ROBBER'S DANCE: THE BUTCH MATSON STORY
He never told Father Cleary to go fuck himself and this was, for the majority of his life, one of his top two greatest regrets – the other being a hankering for smothered pork chops one summer night in '38, but we'll get to that in due course. Butch's restraint in regards to the old priest had nothing to do with Cleary's supposed piety and it certainly had nothing to do with fear of any divine reprisals, Butch just didn't cuss is all. Understand, Butch was no prude, he had a connoisseur's appreciation for the fine art of swearing, enjoying each colorful variation those in his circle would use - shitfucker, for instance, being a favorite, never failing to make Butch crack one of his retarded gap-toothed grins. But Butch left the cussing to his friends and acquaintances; for him it was a temptation quickly snuffed by the echo of one the clearest memories he had of his long dead daddy. He was six, maybe seven, and his old man was still a handful of years from his date with St. Peter, when Butch had told his father that their dinner of cabbage stew tasted like "shit." Wilkie Matson's fist, a red-skinned brick of calluses and bone, sent the boy from his stool to the rough wooden floor with a grain sack thud. When Butch woke up later that night he found his jaw painfully throbbing and his mouth shut by one of his father's handkerchiefs wrapped from chin to crown and tied in a tight bow. "That'll be your jaw that's broken there. Aye, broke good," his father had grumbled in his strange, fluctuating accent – sometimes Scottish Highlands, sometimes lower East side, "you'll be sippin' soup fer a good while. 'F nothin' else, ya won't be able to open your mouth an' give out such trash as ya did. Ya think about that, Butchie."
They weren't the plushest of times for the Matsons and there wasn't enough in the coffers for a doctor's visit, so Butch sipped broth for weeks, missing school and wasting away. But he healed as young kids can, not much worse off other than a distorted jawline that widened his face something like an ape's. Once he was able to, he started to eat like an ape as well, soon gaining all his weight back and the start of some of his muscle. He was never going to win any beauty contests, but that was okay with Butch.
He never talked much about those early years in his old man's clapboard shack but it's reasonable to assume that there were more bruises than laughs. However, on those rare instances Butch did wax nostalgic, the church was mentioned often and, according to those who were privy to these reminiscences, he never smiled when he did so.
"I guess you coulda called him a Catholic," Paulie Hearn, an early partner in crime, recalled, "But it wasn't no comfortable fit. He didn't bend his knee easily, see, an' that's what they was teachin' him to do at St. Alphonse."
St. Alphonse's was the Matson family house of worship, its iron-fenced boneyard was where Butch's mother slept free of earthly cares and Wilkie's snoring. But the only impression all those childhood masses and sermons left on Butch was "a bunch of standing an' sitting an' kneeling and trying to feel bad about whatever they told you you were supposed to feel bad about."
The Roman Catholic church, as you may have gathered, was no guiding light in Butch's life. As a child he listened restlessly to the stories of Jericho's walls, lions' dens, parted seas, virgin births and the risen dead and it all made about as much sense to him as Santa Claus and Paul Bunyan. He was a kid of the waterfront, a first generation immigrant with a worm's eye view of the way things worked in the real world, he'd believe in such things if and only if he saw it with his own two eyes - and even then he'd get his eyes checked. And as for getting into Heaven? The rules as he understood them were way too strict, the chances for actual reward in the Hereafter seemed slight. Butch had it drilled into him that the virtuous and meek were rewarded and that the unrepentant sinner would be punished for all eternity, but he took a look around himself. He saw the men that everyone else labeled as wicked and godless - the men in the big cars, the ones eating at all the posh joints, always in the company of gorgeous dames - and they looked to be having a great time. Heaven, so Butch came to feel, was a sucker bet, a stacked deck in the house's favor, and he hated how faith in such a fantasy turned his father, a wall of a man, into a weeping penitent for one day out of the week but didn't do anything to prevent him from being a prick the other six.
But it was Father Cleary, his childhood priest, who earned the lion's share of Butch's ire and not just because the "potato-eating son of a beeswax," as Butch was known to say, had boxed his ear for giggling during his own confirmation. There was just something about the man's act that rang false as a tin bell for Butch. To a precocious cynic like young Butch, this priest in his robes peddling fairy stories to the desperate and poor while running through his well-rehearsed gestures - the spread hands of supplication complete with raised eyes that marked the climax of each and every sermon - just came off like a cheap stage magician. It was all show and it pissed Butch off how all the grownups around him bought into it. He would sit in his pew mutely seething as he studied Cleary's face, eyes lifted to the rafters as if he could see beyond them, gazing upon wonders that nobody else could. Butch knew there was nothing up there to see. So it was that he wrote off Father Cleary, Christianity and the whole of religion as "a big steamin' crock of hooey." Though, it must be stated, he never had the nerve to say as much to his father.
