The Butcher's Boy

10

In his room he closed the door, bolted and chained it, then took off his robe and walked into the shower. Little Norman worried him because it hadn’t occurred to him that the way he looked would cause them alarm. It was never a good thing to come to the attention of any of the dozen nervous old men who lived in the fragile sanctuary of the open city. Each of them had survived to his present vicious senility through predatory cunning and the instinctive preference for striking first. And they wouldn’t forget that. No matter if you were eighty-three years old and propped like a sack of rags in a wheelchair like Castiglione, you would remember that much.

As long as Little Norman did what the old men paid him for, it would be fine. And there was no reason to think he wouldn’t. But now a slight trickle of fear had begun to mix itself into his bloodstream. It wasn’t enough to spoil the pleasure of being safe and comfortable in Caesar’s, but it was there. He decided that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to go have that drink with Little Norman. He had told him he was on vacation, and now he’d damn well better act like it. Besides, he was on vacation. At least until Friday night.

WHEN HE WOKE UP the room was dark and he could hear the voice of a man outside the door of his room saying, “System, my ass. You see this place, Alice? It’s made out of systems thought up by dumb women from Fullerton.” Then a door closed and he heard footsteps receding down the hallway. He couldn’t hear what Alice said in reply, but the man’s voice said, “So you won once. That doesn’t …” and then they were out of earshot.

He rolled over and looked at the luminous dial of his watch. Nine thirty. Perfect, he thought. Just the right time to start the evening. He lurched to his feet, turned on the lights, and went to the closet to lay out his clothes. The nap had done him more good than he’d dared to hope. He felt cheerful and clearheaded. If he hadn’t caught sight of himself in the mirror he’d have said he was 100 percent.

It was Eddie who’d taught him about rest. Eddie had been the undefeated world champion of resting. He could still hear the quiet, patient voice: “Never work when you’re tired, kid. You have to be able to think straight, and you have to have the physical edge too. Each time it’s a contest and if you don’t come in first place every time you’re dead.” Eddie Mastrewski had kept the physical edge all right. That frigid winter night in Philadelphia when the building contractor had spotted them on the street and tried to run away he’d seen it. All his mind had told him was that they couldn’t shoot, and so he was paralyzed for a minute. But Eddie had just muttered “Oh, shit,” reached over the seat to the back of the car, and taken off on foot after the contractor with the tire chain. He ran him down and garrotted him.

But Eddie’d had the build for it, he thought. A Pennsylvania Polack from the coal mining country—probably the toughest physical specimens on earth except for maybe central Asian goatherds who were supposed to live to be a hundred and forty. He could hear Eddie correcting him, “I’m not a Pole, I’m a Lithuanian. There’s a difference, kid. I just don’t know what it is.” But Eddie had sure known how to sleep. He seemed to sleep whenever there wasn’t some definite reason why he shouldn’t. Even then Eddie seemed a little resentful and suspicious that the reason might not be good enough. He’d seen Eddie sleep on trains, buses, and airplanes; in stations and sitting up behind the wheel of a parked car. Over the years he’d learned that there was something to Eddie’s theory. Sleep really did make a difference. Maybe Eddie hadn’t had enough sleep the day he got it. Or maybe when you got to a certain age there just wasn’t enough sleep to make up for all the years.

He put on the sport coat he’d bought in the hotel store this afternoon, took another look at the knot in his tie, closed his door, and began to walk down the hall toward the elevator. Then he hesitated. No, he thought, it’s stupid not to. He returned to the room, bent over, and pulled a few tufts of lint from the bright azure carpet. He stuffed them between the door and the jamb about two inches above the surface of the red carpet of the hallway. It’s always better to know than to wonder, he thought as he stepped into the elevator.

He made his way through the crowds and noise of the casino and out to the front entrance. The doors gave a wheezy sigh and opened automatically to pull him forward into the warm night air. The absurd magnificence of the oversized fountain along the drive seemed to be the focus of the unanimous eyeless contemplation of the genuine Carrara marble copies of classical statues that stood sentinel. Sammy Cohen had once called them The Stupefied Losers, but that wasn’t what they looked like. It was as though they were staring in dumb amazement at waking up and finding themselves so far from the gentle, reasonable proportions of home.

He glanced at the line of taxis waiting in the loop, but dismissed them in favor of the stroll. There were hundreds of people walking up and down the sidewalks of the Strip in light summer clothing that changed colors as they passed under the garish incandescent auras of the gigantic marquees and glittering facades of the casinos. He stepped in among them, into a herd that was flowing along in the direction of the Sands. As they passed each doorway, came into the glowing circle of each new complex of lights and neon signs, a portion of the herd would be drawn off by the magnetism of it. Others would issue forth from the doors to replace them.

