Hog Butcher: 2nd Edition

  Hog Butcher

  Andrew Sutherland

  Copyright © 2016 Author Name

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1537007915

  ISBN-10:1537007912

  2nd Edition

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to the idea that you can, indeed, go home.

  There are people who love you

  Your past is your past

  You fit in somewhere.

  You belong.

  Cover art for Hog Butcher by J.D. Sutherland.

  A BRIEF NOTE:

  This is a second edition. Why a second edition so close to the release of a first? Because I screwed up and trusted someone to edit this book. I hired someone incompetent after getting a good recommendation from a professional source. I was opening a show (I still act) and in my rush to produce, I didn’t check the editor’s work in todo. The result was one of the worst proof reading hatchet jobs to ever grace the blessed floors of Amazon. I hope you find my sins forgivable and my book sound.

  Nothing is more important than your patronage. For that, I thank you and I salute you. Independent publishing is HARD work. You have taken the first step in showing your support. If you would be so kind, I would ask one small favor. When you are done reading this tale of love and carnage, if you could submit a “star rating” or, better yet, a review on Amazon. The reviews are priceless in spreading the word about the worth (or lack thereof) of any book you buy on that platform. So, I am asking you for a little more help. In return, I will write more about Al, Petunia, and his adventures in whatever city comes up next… it might even be your own. Many thanks and good reading! ACS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have taken liberties with your city, Chicago. Joliet closed in 2002. I reopened it. I also have tried to keep things geographically realistic, though I may have taken a liberty (or several) there as well. Please accept my apology, and I hope my unremitting (and obvious) fondness for you will partially redeem me as a former tenant of your great city.

  Thanks to the hard work of the multiple people who have contributed wittingly or unwittingly. My beta readers: Jerry, Kim, Eleanore, Stefani, Lars, Kate and especially Sean. I would also like to acknowledge the unending and gargantuan love I get from so many people every day. I keep my chin up because literally hundreds of people help me do so. To my children Ellie, Joe and Sammy; my parents; and my extended family, I say thank you, though I know it isn’t enough. Jefferey and Pattey, you are in my heart.

  Lastly, to Little Billy, who helped me to own the ground beneath my feet and to never leave my fight on the road.

  DISCLAIMER

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.

  Hog Butcher for the World,

  Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

  Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;

  Stormy, husky, brawling,

  City of the Big Shoulders…

  From the poem “Chicago”

  By Carl Sandburg

  1

  Marty Mitchell was in an ill temper. He had been awakened by a phone call from the local police regarding an actor in his employ. He had worked off and on with a core group of actors over the last ten years. This fellow was one of his regular actors.

  Theatre folk tended to work with people they knew. For a director and producer of one of the more successful theatres in Chicago, hiring people who had not been proven reliable was an unaffordable luxury. Casting an unknown actor in a leading role was asking the devil to spit in his face. Marty didn’t need that kind of problem.

  He was currently producing Macbeth at a theatre in the Windy City. It was a reputable theatre with a long history of mounting Shakespearean productions that had a vim and vigor usually relegated to companies producing modern, cutting-edge dramas like those written by Sam Shepard or David Mamet. Marty was up to the task and had a top-notch cast and crew working to make his dream a reality. He had cast an old friend as the title character. The man was large, muscular and imposing. His work with text was second only to his work with a broadsword. He could tell a story with the ringing of steel that many only hoped they could accomplish with the spoken word. Most of them fell short of the mark.

  They’d met in high school. Marty had started a small, fledgling company with a handful of friends who all, eventually, went off to pursue further training in theatre. Almost all of them had come back to the broad-shouldered home of the Bears, Bulls, and bratwurst. Marty had stayed put. His little theater made enough money for him not to starve. He was an entrepreneur who managed to keep the lights on and paid most of his bills on time…some were a month late, but he always kept the home fires burning.

  The fellow playing the title role, Dirk Vanderbeek, was an old friend and a predatory douche bag. His idea of a good time was seducing a very young girl (that age being eighteen and legal as compared to Dirk’s forty-plus years) then promptly forgetting her name and number after the deed was done.

  The phone call had come from a detective Marlon “Bud” Smythe of the Chicago Police Department. Apparently, Mr. Vanderbeek (whose real name was Ralph Snider) had been working in the theatre space after everyone else had gone to their respective domiciles. Vanderbeek had a key to the building, and liked to come in during his down time to run the fight choreography alone at a painfully slow pace. He thought his accuracy with a blade might still help him to acquire a career as an action star in some television or film project. It was misguided logic, but it was how he chose to live his life.

  “Mr. Mitchell, this is Detective Smythe of the Chicago Police Department. I’m afraid we have some bad news regarding one of your actors…a Mr. Vanderbeek.”

  Mitchell immediately thought old Dirk had been caught dipping his wick into someone who was, as of yet, not old enough to vote.

  “I’ll help if I can. We at Wildhorse Productions have very little control of what our actors do in their down time. We run a theatre, not people’s lives.” It was the kind of boilerplate party-line statement that he thought officials would want to hear. He was beginning to regret the two Vicodin he had taken with his evening martini.

