Kindness Goes Unpunished

by Craig Johnson

  There was a gaggle of police vehicles and EMTs, all with their gumballs going, at the front of the Fort, so before anybody with more authority could get back to where we were, I handed the shotgun to a patrolman named Fraser. His partner rolled the already complaining man over and cuffed him.

  “This one had an automatic, but I think it dropped into the sewer grate.”

  Fraser smiled. “We’ll light it up and take a look.”

  “Everybody okay over there?”

  “Moretti stepped on a nail, so the big pussy’s going to have to get a tetanus shot.”

  The large man in the cuffs cocked his head and stopped groaning long enough to yell toward me. “Hey, motherfucker, my ribs are broken!”

  I looked back at Fraser. “What was all the gunfire?”

  “Hey, motherfucker, who are you?!”

  He motioned to the drug dealer. “One of his buddies threw a few into the stairwell before shooting himself in the leg.”

  “Motherfucker, I asked you a question!”

  The other cop yanked him a little to the side. “Shut the fuck up, DuVall!”

  “Who went out the window with this guy?”

  The patrolman looked serious for a moment. “Johnston.”

  Two of the EMTs were working on Rayfield by the time I got there. He had dislocated his shoulder and broken a collarbone, but he was smiling when I leaned against the porch, eye to eye with him. They were stabilizing his arm and preparing a gurney to transport. “How you feeling?”

  He groaned. “Like shit. How’d we do?”

  I looked around at the assembled cops, spotting Chavez and some of the others smiling like guys who had gotten away with something. “I think pretty good.”

  My nostrils flared, and my nose hurt. I rubbed it cautiously and looked at Cady. I thanked Lena and apologized for being late, but I didn’t ask the usual changing-of-the-guard question, whether there had been any improvement, and Lena hadn’t volunteered any information. I wondered if that was the first phase in giving up, if I had passed over some threshold of hope. I didn’t want to start saying Cady as I had said Martha, with a level of such misery and despair that I just couldn’t say it without people looking away.

  I sat in the chair by Cady’s bed and remembered a game we used to play when she was around eight. If I would get home late, later than her bedtime, I would carefully make my way down the creaking hallway of our rented house, softly push apart the painted surfaces of the door and jamb, and stand in the backlight of the doorway. She was supposed to be long asleep, and she was a very good actress, but I could tell. If I thought it was a performance, I’d walk over to the bed and place my face only inches from hers, say the magic word, and be rewarded with an explosion of giggles.

  I scooted my chair over and rested my chin on the sore arm that I had carefully placed on Sleeping Beauty’s bed. I leaned in very close to her face and whispered. “Faker.”

  She didn’t move.

  8

  This time I got the ride downtown; as a matter of fact, I got a ride to another state.

  The big Crown Vic took the Broad Street entrance ramp onto I-95 southbound. There were ducks on a lake off to the right; I felt like joining them.

  By the time the PPD had gotten its investigative ducks in a row and been fully informed about what I’d been up to, it was late in the afternoon. Katz and Gowder had picked me up from Cady’s, where I had retreated for a shower, and hadn’t mentioned anything about missing our breakfast. Henry had taken the afternoon shift at the hospital and had called to warn me of the detectives’ impending arrival. I had taken Dog for a walk, and they had been waiting when I returned.

  I studied the small red dots on the frames of Katz’s designer glasses and wondered where he had gotten them. “So, you guys are going to drive me back to Wyoming?”

  He sighed deeply as Gowder changed lanes, took the unmarked car into the far lefthand one, and leveled off at an even ninety; evidently, wherever we were going, we were in a hurry.

  Katz cleared his throat. “I’m trying to figure out if I have made a terrible mistake.”

  I could feel my face redden a little. “No, you haven’t…”

  He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I’m trying to figure out if you are going to be an asset or a detriment.”

  Gowder was watching me in the rearview mirror as I answered. “An asset. Cross my heart.”

