The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Big fucking deal. Not a word of it picked up.

  Nada. They’d erased his identity—for all practical purposes, murdered him.

  At first he’d thought it was a delay, maybe an oversupply of stories holding up his. But after four days he knew it was something else, grabbed the phone and called New York. Making noise about state censorship, expecting outrage, backup, some Freedom of the Press good fellowship, we’re behind you, Mark, old buddy, will get right on it, yessir.

  Instead: hemming and hawing, the kind of talking without saying anything politicians did when they wanted to avoid a cutting question.

  New York was part of it.

  He’d been laid out on the altar for sacrifice.

  Just like the Butcher victims: the unsung victim—how long before they buried him?

  Nebraska. Or Cleveland. Some dead-end desk job purgatory. Meanwhile all he could do was bide his time, work on his screenplay, send letters to L.A. agents—if that panned out, fuck ’em, he’d be eating duck pizza at Spago . . .

  Until then, though, a cycle of wretched, empty days. A good romp would have eased the pain.

  Romp and Turkey.

  Thank God he hadn’t wasted the good stuff on her, the phony.

  Australian reporter, shoulders on her like a defensive lineman. But a nice face—no Olivia Newton-John, but good clean features, nice blond hair, good skin. All those butter-milk freckles on her neck and chest—he’d been curious as hell to know how far down they went.

  Way she came on at Fink’s, he was sure he’d find out. He’d bought the Wild Turkey from the bartender—double retail plus tip, on his expense account. He sat down at her table. Five minutes later, her hand was on his knee.

  Wink and a whistle, my place or your place?

  Her place.

  Dinky single, just a couple of blocks from his, almost no furniture—she’d just arrived from kangaroo land. But the requisite party toys: stereo, soft-rock cassette collection. A futon mattress on the floor, candles. Bottles.

  Lots of bottles: cheap brandy, ten varieties, every fruit you could think of. A cheap-brandy freak.

  They’d tossed back shot after shot, sharing a jam jar. Then her little secret: little chocolate-colored hashish crumbs inserted into a Dunhill filter tip—an interesting buzz, the hash softening the edges of the bad booze.

  Mind candy, she’d whispered, tonguing his ear.

  Soft lights, soft rock on the tape deck.

  A tongue duel, then lying back. Ready to dive into their own personal Down Under. Nice, right?

  Wrong.

  He let the towel fall to the floor, felt the cold tile under his soles, shivered, and swayed unsteadily. Vision blurred, nausea climbed up to his throat.

  God, he felt like heaving his guts out—how much of that swill had he ingested?

  He leaned over the sink, closed his eyes and was hit by an attack of the dry heaves that left him weak and short of breath, needing to hold on to the sink for support.

  Pure swill—he didn’t want to think about what it was doing to his intestinal tract. And had the hash been anything other than hash? He recalled a night in Rio, Mardi Gras craziness. Weed laced with some kind of hallucinogen, he’d walked on rubber sidewalks for three days.

  But she’d put away an entire bottle by herself, not even blinking.

  Australians—they were bottomless pits when it came to booze and dope. Descended from criminals, probably something in the genes . . .

  He felt his heart pounding. Irregularly. Brushed aside heart-attack terror, closed the commode and sat down on the lid, having trouble getting a good deep breath. Trying not to think of tonight’s disaster, but the more he tried, the more the memories forced themselves into his muddy consciousness.

  The two of them lying side by side on the futon, his hand on her thigh—hefty, freckled thigh. Tossing back swill and smoking hash and tossing back more swill, his hand in her blouse, she, letting him, smiling goofy-eyed and saying cheers and burping and putting it away as if it were Perrier.

  Everything going well, goddamned salvation after all those shitty days. Then she suddenly gets the talkies—all she wants to do is jabber.

  Off goes the blouse—big girl, big freckled tits to make a centerfold jealous, just like he’d imagined. Big brown nipples; she let him suck on them, play with her—we’re heading home, Marko—but she kept right on talking.

  Dope-talk. Fast and furious, with an undercurrent of hysteria that made him nervous, as if one wrong move and she’d be sobbing uncontrollably, screaming rape or something.

