The Butcher's Son (6 page)

“Chief Rourke will be continuing his duties as chief of police during the campaign and has appointed his son Kevin to act as his spokesman whenever possible. Kevin, it seems, was inexplicably impressed by your handling of your limited dealings with the family thus far as a representative of this firm, and specifically requested that you stay on in that capacity. The chief concurs.

“You will meet with Kevin at that homeless shelter he runs over at Sixteenth and Boyle tomorrow afternoon at three p.m. to see how you can best be of assistance to him. And let me make it very clear that whatever Kevin wants, you will provide. And you will, of course, keep me informed in detail of
everything
that goes on.”

C.C. pulled another huge cigar out of the thermidor on his desk and gave a slight flick of his free hand in my direction.

“That’s all for now,” he said.

I got up to leave, my legs feeling oddly tingly, and had the door partway open before C.C.’s voice caught me.

“And, Hardesty,” he said, lighting his cigar and blowing a long stream of smoke into the room, “I do not take kindly to intimidation of
any
kind.”

“Yes, sir,” I said as I let myself out.

Kevin, eh?
I thought.

*

I got home a little before Chris, as usual, and went
about making
the basic preparations for dinner, setting the table, etc. Well, I say I did it, but I wasn’t really aware of it at the time. I kept wondering who had suckered whom today, and the answer was fairly clear that, once again, C.C. had really pulled all the strings. He got his scapegoat, and I felt just a little bit like Judas—only the one I’d sold out was me.

I was more than a little curious about this Kevin thing. I had hardly done enough to qualify as an invaluable assistant—I had never said more than ten words to the guy. But there
had
been those eye-contact/evasion things. And if Patrick had been gay, was it not possible that Kevin…?

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Chris coming in the front door. He walked into the kitchen, said “Hi” and went directly to the freezer for ice.

“Want one?” he asked as he reached into the glasses cupboard.

“I was just waiting for you.”

I noticed that he seemed a little…uncomfortable?…ill at ease? Hard to say. I just could sense that something was going on. I was afraid his meeting with Marston’s new owners hadn’t gone well.

He fixed our drinks and handed me mine.

“How was your day?” he asked. He had a very un-Chris-like look on his face, and there was a tightness in his voice,

“It can wait. I think I should hear about
your
day first. Let’s go into the living room.”

We, as usual, sat side-by-side on the sofa. We set our drinks on the coffee table at the same time, in the same movement. That happened a lot.

“So,” I said, putting my hand on his leg, “tell. You got the ax?”

He looked at me, and I thought he might start to cry.

“No.”

“No? Well, that’s great!” I said, and meant it. “But something’s wrong. What?”

He bit his lower lip and swept his thumb across the corner of his eye.

“They offered me a promotion.”

I couldn’t understand why that should make him cry. I knew there was something else.

“And…?”

“And…they want me to move to New York. I told them I couldn’t give them an answer right away. I had to talk to you first. It’s a big raise, and a fantastic opportunity. But they want me to be there ready to start on the first of the month. And—”

“Then I think you should take it, if you want it,” I said, and rubbed my hand up and down the top of his thigh. I couldn’t describe exactly what I was feeling—a mixture of happiness for Chris, and sadness for us, and an odd loneliness.

“Would you come with me?” he asked, and I could sense that, while he meant it, he didn’t mean it a hundred percent. He knew, as I did, that it was time for us to move on.

“I can’t right now,” I said, and told him about the commitment I’d made to C.C. “Maybe when this campaign thing is over, if you want me to…”

We leaned toward each other and hugged, tightly. Chris put his head on my shoulder and started to sob. I had a lump the size of a grapefruit in my throat, and my vision was suddenly very blurry; but I patted him on the back as if I were comforting a sad, small child.

“I’ll miss you,” he said, and started sobbing again.

“No more than I’ll miss you,” I said, and truly meant it. We were five years of the other’s life; goodbyes are never easy.

*

Friday morning was more or less a total blur. Fortunately,
it was a relatively easy morning—mostly involving assembling and collating materials for the press kit to be handed out just before Chief Rourke’s announcement of his candidacy. All I could really think about was Chris, and Chris and me, and how fast life can change so totally. It was probably a good thing C.C. was out of the office most of the morning, and I have the vague recollection he didn’t even look in my direction when he finally stormed in, barking orders like a drill sergeant to various members of the staff.

I did remember my three o’clock appointment with Kevin Rourke, however, and left the office with more than enough time to spare in getting there. Sixteenth and Boyle sounded awfully familiar, but I had no idea why. It was, not surprisingly for the location of a homeless shelter, in one of the less-fashionable areas of town. It wasn’t until I was only a block or so away that I realized Bacchus’s Lair was half a block down from Sixteenth on Arnwood, and Boyle was the next street down.

Now, there’s an ironic bit of coincidence
, I thought.

Finding a parking place was no problem in this area; being sure your car would still be there in one piece when you came back for it was another story. Not usually a problem for the bars along Arnwood, where there was plenty of traffic at night, but just one block away it was a bit riskier.

The shelter was a sprawling, dilapidated, four-story former God-knows-what. Its original ground-floor façade had been replaced with a solid brick-and-concrete-block wall broken only by the narrow, recessed double-solid-slab-door entrance, over which was hung a large brightly painted plywood sign proclaiming that this was
Salvation’s Door
.

The street was pretty much deserted, and there was no one around the entrance—it was much too early for the overnight guests, and the evening meal wouldn’t be served for a few hours yet. It looked like the place might well be locked up, but when I tried the door, it opened easily, admitting me immediately into a long corridor broken by numerous doors and openings.

Directly to my left was a wide stairway going up, with a sign beside it on the wall saying:
Registration: 2nd Floor
. I gathered that was where the dormitory rooms were. There were no sounds coming from upstairs, so I assumed there would be no one there at this time of day.

