The Butcher's Son (2 page)

*

I’ve already mentioned I hated my job. I’d had sev
eral since I left college and hadn’t felt really comfortable with any of them; but as I always say, it isn’t the principle of the thing, it’s the money.

At the moment, I was being rather embarrassingly overpaid by a small public relations firm, Carlton Carlson & Associates. The reason for the high salary was that CC&A was run by the rear end of a horse with a monumental ego, and the only way he could keep help was by paying them so much they couldn’t afford to go elsewhere.

He had, thanks to his rich wife’s family connections, passably juggled the careers of one or two fairly well-known clients over the years. Now, he had volunteered his—that is to say, his staff’s—services in the promotion and setup of a press conference for the chief of police’s contemplated assault on the governor’s mansion. His magnanimous gesture was hardly altruistic, since C.C. viewed it as his key to taking over the chief’s entire campaign.

The task wouldn’t be an easy one, as anyone with his head a little less far up his behind than my boss would readily have recognized. The chief’s political beliefs fell considerably to the right of Attila the Hun’s, and he ran his department like Vlad the Impaler. Need I add that he loathed homosexuals? His tact, diplomacy, and delicate handling of any problem involving the gay community had, among some gays, earned him the nickname “The Butcher.”

But his methods, however reprehensible, had kept the local crime rate in check, and he had, until now, maintained an extremely low personal profile.

If the chief managed to win the primaries—his opponent was one Marlen Evans, a moderately popular but lackluster state senator—he would be pretty much a shoo-in, since the incumbent governor’s wildly liberal policies had alienated the most powerful lobbying groups in the state.

The first step in humanizing the inhuman, my boss decided, was to play up the chief’s warm and loving family life. Guess who got stuck with gathering homey bits about this little nuclear holocaust? Yep, yours truly. The fact that, up until now, very few people had any idea, or the slightest interest, that the chief had a license to breed, let alone that he had exercised it five times, left me a pretty open field.

We started by building a rather anemic file of newspaper photos and articles. The chief’s wife Kathleen was always on hand at functions that required the presence of a spouse, but she generally blended so well with the wallpaper she was almost impossible to pick out if there were more than three people in the picture. Of the children, there was almost nothing known except that the eldest son was a minister, and the chief had recently become a grandfather.

It was, therefore, decreed that I, together with a freelance writer noted for never having met a subject she didn’t like and a photographer selected for his Vaseline-lensed portrait work—both handpicked by C.C. himself—would be sent out to meet with the entire family. The object was getting a feature story into the Sunday supplement of the city’s leading newspaper. My purpose for being there was a bit vague, other than to ride herd on the writer and photographer and to steer them clear of the unlikely possibility they might touch on anything that could smack of controversy.

I viewed the entire project with the same enthusiasm as I’d anticipate a root canal, but I had little choice.

*

The interview was set for a Saturday afternoon, my boss not believing in the sanctity of weekends where his employees were involved. We arrived at the chief’s Hollywood-back-lot, two-story neo-Georgian home at exactly the appointed hour and were met at the door by Kathleen Rourke, looking like a cross between June Cleaver and Donna Reed. She ushered us into the living room, which appeared to have been set up for the photographers from
House Beautiful
. Chief Rourke, obviously painfully uncomfortable out of uniform, removed the unlit pipe from his mouth, set it in the chair-side ashtray, and rose from a wing-back chair near the fireplace to greet us.

The cursory introductions over, to the obvious relief of both Chief Rourke and me, we were told the rest of the family was gathered on the poolside patio and followed Mrs. Rourke outside through a set of curtained French doors. Standing around a picnic table at the far end of the pool like deer caught in the headlights was the rest of the Rourke clan.

Chief Rourke, who followed us outside lest, I suspected, one of us if unattended might make a grab for the family silver, made the introductions. Clockwise around the table: Tammy, aged fifteen; Colleen, age seventeen; Mary, thirteen; Robert (Robby), fourteen; and Kevin, the minister, age not given but probably 25, who was accompanied by his lovely wife Sue-Lynn and their infant son Sean.