They were moving toward the center of the city, and as they did the white river of automobile traffic in the street seemed to slow down and constrict, the signs and lights to cluster together more tightly into a general undifferentiated blur and dazzle, until the doorways were just holes in the light.

Then there was a pause in the glitter, as though it were gathering itself up for some major effort, and then the monolithic marquee of the Sands burst forth to dominate the night. He peeled himself out of the moving crowd, walked up the steps, and crossed the boundary into the air-conditioned cool of the casino. Inside the light, the air, the colors, the sounds were all different and belonged to the special exigencies of this place, where the world consisted of a low-frequency hum of unflagging agitation, like an itch or a hope.

He made one slow circuit of the casino, past the banks of winking, buzzing, clattering slot machines that spun gyroscopically on the periphery, then past the zone of roulette wheels and crap tables and along the rank of fan-shaped blackjack games ascending in order of wealth toward the roped-off sanctum of high-stakes baccarat, where the croupiers wore black tuxedos and the reverential faces of French financial consultants.

Little Norman wasn’t in evidence in the casino, but he knew that someone would tell him. One of the unseen beings Norman kept on his personal payroll would probably be talking into a telephone right now. He made a leisurely path to the doorway of the Regency Room and slipped through the doors into the candlelit red-and-gold silence. He always had the sense that this place was insulated from the cacophony of the city by something more than walls, as though everything outside could explode into screaming atoms and you’d never know it by so much as the wavering of a candle flame. The maitre d’ conducted him to a booth in the far corner of the room, where a waiter nodded his respect for the wisdom of beef Wellington and a middle-range Bordeaux with two glasses.

He had almost finished the beef Wellington when Little Norman came in and sat down at his table. “Hello, kid,” said Little Norman. “You come over here looking for me?”

“That’s right, Norman. I thought I’d take you up on that drink. I suppose you’ve already had dinner?”

“Yeah, but since you got an extra glass I’ll help you with the wine.” Norman poured it himself, sniffed the bouquet, and said, “Not bad at all. Your idea or the waiter’s?”

“Mine,” he said and kept eating.

“Then you’ve picked up a lot since you worked with old Eddie. I always heard that travel broadens you.” He chuckled.

“I’ve always heard that too.”

“Something on your mind, kid? You’re not looking too cheerful. I mean besides the thumps on your face.”

“I’m fine. Nothing wrong that a few days of rest won’t handle. How about you, Norman? You have a hard day? Run into anybody that was nervous about anything?”

“No,” said Little Norman, and smiled. “I ran into one or two who used to be nervous, but I seem to have a natural talent for reassuring people. Should have been a psychiatrist, I guess. I’d probably have a lot more money.”

He eyed the heavy gold ring on the finger Norman had wrapped around the stem of the glass. The diamond, he calculated, was around five carats. It looked big even on Little Norman. “I doubt it,” he said.

“I guess you’re right,” said Little Norman. “White folks don’t want a big black psychiatrist, and black folks don’t have the money for one. They just have to stay crazy, like I did, and learn to enjoy it.”

He pushed his plate away and noticed that Little Norman had emptied the bottle. “Well, how about that drink, Norman? You want it here, or you want to go someplace else?”

Little Norman leaned back in his chair to let the waiter deposit the check where the plate had been. He paused to savor the last inch of wine in his glass, then said, “You know, I think you’ve been working too hard. Seems to me like you’re in a hurry all the time, like you forgot how to relax. I’m gonna have to take pity on you and remind you how it’s done.” He waited while the waiter whisked the money away. Then he stood up and said, “No sense in being crazy if you’re not gonna enjoy it.”

“I know you wouldn’t want me to learn it on the street, Norman,” he said, and got up to follow.

ELIZABETH SAT ON THE EDGE of the bed watching the forensic team going about its work. It took an extraordinary act of patience even to watch them. They crawled around on all fours, sighting along the edge of each smooth surface for latent prints, then wrote in pads, took photographs, stretched tape measures from one point to another, and made more notes.

It was already clear that they weren’t going to find anything new in the room, she thought as she watched a sergeant crawl up to the coffee table and stare at the same spot for the third time. She said to Hart, “Let’s try something different.”

“Got anything in mind?”

“How about the other rooms on this floor? Do you have the list of who was in what room? Maybe we could start with the hotel register.”