When Wilkie died in the winter of '21, the result of a drunken stumble off the Pier 15 boardwalk, it was a difficult time for Butch, difficult mainly because the kid couldn't find it in his heart to feel the slightest bit sad. All he could see was that the man who had spent thirteen years pounding him for offenses real and imagined, the man who made him direct his nightly prayers to pictures of two women he'd never met - the Virgin Mary and his own mother - was gone. Over the following week there were visits from work buddies of his father, big mumbling men who spent their time in the Matson shanty eyeing the walls and floor and blankly offering Butch condolences consisting of variations on the phrases, "Your old man was solid," and "Stand up joe, your pop." The ladies of St. Alphonse's would also appear at the door, clucking their tongues and bearing covered dishes. They each promised to check up on Butch regularly to make sure the poor orphan boy was all right. Butch knew they wouldn't and he didn't care. He just gorged himself on the free eats and thought to himself what a swell racket grieving was.
The funeral took place on a bright, ball-shrinking day in January. It was a quiet thing, just a handful of mourners, Butch and Father Cleary. The priest offered up the usual ponderous old saws about the corruption of the flesh and the sanctity of the spirit and then he asked those present to bow their heads in prayer.
"Heavenly Father of us all," Cleary began, not noticing that the son of the departed was the only one gathered who hadn't dropped his chin, that was in fact staring coldly at the priest, "receive unto Your bosom the soul of Your servant Wilkie Clement Matson."
Watching Cleary's eyes search the heavens, palms raised to the milky white skies, Butch, vaguely ridiculous looking in a wrinkled, cast-off suit of his father's, trembled from an irrational rage as the old priest blathered on. "Forgive him his multitudinous sins and welcome him into the glorious reward that awaits all who have washed in the blood of Your blessed and only Son, who paid for the transgressions of the world with his suffering and death that we may be ransomed from the grave. Hear us, O Lord-"
"Who the heck d'ya think you're talkin' to?"
Cleary's response to Butch's question was the same as he would have had to a particularly nasty fart in his vicinity. His head jerked back and he blinked a few times as if unsure if he had just been intentionally insulted. "I'm sorry – what was that, my son?"
His voice sinking to a deadly tone that would serve him well in later life, Butch reiterated slowly, "Who – the heck – are you – talkin' to, old man?" He jabbed a finger at the clouds above, "There ain't nothin' up there but birds 'n' planes. You know it an' I know it so cut the goshdarned show already."
The acidic words of the boy caused a near apoplectic reaction in the priest. He pinned Butch with the point of one spindly index finger, "What I do know, Butch Matson, is that you're on a slippery slope to Perdition with your disrespect and blasphemy! It's a blessing that your father isn't alive to see you behaving like a – a back alley reprobate!"
Butch took a half-step forward and Cleary took a full step back; the boy was already big enough at thirteen to intimidate. And this was the moment that Butch, in hindsight, regretted having not told the priest to go fuck himself. Oh, the urge was there and the words fairly shouted through his expression, but that morning in front of Wilkie's plain wooden box, Butch Matson just glared at Father Cleary and then turned on his heel, leaving his father's bones and his faith behind forever. Though it would make some of his Irish Catholic colleagues uncomfortable, Butch became fond of saying, "Any sucker who walks around lookin' to the sky for help is likely gonna fall in the nearest open manhole."
Speaking of the Irish, Butch had always mixed well with them. He was from their neighborhood and was crafty enough to respect their boundaries when sneak-thieving and rolling drunks for the nickels and dimes that kept him alive in those early orphan days. A big and fearless kid, Butch caught the notice of the Irish gangs, specifically the Hobs Bay Boys with whom he soon fell in. "Like a true son of Erin, he was," remembered ex-gang member Thomas Trelawney, "He could drink as much as any of us, could sing just as bad as any of us, and he could break a Louisville Slugger across some poor schmoe's kisser like nobody's business." And anybody who felt the urge to mock the broad-shouldered kid's refusal to curse like a grownup was quick to heed the cautionary tale of Dan O'Brien.
"Dashing" Dan O'Brien was the Hobs Bay Boys' answer to Douglas Fairbanks - athletic, handsome and with a smile that made practically every female within fifty feet drop their bloomers and spread. Being that blessed made Dan a mite cocky. During a dice game in which young Butch crapped out and exclaimed, "Fudge it! Fudge it all rotten," Dan snorted and proceeded to offer in unflattering imitation:
"Gee willikers! Ain't that a sunnuva biscuit-eater!"
Without a word, Butch grabbed up a rotted plank of 2x4 studded with rusted nails and beat "Dashing" Dan into the hospital and a new nickname. Once he relearned how to talk, "Toothless" Dan O'Brien would've been the first to warn you to never get on Butch's bad side.
