The Butcher's Boy (5 page)

moment than to escape the place where he'd been embarrassed, but after thinking it over and smoothing out the rough edges, wouldn't be able to resist telling his wife and one or two close friends about it because he thought it magnified him: a real prostitute came up to me on the street and . . . well, she offered herself to me. I couldn't believe it.

He turned off on a side street and kept going, moving along in his preoccupied businessman's stride. Then he turned again onto a narrow street that ran parallel with Colfax— almost an alley, really. It was darker, and on one side were the backs of stores and taverns and restaurants, nestled together and indistinguishable from one another with their steel fire doors and loading docks and navy-blue dumpsters piled with cardboard boxes.

The girl had put him into a bad mood, reminded him of how impatient he was for this trip to end so he could go back to Tucson and relax. It wasn't easy to live for days at a time without so much as talking to anybody, and for weeks without saying more than "What's the soup of the day?"

He glanced at his watch. A little after ten. Time to head for the motel and read the paper while he waited for the eleven-o'clock news. Then the watch disappeared in a flash of pain, and he was aware that he had heard the sound of whatever had crashed into his skull even while he felt it. But he was on the ground now and his left kneecap seemed to hurt too. Dimly he could see a rock the size of two fists beside him as he rolled in the gravel. He didn't have time to decide whether that was what hit him. He just scooped it in and had his arm cocked when he saw a human figure bending toward him for the next blow. With all of his strength he hurled it into the darkness where the face must be, pushing off the ground with his right foot at the same time. There was a sickening thump as it hit, and a high, tentative half-scream that never got all the way out before the shape crumpled.

He was up and moving now, whirling around because the other one would be behind him. This time he wasn't quite fast enough. A blow across his back with something long like a club electrified him with pain and terror, and he wasn't sure he could move himself. But then something hit him in the face and he was on the ground again and the other one was winding up for a kick. He grabbed the stable leg with one hand, pulling the man off balance, and punched up into the groin with the other—a quick, hard jab. This time there was no cry of pain, only the sound of the air leaving the man's lungs. Then the man lay on the ground doubled up like a foetus, rocking and grunting.

He stood up and looked for the others, but no, there had only been two.

Muggers, he thought. Jesus! He looked down at them. The first one was probably dead. He wondered what he should do about the other. He didn't have anything with him—not even a knife. He couldn't leave them this way. They had almost certainly gotten a good look before they'd done anything. He walked over to the first one, picked up the bloody rock that lay by his head, and brought it down once, hard. Then he did the same to the other one. He dragged them by the ankles into the shadows behind the dumpster and moved away down the 22

alley, limping from the pain in his left knee. His back was throbbing and he could feel a thin trickle of blood warming his right cheek, but he couldn't tell if it was his head or his face. The face worried him. Muggers. Jesus.

The Senator sat back in his chair and watched a commercial for new cars.

There wasn't really anything in it about cars, but there was a small Japanese car there, and a lot of enthusiastic Americans cavorting around it, showing surprise and pleasure and amazement to a spirited musical score.

Then the news came on. Carlson went over and turned the volume up a little. Not enough so the Senator would have to take notice of the fact that Carlson knew he was old and probably didn't hear as well as he used to. Just enough to make explicit the view they shared, that commercials were a kind of atmospheric interference but the speech at the airport was the very essence of importance.

A newsman was saying, "Congress ended its regular session today and began its mid-session break. We'll have footage of Senator McKinley Claremont's return to Denver . There was a brief flareup of fighting in the Middle East, an earthquake shook Central America, and New England is wracked in the worst snowstorm in twenty years. More about these and other stories in a moment."

The Japanese car commercial came on again. "It's the same commercial exactly," said the Senator, peering at the screen in amazement as the enthusiastic Americans mugged and pantomimed their way through the song again. "Carlson! When did they start doing that?"

"Doing what, Senator?"

"Playing the same damned commercial twice in a row?”

