The Butcher's Son Read online

  Ian’s heart stopped beating as his voice caught in his throat before the words rushed out in one mad purge. “Was Zelig responsible for my sister’s disappearance?”

  “Huh?” Mr. Ragano seemed confused as he glanced down at his plate and his cheeks flushed an angry red. Then his voice boomed, “Marcia! Where’s my fucking bacon? Did you take my bacon?”

  “You ate it, Grandpa,” Rossella said.

  “I did not. I’d goddamn well remember if I ate bacon.” He forced out a noisy burp and waved it towards his granddaughter. “Smell that? No fucking bacon.”

  The older black woman came rushing out of the kitchen with a plate layered with bacon as if she had been waiting for just such a complaint.

  “You hush now, Mr. Ragano,” she said as she hurried over to the table. “Here’s your bacon. Extra crispy just the way you like it.”

  “You were keeping it for yourself, weren’t you?” Mr. Ragano roared. “Think I’m going senile, but I know when you’re hiding things from me. Trying to rob me blind no doubt.”

  “Grandpa,” Rossella scolded. “Don’t be cruel.”

  The maid shook her head as if she had heard it a thousand times before and placed more bacon on his plate. As her hand moved away, Mr. Ragano grabbed her wrist. “You gonna play with me later, Marcia?” he asked in a childlike voice. “Run a bath and get the boats out? I have that new blue speedboat to play with.”

  “You’ve already had your bath this morning,” said the woman as she gently broke his grip. “But you can have another one tonight if you’d like.”

  After the maid returned to the kitchen, Mr. Ragano picked up a strip of bacon with his fingers and sucked on it until it crumbled apart in his mouth. Returning the remaining half to his plate, he turned to Ian and said, “Are you August’s boy?”

  “Grandson,” Ian repeated.

  “You look like him. Same nose and a hardness around the eyes. You as obstinate? ’Cause that man was stubborn as a two-headed mule.”

  “Afraid so,” said Ian. “Did Walter harm my sister?”

  “Walter?”

  “Zelig,” said Ian.

  “Watch out for him. Ice Pick is a dangerous man, especially since his daughter disappeared. He blamed August, you know?”

  “What happened to her?” Ian asked, trying to keep the conversation alive despite losing the direction he wanted.

  “She was a pretty young thing. All hair, legs and teeth. They named her Constance, after her grandmother. She disappeared. Must be a while ago now.”

  “How old was she when she disappeared?” Ian pressed.

  “It was right after her twenty-first. Walter threw a big party. Pulled out all the stops. Constance looks beautiful, but there’s something broken in her, a darkness that slithers beneath her flesh. I don’t like to be alone with her.” A visible shudder made his shoulders jerk. “That’s an odd thing to say, isn’t it?” He glanced at his granddaughter and smiled warmly. “Not like you, you’re a good girl, always kind, but that one has something wrong. You can’t tell Walter though. He worships her. Broke his heart when she disappeared. I think he’s planning to hurt August.”

  “Why did he blame August?” Ian asked, knowing reality was crumbling around their feet.

  The old man looked at Ian as if he was stupid. “Well, that’s what August does, isn’t it? He makes people disappear.”

  Staring down at his plate again, Mr. Ragano’s cheeks flared crimson. “Marcia!” he screamed. “Where’s the bacon? Did you steal my fucking bacon?” Tears filled his eyes as he looked at his plate. “Woman’s always stealing from me. Thinks I don’t notice, but I see everything.”

  Rossella reached out and squeezed her grandfather’s hand as he began to softly weep.

  *

  Ian stood beside the stone lion, sipping on a cup of coffee he had taken from the table after Archibald entered the room to take care of Rossella’s grandfather.

  The scene had become too personal, family only, and so he had made himself scarce.

  He heard the front door open, followed by the click of Rossella’s heels against the marble stairs. When she was close, he inhaled her perfume.

  “Sorry you had to witness that,” she said. “There are times when he’s so lucid, sometimes for hours, that it’s easy to forget just how ill he really is.”

  “It must be difficult,” said Ian.