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, but it seems that Mr. Vanderbeek was in the theatre tonight after rehearsal. I assume that is OK?”

  Marty was getting tired of the official foreplay. He wanted to get to the situational punchline and start to work on damage control. As soon as he was off the phone with this dimwit, he’d call Frieda, his “Girl Friday,” and get all of this sorted out. If Dirk had just dangled his weenie in front of some high school sophomore, Mitch would get the situation controlled by the close of business tomorrow. He had a fucking show to open in twenty days, and the suspense was killing him. He reached for the Di-gel he kept on his nightstand. That fucking Dirk could ruin a wet dream. “It is perfectly fine for Dirk to be in after hours. If something tawdry happened at the Majestic after hours, I am sure we can get it figured out. We have a fairly generous contingency budget.” He could feel his jaw rambling relentlessly onward thanks to the Vicodin and vodka cocktail he’d had before lights-out.

  “Hey, pal, keep your wallet in your pocket. Matter of fact, grab your wallet, pants, a jacket, and whatever else you need and shag your ass down to the theatre. It appears that Dirk impaled himself on a four foot piece of steel.”

  Marty’s mouth went dry. He could feel this shit going south in a hurry. “Steel? A sword?”

  “Doesn’t look like a toothpick.”

  “You mean to say Dirk is…?�
� his voice trailed off.

  “Yeah, man. Dirk is dead as hell. Come down and we’ll figure this out. To tell you the truth, I don’t know shit about theatre. The sword looks real…and deadly.” Marty knew that theatrical swords, to the untrained eye, looked dangerous. “It looks like he was moving around with the blade and somehow impaled himself on the fucker.”

  “And you’re sure he’s dead?” He knew Dirk’s prowess with the weapon in question, with most weapons, and found this hard to believe.

  “Unless you theatre geniuses have a way to appear dead with a piece of steel puncturing your aorta and not actually be dead, yeah, I’d say he’s long gone.”

  “I’ll be down straightaway. I need to call a cab. I had a martini before retiring to bed, and I don’t want to get in any problems with the law.”

  “I’ll do you one better, sport. I’m sending a squad car over to give you a lift to the theatre then probably to the station to make a statement.”

  “How long will all this be? If he’s dead, I’m going to have a mountain of paperwork to do before tomorrow night’s rehearsal.”

  Detective Smythe gave less than half a shit about this guy’s paperwork. The man’s attitude was cold, callous, and devoid of any empathy Smythe could detect. Bud was supposed to be off work a half an hour ago, spooning with his wife and playing peek-a-boo with his eighteen-month-old kid. A small bubble of rage floated, champagne-like, from inside his belly. “Listen, buddy. You aren’t even ruled out as a suspect yet, so don’t hold your breath, and if you give me any lip, I’ll make sure this lasts well into tomorrow. Capiche?”

  “I’ll be ready in five minutes. Have them buzz my buzzer and I’ll come down. I’ll see you shortly.” Buzz my buzzer? As Marty hung up, he knew he would need some coffee to get him at least part of the way to alert.

  So here it was. In less than three weeks, they were going to be opening to a huge house of tourists, everyone in to see the Bard on the Boardwalk. He got out of bed, jumped in a cold shower, and had just enough time to throw on his duds before the apartment buzzer squawked and he was off to do damage control. He thought he could manage a quick fix to this situation, but he was going to have to call in a favor from a very old friend.

  2

  Al pushed the door of Party Tyme Doughnuts open, and the cowbell rang with enthusiasm. This made him grin broadly. He loved the cowbell. He loved the whole joint. He loved the smell, the atmosphere, but mostly, he loved the fact that he was the silent owner of this little slice of high-cholesterol heaven.

  He and Scotty Mac had bought the place from some guy who had planned to make it into a Starbucks. A fucking Starbucks…shoot me now. At first, the guy didn’t want to sell, but somehow, Scotty Mac’s own particular brand of negotiation had won out. He started to tell Al how he’d done it, but Al waved him off and said, “Hey, man. Plausible deniability.”

  Scotty Mac had been a friend of Al’s for years. He was a large man, with a huge head and a unique sense of right and wrong. They had done a little of everything with each other. Last year, they had gone to Anguilla together to save Scotty Mac’s daughter Lisa from a life of human trafficking. Lots of people who needed killing died. Some who should have lived joined the killing orgy. It was a clusterfuck of the first order, but they saved Lisa and got filthy rich in the bargain.

  “Hullo, Charlene.” Al said as he saw the young lady at the register. Customer volume had increased at the joint, and Al figured it would make Mae happy to have someone to boss around. Mae had been the head and only waitress for the last twenty years. Al had done the initial interviews. When he met Charlene, he took a shine to her. Shortly after they met, a freak paperwork SNAFU had caused all of the other applications to disappear. They hired Charlene.

  “Hiya, big man!” Charlene ran around the counter and gave Al a big hug. She was like one of the Care Bears. He simultaneously wanted to hug, cuddle, and punch her. She was way too cute to handle before he’d had coffee. “Can I get you anything?”