Butch's reputation grew while he worked as unquestioning muscle for the Hobs Bay Boys. He could do - and did - any task set him, showing a talent for both violence and slipperiness. He put the beat-down on welchers, he greased the palms of beat cops, he organized raids on rivals' warehouses, he iced whoever needed icing. And the most remarkable part of this grim résumé, he always got away scot free. In his criminal career he'd only spent three months in a juvenile facility for shoplifting and two nights in jail for carrying an unregistered firearm. His talents and luck didn't go unnoticed. In the vacuum left behind when Jimmy "The Lilac" Feeny was found in the window of his mother's flower shop with his throat slit from ear to ear and then some, Butch stepped up into the big chair with no dissension in the ranks which, in and of itself, was impressive. And that's how the son of a Scottish stevedore ended up as the leader of the biggest Irish gang on the East Coast.
As first order of business, Butch promised his men in those uncertain times of the Great Depression that the Hobs Bay Boys would - well, that they would keep right on doing what they liked doing the most: taking money, taking blocks and putting a hurt on anybody that had a problem with either. "Not exactly imaginative, our boy Butch," summed up Sean "Nails" Nealon, a Hobs Bay Boy during the early '30s, "Mostly you could describe him as a thick-skulled train car on two legs who liked a good meal, a better screw, and the color green."
Such was Butch's signature affectation once he settled into the well-padded life of a mob boss. Green meant "money" to Butch, all the money he'd never had growing up and all the money that he was going to squeeze out of the city he'd decided was his. Green suits, green ties, a bright green Nash Ambassador sedan, this constant display made him stand out like a payday in the middle of the week. Besides it made his mick friends happy. Every day was St. Patty's with Butch Matson around.
True to his word, the Hobs Bay Boys worked the same old rackets that had been worked in those parts since the last of the Redskins was sent packing. They ran numbers, ran protection, ran whiskey, ran whores, ran every olive-skinned son of Ol' Roma back to their Suicide Slum neighborhoods, letting them know in no uncertain terms that the waterfront belonged to the Irish and that any "eye-tye" businessmen - like Giovanni "Johnny Stomp" Stomponato and his boys - were not welcome. The message was simple enough but over the years of Butch's rise there were several disagreements of the semi-automatic and double-barreled variety. That just meant more funerals for Butch Matson to attend and to each and every one the leader of the Hobs Bay Boys wore a tailored vicuna suit of the most dazzling Kelly green.
Before long everybody knew, if not liked, Butch Matson. The local papers ran almost daily editorials calling for Butch's head. George Taylor of the Star went so far as to publish an open letter calling then Chief of Police Calvin Reynolds "a timid mouse of a man too yellow to stand up to the most blatant criminal network to ever operate in this proud city." It was just this kind of free speech that quickened Taylor's ouster and the change of ownership that turned the Star into the Planet not too long after. No matter who was running the rags, they always had plenty of ink to spare for Butch. And that was a-okay with him.
Butch may have hated his Italian rivals but he did admire the way some of their more notable bosses handled themselves. He looked to guys like Al Capone, Joe Adonis, and Cesare Falcone as models of how to act. They didn't hide from the limelight, they basked in it. They were loud and brazen and flashy. They feigned innocence of their crimes in the press and always made the society pages when they stepped out. And so did Butch, a former wharf rat and stick-up artist now flush with power and money who would be damned if he didn't enjoy it while he could. He got the best seats at Giants games, a private box at the Raleigh theater, and even finagled an invite to a party or two at the governor's mansion - a fact that made the papers just in time for the big re-election push. But Butch's favorite pastime, when not ordering hits on weasels and scouring the papers for any hint of his name, was dancing.
Surprising as it may be, Butch Matson was quite the hoofer. No Astaire maybe but a smooth and nimble cutter of rugs it must be said. As Butch himself never addressed the subject, there has been some speculation on where the beefy mob boss might have picked up such skills. One version has a famous Broadway star (specifically the late Neville Baylor who was known to have a serious gambling bug and notoriously bad luck) giving Butch private lessons in exchange for a pass on all outstanding markers and his life. Another story is that it was actually Butch's old man who taught him his steps, though the thought of Wilkie Matson waltzing his ape-faced son about their shanty to the tinny strains of "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen" from their Victrola is a hard one to stomach. It should be stated that the last person known to publicly bandy about this version of the story was later found washed up on a public beach minus his feet.
For Butch there was no better capper to a long day of running "the most blatant criminal network to ever operate in this proud city" than taking a few dames for a twirl. And that's what he could be found doing almost every night in uptown clubs, downtown clubs and a few in between. It's not that he had any great love for the art itself, no fruity ideas about expressing joy through movement, Butch just liked that dancing was a completely acceptable way to feel a woman up. "Ya bring 'em in close, let the hands roam around the tits, waist and ass," he once elaborated to cohorts, "get a good idea of how they're put together. Like what they got? Pull 'em in closer so they can feel how much. Not so thrilled? Just spin 'em away and make yourself scarce before they come spinnin' back." Butch was always on the prowl. Not that he had to work hard for a bit of "the sweet stuff" as he called it. There was no shortage of girls who'd willingly give themselves to a man as notorious and loaded as Butch Matson though, as he admitted often, this easy acquisition of sex bored him.
