Butcher's Road (29 page)

A fog of dust roiled in the door’s wake. Butch coughed heartily.

On first glance, everything in the shop appeared to be common for such an establishment. Armoires, desks, leather chairs, Chinese screens, bronze and marble statuary, but as Butch looked closer at the items, he noticed oddities: a hat stand that seemed to have been constructed of bone; a chest of drawers with intricate carvings covering its surface, but no pulls for any of the drawers; an armoire that wore a wig of Spanish moss; a marble bust of a grinning man whose teeth were sharp and angled like those of an alligator; a severed arm in a glass case with a black tattoo running from wrist to elbow. The thick symbols etched in the skin meant nothing to Butch but they made his skin pucker nonetheless.

“Good morning, sir!”

Butch turned away from the painted arm. The voice had come from a counter on the far side of the shop. Behind it, a wiry little man in a white suit with oil-polished hair stood straight-backed with his hands folded behind him.

“Good morning,” Butch said.

He made his way down the aisle. Though he tried to keep his attention on the man ahead, he occasionally noticed the details of the displays around him: a hand mirror ringed in what appeared to be human teeth; a piece of furniture that might have been a desk or dining table, but which more than anything looked like a funeral slab; the skull of a goat with some kind of star carved into its brow.

“Lovely morning,” the proprietor said. “Might get us some rain later this afternoon, but that’s a future we cannot know.”

Butch smiled. Despite the questionable, even repugnant, items that filled the shop, at least he was faced with a courteous soul.

“It is a fine day,” Butch agreed.

“And what can I do for you?” the man asked, pushing on the bridge of his wire framed glasses.

“Are you Edmund Mercer?”

“Indeed I am.”

“I was told you might be able to help me with something.”

“Something to sell? Something to buy?”

“No,” Butch said. “Mostly just telling me what something is.”

“I see.” Mercer made it sound like the most interesting proposition he’d ever heard. “And what is the nature of this item?”

“It’s a necklace,” Butch said, and then added, “Well, here, I have it right here.”

He freed the necklace from his collar and presented the pendant on the flat of his palm.

Mercer leaned over the counter. He pulled a hand from behind his back and asked, “May I touch it?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Mercer wrapped his palm around the pendant and closed his eyes. Butch stood perplexed, wondering why the shopkeeper was holding the thing rather than looking at it. Finally, Mercer opened his eyes and released the pendant and stepped away.

“Is this a joke?” Mercer asked good-naturedly.

“No,” Butch replied.

“I’m afraid it must be if you think you can pawn such a thing off on me.”

“You didn’t even look at it. Besides, I’m not trying to pawn anything. I just want to know what it is.”

“Well, as far as I’m concerned it’s a piece of junk,” Mercer said. His good nature had apparently been tested. The smile vanished. Indignation rose on the man’s face, a pink sheen that grew deeper as his voice grew louder. “And I have no idea why you’d think it had any value at all. It’s clearly worthless, just a chunk of bronze or pewter stained red. I am a respectable merchant. I buy and sell precious items. I’m not a rubbish man. I am not a joke. I am
respectable
. Who sent you to me?”

“Okay, that’s fine,” Butch said.

“Did Elspeth put you up to this? This has her stench all over it. Sending you in here with shit on a string and trying to pass it off as arcane. She has always been jealous of my collection. Always! Well you can tell her I am not to be toyed with. I am not.”

Butch thanked the man, though Mercer was too busy shouting to notice. He walked out of the store as the lunatic shopkeeper’s voice reached a shrill, nearly incoherent screech. On the sidewalk, he smiled at Mercer’s preposterous behavior. And then he chuckled, which became a laugh—a great booming laugh, like warm bubbles of amusement coursing up his throat.

