“Nobody does.”
He put his shades back on and ran a hand over his buzz cut. “You’re not going to ice Butch?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Just hurt him a little.”
“Less than a little, but it’ll be enough.”
“Right. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“What would I gain by lying? Like you said, you know who I am.”
He squared his shoulders. I didn’t need to see his eyes to know he was thinking about it. “Okay, you’re paying me a wad of cash. You’ve got to have a reason.”
“I do.”
“Your sister.”
“That’s right. I want her unconnected.”
“She’s as connected as they come. She’s from a family of thieves. One’s on death row and due for the needle, and another just bought the farm.” He pushed away from the table and stood. “You people are bad news. You think you’re doing her a favor? You’re doing me one.”
35
Butch’s door was open again. He was inside, smoking a joint, listening to his iPod with his earplugs in. His eyes were closed and he was singing loudly and badly along with music I couldn’t hear.
I still had Higgins’s blackjack. I stepped up behind Butch and caught him on the sweet spot. He slumped over without a sound. I took off his right shoe and tapped his ankle once. He made a little no9;rp. He c doise in his sleep like a colicky newborn. His foot began to swell.
There was nothing in his freezer except a half tray of ice. There were no dish towels in the kitchen. I walked the apartment. There were no towels on the rack in the bathroom. Butch certainly led the life. I found a dirty T-shirt on the floor of the bedroom and wrapped the ice cubes in it, then pressed it to his ankle. He’d be off his feet with a minor fracture for two weeks. The score would go down without him. If it went bad and Harsh and his crew wound up in the bin, Butch would be in the clear, and so would Dale.
I searched the place again. I looked for signs of my sister. I found nothing. Before I left, I dumped the melting ice cubes in his sink and threw the dirty shirt back on the floor.
When I got home, my parents were sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in black again. They’d just gotten back from the cemetery. I put my chin to my chest. The funeral had been yesterday and already they were visiting the wet grave again. My mother looked at me like she knew it was too much but she had to do it for my father’s sake.
He grinned at me without any humor and said, “You okay?”
“Sure.”
“That’s good.”
I wondered if he was going to ask me again if I knew who had killed Mal. He got up and walked out the door, headed to the garage, still in his suit.
I followed him. I thought I should stick close.
He said, “Four months until the stone is ready, can you believe it?”
“Guess there’s a backlog.”
“We got a nice one, did your ma tell you?”
“No.”
“Not sure how to describe it. Big. Square but rounded at the top. Has a kind of silhouette of his face on it. The profile. Not really his face, just sort of his face. Who the hell would want that face on marble? Not him. Nobody. And no angels, nothing like that. But… well, anyway, it’s nice.”
“Right.”
My father stood before his treasured figurines. He seemed to be showcasing a couple of new ones. A Japanese boy pulling a wagon. And a rooster just standing there. I looked at the rooster and tried to figure out why any artist skilled in making porcelain figures would make a rooster just standing there and why anyone would want it.
I wanted to tell him I’d heard voices that night, but I didn’t know how it might help. I sat in the garage, watching him at his hobby, cleaning the pieces and rearranging them, and I could feel the waves of fury coming off him. I thought, One of these days he’s going to pick up a hammer and smash the shit out of each one of those pieces. In a week, in a month. He’ll destroy the display case and it still won’t be enough. He’ll cut himself. He’ll be slashed and bleeding and won’t even notice. There will be a thousand pounds of glass on the ground and he’ll stamp on it. He’ll take the hammer to the walls, to the windows, and he’ll keep at it until he’s too tired to hold it anymore. It’ll fall from his sweaty, bloody, trembling hand and he’ll drop to his knees but he won’t weep.
My mother will find him like that and go to him and hold him, and they’ll both continue to carry their burdens separately and together. They’ll bandage his wounds and clean up the shards and continue on with their day. She won’lig??;t cry either, not in front of him, but when she’s in the laundry room, a week or a month later, she’ll drop and sob into a dirty towel for maybe twenty or thirty seconds tops, and she’ll finish throwing in the fabric softener and then go make lunch.
“Should I show up?” my dad asked. He was moving the rooster around. He tried it on one shelf, then another.
“Show up?” I said. “To what?”
He dipped his chin, shuffled more pieces about. “You know. The execution.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “No. Don’t do that.”
“Collie shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m going.” I hadn’t realized that I’d been planning to attend, but there it was, and it was the truth.
“You don’t have to,” my father said.
“I think he wants me there.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means something, Dad.”
He finally settled on where the rooster should go. He closed the case. He appeared to be extremely calm. I looked over my shoulder at the workbench and thought I should hide the hammer. “To you or to him?”
“Maybe to both of us.”
My old man placed a hand on the back of my neck and pulled me into a half hug, the same way Mal had done outside the Fifth Amendment.
We walked back into the house together. My father went to change. My mother was cooking. Dale stood waiting for me. While our parents were busy she took my hand, drew me in to the living room, and said, “Something happened to Butch.”
“What do you mean?”
Her grip tightened. “He fell while he was stoned. Banged his head up and broke his ankle. He doesn’t want to call an ambulance, and I don’t want him driving himself to the emergency room with a bad foot. Plus he’s got no money or insurance and… well, his license is suspended and doesn’t have his current address on it. Will you drive me over there and help me get him squared away at the hospital?”
“Sure. Where’s he live?”
“I’ll show you.”
I went to one of my caches in the house and pulled out two grand. It should cover the emergency-room costs. Dale got into the car. So did JFK.
She said, “God, does this dog have to always drive around with us? What if someone sees me?”
“They’ll think better of you being with John F. Kennedy than with Butch.”
She pulled a face. “You don’t know my crowd.”
“No, I don’t.” I decided to ask her the question that was still going around in my head. “Do you love him?”
Dale grimaced, her lovely features falling in on themselves. “Are you nuts? Hell no. But he’s sexy. In a dumbass kind of way.”