  Crazy-talk. Sliding from one topic to the next without benefit of logical association.

  Her ex-husband. Exotic birds. Her parents’ taste in furniture. High school drinking parties. A cactus collection she’d had in kindergarten. Homesickness. An abortion in college. Her brother, the sheep shearer.

  Then lots of weird stuff about sheep: shearing sheep. Dipping sheep. Watching sheep fuck. Castrating sheep—not exactly the lexicon from which erotic alphabet soup sprang . . . What the hell was he talking about? Her craziness was catching.

  His head felt ready to split open. After several attempts he finally got to his feet, lurched into the bedroom, and made for the Turkey bottle. The ice could wait.

  The light was off. Funny, he thought he’d left it on.

  The mind gone, memory cells blasted to hell—he was sure she’d put something in the hash. Or the rotgut.

  The darkness better anyway. His eyelids felt crammed with gravel, the darkness more soothing, just a little soft glow from the foyer highlighting outlines . . .

  He went for the Turkey on the nightstand, groped air.

  It wasn’t there.

  Oh, shit, he’d put it somewhere else and forgotten about it. He was really blasted, had really done it this time. The stupid broad had poisoned him with her blackberry-peach-pear rotgut. Jerked him around and poisoned him.

  And how he’d been jerked. She’d let him do anything, everything, allowing him into her pants, passive as a coma victim. Letting him spread her big freckled legs, accommodating him as he slipped it in like a finger in a greased glove. So accommodating he wondered if she felt it—was she used to something bigger? He moved to make her feel it, stroked her, used every trick he knew, but all she did was lie there staring at the ceiling and talking, as if he were doing it to someone else, she wasn’t even a part of it, was in some talktalk twilight zone.

  Putting up no resistance, but jabbering until he lost his hard-on, pulled out, stood up.

  Jabbering, spread-eagled, even as he put his clothes on, grabbed the unopened Turkey bottle. He could still hear her jabbering as he closed the door to her apartment. . . .

  He stumbled around the room, feeling for the Turkey.

  Where the hell was the goddamned bottle?

  Mind, gone; memory, gone. He stomped around the room, checking the floor, the bed, his dresser, the closet, feeling the panic starting to rise—

  “Looking for this?” said someone.

  His heart shot up into his chest, collided with the roof of his mouth. Unexpelled breath stagnated painfully in his chest.

  Outline in the doorway, backlit by the foyer bulb. Some guy, hat, long coat. The light glinting off eyeglasses. The fuzz of a beard.

  The guy came closer. Smiling. Grinning.

  “What the hell—”

  “Hi, I’m Dr. Terrific. What seems to be the problem?”

  He could see teeth. A grin.

  Too weird.

  Oh, shit, Dr. Terrific: D.T. The D.T.’s.

  A Delirium Tremens Demon. You always heard about it hitting some other guy, never thought it would happen to you. He remembered the warning of the Brazilian doctor with the soft, wet hands: Your liver, Mr. Wilbur. Easy on the daiquiris.

  Off the sauce, he promised himself, first thing tomorrow morning. Three squares a day, more B vitamins . . .

  “Looking for this, Mark?” repeated the D.T. Demon, extending the Turkey bottle.

&nb
sp; Definitely hallucinating.

  Poisoned hash. Laced with something—LSD . . . The demon in the hat grinned wider. Looking awfully goddamned real for a hallucination . . .

  Wilbur sat down on the edge of the bed, closed his eyes, rubbed them, opened them again, hoping to find himself alone.

  He didn’t.

  “What the hell—”

  The demon/man shook his head. “Talk respectfully, Mark.”

  Using his name, as if he knew him intimately, were part of him. Like one of those cartoons he’d watched as a kid. This is your conscience speaking, Mark.

  He waved it away. “Up yours.”

  The demon reached into its coat, pulled out something long and shiny. Even in the dimness, Wilbur knew right away what it was.

  Knife. Biggest goddamned knife he’d ever seen—blade had to be close to a foot long, maybe longer. Gleaming metal blade, pearl handle.