• • •

Angry gray clouds began to creep across the sky as Butch waited for the streetcar on St. Charles Avenue. Initially, he’d been amused by Edmund Mercer’s outburst. Obviously the twerp had a serious self-image problem and it took little to tease it from him. But now, on a small thatch of overgrown grass, waiting for the streetcar, he felt what little optimism he’d regained slipping away. If the necklace was garbage, as Mercer suggested—as all of the clerks at the traditional shops had suggested—then Butch was wasting his time. Marco Impelliteri had simply wanted him dead, along with Lonnie Musante. Butch didn’t know why and he had no one to ask.

The streetcar’s brakes squealed, and Butch climbed inside.

Arcane.
Strange word. It began to gnaw at him. Mercer had used the word casually, but Butch had heard it before, plenty of times. The old broads in the spook rackets whispered it to the chumps on the far side of their crystal balls, making it sound dangerous and mystical.

As a boy he’d believed in magic. He had needed to believe in something grander than the dirty walls surrounding him, the misery on his mother’s face, and the pain that came from his father’s tongue and knuckles. Evenings, when it wasn’t too cold outside, his sister would walk with him to the creek and she’d tell him stories. Often enough Clara recited old fairy tales—fanciful myths she’d heard in school or from their mother before their father had put an end to such things. Butch had wanted to steal Jack’s golden goose, had wanted to awaken Sleeping Beauty with his kiss, had dreamed of saving Hansel and Gretel from the witch before he devoured her sweet, sticky house.

More thrilling than the stories were the times that Uncle Spencer had come to visit. Spencer worked the tracks, a conductor with the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, and while he had dozens of funny and shocking stories to tell about his travels, he also knew magic. He could pull coins from behind Butch’s ears and produce fire from his fingertips, and he could always guess what card Butch had taken from the center of the deck. One evening Uncle Spencer gave Butch a rusted key and told Butch it could unlock invisible doors—doors that were hidden throughout the world; doors that entered into impossible landscapes of beauty and danger. And holding that key in his chubby palm, Butch had seen those doors. Really
seen
them. It felt like the rusted metal had been made of pure electricity and grasping it had sent signals to his brain, showing him portals made of wood and glass and gold—some over the water, others in the middle of busy streets. He had not wanted to return that key to Uncle Spencer, because it had many more secrets to reveal, Butch knew, but Spencer had demanded its return.

In ominous and reverential tones, Spencer told the story of Punjab, an ancient man from Bombay, who had revealed, before his death by enchanted poison, his otherworldly secrets to Spencer and had presented Butch’s uncle with the mystical key.

Butch had worshipped his uncle Spencer, but that all changed one freezing January night. Robert Cardinal, Butch’s father, drunk as he’d ever been and bleeding from a split lip, likely earned in a fight at Dingle’s Tavern, had burst into the house shouting, catching Spencer in the middle of showing Butch a card trick. Robert Cardinal had ranted, knocked the table over and sent a confetti of cards to the floor.

“The deck is marked, you idiot,” his father bellowed. “There are symbols on the backs and they tell him what each card is. He’s not a magician. He’s a fucking cheat. These are just tricks he learned to entertain the ladies. Did he tell you about that? Did he tell you about getting fired from the railroad because of that girl in Baltimore? Another man’s wife, she was. A mother, no less.”

His father snorted a laugh and stormed through the house, into the kitchen, leaving Butch to look for an explanation from his uncle. But Spencer just righted the table and picked up the cards. He wouldn’t look at his nephew, simply muttered, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

A long time passed before his Uncle Spencer visited again. By then Butch had put away his faith in magic, too old to believe in witches or gold-laying geese or sleeping princesses. Uncle Spencer’s tricks were the last enchantments in Butch’s life. Once they were gone, so was any illusion about the world waiting for him. It was his father’s world. Hard as granite. Ugly as shit. And the only things of value were the things you could touch with your fingers.

He left the streetcar and in less than five minutes discovered he was lost. He checked the map several times but could not seem to orient himself in the street. The sky above had turned the color of bronze, with jaundiced lines running like infected cuts through the bulbous accumulation.