There was a sort of woman Butch started liking. A harder catch: brassy, classy, sharp and aloof. Exactly the kind of woman who'd never in a million years go for Butch. He spent his evenings in ritzy dinner clubs and smoky dance halls looking for just that kind of gal and, once a likely target was found, he'd start working her. If his meager conversational charms didn't do the trick then he'd start flashing the wad of folding green he always had on hand. And if this failed to melt the veneer of that evening's quarry, well, that's when he asked her to dance. There was no greater sense of accomplishment for Butch than watching a stone-faced broad who clearly despised and/or feared him start to loosen up in his arms, going all flushed as he flew her around the room. He loved winning that first tiny smile.
But it didn't always work, of course. He'd gotten a few slaps, a few stamped toes, a few angry boyfriends or husbands who had clearly never read a paper or else they'd have thought twice about who they were standing up to. And that was all okay; Butch knew how to retreat gracefully while the public eye was on him. But he was still the head of the Hobs Bay Boys, so he'd flash his lieutenants a special signal - the one that told them they'd be following that particular lady home that night. Some of these women screamed as he had his way, some were silent, all of them cried but not one of them ever dropped a dime on Butch. It wasn't his preferred way of scratching the old itch, but it had its satisfactions. Butch was a guy who would not be denied what he wanted and he'd long ago decided he had nothing to fear from the laws of Man or those of the storybook god his father had prayed to. Truly, life was like a candy store with a busted lock for Butch Matson, right up to that June night in 1938.
He'd spent the morning at the courthouse, sitting in on the murder trial testimony of one of his contract guys – a twitchy-fingered torpedo named Chill who'd been a fixture on the scene since he'd skipped out of his native Gotham back in '25. Butch stayed just long enough to make sure Chill's memory failed him on any pertinent details relating to the Matson gang. Reassured, he elbowed his way out of the room, tipping a wink to a certain wide-hipped court reporter of his acquaintance – a girl who liked it in all the filthy ways that she'd never admit to her closest friends.
Around noon Butch saw to the delivery of a shipment of high-grade heroin coming into the docks in crates of porcelain Buddhas from China. There was a brief time back in the early days when he'd felt some twinge of distaste about moving narcotics but that had faded like a case of heartburn when he saw the kind of money the junk could make.
At 2 he had a haircut, a manicure and a blowjob.
Though he was in his office for the rest of the afternoon, he waited until 4:30 to see his 4 o'clock appointment. The guy who sat across from Butch that afternoon was, or claimed to be, a scientist. Stocky but not fat and wearing what looked like a bargain basement red-haired rug on his dome, the visitor wasted little time on small talk but immediately launched into his spiel. "I've come," he said to Butch with an arclight stare, "to speak to you of the future."
Butch could hardly understand half of the vocabulary that was then lobbed at him but he found himself enjoying the scientist's delivery. In a clear, precise and magnetic fashion, Butch's guest preached about the stagnation of the criminal imagination, about how mobsters like Butch were too shortsighted when it came to the possibilities, that Butch himself thought too small. Why rob banks when you can rob cities? Why rule the west side when you can rule the Western Hemisphere? "The paradigm is shifting, Mr. Matson," the toupee-topped genius stated, "as it always does. We are on the threshold of a new world, of a golden age. Can't you feel it approaching?" Butch listened to every word with growing amusement, getting a kick out of how the scientist's voice had gradually risen from cultured, rational tones to an almost manic state of imperious fervor. By the time he finally got around to detailing his plan of using Butch's gang as foot soldiers whose reign of terror would fund the building of an unstoppable army of giant robots, Butch just had to laugh. And he did, loudly, right in the scientist's face. Butch's guest just clamped his mouth shut, carved out the deadest little smile and thanked Butch for his time. Butch was still gulping through his laughter as the scientist left the office.
As soon as night fell, Butch slapped on some cologne, donned his sharpest Brooks Brothers suit of emerald green, an orange cream camelhair overcoat and a robin's egg blue snap-brim fedora. He was putting on the nines for an evening at the Chevalier Road House, an upscale supper club with a tacky name on the outskirts of town. On the way there, Butch regaled his boys Sandy Reilly and "Moustache" Matty Flynn with the story of his afternoon meeting. "Jeezum crow, fellas, you shoulda heard this screwball!" All were in a fine and jolly mood by the time they sat down to dinner.
His breaded chops and gravy, a Chevalier special, cooled and congealed on the plate in front of him. Butch's attention had dropped from his stomach to a region a little farther south and his underlings knew perfectly well the cause of his disinterest in eating.
