Stuart Kaminsky - Poor Butterfly

“He was with you when Miss Bartholomew was attacked, remember?” I said. “Lose him and you lose your alibi.”

“I see what you mean,” he acknowledged, reaching a bony finger to touch an itch just under his nose. “I’ve spent too damn much time alone to make sense. Want a sandwich? I got Prem and stuff in an icebox.”

“No, thanks,” I said. “We’ll be talking again.”

“I’ll practice up for it,” said Raymond with a snaggle-toothed grin.

I was down the second step of the tower when the violin began to play ragtime behind me. I was on the way to the third step when I saw Jesus Ortiz standing in front of me.

“Lost?” I asked pleasantry.

I would have liked an answer, something to bounce off of, but the Deacon Jesus Ortiz did the one thing I would have preferred not to see. He grinned, and the grin was not pretty. His teeth were large and close to white and he looked happy. The bridge of his nose was raw from where it had met the hood of my Crosley the night before. I backed up a step. He didn’t follow.

Behind me Raymond Griffith was playing a Scott Joplin version of “Anything Goes,” no mean trick on a fiddle, but I really couldn’t appreciate it at the time.

Ortiz was wearing a new light gray suit.

“Nice suit,” I tried.

The closest sound I could equate to what Ortiz gave out was the snort of a pregnant seal I once saw in the Griffith Park Zoo.

I backed up. I was running out of back-up room. My back was to Raymond’s door. I reached behind me and knocked as Jesus Ortiz, who had all the time in the world, moved-or rather, hulked-toward me, getting happier with each step. Raymond’s playing grew a little less frenzied.

“What you want?” he called.

“I forgot something,” I said.

“Can’t stop,” Raymond shouted. “The muse has got me.”

There was about five feet of space between Ortiz and me, and through, above, or beyond Raymond’s playing, I could have sworn Ortiz was humming.

There was no room to get past Ortiz, and Raymond was taken by the muse.

“I don’t think Reverend Souvaine would want you …” I began, but Ortiz was shaking his head.

“He would want you to …” I went on.

When Ortiz was close enough to kiss my chin and for me to smell Adam’s Clove on his breath, I threw a right cross to his stomach. He didn’t even bother to block it. My fist hit solid concrete just above the kidney.

I threw a left toward his already tender nose. His shoulder came up and caught the blow. I came up with my right knee. He turned so the kneecap hit his thigh. I was running out of ideas.

Ortiz’s right hand came up and grasped my arm. It did more than hurt.

“You got a mother?” I asked.

He shook his head no.

Raymond stopped playing and complained, “Stop the noise out there, will you? Thirty years I hear nothing but creaking and mice, and wouldn’t you know it, the day I get inspired, a bunch of hooligans set up a circus on my doorstep.”

“Raymond,” I called to him as Ortiz’s left hand came up toward my throat. “Call for help, now.”

“Got no phone,” Raymond bleated. “Got no phone. Got no phone. Told you that. I got nothing in here but what I got in here, and now I don’t have my inspiration.”

Jesus Ortiz’s thick fingers now had a firm grip on my neck, and I was getting a headache. He was definitely humming, but I didn’t know the tune. He pulled my head down to him and put his mouth to my ear.

“I’m gonna pop your eyeballs,” he whispered in a surprisingly high voice.

I took little comfort in the knowledge that he could talk. My head was throbbing.

“Murder,” I gasped.

“Yeah,” he said. “Murder puta .”

“God will …” I groaned.

“God’s will, si ,” he said.

I’ll be truthful here. I’m not sure if Deacon Ortiz would have killed me if Jeremy hadn’t appeared on the landing behind him. Maybe he was just planning to cause me great pain and murder Raymond’s inspiration. But there, over the deacon’s shoulder, I saw Jeremy Butler. I hadn’t heard him come up the stairs.

I did hear the door behind me open and Raymond shout, “Begone!”

Ortiz did not see Jeremy, but he did see something in my eyes-hope of salvation-and he saw that my eyes were looking over his shoulder. Without letting me go, he turned. Raymond saw a bald giant moving forward, noticed that a marble slab of a man was about to strangle me, and hastily closed his door.

“I know you,” Ortiz said to Jeremy.

“Wichita, 1934,” said Jeremy. “Baseball park. You wrestled Man Mountain Dean in the headline.”

Ortiz considered. I began to pass out.

“Butler,” he said. “You wrestled my brother, Jaime. You broke Jaime’s shoulder.”

Jeremy ambled slowly forward and reached up toward Ortiz’s left hand, which was now only vaguely visible to me as I started to pass out.

“Your brother lost control,” Jeremy said. “He tried to kill me.”

“He wasn’t as good as me,” said Jesus with a smile, giving me a little love squeeze so I’d groan and let him know I was still alive.

“No,” said Jeremy, putting his hand on Ortiz’s wrist. “He wasn’t.”

“And you was old then,” Ortiz said, looking at Jeremy’s hand as it began to squeeze his wrist.

“I was old then,” Jeremy admitted. “But I was not at peace, as I am now.”

Ortiz was grinning widely. Raymond began to play again. Only this time the playing was madness. No tune. Just noise. Screeching noise and anger.

I knew Jeremy was getting somewhere in spite of Jesus Ortiz’s grin because I felt the deacon’s fingers loosen. Not much, but enough so I thought I might be approaching a breath.

“Let him go,” Jeremy said softly.

Jesus shook his head no.

Jeremy’s free hand came up, open-palmed and fast. It caught Ortiz on the side of the head. Ortiz didn’t stagger. He did let me go. He did hiss. But he didn’t step back.

“I think I’ll break your shoulder, old man,” he said as I slid back against Raymond’s door.

My hand caught the handle. I turned it and the damned thing opened. I fell into Raymond’s room and heard him shout, “Where the hell is a human being’s right to priv-a-see?”

My head was a mass of pain. I looked up from the floor where I was sitting and saw Jeremy and Ortiz holding hands. They were facing each other, Jeremy’s right grasping Ortiz’s left and his left Ortiz’s right.

“The hell with charity,” cried Raymond, and started a new tune on his fiddle. It sounded a little too much like “After You’ve Gone.”

Jeremy and Ortiz, their fingers locked, began to dance to the music. At least it looked as if they were dancing to the music. My plan was to leap to my feet find something heavy, and crack Ortiz’s skull. That was my plan, but when I tried to get up I slumped back to the floor, my head waming me of certain disaster if I dared to move.

Jeremy and Ortiz waltzed past the door, grunting, trying to keep their faces from turning red. Ortiz continued to grin. Jeremy showed nothing. Mid-tune Raymond changed to a Strauss waltz to make life easier for the dancing bears. On their next pass they fell through the door and tumbled to the floor, almost crushing me.

“I suppose,” said Raymond, continuing to play, “there would be no point in asking you to leave my abode.”

Jeremy hurtled across the room, crushed a fragile-looking, dirty-pink chair. He was rising slowly as Ortiz got to one knee and then lunged, landing on him and sending him tumbling backward into the old Victrola on a rickety table. The Victrola swayed. Ortiz’s fingers found the flower-shaped speaker and ripped it from the machine.

“Oh, oh,” groaned Raymond. “That’ll do it. No more music. No more hospitality. Out you all go.”