The Killing of Butterfly Joe Read online

  — Sounds like he was always headed for trouble.

  — You say ‘was’ like he is no longer with us.

  — This his car?

  — Yes.

  — It ain’t a model I recognize.

  — It’s a Chuick. He gave it to me when I made my first big sale.

  — Not exactly screaming success at ya.

  — Maybe not. But it was reliable. And trustworthy. It got the job done.

  — We found this in the glove box. This belong to you?

  — Yes.

  — You do a lot of cannabis?

  — I smoke to escape, or when I’m stressed. It helps me not think.

  — And were you smoking a lot when you met Mr Bosco?

  — What are you suggesting?

  — Would you say your judgement was impaired, at the time you met Bosco? That you weren’t thinking straight?

  — Possibly. I’d got into my head too much. I was sleeping a lot. Twelve hours some nights. And I had recently lost my father.

  — I’m sorry about that.

  — Don’t be. He was not a pleasant man.

  — You want to take care saying things like that. ‘Honour thy mother and father so that you might live long in the land.’

  — Tell that to Joe. I’m not sure how you honour parents like his.

  — All the same, losing a parent is a big deal. Maybe it affected your judgement.

  — About what?

  — About Joseph Bosco. I mean, I’m finding it hard to understand how you got involved with a guy like that. A man arrested for disturbing the peace in seven states. A man wanted by a government agency. Driving a car like that claiming to be pulling big deals here and there. Seems like a regular huckster. What were you thinking?

  — I already told you. I was looking to see America and I was offered a chance to do that. And I liked him. Infuriating though he was – is. I felt . . . somehow bigger in his company, that life was more interesting. He was a force of nature. And it wasn’t just him either. The whole family was – extraordinary. I got . . . involved. You could say lust had something to do with it. At the beginning. Lust and trying to prove something. And just being caught up in . . . an adventure.

  — Lust for who?

  — His sister.

  — Is that . . . Miss Isabelle Bosco?

  — That was . . . no. I meant his younger sister. Mary-Anne.

  — At what point did you realize what was really going on?

  — With what?

  — With the bugs.

  — Too late, I suppose. Although I don’t know if I ever really knew what was going on. I thought I was ahead of things. But I wasn’t. I think a part of me is still hoping I’ll wake up and discover it was . . . you know.

  — A dream?

  — Not real.

  — Well. It’s real, Mr Jones. As real as you and me sitting here in this cell. And we’re gonna need you to remember as much as you can. Get your statement clear. Get your story straight. You owe your future to it. I see you made a start.

  — Yes. Although I’m maybe giving too much detail. I don’t know.

  — If it’s relevant to the case, write it down. Some say the Devil’s in the detail but I’m inclined to think it’s the Lord who has a preference for exactitude in the small things. In the end it’s the details that will save you, Mr Jones.

  II.

  So Butterfly Joe said:

  ‘Drink up your tea

  Leave your book

  And follow me.

  The story’s out there

  You oughta know

  The time is now

  And we gotta go.’

  So I dried my quill

  Broke off my labours

  Hit The Road

  And took its favours.

  Freshly named and re-baptized

  I drove to a mansion

  ’Neath burning skies.

  I faced a test

  (Which I survived)

  I looked a monster

  In the eye.

  Then given the choice

  ’Tween woman and girl

  I took the oats

  And saved the pearl.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In which I meet Joe’s family and face ‘a test’.

  Joe’s home was more than a mansion.

  ‘Wow.’

  He was giggling at my response. ‘Isn’t it great?’

  ‘It’s . . . extraordinary.’

  ‘Not what you expected, huh?’

  It wasn’t what I expected. It was probably the first (it wouldn’t be the last) instance of reality matching Joe’s hyperbole. The house was a Frankenstein of inspirations – Scottish hunting lodges, Victorian English museums, French châteaux, Welsh castles. There were jalopies lined up against a tumbling orchard wall. I could see Chuick parked up next to what must have been the rest of the Buick that had supplied its front; there was a flatbed Ford pick-up and a Chevy Camaro Z28 on blocks. The whole premises combined a faded Gothic grandeur with the whiff of hick, neither quite winning.