"Say, 'Stache, whattya suppose has got its teeth into Butch all of a sudden?"
"Gee, Sandy, you got me. Maybe the frail in the red dress sittin' right over there?"
Of course it was the frail in the red dress. Even in a crowd of sparkling debutantes and vivacious cigarette girls, this woman stood out. And it wasn't just her looks, though there was nothing wrong in that department. The woman that had frozen Butch's fork halfway to his open mouth was a slender but shapely young thing with slightly angular cat's eyes, red bow lips framed by tiny smirk lines, and a tight coif of deep, dark hair. The overall effect was something like Snow White if she'd been smoking since grammar school. But there was something else there that even a brute like Butch could detect from half a room away. It was something in her air, a restlessness that showed in her gaze which was impatient but penetrating. She seemed capable, sharp, eager and, at the moment, truly bored. And no wonder. Her "date," a big boned sloucher with Harold Lloyd glasses and too much pomade in his slicked down black hair, had been twitching and gesticulating all night, trying desperately to amuse or interest the fascinating creature across from him. For her part, she looked like she'd rather be enjoying a root canal without benefit of laughing gas. And now, somehow, the broad-shouldered shlub had gotten her onto the dance floor. What followed was painful to watch, a comedy of awkward steps and stepped-on toes. To Butch, it was as if he'd just been handed a gold-embossed invitation on a silver platter. He rose from his chair.
"Nice lookin' dame there, eh? Guess I'll cut in."
His lieutenants watching on with mild interest, Butch did just that, approaching the dancing couple and placing a hand on the stumbling date's shoulder.
"Step aside, junior, an' give somebody else a turn."
The woman's eyes flared and she answered first, "That's not likely, Mr. Matson."
Butch broke into his wide monkey grin, "You heard of me, doll? Now, see, that's unfair 'cause I don't know you for nothin'. Let's fix that right now." He reached again, this time aiming for the lady's upper arm, but found himself deflected by her date's raised hand.
"Now – now see here," the guy stammered in a reedy voice shot through with the hint of a rural Midwestern accent, "the lady has clearly declined your offer-"
Butch didn't turn his head but stayed locked onto the fierce looking dame in the red satin gown as he replied, "I said run along; I'm cuttin' in."
"But this is not a robber's dance."
That got Butch's attention. He slid his gaze sideways, squinting at the rube in the Coke bottle lenses, looking for any sign of a wink in the blue eyes on the other side. Something about this guy was setting off his bullshit alarms.
"Tryin' t'get flip?" Butch leaned in, "Move quick if y'know what's good for ya."
The shlub made a good show of blanching in fear and this more than the threat Butch presented seemed to set the dame off.
"Clark! Are you going to stand for this?"
Glaring at the date with his best "don't fuck with me if you enjoy breathing" look, Butch watched the guy glance past him to his two boys who were still watching them from their table. It was just a second but Butch could practically see the rube's spine disappear.
With audible resignation, the bespectacled nebbish whined at his dinner companion, "Be reasonable, Lois. Dance with the fellow and we'll leave right away."
The woman, Lois, was clearly stunned at her date's naked cowardice. She shook her head. "You can stay and dance with him if you wish but I'm leaving now."
Butch might've found this funny if he hadn't reached the end of his stunted patience. "Yeah?" he growled at her, "You'll dance with me and like it!"
That's when the dame, ignoring her date's anticipatory cry of "Lois – don't!", launched an open-handed slap across Butch's distorted jaw. Powered as it was by her indignation and all her considerable fire, the blow was a solid one, the sound from it seeming to freeze the entire road house. A couple of the players in the house orchestra actually dropped out of the last few bars of "Begin the Beguine" to watch the scene unfold.
Butch was aware of all the attention on him, knew he couldn't retaliate against this beauty the way he wanted to, but he was fuming in a way he hadn't in a good long while. He turned instead to the big hick at her side, "You wanna have a go? Huh?"
The rube she'd called Clark blinked, "What?"
"Fight, ya lily-livered polecat," Butch prodded.
The guy threw up his hands, stammering, "Really – I have no desire to do so."
The simper in the guy's voice just enraged Butch all the more. He thrust his right paw at Clark's face and sent him sprawling onto the dance floor. Butch was slightly surprised at this, it hadn't been that hard of a shove. He didn't have long to wonder at this however as the object of his lust and frustration was now striding for the club's doors. Lois had apparently had enough of the whole spectacle. Without turning around, Butch flashed Sandy and 'Stache "the signal."
While Clark pathetically scrambled to his feet, pleading with Lois not to leave, Butch and his boys made their exit through the road house's kitchen.