  “We’ve had deep, intellectual conversations about the law that make Supreme Court arguments sound like idle chit-chat, and then he’ll call me by my mother’s name and it’s…it’s just all gone.”

  “He seems to be in good hands,” said Ian, draining the last of his coffee.

  Rossella smiled. “Marcia is wonderful with him. She’s been with us for decades, although how she puts up with his abuse, I don’t know. He was never like that before…before the illness.”

  “It’s a damn shame,” said Ian. “All that knowledge, all those secrets, being eaten away.” He sighed. “He knew about my sister.”

  Rossella squeezed his arm. “We can try again. After he’s had a rest.”

  “Will he remember I was here? Any of the conversation we started?”

  Rossella lowered her gaze. “Probably not. Sorry.”

  Ian laid his hand on top of hers and returned the squeeze. “Don’t be sorry. I learned some things I didn’t know before. It’s a start.”

  “I’ll talk with him later. See if I can learn anything more about your sister.”

  “Thanks.” Ian squeezed her hand again, but this time it was a gesture to let him go. He handed her the coffee cup and bent to kiss her. The embrace was short, both of them distracted by the day ahead.

  20

  After exiting the lawyer’s demonic gate, Ian pulled over to the side of the road and parked. His van didn’t belong in this neighborhood, its minimum-wage-with-a-kid-on-the-way presence likely making some of the privileged homeowners nervous. But the vehicle was pre-Bluetooth and therefore didn’t have hands-free dialing.

  He called Jersey and said, “Zelig had a daughter who went missing sometime before my sister disappeared. Can you check if it was ever investigated?”

  “You know,” said Jersey, stifling a yawn, “I preferred it when you were so skittish to ask me for a favor that you softened the blow with doughnuts. When was the last time you brought me a doughnut?”

  “Sorry. Got a lot on my mind.”

  “Buy me lunch and we’ll forget about it.”

  “Lunch?”

  “It’s the meal between breakfast and supper. Becoming quite popular with the working class I hear.” Jersey paused for laughter, but when none came, he pressed on. “I have a line on the detectives who wrote off your grandfather’s death. They’re both retired but still tight as thieves. They meet up for a liquid lunch daily at The Crown Royal, you know it?”

  “It’s near work, but I thought it got shut down for a list of health violations.”

  “It did. New owners secured the liquor license and reopened a few months back. Still a dive though, just the way the faithful like it.”

  “And you want to eat there?”

  Jersey laughed. “Okay, maybe we eat after.”

  Ian hung up, checked his rearview for traffic and slid the van into drive. Before he could pull away from the curb, however, his phone rang.

  Throwing the van back into park, Ian glanced at the Caller ID and answered.

  “Hey, Jeannie. I was just heading in.”

  “Noah’s mother is here.” Jeannie’s voice held an edge of anxious discomfort. “She says you have an appointment, but I don’t have anything written in your calendar.”

  “It’s okay. We may have set something up before Noah’s funeral. How is she?”

  Jeannie lowered her voice to a notch only slightly above a whisper. “Not good. She keeps muttering to herself and can barely hold eye contact. I don’t think she’s slept in days, and she’s certainly not showered.”

  “Give her coffee with lots of sugar. I’ll b
e there soon.”

  *

  Ian parked in his usual spot in the empty lot across from Children First. An Elvis impersonator was crooning to an audience of none on the corner, while a shooting gallery had set up shop behind a large trash container opposite. Leaning against an overloaded shopping cart, Tommy the Tink was sucking on a mixture of cranberry juice and rubbing alcohol.

  Spotting Ian, Tommy shook his head in disgust at the cluster of addicts as a junkie injected his girlfriend in the neck before administering to himself. The dope was strong, taking immediate effect. As the addict nodded off, the shared needle wavered at half-mast, stuck amidst an arm’s length of bruised flesh.

  “Every morning,” yelled Tommy, his words a slur. “Fuckin’ sharps everywhere.”

  “You eaten yet?” Ian called back.

  Tommy raised his bottle. “Got what I need.”