  The dogs, meanwhile, were jumping up on my side of the car and Joe wasn’t exactly encouraging them to calm down. ‘Hey dogs, say hello to Rip! They won’t bite ya! Once they know you’re family.’

  The dogs didn’t look or sound convinced and neither was I.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘They’ll be licking your face tomorrow. Eli, why don’t you tie them up.’

  I waited while Eli led the mutts towards some outbuildings and then I followed Joe towards the house where an elegant young woman and an impish black girl appeared on the veranda. The little girl hop-scotched down the stone steps, leaping into Joe’s arms and hugging him with fierce affection.

  ‘Hey, Ceelee. Say hi to Rip.’

  ‘Hi, Rip.’

  ‘Rip, this is Celeste. She’s a little cuddle monster.’ Celeste was like a fairy-elf: white frock, grown-out Afro, bare feet. When Joe set her down she started touching my shirt, poking me to see if I was real, pulling at my hands, then hugging me as though she’d known me a lifetime. The young woman was less enthusiastic with her welcome. She put out a hand to call the little limpet off: ‘Ceelee, leave the man be. I’m sorry. She hugs anything that moves!’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I said, but the limpet obeyed the instruction and let go before running off.

  ‘Rip, this is Isabelle. Izzy, meet the new Head of Sales and Marketing.’

  Joe had described Isabelle as the serious-minded one in the family and I gave her my most serious-minded look. We made little head-bows of hello to each other.

  ‘Rip’s here to help bring beauty and joy to the world.’

  ‘That’s a fine ambition,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not sure it’s my ambition.’ I didn’t want her thinking I was easily led, or incapable of independent thought.

  ‘What is your ambition?’ she asked. It seemed a little early in the day for such a question but I felt the need to justify myself and impress her.

  ‘Rip’s going to be a writer,’ Joe bawled. ‘He’s gonna write a book about his adventures with me!’

  Whenever Joe told people of my ambition to be a writer, I felt the push and pull of opposing emotions: I wish you wouldn’t say that but I’m glad you did!

  ‘Joe’s usually able to make everyone else’s ambitions serve his own,’ Isabelle said in a calm, un-judgemental way that sounded perfectly true.

  ‘Aw, that’s not fair!’ Joe protested, feeling no offence whatsoever. He was looking at something in the house, upstairs. ‘Is the volcano ready to spew?’

  A figure stood at the window looking out, watching us.

  ‘She’s been simmering all week. You’ll have a hard time talking her down today.’

  ‘You show Rip around. I’ll go deal with her. What’s for dinner?’

  ‘Clay’s doing moose burgers with corn bread.’

  ‘Moose! You ever had moose, Rip? It’s something. Like the tenderest beef. We need to put some muscle on you.
Get you combat-ready.’

  I wanted to follow him, just to see what it was he had to do to talk his mother down.

  ‘Do you have any luggage?’

  ‘It’s in the trunk.’

  ‘I’ll have Clay bring it to your room. Shall we go in?’

  Elegant-gangly, olive-skinned Isabelle was more obviously Joe’s sister than Mary-Anne. Like him, her face was not pleasing in particulars but there was beauty in overall effect. In personality, however, she was still waters to his mad rapids. She had a gentle disposition and was languid of movement and speech; qualities the noisy people around her served to amplify. Even so, as she began her tour, I was wondering where the wild sister was.

  We entered the house through the door-less doorway to what was once the main hall. Broken fittings and fixtures lay all around, a grounded chandelier, a rack of wooden skis, the head of a stag. The house had history but the customizations of its current inhabitants gave it a futuristic, post-apocalyptic feel. It was like entering the headquarters of some survivalist remnant set on re-making the world. A carpenter’s workbench had been set up near the gaping windows and a window frame was waiting to be set.

  ‘Joe wants to restore it all. He’s hoping we will be able to buy this place one day. For now we live upstairs.’