Butch was behind the wheel which was the way he preferred it. Ahead of them at a closing distance was a taxi cab. Butch and his lieutenants had watched Lois hire the cab from the island in front of the Chevalier, also bearing witness to the verbal parting shot she delivered to her milksop of a suitor. Though they couldn't hear her words they could see the effect they had on the guy. The poor bastard just sagged on his feet like an abandoned marionette. This amused Matty and Sandy but Butch never cracked a smile, his determination having turned his face to stone. And his foot to lead. The taxi's rear grew closer through the windshield of Butch's Ambassador and his underlings shared a look of uncertainty.
"We're just tailin' the broad, right Butch?"
Butch, his knuckles glaring white above the steering wheel, barely moved his lips as he replied, "Yeah, I don't think so." He punched the gas and the sedan lurched past 70.
Butch flashed his lights at the car ahead but the taxi only drifted towards the shoulder assuming that they were just trying to get around. That assumption was quashed the first time the Ambassador's fender clacked against the cab's rear bumper. Now the taxi driver stepped on his own accelerator and Butch was granted one quick glance at Lois's alarmed face turned around in her seat looking back at him before the cab pulled slightly ahead. Butch floored it.
An eighth of a mile farther down the highway both cars were pushing 80. Butch was ready to end this little chase. He sped up in front of the cab's rear wheel and nudged his sedan to the left. There was a great crunch and squeal as Butch hit his brakes and watched the taxi spin twice before plowing rear first into the ditch. The cab rocked to a halt and then there was nothing moving in the sweep of Butch's headlights but a massive cloud of dust quickly settling in the windless summer air. Butch grabbed his .45 from under the driver's seat and his men followed suit. The trio stepped out of the slightly crimped sedan and made for the cab.
They found both occupants of the taxi unharmed though the driver was rubbing at his chest and groaning. He shut up pretty quick when he saw their guns. Tumbled awkwardly in the back seat, Lois was wide-eyed, clearly calculating her chances for escape or self-defense. This actually made Butch grin again, but there was nothing friendly in the way he told her, "Get in that car and shut up."
Her eyes darted between the three gun barrels pointed at her and the face of the cabbie who looked even more terrified than she did, and she slid herself out of the taxi, only protesting when Sandy grabbed her by the arm. "Let me go," she snapped, shooting a deadly glare at both the underling and his boss, the perspiring brute in green whom she had apparently fascinated.
Once Lois allowed herself to be deposited in the back of the Ambassador, shoulder to shoulder with Sandy Reilly, Butch pulled away from the scene. Somewhat sated by having acquired his latest prize, Butch still grumbled about having to leave matters unfinished with her "boyfriend" (though he didn't see it, his captive winced at his choice of descriptive). "Moustache" Matty attempted to cheer him with the idea that he'd no doubt run into the milksop again. Butch nodded, supposing that was true. His anger was fading and, scanning Lois in his rearview mirror, he found it was being replaced by a pleasant, tingling anticipation. Until, that is, she began to talk.
"Do you think this was the smartest play, Mr. Matson?"
"What're you on about?"
"You made a real show of it back at the Chevalier. People will surely bring up your name once I go missing. You also left a witness behind in that cabbie - a witness who will definitely be able to pin you as my kidnapper."
Butch shifted in his seat, "Nobody talks, girlie. Not if they want to see tomorrow. 'Sides, you got some big opinion of yourself t'think you're even gonna be missed."
"Guess you don't read the papers," Lois said with a smirk. "Lois Lane of the Daily Star."
"Lane?" Butch repeated, placing the name, "Wait - the - the sob sister advice column? That's who we got here?" He began to laugh and his boys joined in.
Sandy said, "We better let her out, Butch, or else we'll have every lonely heart in Metropolis after us!" The laughter doubled.
Lois looked miffed, "I'm a reporter as well. I - just haven't had a page one byline yet."
"Too bad you won't get the chance to write up this little story, huh?" Butch made his point by meeting Lois's gaze in the mirror and so he heard 'Stache's warning before he saw the man with his own eyes.
"Hey - watch out," Matty exclaimed, "Someone's standin' in the road-!"
Butch snapped to, getting his first glimpse of the strange figure pinned by his headlights. Still a couple of hundred yards away was a large man in a colorful outfit just standing in the middle of the empty highway like some halfwit circus strongman about to perform his last act. It was an odd sight for sure but Butch was still feeling light-hearted about the prospect of getting Little Miss Daily Star into the saddle so he merely chuckled. "Watch me scare him outta his wits."
He aimed the sedan right at the sideshow idiot - who was wearing a cape he now saw - cackling in anticipation of seeing the freak bolt for safety. But the figure stood his ground, arms akimbo, as the distance closed alarmingly fast. From her seat, Lois gasped and Matty yelled, "Look out! You'll hit 'im!"
Butch wasn't laughing now. Knowing there was no earthly way to swerve in time, he braced for impact. But there wasn't any. A second before there had been a muscle-bound joker inches away from Butch's front grille and now - nothing but open road.
"Wha-?" Butch barely managed before Sandy spoke up from the back.
