraph. At one-thirty P.M. he made radio contact with the Chinaman. Nothing new from the Old City.