World, Chase Me Down

by Andrew Hilleman

  Still no moon in the sky. Wouldn’t be for another night more.

  I leapt to my feet in a rush, rifle butt deep in my shoulder. I shouted, “Hold them ponies right there or I’ll put a little short caliber in your heads.”

  The carriage stopped instantly. It had turned sideways in the road. Billy, his courage ten seconds short, joined me after a brief delay. Both of his hands were filled with aimed revolver.

  “Both of you, get down on the ground,” I demanded.

  Nobody moved. Even the horses were motionless.

  “Are you deef?” I asked. I cocked my rifle hammer. Even a sound as small as that had an echo in the middle of nowhere. “Get off that rig. Now.”

  Another moment passed. Cudahy was the first to move. His weight shook the carriage as he stood and stepped down, his back facing the other direction. His driver replied in kind and I directed both of them to the other side of the road with their hands aloft. They marched into the snow side by side, arms raised. When I instructed them onto their knees, Cudahy asked, “Where is my son?”

  I came up behind him, each footstep a wet crunch, and jammed the end of my rifle into the back of his head. “Skin for skin if that’s the way you want it,” I said, quoting the Satan of the Old Testament. “All that a man hath will he give for his life. All I’m asking you for yours is to keep quiet.”

  “Are you not a man of your word?” Cudahy said, ignoring the threat. He was on his knees now, an effort that was as laborious to him as a turtle trying to flip over after being capsized on its shell. “I followed your instructions to the letter, and now you’re robbing me?”

  “Not robbing. Double-checking,” I said and kept my rifle trained at the back of his head.

  Billy searched both valises.

  Inside each was a pair of canvas bags filled to the brim with gold coins in ten- and twenty-dollar increments. He lit a match and pawed through the coins, making sure there wasn’t a counterfeit amount of nails or buttons filling out the bottoms. Nearly ninety-five pounds’ worth of gold. He could barely contain his excitement.

  His voice was a wheeze, “It’s all here.”

  I turned and nodded to our original camping spot at the top of the hill where Silversmith was hitched just on the other side of the draw. “Get it loaded up.”

  Billy holstered his guns and picked up the two bags, one in each hand at fifty pounds apiece. It took him quite the effort to manage the hill with the weight, like carrying a pair of kettle bells. He slipped twice, cursing the heft of the gold. I watched him but kept my rifle sighted on Cudahy and his driver.

  The dark thought came to me: it would be easy to execute both men and maybe, just maybe, forever satisfy the panther prowling in my chest.

  “I know who you are,” Cudahy said.

  I thought: put one in his brainpan. Instead I said, “Do you, now?”

  “You won’t get away with this, Pat Crowe.”

  I stepped back, relaxed my rifle over my shoulder. “Stand up!”

  Cudahy stood.

  “Turn around.”

  Cudahy turned. He looked right at me. “That mask doesn’t fool me, son.”

  I breathed through my gunnysack. After a heavy moment, I bashed Cudahy in the mouth with the barrel of my rifle. The huge man collapsed to his knees and fell over onto his side. His front teeth were completely smashed. Blood poured out of his mouth and gushed over his cupped hands as he pressed them to his face. He moaned like a kicked dog and spit out a mess of broken lip, blood, teeth. I watched him writhe in pain. I chuckled through my cloth mask and knelt down beside him.

  With a great deal of calm, leaning against my upright rifle, I said, “Now you listen to me. You’re in a good heap of pain. Come time, you might need a set of false teeth. I do hope you have a good dentist. Man as rich as you must have. It might be hard to hear anything but the ringing between your ears right now, but you better pay attention anyway. I’m not releasing your son for three days. In seventy-two hours he’ll be set loose. But that’s on one condition.