"Fellas, he's - he's - look for yourself!"
And they did. It was the strongman who should have been a red, blue and yellow smear on Highway 27 looking quite healthy and now running after Butch's car. Most jarring was the fact that the guy in the cape was gaining on the Nash Ambassador which still rocketed along the straightaway at over 80MPH.
"Moustache" Matty squealed in a higher pitched voice than most broads Butch had ever known, "Butch, step on the gas! He's chasing after us!"
Forgoing the mirror altogether, Butch darted his head around to look out the back window seeing a vaguely human blur in primary colors. A chiseled face with a small tight grin emerging out of the night at an unbelievable rate of speed. "It's the Devil himself," he whispered, surprising himself.
Then came a colossal, metal-crimping jolt and lurch as the speeding vehicle left the pavement entirely, its wheels spinning in empty air. In that moment Butch and his boys along with their unwilling passenger were tilted rudely, jostled from their seats, stunned to breath-holding silence as the world outside their windows dropped away by several feet. But this was just a passing sensation, lasting just long enough for them to register the impossibilities at play, before the car was turned on its side. In various pitches all the occupants of the car yelped as they were thrown sideways.
It was too much for 'Stache who opened the door that was now underneath him causing both himself and Butch to tumble out of the car, hitting the road seven feet below. "Moustache" Matty Flynn bellowed, his arm and two of his ribs snapping when Butch landed on top of him, but his boss ignored him altogether. Butch was looking up from his place on the pavement at a sight that he would never - could never - forget: his emerald green Ambassador held aloft by nothing more than the two hands of a muscular man with a showy red cape fanning out from his broad shoulders. Butch knew he should already be running but he couldn't help but stay put, his mouth wide open.
Sandy now managed in his panic to get his own door open and out he tumbled. For her part, Lois attempted to hang on but she soon followed after. As if the strongman's feat wasn't spectacular enough, Butch watched him shift the car's entire weight to a single hand, reaching out with his free arm to snatch the woman out of the air, pulling her to him before she could hit the ground. Set down and freed, Lois quickly scuttled away from the freak juggling the car over his head, but she didn't go far. Her choice, Butch thought, having found his feet and taken flight. He couldn't wrap his brain around what he was seeing so he ran blindly across the road with his hands clapped to the sides of his skull in disbelief, scrambling for the safety of the shadows, screaming, "Shitfucker!" as he went. That's why he heard rather than saw the superhuman stranger slam the Nash headfirst into a rocky hillock on the far side of the highway shoulder. The noise was a thunderous assault of wrenched metal and shattering glass as the sedan was demolished in that one almost casual gesture.
At this moment, Butch could've sworn he saw a camera flash ahead from the grassy slope he was making for. Whatever it was he didn't care. He didn't care where Sandy or 'Stache had gotten themselves, he didn't give a flip what had become of his troublesome hostage, he just wanted to hide. The same panic was filling him that he used to feel whenever Wilkie Matson raised his big, red hand.
"Just a minute, Butch," came an unfamiliar voice from behind. A clear, deep voice with the slightest edge of mockery.
For someone who took pride in his own renown, Butch was terrified that this creature knew his name. Still pumping his legs in a dash for the darkness beyond the highway, Butch felt a powerful grip close on his collar and then his stomach dropped through the soles of his Italian shoes as he was lifted off the ground. And kept rising. Butch suddenly knew how a field mouse must feel when snatched up in an eagle's talons. He kicked his legs a bit but the ground was far enough away already that the idea of freeing himself looked more deadly than letting himself be carried. It wasn't until they reached the top of the telephone pole that Butch fully appreciated what had just happened; that the man in the cape had risen into the air with no visible support - no wires, no crane - and had hauled Butch along with him by the strength of one arm. Sweat streaming down his face, Butch had to bite back a scream. "The brain," he reckoned later, "can only handle so much impossible before it snaps like a rusty spring." It wasn't just the freak's strength or speed or ability to defy gravity that was endangering Butch's sanity, it was the infernal ease with which it was all done. The off-handed manner in which the flying man hung Butch by his belt from one of the pole's cable hooks was the same he'd displayed when tossing around a two ton automobile, showing no more effort than someone would flipping the pages of their morning paper. That kind of power and grace Butch had only heard about in the Bible stories of angels that had been shoved down his throat by the nuns of St. Alphonse's. Butch started to physically quake, looking fearfully into the handsome face hovering in front of him. "Get me offa here," he said to the freak, trying to keep the plead out of his voice.
The flying man, still flashing a self-amused smirk, answered amiably, "Okay. I'll cut you loose."