The children took after their mother, except for Kevin, who had obviously inherited all the good looks. That is to say, they were nondescript to the point that any one of them would be hard to pick out of a police lineup.

I suggested we first get the photos out of the way, and Ted, the photographer, proceeded to take up the next half-hour orchestrating various homey shots of the family around the picnic table, by the barbecue, in the living room, around the kitchen table, etc. It might have just been my imagination, but it seemed like every time I looked at Kevin, he was looking at me. Whenever our eyes met, he’d hurriedly look away.

Actually, Ted need have taken only one photo of the chief, since his expression—that of the proud family man—never changed except for one moment when the baby, who had been handed to him, reluctantly, only after Ted’s repeated suggestion, developed a slow leak in the diaper department.

While all this was going on, the writer, in obvious awe at actually being in the presence of someone so prominent as the chief, tried getting responses to a set of routine questions.

After the majority of the photos had been taken and the chief and Mrs. Rourke were huddled at one end of the living room with the writer, I wandered over to the mantle to look at a set of family photos. There were individual shots of all the kids, plus Kevin and Sue-Lynn’s wedding photo, plus a photo of baby Sean. However, one that caught my eye was an older family shot, taken in front of the house apparently when Mary, the youngest child, was a baby. The interesting thing about the picture was that it contained two Kevins.

Kevin, who had been off somewhere with Sue-Lynn changing the baby, had just reentered the living room. He must have noticed me looking at the photo and hurried over. I got the distinct feeling I’d been caught at something illicit.

“I was just looking at your photos,” I said, rather lamely.

“Yes,” he said, the first time since we’d arrived that he’d spoken directly to me. “My mother and father are typical proud parents, I guess.”

Never having been noted for excessive tact when my curiosity is aroused, I couldn’t resist remarking on the photo.

“I hope I’m not touching a sensitive area, but I notice in this one photo there seem to be two of you. I didn’t know you had an identical twin.”

“Patrick.”

Suddenly, we were aware the chief had gotten up from the sofa, crossed the room, and was, like a thundercloud at a picnic, hovering just behind us.

“Sue-Lynn needs you, Kevin,” he said, although how he might have come by that information was totally beyond me, since he’d been seated at the other end of the room for the past ten minutes.

Kevin turned without a word and left the room the way he’d come in, leaving me standing there with the chief. The beaming family man façade was gone. His eyes were cold black holes, and his voice sent a chill down my spine.

“Patrick’s dead,” he said.

Chapter 2

By the time I got home from the meeting with
the chief’s little brood, the first thing I wanted was a long, hot shower, followed by a drink. Chris wasn’t home when I arrived but was in the kitchen unpacking a sack of groceries when I came in from the bedroom to fix my drink.

“Do I need to ask how it went?” he asked, opening the refrigerator to hand me an ice cube tray and to put away a package of chicken.

“Imagine Adolph and Eva with kids.” I looked for an ashtray and, as usual, didn’t find one. I turned on the tap just enough to put out my cigarette, tossed it in the garbage, and reached for the cupboard where we kept the liquor. “You want one?” I asked, taking a glass from the shelf.

He shook his head.

“I’ll wait,” he said, folding the bag carefully and putting it in the broom closet with the 10,000 other bags. He then opened a drawer, rummaged around a moment, and handed me a small glass ashtray. “Oh, do you remember those fire trucks that woke us up last night? It was the Ebony Room.”

“Oh, no! How bad?” I asked, pouring bourbon into my glass.

“It was gutted. Somebody tossed a fire bomb in through the bathroom window, I hear. It was after closing, thank God, so nobody was hurt.”

“Somebody there is that does not like gay bars,” I said, paraphrasing Robert Frost. “This makes—what?—six in two months?” I set my drink on the counter and reached into my shirt pocket for another cigarette.

“At least,” Chris said as he put away the last of the groceries.

“Did you talk to Bob?” I asked, walking into the living room and sitting in my favorite chair. Bob Allen was the owner of the Ebony Room and lived in our building with his lover Ramón, a really cute Puerto Rican about fifteen years Bob’s junior. We weren’t exactly friends, but we were, as Chris would say, close acquaintances.