  ‘Joe said you were “borrowing” the house?’

  ‘Yes. He did a deal with a collector. He sold a set of rarities from our collection.’

  ‘Wow. They’re that valuable?’

  Isabelle nodded, but made it clear that she did not want to discuss this further by ushering me onward towards the staircase. The stairs were bare wood but became carpeted at the turn to the first floor. The burgundy and gold pile faded to brown and yellows and was patterned with what I assumed to be a family crest – pistols and doves.

  ‘The bedrooms are on the next floor. We’ll probably put you in Ceelee’s room – in the attic. I need to tidy it for you. Let me show you the factory.’

  I followed her along the landing and entered a vast room through double doors. I was hit by a smell of dried flowers and naphthalene that made me sniff and blow.

  ‘This is where we make the cases. You get used to the smell.’

  The wood-panelled room had a full-length snooker table with retractable light box over the baize. The table itself had been converted to ‘factory floor’; it was laid with all that was required to make a butterfly case: butterflies, glass, silicon tubes, dried flowers and driftwood.

  ‘We stopped production for a while because we ran out of driftwood but we just had a fresh delivery. Clay collected this from the Finger Lakes.’ Driftwood had been dumped in a pyre-sized pyramid in the alcove where there were two large baskets either side of the pile. Isabelle went over and picked a piece from the pile. ‘We separate the rough from the smooth.’ She felt the piece to gauge the rub then handed it to me.

  ‘Smooth?’

  ‘That’s actually a “rough”.’ She pointed to the appropriate basket and I tossed it in.

  ‘Is this what you all do, full time?’

  ‘We all contribute. Joe does the selling. Ma used to sell too but she mainly does the bookkeeping and the running of the business now. Mary sells too and she likes to drive. You met Mary already, right?’

  ‘I . . . saw her. Briefly.’

  ‘I’m sure she made an impression.’

  ‘Well, she was naked. I tried not to look’

  ‘If there’s something Mary cannot abide it is not being looked at.’ Isabelle blushed at her bad-mouthing of Mary; she then muttered something as though inwardly castigating herself for it.

  ‘What about you? Don’t you sell?’

  ‘I am a terrible sales person.’ Her voice had a tiny vibration, and the smallest tremor was perceivable in her hand. ‘I help with the production of the cases and the administration but I mainly look after the Collection.’

  ‘I hope you’ll show me.’

  She nodded, withholding full endorsement.

  ‘Do you have other ambitions – beyond butterflies?’

  ‘I am hoping to go to university. A bit late, but I had to delay things. ’Cos of Ma and . . . well, financially.’

  ‘What are you going to study?’

  ‘I’d like to do European Literature. Majoring in the Russians. What about you? Joe told me you graduated already.’

  ‘I did Classical Studies. Fat lot of use it’s been so far. My father was right about that.’

  ‘All that thinking. Some of it must have rubbed off.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Joe described you as Britain’s greatest salesman.’

  ‘Of course!’ I said and we both laughed, finding common ground in our understanding of Joe.

  ‘He also said you were someone looking for meaning.’

  I was amazed Joe had thought this let alone described me in such a way. ‘I’m not sure there is any to be found in this life.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why he said it.’

  She led me to an adjacent room, an antechamber where men must have once smoked cigars whilst plotting new ways to exploit the masses.

  ‘We call this the Operations Room.’

  A huge map of the United States was laid out on a table. It was the kind of map a five-star general might pore over whilst plotting a great campaign. Different-coloured pins – the pins used to pierce the thoraxes of butterflies – pierced towns, cities and states. A cluster of pins along the eastern seaboard and Great Lakes area gave the impression of a beachhead established. There were also random, single pins in some of the big cities elsewhere – San Francisco, Dallas, Denver, Santa Fe, Phoenix, Seattle (there was even a pin in Anchorage, Alaska).

  ‘The black pins mark places where we have sold butterflies. The red pins indicate repeat orders. Those are important.’ The south and east were well pinned but the west was largely butterfly-free. ‘Joe’s ambition is to have a pin in every state and a butterfly case in every home by the end of the century.’