  “Are you listening? You don’t tell anybody he’s gone. Not the police, not your sister in Burlington, no one. I really mean it. If I pick up a paper in the next three days and see that this story’s made ink, I will kill your boy. And it won’t be quick, either. I’ll torture him. I will burn his feet. I’ll chop of all his fingers. I’ll use his stomach to put out my cigarettes. If a minute goes by where he stops screaming, I’ll shoot him in his kneecaps. If he passes out from the pain, I’ll put his head underwater until he drowns or wakes up. When he’s coherent, I’ll tell him all of this happened because his father couldn’t keep quiet.

  “You better hope your wife hasn’t made any bad choices. I really hope for your son’s sake she hasn’t phoned anybody while you were out on this errand. And your driver here? Well, let’s just say you better trust the man with your child’s life. We have two scouts keeping an eye on your house around the clock. If one suspicious carriage parks in your drive or anywhere near it, I’ll break your son’s arm in three places. If anyone enters your house that even looks like police, I’ll brand him with a hot iron from your stockyard. He’ll bear your company mark like he was one of your cattle.

  “That brand will be the only way to identify his body, if you ever get lucky enough to find it, because his face will be unrecognizable. I’ll scalp him like an Injun. Then I’ll cut off his nose and ears and pour acid in his eyes. That much pain will surely render him unconscious. But I’ll stick a plunger of morphine in his arm to shoot him awake again to make sure he enjoys every agonizing moment. Are you hearing all of this? Nod if you understand.”

  Cudahy nodded and spit more blood.

  “Good. That’s good. Just remember, after I get bored of torturing your son, I’ll slit his throat. Not with a good knife, no. That would be too clean. I’ll rip him open with an old nail. His throat will rupture jagged. Then I’ll dump his body in some nobody lake or piece of pasture way the hell out in the middle of nowhere.

  “Birds will pick at his remains. Fish will nibble on his skin. A wolf or a coyote might tear him apart. And that will be the end of this tale. You’ll forever have an empty chair at your dinner table where he once sat. His sisters will have forgotten what he looked like by the time they’ve grown. Your wife will never come out of the house. She’ll probably lose her mind to unspeakable grief. And when you die or retire, somebody with a last name that isn’t yours will own your company. They’ll change the name. Your family line will fall to ashes, never spoken again on the tongues of men.”

  I stood and slung the rifle over my back, adjusting the strap. Cudahy squirmed on the ground. A pool of blood stained the snow in front of his head as if he’d sneezed it out. I considered the driver. He hadn’t moved since he had gotten down on his knees. Probably he was one of their house servants. Or one of Cudahy’s cattle salesmen. There was no telling what he might do, but there was no justice in doing him harm.

  I didn’t even know his name.

  “Driver?” I said. “You of a mind to help Mr. Cudahy remember what I just told him?”

  “Yes, sir,” the driver replied weakly.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ernest Cartwright.”

  “Well, Ernest Cartwright, answer me truthfully. Who knows about the boy’s abduction?”

  The driver stuttered. “Just, uh, just the family, sir.”

  “You’re not family.”

  “No sir. I’m not.”

  “Who knows? Think. Give me names. And if I get the idea you’re lying to me, I will shoot you in the head. Do you believe that?”

  “I believe it, sir,” the driver said. His voice was powder soft. “There’s me.”

  “Speak up now, so I can hear you.”

  “I said there’s me. I know.”

  “Goddamnit, of course you know. Who else? Who are you?”


  “I’m a stableman, sir. I keep up the grounds and animals on the family ranch.”

  “A stableman?”

  “Horse trainer and caretaker, sir, by trade.”

  “Leave him alone,” Cudahy gurgled as he kicked his legs in pain.

  I whacked him in the side of his head with the stock of my rifle. “One more word out of you and I’ll blow your head off.”

  Cudahy rolled over onto his back, spitting clots.

  “So you know about it, stableman,” I said to the driver. “Who else?”

  “There’s—there’s the mister and the missus. The two younger sisters. The housemaid.”

  “Anita, right?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir. Anita.”

  “Who else. The police? Neighbors? Extended family?”

  The driver fumbled his words.

  I pressed my rifle to the driver’s head. “Tell me.”

  “No sir. No police. No one else. When Mr. Cudahy got your letter, he was very concerned that it be followed exactly as written.”

