Butcher's Moon

Twenty-three

“First-rate sermon. Reverend,” George Farrell said.

The minister’s noncommittal face suggested he knew he was being used. “I’m glad you liked it, Mr. Farrell,” he said.

Farrell kept pumping the man’s hand, holding it in both of his so the minister couldn’t make a premature withdrawal. Out of the corner of his eye, Farrell watched Jack, standing unobtrusively to one side; Jack would give him the high sign when the photographers and cameramen were finished, and then he would let go of the minister’s hand.

Farrell made a lovely all-American picture there in the sunlight, and he knew it. Tall, heavy-set, with a banker’s stockiness and an actor’s profile and a doctor’s professional intimacy, he belonged on that church step, shaking hands with that black-garbed white-haired man of God. Four news photographers and the camera crews of two local television stations were fixing the scene indelibly, to be shown to the voters between now and Tuesday. Compare this image, voters, with any photograph you choose of Alfred Wain, with his overly large nose and the deep bags under his eyes and his general hangdog air of being the owner of a warehouse full of dubious cargo.

Over to the side, Jack lifted a hand to his medium-long hair, brushing it back. Farrell, smiling a manly smile, said, “Keep up the good work, Reverend,” and released the minister’s hand.

“You too, Mr. Farrell,” the minister said, with no expression at all in face or voice.

And to hell with you, Mac, Farrell thought. Smiling, he turned away, automatically reaching to take Eleanor’s elbow. She was there, of course, right where she should be, the perfect complement: tall, ash-blond, competent-looking, attractive without seeming oversexed, with just the slightest touch of apple-pie plumpness about her. Where would a public man be without this wife?

The two of them went down the church steps together, Farrell waving broadly to the curious crowd; mostly churchgoers, attracted by the television equipment, who had stayed because they recognized their mayoral candidate. Sudden spontaneous applause broke out among them, true spontaneous applause, and for just a second Farrell was so startled he almost broke stride. Then he moved on, feeling a great wave of emotion well up within him. They truly liked him, the people really and truly liked him.

The limo was at the curb, and Jack was already there to hold the door open and the citizens at bay. Eleanor got in first, and Farrell after her. Jack shut the door, slid in front next to the driver, and they were off, followed by the unmarked police car with its two plainclothes bodyguards.

“Well,” Eleanor said. “So much for that.”

Farrell stretched his feet out on the gray carpeting. The limousine had been contributed for the duration of the campaign by a local automobile dealer, and its normal role as a rental vehicle was revealed by the pair of folded bucket seats tucked up against the front-seat back. Farrell opened one of these now and put his feet on it. He felt physically content, and still pleased at that applause. Spending months manipulating emotional reactions, it came as a shock and a delight to be liked without inducement.

Eleanor had taken out her large notebook and was studying it. “Coffee with the volunteers at headquarters,” she said.

He nodded; nice kids, the volunteers. Though they bewildered him at times. He’d look at them, see their intense shining eyes staring back at him, and he’d wonder just who in the name of God they thought he was. Well, it didn’t matter, did it? You couldn’t buy for all the money in the world the work they did for free, out of whatever noble misconception it was that drove them.

Eleanor was closing the notebook, but Farrell said, “What’s after that?”

She opened it again. Technically, an old pol named Sorenberg was Farrell’s campaign manager, but it was strictly an honorary position, a part of the fence-mending Farrell had had to do early on. Eleanor was his campaign manager, she had the whole structure in her mind and every detail in her notebooks. “Visit the swimming pool at Memorial Park,” she said. “Little League game at Veteran’s Field. Dinner and speech to the teachers’ union. Dinner and speech to the Urban League.”

“Enough,” Farrell said. “Enough.” He had already had breakfast with the Knights of Columbus and listened to a morning concert of the Methodist Youth Federation glee club. Tuesday couldn’t get here fast enough.

Eleanor gave him a thin smile—understanding and sympathy, but with some reserve. She had been opposed to his getting involved in all of this in the first place, though she would never be difficult about it. Eleanor was a smart and capable woman, too sure of herself to be difficult. My best investment, Farrell said of her at times; it was supposed to be a joke, but it was also more than that.

George Farrell was forty-three, president of the Avondale Furniture Company, tables and chairs, a family-owned business that had been started by Farrell’s great-grandfather in 1868; returning Civil War veterans were getting married, furnishing new homes. Farrell had been a part of the family business since he’d graduated from Northwestern University, but he had never taken a great interest in the running of the concern, nor had he ever put himself in a position of real authority or control. He was a figurehead president, the different divisions of the company all being run by competent professionals, and he was content to leave it that way; he had enough to do so he didn’t feel like a useless sponge, but not so much that he felt overburdened.