“Are they? I didn't notice," said Carlson.

He moved as quickly as he could. There'd be plenty of time to baby the bumps and bruises later when there wasn't anybody to watch him do it, but now the important thing was to get back to the motel room and out of sight before anybody found the bodies. He made a quick inventory as he walked—there was a tear in the left knee of his pants, and the whole suit was dusty. With effort he brushed himself off. There was definitely blood on his face, but that was easily taken care of. He pulled out his handkerchief and brought it to his right cheek, but had to stifle a yelp at the pain.

"Damn," he muttered, wishing vaguely that there was something more he could do to them. There was no question it would show: by morning there would be a bruise, and the swelling had already started. He just hoped there wouldn't be a scar. Maybe all the blood was coming from beyond the hairline. "Damn!" he 23

said again, under his breath. "Stupid. Rocks and clubs, like animals. Baboons!"

Down the alley he could see the pool of light of the motel parking lot. He stopped to listen for a car coming his way, but there was nothing. He was surprised to see that he still had his newspaper. He didn't remember picking it up. But a wave of relief washed over him. He opened the paper as though he had been reading it since he parked his car down the alley. Then he took a deep breath and came around the corner of the motel, heading for the back stairway.

He heard a door somewhere in the other wing slamming but he kept on going, trying hard not to limp. His ears picked up the sound of keys jangling and muffled voices, but he kept on going, gritting his teeth against the pain. Up the stairs he climbed, using the handrail to keep the weight off the leg. He swung around with the paper under his arm, keeping his left side to the light as long as he could, then pressing his face so close to the wall it almost touched while he unlocked the door.

He was inside, and breathing hard. He carefully stripped off his clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor, then walked into the bathroom. The mirrored wall told him what he had feared. He stared at it, and what stared back at him was a thin, nondescript man in his early thirties who looked as if he'd walked away from an airplane crash. The right side of his face was already beginning to blacken and swell, and a thin trickle of blood was beginning to snake down from his temple. He watched it saturate the sideburn and then quickly curve down the cheek to the chin. As he leaned closer to search the face, the drop reached the point of his chin and fell, making a bright blotch in the sink. He carefully washed his face, then ran the water in the bathtub.

He sat on the edge of the tub and stared at his knee while he waited. A scrape, a cut with a little dirt in it maybe. He flexed the leg, studying the pain as though he were finetuning it. No cracks or chips, he thought. Just a scratch is all.

But the face—he wasn't ready to think about that yet. He padded out into the other room and turned on the television. The news was just coming on. He caught sight of himself in the other mirror, sitting naked on the bed. A small, whitish animal with a few tufts of hair. And hurt, too. As he watched, the injured face in the mirror contracted a little, seemed to clench and compress itself into a mask of despair. A sigh like a strangled squeak escaped from its throat. He said aloud to the face, "You sorry little bastard." And then the moment was gone. The people on the television screen seemed to be dancing around, celebrating something having to do with a little car parked behind them. He wished them all dead.

Then the newsman came on. He padded back into the bathroom to check the water. It was beginning to get deep enough now, so he turned the tap off and tested the temperature. Too hot: time enough to watch the news.

When he got back to the bed, Claremont and his aide were descending the ladder of the plane. It was pretty much what he'd pictured—a white-haired, stiff-necked old coot in a three-piece banker's suit of the sort you could hardly buy in a store anymore, followed closely by a neat, short-haired, 24

milkcomplexioned young man who appeared to be the prototype of a new doll.

He studied their moves as they approached the terminal. The Senator looked old and frail and a little tired. Then there was a different scene, at a podium bristling with microphones. He was saying, "We're going to fight it through this time to the end. We've got key people from both parties working very hard in Washington and in their home districts."