  I slung my rifle over my shoulder again. I’d spent way more time in discussion than I wanted. For all I knew, Billy had already bolted off with our horse.

  “You know something, Ernest? I believe you,” I said and hustled over to the pair of draft ponies stationed to their carriage and unhooked them from their bindings. I took off their headstalls and bits, unclasped their harnesses and breast collars and whacked them both on their hindquarters.

  “Giddyup, c’mon, hiyah!” I said with a loud cluck of my tongue. Both horses trotted forward four paces only to stop again. They were well trained. I fired my rifle into the air, sending the horses into a fit. They galloped away down the road, and I watched them until they disappeared from view.

  “You remember what I told you,” I hollered back to Cudahy and his driver. “Three full days. Anything short of that and little Eddie Junior will suffer a death indescribable.”

  XII

  AT FIRST SIGHT, our butcher shop looked more like a novelty store. We adorned the front with a pair of bull heads carved out of mango wood on each side of the entrance and painted the windows in gold lettering advertising the meats: VEAL LOAF, BRAUNSCHWEIGER, LIVERWURST, OXTAIL SOUP, GOOSE LIVER SAUSAGE. The overhanging eaves were draped in holly and trim for the grand opening, which fell on the Monday before Christmas Day.

  Occupying the corner of Second and Hickory, the store literally sat in the shadows of the Cudahy Meatpacking plant when the afternoon sun was in the sky. Most of the neighborhood was a seven-block district of warehouses nestled between the looming Union Stockyards. The building itself was three stories tall and skirted with canopies above its entire second floor. Nearly every structure in the district was of equal height and constructed of redbrick above brick streets cut through with railroad spur lines.

  I made the storefront sign myself from a piece of sheet iron and a bit of pink paint, which read in fancy cursive script: CROWE AND CAVANAUGH, BUTCHERS.

  Inside, the butchery was much more functional and drab. A huge ice table and sawbuck carving block as large as a church altar occupied the back wall where customers could order their meat to any specification. Kerosene lamps hung from the low ceiling. By ten o’clock in the forenoon, the tile floor was slick with water and blood and slush brought inside on customers’ shoes. I mopped the slurry down the floor drain every hour to keep it dry and clean. To coincide with holiday shopping, whole geese and pheasants lined the walls, dressed with berries. Billy and I each wore a uniform of all white, our aprons slashed with blood.

  Billy was an ace with a blade. He could undress a whole steer as neatly as peeling the jacket off a banana. He used an air pump to spray animal blood on the hanging carcasses on display to heighten their color. I dealt with the shoppers directly and left Billy in charge of most of the butchering to save him from any unpleasant exchanges. When it came to customer service, he was either foul in manner or spitting tobacco or stammering his words or all three at once. The kid was death on a scattergun, powerful in chewing snuff, offensive with his halitosis, a surgeon with a cleaver, deft at making nervous people more nervous, and nearly as unwelcoming in his demeanor as he was loony.

  Most of our patrons were poor Polish and Irish laborers who came into the shop wearing patchwork coats without collars. They had unkempt hair and rotting teeth and hardly a lick of learned English between the entire lot of them. I tried my best to make friends when I could, offering up compliments and complimentary samples of chipped beef. I wrote down their names next to their physical descriptions in a nickel pocketbook.

  When I showed Hattie our shop on the second day of being open for business, a heavy snow cooled the earth. The sky woolen with cloud cover. She arrived aboard a taxi carriage as if attending an opera, dressed in a long coat with a cape and kid gloves. I was waiting for her on the plank sidewalk in front of the store with my hat in my hands. I gripped it so tightly I crumpled the brim on both sides. I smoked a strong pipe and pushed my long bangs behind my ears while I paced back and forth, nervous as a boy on his first day of school.

  Hattie stepped off the carriage and looked at the storefront as if it were condemned. She fixed her sneer and said, “This place is some pumpkins. You’ve done good for yourself, Pat.”