“Mistretta’s got it and he’s checking them all out now. Not just this floor, either.”

“Well, it looks as if we’ve hit the point of diminishing returns in here.” The forensics people were packing their equipment in black metal boxes and preparing to leave.

“Whew!” said the sergeant. “This has been a long day.”

Elizabeth said, “Oh?” She was still a little resentful because they hadn’t seen the importance of the absence of prints on the window.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, “two murders this morning besides this one, three breaking and enterings, all within a mile or two of here.”

The resentment came back without warning. Ma’am and sir were what policemen called outsiders. Whatever sympathy she had been prepared to feel for a tired cop who’d been crawling around straining his eyes for invisible marks went out of her. But she just said, “Please have copies of those reports sent to us at the Bureau office, with the precinct log.”

“No possible connection, ma’am,” said the patient sergeant. “The other two had their skulls crushed. Nothing subtle about it. Just a gang fight in an alley. The B and E’s were all just the usual—an auto parts store, a housebreaking, and a stereo shop.”

She matched his patience. “I want them anyway. It’s important to learn everything that we can about what went on in this part of town last night.” At last she succumbed: “If nothing else, it may tell us where the squad cars were when a murderer was swinging like Tarzan from balcony to balcony on the outside of this building.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the sergeant. He picked up his fingerprint kit and stomped out the door.

Elizabeth became aware of Hart standing there watching her. She turned on him and said, “I know it wasn’t nice. But it happens to be true.”

Hart shrugged. “The local police can be very helpful if they want to.”

“So I’ll be extremely sweet to him when he gives me the logs and the investigation reports, and we’ll be fast friends forever. But the local police might not be the kind of help we’re going to need on this case. Has anybody—”

“Yes,” said Hart. “The CIA was as surprised about it as we were, and they’ve spent the day trying to match it to their standing list of possibilities, apparently without success. Mike told me they’ve probably cabled their field offices and are waiting for something that sounds plausible to come back. He also told me it doesn’t look as if anything will. McKinley Claremont was in the Senate for almost thirty years without doing anything very controversial in the area of foreign policy.”

“I suppose all we can do tonight is wait for the forensics people to work their way through the other rooms, then.”

“That and wait for our replacements to arrive,” said Hart. “As of an hour ago we’re no longer here just to establish a presence.”

“So they’ll send in the first team?” said Elizabeth. “We haven’t done so badly, considering we’ve hardly had time to begin.”

“No, we haven’t,” said Hart. “But just the same, I’m not going to do much unpacking.”

“Speaking of that, has anybody told you where we’re supposed to be staying?”

“They had our bags sent here a little while ago.” He reached into his pocket and fished out two room keys. “That way we’re easy to get hold of if they turn anything up.”

Elizabeth reached for the telephone and dialed a familiar number. An unfamiliar voice came on and said, “Justice.”

“This is Elizabeth Waring. I want to leave a message for Roger Padgett,” said Elizabeth.

“I’ll see that he gets it,” said the voice. “What’s the message?”

“I want his airline reports for last night and all day today wired to the Denver field office of the FBI. Everything within a five-hundred-mile radius of Denver. The information I requested previously I want telephoned to me at the Constellation Hotel.”

“That in Denver too?”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth, “I’ll give you a number.” She read the number on the telephone dial slowly. Then she held out her hand, and Hart placed one of the keys in it. “Room 256.”

“Got it,” said the voice. “Anything else?”

“No,” said Elizabeth. “Thanks.”

Elizabeth sat on the bed feeling exhaustion beginning to flood into her mind, taking possession of whole sections of her brain at once like water rushing into a sinking ship. Too many things were going on at once, and she was beginning to lose the strength of will that kept them separate. Everything was beginning to get muddled together and hazy. She couldn’t remember anymore whether she was collecting information that was supposed to lead in some particular direction, or just collecting information. Pervading all of it was an impression, a sense that an awful lot of people seemed to be dying. There was something unreal about it.

You knew they were dying because somebody told you so over the telephone, and by the time you got there, there wasn’t even a body. At most there was a chalk outline like the one on the floor at her feet. The discreet efficient functionaries had already cleaned everything up, so there wasn’t the palpable and substantial residue of an act of violence, just a question; the murder itself just an intellectual postulate and you were supposed to deduce its causes and corollaries starting with an infinite range of things that could have preceded it in time. All you had to work with was your ability to see the relationships, to pick the single thread of logic that might lead to the one who’d done it, and then follow it slowly forward, trying hard to take each step faster to bring yourself closer and closer to the present moment, where the murderer would be waiting for you. And all the time, the act itself was moving backward, further and further into the past. Everything you chose to look at put the act farther from your reach—trace the poison? check the airline records for suspicious travelers? check the police reports? the other rooms in the hotel? the Senator’s personal life? the CIA’s foreign agents? the world?