  Katz blinked for the first time. “We have about 350 homicides per annum here in Philadelphia, and we try to keep the number of police officers on that list to a minimum.” He glanced at Gowder, who might have smiled. His eyes returned to me. “Do you have any idea how lucky you were last night?”

  “Probably not.”

  He nodded. “Personally, I don’t think you have any idea, but since the Chief Inspector’s son was injured…”

  “He stepped on a nail.” It was the first time Gowder had spoken, and Katz looked at him like he was a potted plant with blight. He stared at the side of Gowder’s head until Gowder leaned an elbow on the window ledge and covered the smile with his index finger.

  After a moment, Katz looked at me again. “So, do you mind telling me how your adventures last night are going to aid in our investigation?”

  “They’re not.”

  He compressed his lips. “You can’t do things like that anymore.”

  We rode along in silence, Katz studying me a while longer before handing me a manila envelope with more than a few files inside. I looked back up at the two of them as we rocketed down I-95. “Devon Conliffe?”

  Katz spoke over his shoulder. “You’ve got thirty minutes.”

  I opened the envelope. “Do you guys mind if I ask where we’re going?”

  “The opera.” Gowder smiled, and the mole under his eye kicked up in the rearview mirror.

  The Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware, incorporated the same wedding-cake characteristics as Philadelphia’s City Hall but with slightly less drama, inside or out. French Second Empire with a cast-iron façade, it was lit from below with floodlights that highlighted the detail.

  A grumpy, elderly gentleman was sitting on a stool in the lobby and ushered us into the main auditorium, where Gowder and I sat just below the balcony. Katz continued on into the dark of the theater to a large soundboard that straddled two rows at house center and tapped the stage manager on the shoulder.

  The young woman pulled her earphones aside and spoke with him. He waited as she returned to her headset, prefacing and ending her conversation into it with the word “Maestro.” The seats were comfortable; I watched as Gowder propped his feet over the back of the next row, and I noticed that his socks did, indeed, match today’s ensemble. He whispered, with his head inclined toward me. “Where in the world did you get the idea for the crack house?”

  I also whispered. “OIT.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Old Indian Trick.”

  He smiled the becoming smile, and we watched the rehearsal. It was the end of Act II, where Monterone confronts the hunchback, reaffirming the curse he had placed on Rigoletto and the Duke. The irony of the father/daughter opera was not lost on me, and I could only hope that Cady and I would have a happier ending.

  The scenery and costumes were brilliant, with the Duke’s salon and adjoining apartments drifting to the sixteenth-century Mantuan skyline. It was night, and the jester was watching as the tortured father was dragged away. Inspector Victor Moretti cut a bold figure as Monterone, in a torn robe stripped aside to reveal his lashed back. He was tall and lean like a Doberman, and even from this distance I could feel his eyes. Lena was right about his voice; Victor could sing his baritone ass off.

  I watched and thought about the manila folder the two detectives had shared with me. The chain holding the gate to the north-side entrance of the bridge closed had been cut with a substantial pair of bolt-cutters, and there had been a scuff mark on the sidewalk next to the railing of the bridge that indicated that the perpetrator had
worn leather-soled shoes or boots. There were no fingerprints at either location, and it was surmised that the killer had also worn gloves.

  The decedent had been propelled over the railing and across the PATCO rail lines before landing in the alley below. Somebody had thrown Devon in an arch close to twenty feet before he fell. I would have suspected me, too.

  The topper was Devon’s blood sample, which indicated that he was loaded with ketamine hydrochloride, otherwise known as Special K, a club drug that he had snorted in powder form. A chemical cousin to the animal tranquilizer PCP, ketamine creates a dreamlike state by binding the serotonin transmitters in the brain, consequently destroying the user’s ability to regulate mood, appetite, sleep, and temperature, but it supposedly feels good.

  That was probably how Devon had been coerced onto the BFB late that night, in search of another hit; he’d got it, all right, and then had been thrown off the bridge. I was working on a Rasputin-like scenario when I noticed Detective Katz standing in the aisle with Verdi’s Monterone.