  “I’ll get it. Just coffee.” Al liked the new power he possessed, power that allowed him to walk behind the counter at the little greasy spoon with impunity. He almost always did it when Mae wasn’t looking. She was scary with her tattooed on eyebrows and “go-thither” stare.

  “Hey Boss!” It was Sid, Zen master of the world’s oldest flat top griddle. Sid had six orders of hash browns, a dozen rashers of bacon, and two cheeseburgers on it, and had just put four sunny side eggs next to each other in the front. It was magical.

  “Hey, Slick, why don’t you shuck your tail to the other side of the counter?” It was Mae. “I gotta make more goddamn apple fritters. Since you took this place over, I make those things all the time.” Mae made all the fried goods at Party Tyme. Al would have killed or fired her if she wasn’t such a great fryer of dough.

  “I’m moving,” said Al as his cell phone started playing the theme music from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. It was his current ringtone for unassigned callers. He had personalized the important people in his life with their own ring tones. Scotty Mac got “Bad to the Bone”; Trevor (arms-dealer extraordinaire), “Santeria”; his dad and mom got a Gaelic ditty, “Boulevogue.” The one ringing now was for first-time callers. The name on the caller ID read “Unknown.”

  Al headed out the front door. “Al McNair Investigations. This is Al. To whom am I speaking?” It was a gorgeous spring day. Motorcycle weather all the way.

  “Alistair, this is Marty Mitchell…from Chicago.”

  Marty fucking Mitchell. Someone had surely died. “Wow. Blast from the past. What’s up, Hoover? Who died?”

  “Please don’t call me Hoover, Al.” Al had once walked into a men’s room and found Marty orally servicing three well-dressed men. This was in the early days of Wildhorse Productions. They were in a shitty theatre and all had day jobs to make ends meet. Day jobs and blow jobs. The next day, Al had called him Hoover. When someone asked him why, Al explained that he had seen Marty doing copious amounts of coke in the men’s room; really sucking it down was how he put it.

  “Sorry, Martin. Haven’t spoken with you in a coon’s age. What do you need?”

  “Why do you think I need something?”

  “Because you called. I haven’t talked to you in…” Al did the math. “Almost twenty years.” Al and Marty had met right after Al had moved to Chicago after graduate school. He was a little fish in a huge pond then. Since the bad old days, Marty had become something of a Chicago legend. He regularly employed a large group of actors that Al had worked with at one time or another, when the world was young and being an actor still made some kind of lunatic sense to him.

  “Phones work both ways, Al.”

  “You called me. And don’t get bitchy, or the answer to whatever you ask will be no.”

  There was a silence on the other end of the line. Finally, Marty said, “People call me Marty these days. I wish you would do the same. I do need something, but I need to ask you a couple of questions first.”

  “This sounds like the interview that proceeds the question.” Al knew what questions were coming but not why they would be asked.

  “First, I took the liberty of doing some research on you. My administrative assistant checked you out on Facebook.” At some point in distant memory, Marty had sent Al a friend request. Al remembered being drunk and pushing “accept” mostly out of nostalgia.

  “Well gee, Marty, that’s like two steps from being vetted by the CIA.”

  “Don’t be a dick, Al, OK?”

  “OK. Sorry. Proceed.”

  “Frieda, my assistant, said you seem to be in good shape. You look healthy. She actually said you looked massive. She also found your Private Eye ads in Sacramento. The last I heard, you were teaching at a university. You were on some kind of meteoric rise in the world of mediocrity. She looked up some photos of you from that era. She said you looked decidedly unhealthy. She used a similar word to massive, but it had slightly different connotations. I think she said something about �
��fat-fuck.’ You haven’t been on stage in a long time, unless you’re scabbing. You’re still paid up and active in Actor’s Equity of America. I checked with them. No recent work records.” Actors’ Equity of America--AEA--was the professional union for live stage actors. There were some theatres you couldn’t work in unless you were AEA. Likewise, there were plenty of theatres you couldn’t work in if you were a member. Unions. It was just more of the bullshit that was part of live theatre. Al didn’t miss it. At least, he didn’t miss it much.

  “Sounds to me like she’s a first-class sleuth. If she needs a job, I’m looking for an assistant.” He was lying. Al didn’t want an assistant, but he was enjoying this little mystery.

  “So tell me a story, Al. How did a guy who was one of the best actors I’ve worked with, a guy that could move well, fight like a tiger, make you fall in love with him every night, end up a PI in a one-horse burg in California?”

  “We have two horses…and happen to be the state’s capitol. I went through an ugly divorce. I started partying like the old days and I needed to get out. Out of the fantasy world, out of theatre, out of alcohol and drugs, out of the life. I bummed around, started lifting weights and eating right, I still do tai chi, and still love swords. Someone suggested I become a private eye. I tried it. I like it. I hope that story was worth your nickel.”

  “Still know Macbeth?”

  “Which part?”

  “The part of Macbeth. By the way, do you still know all the lines from the show?” It was an old joke. Al had often memorized entire scripts for shows he was involved with.

  “Not right now. I could probably be word-perfect on the whole thing in five days or so. Why? Is there going to be a pop quiz?”

  “That depends. You want to come to Chicago and do a show?”