She was aware that Hart was saying something to her that had just battered against the tired receptors in her brain without their being fast enough to decipher it. “Huh?” she said.

“I said I think we ought to go to bed.”

“So do I,” she said, and sensed in herself a tiny warm tremor of joy. Then she realized that part of her mind had heard him differently, and had rushed upward to meet him without being held back or delayed by the restraints. She caught it in time to keep it from blurting out, “Oh, you mean each of us, not both of us.” She smiled to herself as she stood up and walked out the door. All the barriers seemed to be going at once; things were tearing through them without warning, things she hadn’t suspected were there. This one would take some thought. Not that it meant anything, but it was interesting, like a dream.

THEY WENT OUT TO THE parking lot and got into Little Norman’s white Mark IV, then drove to the Marina Hotel.

At the bar, which was set back and above the casino, Little Norman said, “Grab a table where I can see the action; I’ll be back in a second.”

He said, “Where are you going?”

“Just a quick phone call, kid. I’m looking after your interests.”

He waited as Norman plowed through the knots of gamblers to a bank of telephones near a men’s room. When Norman got there, he dialed and then turned back to face him, smiling as he talked.

The waitress leaned across him with Little Norman’s drink, actually placing a breast on his shoulder for an instant. Everything here was different, he thought. It was calculated to put things that secretly delighted just out of reach, always as though it had been a fortuitous chance. They probably had a class that taught them to do that, as the last girl in the line of the dinner show at the Lido had her G-string snap, always in the last few bars of the performance.

Little Norman said, “To your health, kid,” and took a drink.

He responded, “And yours,” and drank too, but only enough to wet his mouth and let the ice click against his teeth. There wasn’t much point in overdoing it, and he would overdo it if he had to drink one for one with Little Norman. Besides, he had been on the road for over a month, and he never drank on the road. You had to keep your head clear on the road.

On the other side of the casino the crowd around one of the crap tables was two deep and growing. The man who was rolling was wearing a sport coat, but had stuffed his tie in a pocket and opened his shirt at the neck. He rolled again and a little cry went up from the table that was just loud enough to reach the bar. More people strolled over attempting looks of detachment, but joined the crowd and riveted their eyes to the table. From where he sat in the bar it was hard to tell whether they were betting or watching. The quick, mechanical movements of the croupier didn’t reveal anything to him. From this distance they all just looked hungry.

“You a gambler?”

“I may try my luck a little later,” he said. “Why?”

“Some people in that line of work are, some aren’t. Henckel once lost twenty thousand in one night. Personally I didn’t like it much until after I quit. Couldn’t see the point in it. When you’re old you need some kind of excitement that doesn’t involve your body.”

Another cry reached them from the crap table across the casino, not a cheer, exactly, but a wordless, spontaneous howl from all the throats gathered around the table, as though it were the collective sound of their blood pressures going up in unison.

“You’re no more retired than I am, Norman,” he said. “Just got a steady job now.”

“It ain’t so, kid,” said Little Norman, his eyes suddenly open wide and his smile gone. “I’m sixty-one years old. But once I was good. One of the best. Quiet and reliable. Maybe the best button man in the Midwest.” Then his eyes narrowed and the opaque smile returned. “Not as good as you, though. I was real surprised to see your face like that. I never expected to see you looking like that. Not ever.”

“It happens,” he replied.

“I didn’t say it couldn’t happen,” said Little Norman. “What I said was I didn’t think I’d see it. That’s a loser’s face.”

Across the casino the man rolled again; this time he rolled into a silence, a deep-drawn inbreathing like a wall of anticipation. From the bar it was hard to tell whether he made his point, but the silence seemed to draw spectators even faster, like particles rushing to fill a void. When the stickman leaned across the table, bestowing and gathering in single economical movements, the man was still visible, standing with his back to the bar. But then the crowd shifted a little and he disappeared behind it.

“Maybe so,” he said. “Hard to tell about winning until you count the money.”

“That’s a fact,” said Little Norman. He gulped down the last finger of Scotch in his glass and stood up. “Be seeing you, kid. It’s always a pleasure.”

“Thanks for the drink, Norman.”

“Any time,” he said as he stepped down to the casino floor. For a long time it was possible to watch his head and shoulders moving along above the crowd, but then he was gone.