When, a few years ago, he’d been asked by some local pols to run for the City Council, Farrell had accepted at once, only later pausing to wonder why he’d wanted the job. Partly, of course, it had been his pleasure at being asked. But also there was a certain boredom that had been coming over him the last few years, a boredom caused by his general remoteness from his livelihood, by the casual irrelevance of his working day. Would the City Council be a cure for that?

It would. Farrell loved politics, every bit of it. He loved the maneuvering, he loved the deals and the sense of being an insider, the almost frightening feeling of being in a house of cards constructed of winks and nods and handshakes, and he also loved the occasional feeling of accomplishment, the knowledge of a job well done, the people’s trust justified, a valuable task competently completed.

He was also a realist. He knew that the workings of Tyler, of any city, required accommodations with men you would never invite into your own home. Men like Adolf Lozini, for instance; a crook, no better than a mobster, with his hand in every unsavory operation in town. But necessary, because crime and vice would go on existing no matter what, and it was important that some sort of control be laid over the cesspool. Lozini, half murderer and half businessman, was that control.

Or had been. But Lozini was getting old, he was losing his competence, and a better man would be taking his place. Better in many ways; not only better at controlling the criminal element, but also better in his attitudes toward the city and toward his fellow-men. Lozini’s replacement was a man Farrell could get along with, could understand and even sympathize with—could almost invite to the house.

The removal of Lozini would mean, naturally, the removal of Alfred Wain, who was Lozini’s puppet in the mayor’s chair. The job had been offered to Farrell, and he knew at once that he would be no puppet, that he could work within the system and still be a much more effective mayor than Wain had ever been. In one sense, his public posture as a reform candidate was a mockery, since he was supported by criminal funds just as much as Wain had ever been. Yet in another way, Farrell told himself that he truly was a reformer, in comparison with Wain; under himself, Tyler would be a much better, a much cleaner, a much less corrupt city.

The limo was coming to a stop, at the main entrance of the Carlton-Shepard, Tyler’s only first-class hotel. The maroon-uniformed doorman opened the car doors and they all got out, to no reception at all. The few people in the vicinity were all hotel guests, out-of-towners who wouldn’t recognize Farrell or care about who he was, well-off people who wouldn’t be distracted from their own concerns by the appearance of a chauffeured limousine.

The Carlton-Shepard lobby was cool and spacious. The giant cabbage roses in the carpet design were spaced so that Farrell’s stride matched them exactly; he amused himself by stepping from the center of one rose to the center of the next, all the way across the lobby to the elevator that was being held for him. His campaign headquarters was the entire seventh floor, a lavish expenditure in local terms, but necessary as a public display of his big-league aspirations. It had been important at first to demonstrate that he wasn’t merely another one of those well-meaning amateurs, those ministers and teachers and other bumblers that the opposition had routinely been mounting against Wain over the years.

Five of them entered the elevator now, with the maroon-uniformed operator: Farrell, Eleanor, Jack, and the two plainclothesmen. They started up, everybody remaining silent in the slightly uncomfortable proximity, and when the elevator stopped, the indicator light over the door read 5.

The operator himself seemed confused. He moved his control bar back and forth twice, then frowned up at that lit number 5. One of the plainclothesmen said, “What are you stopping for?”

“I didn’t,” the operator said, and at the same time somebody knocked on the door. The operator looked around at the plainclothesmen and said, “Should I open it?”

They didn’t seem to know. Farrell found himself suddenly frightened—an assassination? That happened to national figures, not local ones. Who would assassinate him?

Lozini. What if Lozini had found out somehow, if he’d decided to fight back by eliminating Wain’s competition before weeding his own garden?

One of the plainclothesmen said, “Yeah, open it.” Neither of them had a gun in sight, but they both had their hands back on their rumps, their jackets pushed back out of the way.

There was a gate to open, and then a gold-painted door, and the fifth-floor hall was revealed, with two men standing in it. One of them nodded to the plainclothesmen, saying, “That’s okay, Toomey, Calesian sent us.”

The plainclothesmen relaxed, and so did Farrell. So they were police. When he’d first seen them, with their general aura of toughness, he’d thought they were Lozini’s men for sure.

One of the plainclothesmen said, “What’s up?”

“Trouble on seven,” one of the new men said. “A threat against Mr. Farrell’s life. We’re supposed to take him up a different way. The rest of you people proceed. There’s no threat against anybody else. Mr. Farrell?”

The man wanted him to leave the elevator. Farrell hesitated, unsure what to do. The plainclothesman beside him said to the new men, “We’ll come with you.”

“Calesian wants the rest of you to stay in a body,” the new man said. “To cover us when we take Mr. Farrell up the other way.”

“We’re supposed to stay with him,” the plainclothesman said.

“You’ve got the candidate’s wife there.” The other new man said, “Let’s not hang around here and be targets.”

The plainclothesman said, “I don’t think I recognize you.”

“Come on, Toomey.” The new man took a worn leather wallet from his pocket, flipped it open, held it open with both hands for the plainclothesman to see. “You’ve seen me around,” he said.