  “Respectfully, Mark.”

  Wilbur stared at the knife glinting light. Cold and clean and cruel and real . . . Could this be real? Oh, God—

  “I’ve missed your stories about me, Mark. I feel as if you’ve abandoned me.”

  And then he knew.

  “Listen,” he forced out, “I wanted to. They wouldn’t let me.”

  The man kept grinning, listening.

  A hundred shrink interviews reeled through his head: Buy time, goddammit. Establish a bond. Empathy.

  “Censorship—you know what it’s like,” he said. Forcing a smile—oh, Jesus, how it hurt to smile. That knife . . . “I did several stories—you want to see them, I can show them to you—out in my desk in the living room.” Slurring his words, sounding like a drunk. Be clearer!

  “In the living room,” he repeated. Front room, make a lunge for the door . . .

  “Another thing, Mark,” said the grinning bastard, as if he hadn’t heard a word. “You called me a butcher. That implies sloppiness. Crudeness. I’m a professional. A real scientist. I always clean up afterward.”

  No, no, no, make this go away—got to get out of this room, this goddamned room, make a run for it . . .

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “Despite that, I’ve really missed those stories, Mark. We had a relationship. You had no permission to end it without consulting me.”

  The man in the hat and long coat came closer. What a weird face, something wrong with it—off kilter, he couldn’t place it. . . . Hell with that—don’t waste time wondering about stupid things.

  Buy time.

  “I know what you mean. I’d feel the same way if I were you. But the system stinks, it really does.” Now he was jabbering. Going on about New York, the Chosen People, how both of them were victims of Zionist censorship. The grinning man just standing there, bottle in one hand, knife in the other. Listening.

  “We can work together, Doctor. Tell your story, the way you want it told, a big book, no one will ever know who you are, I’ll protect you, once we’re out of this stinking country no more censorship, I can promise you that. Hollywood’s crazy for the idea. . . .”

  The grinning man didn’t seem to be listening anymore. Distracted. Wilbur moved his aching eyes down from the off-kilter face to the asshole’s hands: the Turkey bottle in one hand, the knife in the other. He decided to go for broke, wondered which one to grab.

  The knife.

  He readied himself. A long moment of silence. His heart was racing. He couldn’t breathe, was suffocating on his own fear . . . Stop that! No negative thinking—buy time.

  Distract the asshole again.

  “So,” he said, “tell me a little about yourself.”

  The grinning man came closer. Wilbur saw his eyes and knew it was useless. Over.

  He tried to scream. Nothing came out. Struggled to get up off the bed and fell backward, helpless.

  Paralyzed with fear. He’d heard that animals about to be ripped to shreds by predators slipped into protective paralysis. The mind shut off. Anesthesia—oh, Lord, he hoped so. Make me an animal, numb me, take away these thoughts, the waiting . . .

  The bearded face hovered over him, grinning.

  Wilbur choked out a feeble squeak, covered his face so as not to see the knife, scrambled to fill his mind with thoughts, images, memories, anything that could compete with the pain of waiting.

  God, how he hated knives. So unfair—he was an okay guy.

  The hand with the knife never moved.

  The one with the bottle did.

  CHAPTER

  64

  The Ali Baba closed at midnight, but Al Biyadi slipped the waiter some dollars and he and Cassidy were allowed to sip another pistachio milk as the lights went out around them.

  Quite a few dollars, thought Shmeltzer, as he watched the waiter bring them a plate of cookies topped off by a sonata of bows and scrapes.

  Cassidy took a cookie and nibbled on it. She seemed bored, no expression in the sexless face. Al Biyadi drank, consulted his watch. Just another couple out on a date, but Shmeltzer’s instincts told him something was up—the shmuck had looked at the watch fourteen times during the last hour.

  The more he studied them, the more mismatched they seemed—the sheikh in his tailored dark suit and shiny shoes, Cassidy trying to feminize herself with that upswept hairdo, the dangling earrings and lacy dress, but ending up far short of success. Touching the sheikh’s arm from time to time but getting only half-smiles or less.