  They were talking sharply, but sotto voce, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t in English. I looked at Gowder. “Are they speaking Italian?”

  He nodded. “Asa does it to piss Victor off. His Italian is better.” He chuckled to himself. “He does everything he can to piss Victor off, including fuck his wife.”

  I sat there for a moment and then turned in my seat. “What?” He didn’t have time to answer because the next thing we both knew, Chief Inspector Moretti was standing with his arms folded in the aisle in front of us. It could have been the stage makeup, but he seemed like the most intense person I’d met in quite a while. His hair flourished in a sweeping mane with eyebrows to match, and he wore a silvered goatee. With the torn robe and lacerated back, it was like meeting the returning Jesus Christ; a pissed-off, returning-like-a-lion Jesus Christ.

  I smiled, but he didn’t. “Sheriff Longmire?”

  I stuck my hand out. “Walt.”

  He looked at my hand, then back at me, his voice flat and emotionless. “Sheriff, I’m terribly sorry about what has happened to your daughter.”

  I let the hand drop. “Thank you.”

  “But you must realize that you have no jurisdiction here in the city of Philadelphia or the state of Pennsylvania.”

  “I am aware of that.” I was also aware that we were in Wilmington, Delaware, but figured now was a bad time to argue geographic discrepancies.

  He glanced at both Gowder and Katz. “We have a number of very fine detectives assigned to the incident that concerns your daughter and to the one concerning Mr. Conliffe.” He paused for a moment. “You need to listen to this next part very carefully.” He unfolded his arms and placed his hands on the seat in front of me. “If I find that you have involved yourself in this case, in any way, I will have you in the Roundhouse so fast your eyes won’t have time to water.” He leaned in with his exposed and stage-makeupped chest. “Do you understand me?”

  I nodded. “Yep, but before you get yourself all worked up, you better take a look at this.” I pulled the card from my shirt pocket and handed it to him.

  He took the envelope and, to my unseen amusement, Katz lent him the designer glasses. He looked back up at me as the detectives gave me worried looks. “Where did this come from?”

  “It was left in my daughter’s room. None of the staff had any idea who could have left it or when.”

  He lowered the glasses and handed them back. “Did you know about this?”

  I interrupted. “I asked them to let me tell you.”

  He held the card a little higher. “So, from this, we are to assume that you are already involved.”

  “It kind of looks that way.”

  “Let’s make sure it stays in an unofficial capacity.”

  “You bet.” I waited a moment. “But can I give you a piece of advice?” He didn’t move. “Monterone wouldn’t wear the Rolex.”

  “I think that went well, don’t you?”

  They weren’t talking to me.

  “Guys, I’m sorry…”

  Katz didn’t turn this time when he spoke. “We have just given you access to some of the most sensitive evidence in this case, and you withhold something like this?” He held the note, now safely encased in a ziplock bag.

  “I was going to tell you about it.”

  “When?”

  I looked out the window and into the velvety darkness of the Delaware River toward the New Jersey pine barrens. “After you showed me the reports.”

  Katz finally turned and looked at me. “This is not a poker game where we call and see; this is a murder investigation, and if you don’t start coming clean with us, then all bets are off, and you can take the next flight back to cowtown.”

  We sat there for a little longer. “I’ve got more.” They looked at each other. “I questioned the security guard at the Franklin Institute, Esteban Cordero, in a little more detail.” I had to be careful how I did this, so that none of the blame would fall back on the inexperienced Michael Moretti. “He remembered that a young man had banged on the door after Cady’s fall, but I don’t think it was Devon Conliffe.” I had the detectives’ full attention as I explained about the incongruities of the man’s appearance and the red tie. “After we looked at the picture on the cover of the Daily News, he positively stated that it wasn’t Devon who knocked on the door.”

  Katz turned to look at me again. “So someone else was there.”