The plainclothesman—Toomey—nodded doubtfully, but still seemed reluctant. “Our orders are to stay with Mr. Farrell,” he said.

“Fuck,” the new man said, sounding disgusted, and took a gun out from under his jacket. Everybody in the elevator tensed, moving involuntarily backward, and the man said, “Hands on heads. Fast.”

The plainclothesmen had relaxed sufficiently before this to no longer have their hands anywhere near their own guns. Farrell, who immediately placed his own hands atop his head, saw the plainclothesmen hesitate, saw the second man out there also draw a gun, and saw the plainclothesmen angrily realize there was nothing they could do but obey.

”You too,” the new man said to the elevator operator, who had been merely staring open-mouthed at everything that was happening. The operator at once put his hands straight up in the air.

The first man gestured with his gun at Farrell. “Come out here,” he said.

“D-don’t kill me,” Farrell said. He was terrified, but he tried to speak calmly, rationally, tried not to blubber. “There’s no reason to, I’m not—”

“Shut up, you horse’s ass. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead now. I want to talk to you.” To his friend, he said, “Hold them. I’ll make it fast.”

“Too bad we couldn’t do it the other way.”

“It’ll work out.” He glared at Farrell; he was very angry that his scheme hadn’t worked. “Get the hell out here, I said.”

Farrell moved jerkily forward. It was true, they weren’t going to kill him. Unless something went wrong. But what did they want?

“Put your arms down. Walk easy. Down to the right there.”

Farrell obeyed, leaving the elevator behind, walking along the empty hallway, sensing the man coming along behind him. They reached a stairwell door, with its red light glowing above it, and the man said, “In there.”

Farrell opened the door, stepped through into the gray-metal stairwell. He stood on the landing, not knowing whether he was supposed to go up or down the stairs, and the man came through the doorway behind him, shut the door, touched his arm to turn him around, and punched him very hard in the stomach, just below the belt.

Farrell bent over, falling backward against the wall, his forearms folding over the sudden flowering pain in his stomach. The pain seemed to rush out like rips in a stocking—lancing up through his chest into his throat, down into his genitals, down his legs to make a tingling weakness in the back of his knees. The breath had whooshed out of him when he was hit, and he opened his mouth wide, trying to replace the lost air, but his throat seemed to be closed, air scraped in slowly and painfully.

The man stood waiting for him, his expression cold and grim, clinical, detached. Farrell struggled to breathe, swallowed down a feeling of nausea, waited out the pain. Gradually his lungs filled with air again, the turmoil in his stomach settled, the pain eased, he could straighten himself. Blinking, mouth open, he stared at the man, wondering what he would do next, why this was happening.

The man said, “I wanted you to know I’m serious. Do you know it now?”

“Yes.” Farrell’s throat was raspy, it hurt a bit when he talked.

“Good. Who’s financing you?”

Farrell couldn’t begin to understand the question. “I don’t—” He coughed, which also hurt, and pressed a hand to his throat. “What?”

“One of Adolf Lozini’s sidemen is financing you,” the man said. “Which one is it?”

Scandal: that was the first thought that came to Farrell’s mind; this was some sort of insane reporter or scandalmonger, out to verify a rumor he’d heard somewhere. The unlikelihood of a reporter holding people up with a gun or asking his questions with his fists didn’t occur to him until later. It was thinking in terms of a reporter, in terms of scandal, that he answered, saying, “No, you’re wrong about that.”

The gun was in the man’s left hand. He lifted it, chopped the barrel down on the top of Farrell’s right shoulder. Farrell screamed at the sudden pain, the sound echoing in the stairwell. The man clapped his free hand over Farrell’s mouth, bouncing his head back against the wall, holding him there till the echoes died, while Farrell clutched at his burning shoulder. He felt his jaw trembling, knew the man could feel it in the hand pressed against his mouth, and felt angry and ashamed of himself for displaying weakness.

The man released him and stepped back. “I don’t want to waste time,” he said. “I’m in a hurry. I know where you’re getting your financing. I know which of Lozini’s people it could be and which ones it couldn’t. I’ve got it narrowed down to just a few. Now you tell me which one it is or I’ll break you apart in here and go ask somebody else.”

He knows, Farrell thought. He’s narrowed it, but he doesn’t know which one. Could I lie, give him a false name? Which ones has he narrowed it to? What if I told him it was Frank Faran, from the nightclub?

“If you lie,” the man said, “I’ll come back and kill you. And I’ll get to you just as easy as I did this time.”

Farrell trembled all over his body. His mind skittered back and forth, torn by fear and the need to work out too many complexities. How could he dare to tell this man the truth? Of course he could deny it later, but still . . .

The man’s hand drew back, closing into a fist.

“Buenadella!” Farrell shouted. “Louis Buenadella!”