  I blushed and waved my hat with a panoramic sweep. I’d never been so proud in my whole life. “She’s a great gal, this place. Come on inside and let me show you the works.”

  “I don’t want to get blood on my new boots.”

  “We keep the floors as clean as a baby’s conscience,” I said and took Hattie by the hand and led her to the front door. Before we entered, I pointed at the sign above the windows. “See that there? Crowe and Cavanaugh. This is my own place. Now whaddaya think of that? By the time we get her running full steam, it’s no more rental rooms and shared wash buckets for us. Nothing but the cream from here on out.”

  Hattie sniffed the putrid air. Even the clean smell of heavy snow couldn’t disguise the odor of dead animals. She broke free from my grip and said, “I thought you and I might take breakfast somewhere nice.”

  I stammered. “You don’t want to see inside?”

  “I’ve been in a butcher shop before.”

  “I spent four weeks getting this place up to snuff.”

  “And I’m sure it’s lovely.”

  “Is something the matter?”

  Hattie bit her lower lip and covered her mouth with her hand as if catching a hiccup. Her face cringed as she held back tears.

  I sighed and smashed my hat on the back of my head. The dangling store sign flapped in the cold wind. We’d had only five customers in our first two days, and only three of them made a purchase. All three had been given credit. I exhaled through my nose. No other business in South Omaha extended credit to the Polacks and Micks and Negroes. Even the Cudahy shops, unsinkable empire that they belonged to, took cash only. A man couldn’t get a new button sewn on his threadbare coat at a haberdashery in that part of town without payment up front.

  I looked back at Hattie. She’d started in with the boohooing.

  I took my hat off again and gestured with it while I spoke. “You think I won’t make it? You and everyone else, huh? Well, let me tell you something. I ain’t one to strain my future through a piece of cloth. Not by a jugful. I’m going to make something good out of this life, and I’m going to make it honest even if it’s hard trotting along the way. And let me tell you something else. I ain’t doing it for me. I could’ve gone on hauling hogs and sleeping on hay till I croaked and never thought twice about it until I met you. I’m doing it for us. This store here? It’s for you. All of this.”

  Hattie dabbed at her eyes.

  I shrugged. “I’d go to hell across lots for you.”

  After a moment she said, “You’re getting bamboozled.”

  “Bamboozled? That’s a funny word. What’s t
hat mean? Like tying on a long one or something? Because I tell you what I haven’t had, a drink in a month.”

  “You know what it means,” Hattie said coldly.

  “I don’t at that. I ain’t familiar with woodland sayings.”

  “I know the men you’ve thrown in with.”

  “The men I’ve throwed in with, huh?”

  “Quit repeating everything I say like you don’t know what I’m talking about. You’ll make a poor go of this business and they’ll close it down in three months and you’ll be on the outs for the rest of your life.”

  “That’s a helluva thing to say to me after I just got done carrying on about hogs and hay and all. Christ, I ain’t even had my morning banana yet, and already you got me feeling almighty blue,” I said.

  “That’s just what they want. You’ve trusted too many to your own sorrow.”

  “Just who is this ‘they’ you think you know so well?”

  “You know exactly who. They give out loans on short meter and then take it all back and more like they were planning on failure all along. It’s how those gangsters make their money.”

  “You’ve had some interesting pillow talks, I guess,” I said.

  Hattie’s face dropped. For a moment she looked poised to slap me across the face and walk off down the avenue all the way to forever and never come back. But she didn’t. We just stood there in the snow not saying a word to each other.

  I rubbed my mouth and blinked against the purpling sky. There was still plenty of moon left in that early morning. For all I didn’t know or only knew a part of, I also knew that Hattie knew more than most men ever would about the workings of fellers like Tom Dennison and those in his circle. She’d lain with the mayor on who-knew-how-many nights before I came along and probably with many others of his same paint. There was no blame for it. None that I held, anyway. But there was also no getting around it even by the long route. It was the kind of dark knowledge that spilled out faster than bad gossip in every gold-papered bedroom in every harem in the city after a night of whiskey and romping.