No one seemed to be around on the ground floor, either, but since I heard kitchen-type sounds from somewhere in the back, I kept walking in that direction, glancing to the left and right as I passed each door or opening. A large room with chairs and a pulpit was to the right, and there were a couple smaller rooms set up apparently as meeting rooms and a few offices. A wide arch about three-quarters of the way down on the right led into a vast dining area lined with tables. The kitchen was, I assumed, directly to the rear of it.

At the very end of the corridor, a stairway to the left led upwards, and a sign said simply
Director, 2nd Floor
. I climbed the stairs and found a truncated hallway, off which there was only one partially opened door with a sign:
Director
.

I knocked, and a voice I vaguely recognized said, “Come in.”

Kevin Rourke sat behind a very old, very large and very heavy-looking desk piled high with papers, file folders, those large accordion-type envelopes with strings to tie them shut, and books. Behind him was an equally large bulletin board covered with notes, business cards, official-looking operating permits of one sort or another, handwritten notes, etc. On the wall beside the bulletin board was a framed eight-by-ten color photo of a smiling Kevin standing behind and with a loving hand—the left hand, of course, to prominently display his wedding ring—on the shoulder of a seated smiling Sue-Lynn, who was holding a smiling Sean. In one corner of the small room was, inexplicably, a battered upright piano, atop which was an expensive-looking tape recorder and an open Bible.

Kevin rose and came around the desk to shake my hand. He had a very firm grasp, and I was keenly aware he held the handshake just a fraction of a second longer than necessary.

“Mr. Hardesty,” he said, with a very engaging smile. “I’m really glad you could come. Please, sit.”

He bent over to take a stack of folders off one of the heavy wooden chairs sitting sideways in front of the desk then moved to a second and repeated the process. He laid the combined stack on one side of the already cluttered desk as I sat down. He then pulled the second chair over directly in front of me and sat, our knees within about six inches of touching. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the wooden arms of his chair and clasping his hands.

“We haven’t really haven’t had much of a chance to talk, have we?”

“No,” I admitted, “we haven’t.”

I kept hearing the gaydar in my head going
Ping!
Ping! Ping!
With absolutely no evidence to support it, other than what I realized with mild surprise was possibly my own wishful thinking, I forced my mind to turn it off. Kevin Rourke was a pretty hot number, but business is business, and never the twain, etc.

“I hope you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Hardesty…”

“Please, call me Dick.”

He smiled. “Dick, are you a Christian?”

Well
,
this
was a brief assignment
, I said to myself. But I wasn’t about to lie, job or no job.

“I’m a practicing agnostic.”

Kevin’s smile did not fade by a single degree.

“No matter. We’re all God’s children. I just thought that if you were…more spiritually oriented…we might start our meeting—and our working relationship—with a brief prayer for my father and the success of his campaign.”

I’d rather have bamboo slivers driven under my fingernails
.

“Well, then,” he went on, still smiling, “let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“Fine,” I said, relieved that he didn’t seem to take offense at being in the presence of a heathen. “Did you have some specific ideas, Reverend?”

Had Kevin been able to purse his lips and smile at the same time, I’m sure he would have. Instead, he gave up the latter for the former and leaned back in his chair.

“Kevin, please,” he said. “We’re not unaware,” he continued, “that my father has a…well, let’s say a less than positive image in the minds of far too many of the people whose support he will need in order to win the election. I propose that we start there—getting the public to see my father as a deeply caring and spiritual man.”

Are we talking about the same guy, here?
I wondered, but of course said nothing.

“Were you aware, for example, that this building belongs to my father, and that he donated it to the shelter’s use? He did it with no publicity whatever, merely out of a sincere Christian desire to help those unfortunate souls who find themselves in need—in no small part as a result of the economic policies of the present governor.”

Who the hell
is
this guy?
I wondered.
Mixing Christian good works and politics in the same breath?

“Well,” I said, “perhaps that might be a good place to start. What about having a fundraiser held here at the shelter? It would be a great way for your father and his supporters to show their deep concern for the homeless, and an opportunity for the public to see that your father is more than just a cipher in a chief-of-police uniform.”

My ears couldn’t believe how totally hypocritical my mouth was being. How in hell could I even think of working for such a bigoted asshole—two, if you counted the chief and C.C., which I did—and keep any shred of personal dignity?

I was actually coming to see myself as a resistance fighter, and realized it might be possible, by working from within, to throw a couple of well-placed monkey wrenches into the chief’s political machinery.

The fundraiser idea was a win-win situation. First, the chief needed something like this if he were to have any chance of showing a human side—which even so I doubted he could pull off successfully, if our first meeting was any indication. He might come across as remotely warm and fuzzy in the Sunday supplement, where every word was doctored and every photo staged, but put him in with real people in a real-life situation?

Second, there was no way in hell the chief’s upper-crust supporters would be seen dead in a dump like this without some major cosmetic improvements being made first, which could be of actual benefit to the homeless who used its facilities.

Third, given the very remote possibility they might not see the depth-charge potential of the visual contrast of tuxedos and rags in the same room at the same time, I suspected a lot of the voters would.

Fourth, if they acceded to holding a fundraiser in the shelter but without having to actually be in the same room with anyone not on the city’s social register, it would almost inevitably mean the shelter would have to close down for a short period while the event was being set up and held. In that event, an anonymous tip to the local media on the day of the gala could be devastating to the campaign.

Kevin appeared conflicted.

“Well, Dick, my father is really not accustomed to actually dealing with the public in any numbers. He is a very private person.”

“Kevin,” I said, realizing I might be a little too forward but not really caring, “since I work for the public relations firm charged with doing everything possible to get your father elected, I hope you will allow me to be honest—and blunt.”