  Shmuck was definitely nervous, his mind somewhere else.

  A young dark-haired woman dressed in white work clothes and equipped with a mop and pail emerged from the back of the restaurant, knelt, and began cleaning off the sidewalk. Al Biyadi and Cassidy ignored her, kept playing out their little scene.

  Waiting? For what?

  The Latam couple had paid their check and left the restaurant ten minutes ago, conferring briefly with Shmeltzer before walking off hand in hand, north on Salah E-Din. To the casual observer a goyische twosome, headed for fun in a suite at the American Colony Hotel.

  Al Biyadi looked at his watch again. Almost a nervous tic. Cassidy put the cookie down, placed her hands in her lap.

  The scrubwoman dragged her mop closer to their table, making soapy circles, then right up next to them.

  She knelt, kept her hands moving, her narrow white back to Shmeltzer. He half-expected Al Biyadi to say something nasty to her—guy was class-conscious.

  But instead he looked down at her, seemed to be listening to her. Tensing up. Nodding. Cassidy making a grand show of looking off in the distance.

  The scrubwoman dragged her pail elsewhere, scrubbed for a few seconds, then disappeared back into the restaurant. Half the sidewalk was still dirty. Al Biyadi slapped down more bills, pinned them under the candle glass, got up, and brushed off his trousers.

  Cassidy stood too, took his arm. Squeezed it—through his binoculars, Shmeltzer could see her fingers tightening like claws around the dark fabric.

  Al Biyadi peeled them off, gave her a tiny shake of the head, as if to say not now.

  Cassidy dropped her hands to her sides. Tapped her foot.

  The two of them stood on the sidewalk.

  Moments later, Shmeltzer heard sounds from the back door of the restaurant. The door opened, freeing a beam of ocher light and kitchen clatter. He pressed himself into a dark corner and watched as the scrubwoman, now dressed in a dark dress, walked out and fluffed her hair. Short girl—petite. Pretty profile.

  She began heading north on Salah E-Din, duplicating the Latam couple’s route.

  Shmeltzer could see she was a bit flatfooted, could hear her shuffle. When her footsteps had died, he moved forward, looked at her, then back at the Ali Baba.

  The restaurant’s front lights had been turned off. The waiter was folding up tablecloths, extinguishing candles, collapsing tables.

  Al Biyadi and Cassidy began walking north, too, following the scrubwoman.

  They passed within two meters of him, keeping up a good pace, not talking. Shm
eltzer radioed the Latam couple. The woman answered.

  “Wife, here.”

  “They just left, followed a short woman in a dark dress, shoulder-length dark hair, early twenties. All three of them coming your way on Salah E-Din. Where are you?”

  “Just past Az-Zahara, near the Joulani Travel Agency.”

  “Stay there. I’ll take up the rear.”

  He put the radio under his beggar’s robes, back in the pocket of his windbreaker, cursed the heat and all those layers of clothes, and followed a block behind.

  Goddamned caravan.

  Sheikh and girlfriend kept walking fast. A few stragglers were still out on the streets—lowlife, porters and kitchen help from the Arab hotels going off-shift—but he found it easy to keep an eye on his quarry: Look for a female head bobbing next to a male. You didn’t see many men and women walking together in East Jerusalem.

  They passed Az-Zahara Street, walked right by the Joulani Agency where the Latam couple was waiting, invisibly, and the American School for Oriental Research, and continued toward the Anglican Cathedral of Saint George and its four-steepled Gothic tower.

  Just above the cathedral they reunited with the scrub-woman, exchanged words that Shmeltzer couldn’t hear, and made their way—a strange threesome—east, then south, down Ibn Haldoun. The street was narrow and short, dead-ending at Ibn Batuta and the front facade of the Ritz Hotel.

  But they stopped short of the dead end, walked through a wrought-iron gate into the courtyard of an elegant old walled Arab house, and disappeared.

  Shmeltzer waited across the street for the Latam couple to arrive, saw them enter the mouth of Ibn Haldoun and trotted up the street to greet them. The three of them retreated twenty yards up Ibn Haldoun, away from the glare of street lamps.