"DON'T!" Butch literally cried, involuntary tears springing to his eyes, "No! No, please-!" And sobbing freely now, he drooped from the hook, his fancy leather belt digging painfully into his gut. He was relieved when the mystery man's attentions shifted to Lois who remained on the road below, observing intently every move made by the caped man. Butch watched the unreal figure drift lazily back to the pavement, alighting before the woman in the red satin gown. Even from his vantage, unable to hear what words passed between them, Butch could read the trepidation and wonder in her posture. Whatever was said, some sort of bargain was struck and Butch got to see that fiery woman allow herself to be hoisted into the caped man's arms and then lifted up, up and away. He watched their figures lit by moonlight until they grew too small over the twinkling skyline of Metropolis, a city that Butch had once believed that he owned. Still shuddering, his breath heaving out, Butch tried to remember what his life had been like, who he had been, just a couple of hours before. But nothing came. The world looked so different from up there.
Butch had plenty of time to dwell on these new feelings of utter powerlessness and insignificance as the police and their cohorts in the fire department ladder truck didn't arrive until a half-hour later.
The next day, specifically coinciding with the release of the afternoon edition of the Daily Star, the world changed for everybody, not just Butch Matson. Lois Lane had brought the story of a lifetime to her managing editor but popular legend has it that George Taylor didn't believe the wild tale and wouldn't have run it - if not for the corroborative photographs that were walked in by a freckle-faced kid who had happened on the scene. This teenaged Eagle Scout had just been trying to earn his nature photography badge and ended up taking one of the most historic photos of the 20th century.
The image, the first that the world at large had of this strange visitor from another planet, imprinted itself on the public consciousness like few had before or since. A portrait of inhuman power in the service of justice, a god in mortal guise destroying a chariot of the iniquitous - and Butch Matson running for cover with a comic expression of panic frozen on his face. That photo earned the kid a job with the Star while the story that accompanied it, under the headline CAPED WONDER STUNS CITY, earned Lane her first byline and, eventually, a Pulitzer Prize. She, with tight, breathless prose, introduced the planet to its new protector and perhaps just as importantly gave him a name derived from the suggestive initial emblazoned on his chest. This was, as most already know, just the start of the story for that particular journalist and her most frequent subject.
As for Butch, history has generally glossed over the remainder of his life as if he'd only been born to play his role in the debut of a legendary hero. But there are a few interesting facts left to relay in the Butch Matson story. Once returned to terra firma, Butch was immediately booked for attempted kidnapping, reckless endangerment and possession of an unlicensed firearm. Unlike previous victims, Lois did talk, appearing in court and backing up her story that had already seen print. Ironically, the judge threw out the case on the grounds that it would be virtually impossible to find an impartial jury after the impact of the Star's article. That much was probably true. However, inspired by Lois's example other women of Metropolis began to come forward to accuse Butch of assault and rape. Butch's reputation on the street was already critically diminished by his portrayal in Lois's article and Olsen's photo as a cringing weakling and now, sensing that this former predator was wounded, witnesses to his more serious crimes including arson, extortion and murder started coming out of the woodwork. Even after finally being jailed that December on one of the rape charges, Butch would spend the next couple of years getting day passes out of Stryker's Island Pen to attend more trials. A great majority of these trials he lost. His cumulative sentences totaled two hundred and eighty years. The former boss of the Hobs Bay Boys would never again breathe free air having permanently traded clover green for prison gray.
What may surprise those who never followed his life past the events of that June night in '38 is that during his incarceration Butch Matson rediscovered his soul. According to Father Paul Sandoval, prison chaplain during those years, Butch had begun sporadically attending worship services, then coming regularly and finally, three years into what promised to be a very long stay in the system, organizing a Bible study group with the warden's consent.
"We see that a lot on the inside," Sandoval said in a 1951 interview with Profiles in Faith magazine, "We also saw it greatly increase after the mystery men started appearing. More and more the prisons were filling up with criminals who had been put there by bat-men and Amazon princesses, men who moved faster than lightning, men with magic rings. Our whole world changed practically overnight and though most would say that it changed for the better there were still plenty of questions on both sides of the prison walls, questions about where these super-powered people and the miracles and wonders they performed fit into God's plan. I think a lot of troubled souls like Butch Matson had nowhere else to turn for answers."
Whether or not Butch found those answers we will never know. What is a matter of record is that at 8:36 AM on August 19, 1944, Butch Matson was kneeling in prayer on the floor of his cell, his eyes open and focused on the slats of morning sky visible past his iron-barred window when newly incarcerated Otis Grebbly, a career henchman of little distinction, came up behind him and shoved a sharpened trowel through the base of his skull, shouting, "Luthor never forgets!"
Unmourned by all save a handful of his Irish cronies from the heady days and those inmates he had bonded with in his brief spiritual reawakening, Butch Matson, son of the age before the Golden Age, was laid to rest in a fancier box than his old man's. It was a bright blue day under a sky full of birds, planes, miracles and wonders. A drunken friend from the old neighborhood played "Flowers of the Forest" on a faded squeeze-box. Nobody danced.
The End