When he stepped up to the butcher’s counter, Jimmy Borden’s face wore the look of a man who’d just seen another man killed: skin as gray as a foggy morning, eyes as empty as the hollows in a dead tree, the small list neatly written out by his wife twitching in his shaking hands. He should have taken a number, but he didn’t and didn’t have to. As the other customers became aware of his presence, they each took a step back, gaped, forgot their orders and their places in line. “Good God, Jimmy,” observed the butcher Tom Ashton in his usual offhand way. He placed his chunky hands, fingers spread wide, on top of the display case where beef and veal and pork and chicken and turkey in every cut had been neatly arranged and priced. His apron was streaked with red, but otherwise he was an immaculate giant, six and a half feet tall, his white paper hat settled just right on his head, his hands freshly gloved.