  ‘Thirteen years. Do you think that’s possible?’

  ‘My brother gets these giant ideas. Sometimes you have to tie him down, like Gulliver. He’s not a bad person but his eagerness can create casualties. He needs people around him to keep him grounded.’

  Isabelle looked at me carefully, as if to make sure I’d understood this. Yes, I was here to help sell butterflies but my real job was hammering Lilliputian guy-ropes into the earth to keep the giant from hurting himself and crushing others.

  ‘How do you do that?’

  ‘We all try. In our different ways. Ma shouts at him – as you’ll hear. Any second now, I guarantee. I try to catch him when he’s still. Which is not easy these days as he’s always on the move. Mary just laughs at him.’

  ‘What’s in there?’ I asked, pointing to the door at the other end of the ‘office’.

  ‘That’s the library. It’s where we keep the Collection.’

  Yelled expletives from above cut across our dialogue and saved my blushes. It sounded as if Joe’s mother was giving him both barrels of her sawn-off swear-gun.

  ‘Why do you go and do that? Fucking ape! I already got bills enough.’

  Isabelle looked at me with concern. ‘Joe did tell you about Ma, yes?’

  ‘He said she has a temper. But that she can also be sweet.’

  She nodded. ‘Did he tell you anything else?’

  ‘He told me the family history. About – the fire and the divorce.’

  Isabelle still seemed to want to verify something but the exchange between Joe and his mother became even more audible. And it was now clear they were talking about me.

  ‘He’s here to help us, Ma. Super-smart and literary. Great salesman. Wait till you hear his voice.’

  ‘I’m not paying him a cent. We got an army to feed here. I’m here all day while you gallivant.’

  ‘I’m not gallivanting! I’m working hard. Goddamn it! Who do you think is bringing in the money here?’

  ‘Don’t you swear at me, you godd
amned sonofabitch!’

  ‘Well I am that!’

  ‘You cock-sucking bastard!’

  ‘Well you know I’m not that!’

  ‘You may as well be. For all I care. You may as well be. Asshole!’

  ‘Count to sixty, Ma. Come on. I want you to come downstairs. Come and meet Rip.’

  ‘I saw him already. He looks lame.’

  ‘Come on. He’s gonna help us. He speaks nice. He’s got charm and will help get me in front of some people. And he writes nice.’

  ‘He looks like a punk. A useless punk.’

  Being conventional in dress and moderate in attitude, I liked the sound of being a punk, even a useless one, but Isabelle was embarrassed for me and waved off the description. ‘Take no notice.’

  ‘Sixty, Ma, come on. That’s it . . . there . . . that’s it.’

  It went quiet then.

  ‘When she’s bad, Joe’s the only one who can get through to her and help her get back to herself. It’s OK. The swearing is a kind of tic. When you see her she’ll be a different person. She’ll be like the First Lady meeting the King of England.’

  As it was, Edith Bosco’s etiquette was not the most challenging thing I had to face. Why hadn’t Joe told me what so obviously should have been mentioned? Was it that, after nearly twenty years, he’d grown oblivious to it and was unable to see what would strike anyone else were they meeting her for the first time? She entered the room with one hand crooked through Joe’s arm and her other using a cane for support; such a picture of maternal and filial respect that it was hard to believe they’d been at each other’s throats just minutes before. Joe didn’t even give me a helpful ‘yes I know this must be quite a shock for you’ look. He simply said: ‘Rip. This is Ma. Ma, this is Rip.’

  Edith Bosco’s face was disfigured, the scar tissue and skin grafts forming ridges on one side of her face, one of her eyes a dead black glass, one half of her nose rebuilt. I could see straightaway that even this must have been a miracle of reconstruction and that time had allowed some settling and natural regeneration, but not even two decades of plastic surgery and natural healing could disguise the grotesque.

  This must be the little test, I thought. Don’t look away. Don’t stare too much. Look her in the eye. Look her in the good eye. An eye she used to model.