  “Make sure you get to the mission for lunch.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Ian crossed at the corner, nodded to Elvis — he preferred the older one, but the youngster had better moves — and spotted Noah’s mother standing on the sidewalk in front of Children First. The cigarette in her mouth was being sucked down in large inhalations, while the soiled remains of dead filters lay discarded at her feet.

  Her name was Shirley and she looked as despondent as a paper doll left overnight in the rain. A clingy black dress, the same one she wore to her son’s funeral, was twisted and stretched as though she had been in battle. Her nylons were ripped from ankles to knees, and her shoes, the toes split open to expose cheap plastic caps beneath a thin, pleather skin, barely clung to her feet.

  When she turned to face him, her face was the color of death with dark eyeliner leaking down her cheeks.

  Her thin lips curled as Ian approached. When he was just a foot away, an open hand swung up to slap him hard across the cheek. One of her fingernails, broken and chewed, caught his flesh and drew blood.

  Ian took a step back, recoiling from the sharp pain.

  “You,” the woman screamed, “are fucking marked.”

  “What does that mean?” Ian asked.

  “He took my son and you did nothing. So what the fuck do I care if he wants you?”

  Snot bubbled at the woman’s nose as she struggled to contain her grief. “Why are all men bastards? Why? The whole fucking lot of you.”

  The woman lunged forward again, but this time she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him in close. Cold lips were jammed against his ear, a sticky, wet nose tickling the back of his neck.

  “My son didn’t deserve this, but nobody wants to make the bastard pay. So fuck you, fuck all of you.”

  When the woman released him, a white paneled van pulled over to the curb and its side door slid open. Two men wearing black woolen ski masks pointed handguns at Ian and ordered him inside.

  “If you make us chase you,” said the driver, “they’ll shoot her first.”

  Shirley shot the men an evil glare, but the anger only flashed for a moment before it dimmed into acceptance. This was her lot, these were the men she climbed into bed with, and the joke was on her that once upon a time she thought it was actually possible to escape.

  Shirley refused to meet his gaze as Ian climbed into the van and the sliding door slammed shut.

  *

  Inside the van, the two gunmen dropped a black hood over Ian’s head and secured it tightly around his neck. They then forced his hands behind his back, looped a plastic band around his wrists and zipped it tight.

  “What ’bout his feet?” asked one of the men, his voice revealing everything. It belonged to Noah’s father, Rory Bowery.

  “Leave ’em,” said the older brother, Ryan. “I don’t want to be carrying the fat bastard. He looks heavy.”

  Rory laughed. “True dat.”

  Ian thought about asking the brothers what the hell was going on, but figured it might just piss them off even further, and he would find out soon enough anyway.

  When the van stopped moving, Ian was ushered out and guided along a loose gravel path.

  “Watch your step, old man,” said Rory.

  Ian’s left toe caught a raised lip as the ground shifted from gravel to concrete. He stumbled before his escort tightened the grip on his arm to hold him steady.

  “WhatdidIjustsay?” Rory grumbled. “Fuckin’ retard.”

  Ian didn’t bother pointing out that it was difficult to watch one’s step when you were blindfolded.

  They moved a few more paces before he was stopped and told to remain still. An overhead garage door rumbled to life and rolled into place behind them.

  Once the door settled, Ian was pushed down onto a cold metal chair. The snick of a switchblade caused him to flinch, but it was only used to cut the plastic band around his wrists. Next, the noose around his neck was loosened and the hood removed.

  Ian blinked in the dim light of the musty garage, regaining his focus. The smell of oil and grease added a bitter tang to the air; the remains of an old hydraulic lift still bolted to the stained cement floor. The few windows were covered in old newspapers and duct tape.

  A large man with hard eyes the color of nail heads sat across from him. He had a chest like a silverback gorilla, a straining white muscle shirt showing off years spent pumping iron in the gym or prison yard. His heavily veined arms were covered in full-sleeve tatts that reached across his shoulders to lick at a short neck. Above the stubby neck was a solid square head that could have been cleaved out of a block of industrial cement. Stamped onto the head was a stubbled face that only a blind grandmother could love.