  “Someone who identified himself as Devon Conliffe and was gone by the time the guard got outside.” As they absorbed that, I asked them a question. “What can you guys tell me about Devon’s Roosevelt Boulevard incident?”

  It was Katz’s turn to sigh. “That was yours, Tony. You tell it.”

  “It was before Thanksgiving.” Gowder made eye contact with me in the rearview. “Assistant district attorney with the Special Narcotics Prosecution Unit…”

  “Vince Osgood.”

  “You’ve heard of him?”

  I paused a moment, not wanting to get anyone else in trouble. “He sounds important.”

  He laughed. “Important enough to get charged by a federal grand jury for violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act; about a half-dozen counts for racketeering, possession with intent, conspiracy to extort money, conspiracy to manufacture drugs, witness tampering, and retaliation against a witness.”

  “This guy’s on our side?”

  “Wait, it gets better,” Katz interrupted. “Tell him about the retaliation.”

  “Tim Gomez, writer for the Daily News, investigates and writes about Osgood’s activities with the Special Narcotics. Being a good reporter, he catches wonderboy Vince outside 13th and Samson, where he asks the assistant DA about property seized by the drug task force. Oz loses his mind, has to be forcibly restrained after kicking Gomez and screaming about how he’s going to bitch-slap him all the way to Camden if he doesn’t lay off.”

  “Always good to have positive relations with the fourth estate.”

  Gowder laughed. “Some of the extortion charges dealt with sums over $100,000.”

  I shook my head and looked out the window. “What about the possession/distribution charges?”

  Gowder shook his own head and concentrated on the road. “Oz was reported to have watched another man cook about 118 grams of designer stuff and then accepted half in June of last year for distribution. Local kingpin Toy Diaz is picked up on a traffic stop by Osgood’s buddies in the drug task force and relieved of about two million dollars worth.”

  “Must’ve been a big car.” I thought about it. “Toy Diaz is the operator of the house we took out last night.”

  “Could be. He’s got his fingers in a lot of pies.”

  “In the aforementioned transaction, all the evidence disappeared from the holding unit, and that under Vince Osgood’s supervision.”

  “What about Roosevelt Boulevard?”

  I saw the mole kick up again, and I was sure he was smiling. “E
aster Sunday, and Oz leaves the office with good friend and fellow attorney…”

  “Devon Conliffe.”

  “You got it.”

  I glanced at Katz. “Easter morning?”

  Gowder went on. “As they pull away, they notice that they are being followed by a Toyota station wagon occupied by two nonwhite males, approximately thirty years of age. Osgood pulls a sawed-off shotgun from the under the seat and rests it in his lap. Then he instructs Conliffe to take the 9 mm, which he keeps for insurance, from the glove box and be prepared for what happens next.” He took a deep breath, glanced at Katz, and continued. “Being a concerned citizen and aware that gunfire may result, Oz takes the exit at Fifth and pulls up at an abandoned lot in Fentonville…” His voice slowed for effect. “Three congested city miles from where they started. Oz’s initial statement was that they had decided to confront the individuals in a neutral area.”

  I cleared my throat. “Going to a police station didn’t occur to them?”

  “Evidently not.” Gowder eased his way around a slowpoke, and I noticed we were approaching ninety again. “Oz states that, after a brief but heated discussion punctuated by rapid small-arms fire, he saw the passenger’s head thrown back on impact and then the Toyota sped away.”

  I had to ask. “What was Oz…?”

  “A Hummer.”

  I nodded. “I heard that Osgood also stated that they might have been KKK?”

  “Yeah, his statements were a little confusing. Then Toy Diaz showed up at Temple University Hospital with numerous shotgun pellet wounds and a wounded Ramon Diaz, who had just done a three spot at Graterford.”

  “Ramon any relation to Toy?”

  He inclined his head to indicate I was a good student. “Brothers.”

  “So it was revenge?”

  Katz answered. “Well, that was the tack the U.S. District Court took, but Toy Diaz continued to state, with a great deal of emphasis, that it was an independent capitalistic venture that took a surprising turn.”