“No.” Chris followed me into the living room. He took my glass and had a sip of my drink then shuddered dramatically. “Smooooth,” he said, handing the glass back then plopping down on the sofa. “Tony called right after you left this morning to tell me about it, and I tried calling Bob right after that, but nobody was home.”

I shook my head.

“I’m really sorry about that. We’ll just have to find another place to hang out.”

“Speaking of which, are you up to dinner out tonight, or do you just want to drink yourself into a stupor here?”

I carefully put my cigarette in the ashtray and gave him the finger.

“One drink does not a stupor make, and yes, I’m up to going out. God knows I deserve it after today.”

“Good,” he said, getting up from the sofa and moving down the hall to the bedroom. “I’m going to hit the shower and start getting ready.”

*

A thunderstorm had broken by the time we reached Rasputin’s, a slightly overpriced but very trendy and therefore popular gay restaurant/bar close to downtown. I wasn’t as much into either trendy or popular as Chris was, but I didn’t feel like making an issue of it. I’d discovered when we were about halfway there that I may well have deserved a night on the town, but I didn’t really feel much like it.

We were having a drink at the bar while waiting for our table when someone came up behind us and grabbed us both around the shoulders. A deep voice said, “Well, honey lambs, I do declare you make a gorgeous couple.”

We turned in unison to face a very large black man with exaggeratedly pursed lips who darted his gaze back and forth between us without moving his head. It wasn’t until he broke into a wide grin that I recognized Tondelaya O’Tool in his Teddy persona.

We exchanged greetings, and his large hands rested easily on our shoulders.

“So, what are you two lovelies doing out on a night like this?”

“Our Saturday night ritual,” Chris said. “Old habits are hard to break, even in bad weather.”

“You having dinner?”

“If we ever get a table.”

“Well, stay away from the lamb chops—they’re deadly,” T/T advised.

“Can we buy you a drink?” Chris asked.

He pulled both of us to him.

“Oh, thank you, honeys, but I’ve got to get to the club. Showtime in about an hour. Are you coming over?”

Chris looked at me, and I shook my head.

“Not tonight, I’m afraid,” Chris said. “The master here has a headache.”

“We’ll try for next Saturday,” I said.

T/T slapped us both on the back

“Well, you just better. I’ll be looking for you, hear?”

*

Some people are lucky enough to have jobs in which each day is a joyful blur. Chris’s was like that—he was head window designer for Marston’s, the most prestigious (and expensive) department store in the city, and he already had a solid reputation in the industry. He couldn’t wait to get to work every day.

My workdays were more like psychedelic smudges—they were just one long blur when viewed in retrospect but were endless when viewed from each morning looking toward evening.

The writer, who had done other assignments for my boss, wisely sent her cloyingly adulatory piece on the Clan Rourke in on Tuesday morning by messenger. The boss demanded to see it immediately then, scornfully proclaiming her “a no-talent hack” (I resisted pointing out he was the one who had hired her), insisted that I personally make several totally unnecessary additions and changes.

The photographer, not as shrewd as the writer, brought his contact sheets in Wednesday afternoon. I thought they were quite good, considering what he’d had to work with; but the boss viewed them with his usual total contempt, making it clear that his own four-year-old son could have done an infinitely superior job with an old Polaroid and outdated film.

When he felt he had adequately achieved his objective of thoroughly humiliating the photographer, he magnanimously declared that, since there was no time to reschedule another shoot, he would have to deign to accept them, and left it to me and the photographer to select which photos to submit with the article—subject to his final okay, of course.

The patently obvious motive for all this bullshit was, of course, aside from his psychotic need to put everyone down, so that he could tell Chief Rourke that he, personally, had whipped the article into shape.

I’d already wined-and-dined the editor of the paper’s Sunday supplement, who had previously been pressured by both my boss and the chief’s aides, and confirmed the piece would be the lead story the Sunday before the chief’s press conference announcing his candidacy for governor.