Claremont looked old and vulnerable all right. Too old to run or fight, probably too old to even make much noise. He had that sharp-eyed hawkface look that old people got sometimes, and his temples were marbled with blue veins. The picture changed and the newsman was talking about something having to do with some dark, intense little men in olive-drab fatigues. He switched off the television, went into the bathroom, and slowly settled himself into the hot tub. He studied the knee again, watching the tiny pink cloud swirl away from the cut like liquid smoke. Then he settled back, relaxing every muscle in his body. In a minute he would submerge his head and try to clean those wounds too. That would hurt but it had to be done. No sense getting an infection.

He tried to think the situation through. He couldn't travel with a face like that. People remembered things like black eyes and bruised faces. And in the morning they'd find the two bodies, and start looking for somebody who'd been in a fight. The first place they'd look would be in the hotels and motels around here, starting with the cheapest first. It would look like a gang fight, but not enough like one to keep them from checking out transients right away while they could still put their hands on them. He'd paid in cash for the room, three days in advance, like always. And then there was the charter flight for Las Vegas —paid in advance too. But that didn't leave until Thursday night. Too soon for the face to get back to normal, and too long to wait while the police looked for a man who'd been in a fight. So it had to be tonight. There was no other way. He had to be somewhere else before they knew what they were looking for. And then his mind stopped dead. There was still the Senator. How could he do the Senator and get out of Denver in one night with a face like that? He thought again about the two men in the alley. If only they hadn't picked him out, or picked that alley, or had thought of it another night. But there wasn't much he could do about it now. He started again from the beginning. How can I travel with a face like this?

McKinley Claremont sipped the last of his bourbon and watched the film of the Arab gun crew expertly loading and firing at a distant hillside. He wondered if it was stock footage, or if they were really getting that organized. In '67 he'd been to Egypt on a fact-finding tour and it hadn't been like that. After a couple of rounds, the ammunition they had with them had turned out to be the wrong size, so the crew he was with just sat down and started eating and drinking. Two hours later a captain told him they were waiting for the supply lines to get untangled, or for further orders, whichever happened first. Meanwhile they sat in the sun behind their useless cannon, waiting.

Carlson interrupted his thoughts. "I'd say it came off very well, wouldn't you, Senator?"

"All right, I guess," said the Senator. "On television they don't get the chance to spell your name wrong, anyway."

"Big day tomorrow," said Carlson tactfully.

"Right," said the old man. He set down his glass and raised himself slowly from his chair. "Call me at eight and while we're having breakfast we'll try to figure out what's got to be done. That is, if we've got time for breakfast?"

"Yes sir," said Carlson. "First appointment isn't until ten."

"Fine, see you in the morning then."

"Good night, Senator," said Carlson, already halfway out the door. "My room is right next door if you need anything. Four oh eight." The door shut.

Claremont shuffled over to the closet and brought out his pajamas. He tossed them on the bed and then took off his suit, carefully hanging it up so it wouldn't get wrinkled. If he didn't hate the idea of losing his privacy, he'd get a valet, he thought. Living out of a suitcase half of each year was bad enough.

Then you had to decide whether to spend your time worrying about wrinkles or give up the few minutes of solitude you ever had.

He eased himself into the strange bed and tried out a couple of positions for comfort. Politics wasn't so bad for the young fellows, he thought. Trouble was, by the time you knew anything and had enough seniority to make anybody listen to it, you were too old. He peered through the darkness at his teeth soaking in the glass on the nightstand. Those things were older than some of the men in the House of Representatives. He chuckled to himself. Still plenty of bite to them, though.

He felt the water around him loosening the taut muscles and soaking some of the hurt out of him. He began to feel stronger. Now and then he would take a deep breath and lean back with his chin tucked into his chest to submerge his whole head. Then he would wait until his breath came back and do it again for as long as he could. Finally he sat up, took the soap between his hands, worked it into a lather, then rubbed soap over his head and face. It was as though dozens of hornets were stinging his scalp, his cheek, his temple. He gasped to fill his lungs again and ducked under. Slowly the pain went away.