  A U-shaped scar took up most of his wide forehead as though he had been kicked by a horse, and the first thought that entered Ian’s mind was: You must have been one ugly kid.

  Standing on either side of the man were the two brothers, both still wearing their full-face ski masks, white stitching around the eyes, nose and mouth attempting to make them look like spooky skeletons. Ian glanced over his shoulder, spotted a third masked man standing by the garage door. He was skinny. The driver, not muscle.

  Ian turned forward again and nodded at the two brothers. “Rory. Ryan. Who’s your friend?”

  “Shit!” said Rory. “He made us.”

  “That’s ’cause you never shut your fuckin’ mouth,” said Ryan.

  “Quiet,” said the large man in the middle. “And take off those masks.”

  Both brothers obeyed, their eyes blazing with anger and aiming all the heat at Ian.

  “I’ve been wanting to meet you, Ian Quinn,” said the behemoth in a voice that added moisture to each word as though he had to continually suck back extra spittle, yet held more refinement than his appearance would suggest. “But it was never a priority until recently.”

  “Until you killed Noah,” said Ian.

  The man moved his large head a half-inch to either side. “That matter is none of your concern. And, no, that has nothing to do with this.”

  “I disagree.” Ian’s gaze locked onto Rory’s. “What kind of man follows the monster who butchered his son?”

  Rory flinched but remained silent.

  “A man who prefers to live and profit rather than suffer and die,” said the gorilla.

  “A coward,” said Ian.

  “A survivor,” countered the gorilla.

  “Is that what Shirley calls you?” Ian said to Rory. “A survivor. Bet it’s not.”

  “Fuck you!”

  Rory broke from his position and rushed at Ian, but he moved too close to the gorilla. With a vicious backhand, the gorilla sent Rory flying onto his ass.

  “Enough!” yelled the gorilla. Baring his teeth — strong, sharp and vicious — he leaned forward, capturing Ian’s full attention. “You play a dangerous game.”

  “I don’t have much to lose.”

  “Not much, no,” agreed the gorilla. “But despite everything, you are not an island. There are still people you care about.” The gorilla showed his teeth again. They needed
some serious work. “Don’t make me hurt them.”

  Ian exhaled heavily. “What do you want?”

  “Tell me about Walter Zelig.”

  The query caught Ian by surprise. “Ice Pick?”

  “Yes. You have been looking into his past. It is linked with your own, no?”

  Ian shrugged. “He knew my grandfather. In fact, he may have killed him. He also knew my father, and likely killed him, too.”

  “And your sister?” asked the gorilla.

  Ian was taken aback. “What do you know about my sister?”

  The gorilla shrugged. “Nothing. Just that she is also connected, is that not correct?”

  “I don’t know what his connection is to my sister,” said Ian. “She disappeared a short time after Zelig’s daughter vanished. I’ve been told the disappearances may be linked.”

  “Who told you this?”

  Ian saw no reason to lie. “Zelig’s lawyer, but his testimony isn’t reliable. He has Alzheimer’s.” Ian stopped and studied the gorilla’s scar-ravaged face. “Why are you interested?”

  “He’s a competitor.”

  “He’s an old man.”

  The gorilla grinned. It wasn’t friendly. “Old men with sharpened teeth are far more dangerous than young ones without.”

  Ian wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but he decided not to argue. “So what happens now?”

  “That is up to you.”

  “I don’t really think it is.”

  “What would you like to see happen?” asked the gorilla.

  Ian thought for a moment, and then said, “I would like Rory to grow a set of balls and blow your fucking head off for what you did to Noah. Then I would like him to shove the gun in his own mouth and pull the trigger again.” He turned his gaze on the other brother. “Ryan and I can settle our score the old-fashioned way, only this time, I get the bat.” He swiveled his head further to fix on the driver standing silently by the door. “Him, I don’t have a problem with.”

  “Let me propose an alternative,” said the gorilla. “You will leave the same way you arrived, and the brothers will be instructed not to harm you. You will continue to investigate Walter Zelig, but when I call, you will answer my questions without hesitation.”