After more than an hour of searching, Butch finally found the home of Delbert Keane. It stood tucked in the back of the Uptown District like a shameful secret. The Victorian structure was tall, narrow and grim, seeming to have been painted with the same colors that currently stained the sky. A waist-high wrought-iron fence ran around the periphery of the yard, each spindle capped with a pointed spike. The yard was neat. The porch was kept tidy. But the house looked malicious, as if it had been summoned in a dark ritual, rather than built of wood and nails.

Butch let himself through the gate. As he began down the walk a man appeared at the side of the house. The man kept his head down, apparently distracted with thoughts, as he stomped to the front yard. He stopped before the porch stairs, looked up at the angry façade and put his hands on his hips.

“Mr. Keane?” Butch called.

The man lifted a hand to wave but did not turn around. He wore a white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled past the elbows and black trousers that had accumulated bits of brown grass and dirt on his backside.

When Butch reached a point just behind him on the walk, he said the man’s name again.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Keane said, still staring up at the house.

“My name’s Butch Cardinal, and I was hoping you could help me out.”

“You need something to eat? I don’t got any work for vagrants if that’s what you’re fishing for.”

“No, sir,” Butch said.

“Good,” Keane said. He lifted his hand and used his palm as a visor. His forearm was heavily muscled as if he’d spent a lifetime doing hard labor.

Butch found it odd the man was shielding his eyes, since there was little light in the air and certainly no glare. He looked up at the house, but could find no explanation for the action.

“I was told you might be able to help me identify something.”

“Yeah, maybe so,” Keane said distractedly. “How much paint you think I’ll need to cover this place? Can’t afford to buy a surplus but would like to get some of the dingy off the place.”

“Couldn’t say,” Butch told him.

“Don’t have much of a calculating mind myself,” Keane said.

“Can’t you buy it as you go?”

“Nah, can’t do that, unless I use raw white. It’s mixing in the color that causes the trouble. They can never get it exactly the same each time. I’d like a light walnut color, but if they mix it wrong, who knows what kind of mess I’d end up with. Don’t think I’d like to live in a mottled house. But I might. Can’t really say.”

“I wish I could help you out.”

“Not a problem,” Keane said, lowering his hand. “About to get a big wet coming down. Won’t be able to do much about this anyways.” He extended his hand to Butch and they made a proper introduction. Then Keane asked, “What can I do for you?”

“I have this necklace.”

“And you want it appraised? I don’t really do that kind of thing.”

“Maybe you could just tell me what it is.”

Keane’s eyes lit up and his brows arched. “A mystery, huh? I like mysteries. Let’s go on to the back and have a sit down. I’ve been working in the garden all morning, and then I got the idea to paint the house, so I been walking in a circle for about thirty minutes, trying to figure how many gallons the old gal will need.”

Butch followed the man around the side of the house. Behind the Victorian a wide vacant parcel of land ran to a line of low trees. Keane stopped at a small picketed gate and opened it onto a space not unlike the courtyard at Hollis’s place. The backyard had been squared off with a tall fence and numerous panels of latticework. Vines covered the barriers in lush green skin. Two wrought-iron chairs with thick floral cushions sat in the middle of a flagstone court. Between them stood an iron table with tiles inlaid on its top.

“Nice place,” Butch said.

“Working on it,” Keane replied. He took a seat and waved for Butch to follow suit. “So what have you got? You said a necklace?”

Butch pulled the pendant out of his collar. Instead of holding it on the flat of his hand, he removed the chain and passed the whole thing over to Keane. The man gave the piece a smile. Turned it over in his hand. Bounced it against his palm testing its weight.

“And you think this is valuable?” Keane asked.

“I think someone does.”

“Hmm,” Keane muttered. He rolled the pendant on his palm and nodded his head. “Let’s start with what it’s not. There are a number of trinkets that look like very little but might actually have value. An ancient coin, for instance. If this here were currency, say Greek or Roman, you might have something. But it isn’t. There are no inscriptions, no marks at all really. That tells me two things: it isn’t a coin, and it isn’t likely the product of a known artist. Even if it were the latter, the fact it has no signatory mark means it could never be authenticated. So that leaves a few options.”