Kindness Goes Unpunished

by Craig Johnson

  “Toy Diaz?”

  “Has to be. The way I see it, Devon Conliffe tried to put pressure on Cady about the laundering scheme, but when she didn’t bite, he was going to turn state’s evidence on Osgood. Either Osgood or Diaz got antsy and decided to have Shankar DuVall toss Devon off the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, but then Billy Carlisle became a loose cannon, and everybody decided they couldn’t trust anybody.”

  “You do not think that Shankar DuVall was there at the Academy to kill you?”

  “No. It might have been what Diaz told Osgood, or what Osgood planned with him, but I think Diaz had decided that Assistant DA Vince ‘Oz’ Osgood was not the type to go down with the ship. Besides, DuVall told me himself that he hadn’t planned to kill me.” I sipped my iced tea. “Now, the only one left with any of the answers is Billy Carlisle, aka William White Eyes.”

  “So you think it is our responsibility to keep him alive?”

  “It’s mine.”

  “Then it is ours.”

  Our attention was drawn to a sassy brunette who was attempting to walk an oversized dog into the lobby of the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. Henry stuck both fingers in his mouth and whistled with a piercing note that rattled the surrounding windowpanes.

  Vic stopped arguing with the security guard, flipped him off, and crossed 34th without looking. Mutt and Jeff scattered in the presence of Dog as Vic sat next to me and took my iced tea. She sat very close. “So, you got any other great ideas?”

  “Nothing?”

  She held a few ice cubes in her mouth. “Nothing.”

  “Where are the cops?”

  “There was a possible Toy sighting up in Germantown, where a competitor in the highly volatile commerce of grass-root pharmaceutical distribution came down with a critical case of NFP.” We continued to look at her. “No fucking pulse.”

  “Did this competitor fall off a bridge?”

  “No bridges big enough in Germantown.” She shook her head and continued crunching the ice between her teeth. “Somebody ran over him with a car. Twice.”

  Henry and I looked at each other, and then I looked back at Vic. “I want to go up to the Medicine Man and have a look for myself, or have William White Eyes have a look at us.” I remembered Lena’s invitation as I looked at her. “Your mother and father invited us over for dinner.”

  Vic choked, picked up the cup again, and began eating more ice. “Yeah, tell ’em I’ll pencil ’em in.”

  Henry watched her for a few moments. “They say chewing ice is a sign of sexual frustration.”

  Vic slipped her hand on my knee under the table, and I almost jumped off the bench. She continued chewing. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  “Four hooves down means that the individual died in battle.”

  I looked at the four bronze horse hooves planted firmly in the granite base. “I thought died in battle was one hoof lifted.”

  Vic held Dog and input her two cents. “What are two hooves lifted?”

  I glanced down at the description in the book. “You mean rearing?”

  “Yeah.”

  I looked around. “Fell off his horse during battle?”

  The sloping lawn of this part of Fairmount Park was at odds with the sordid squalor across Ridge Avenue. The row houses on the block were falling apart from the neglect, and the only retail establishment was an after-hours club in what looked to have been a restaurant.

  I turned back to the statue and read from the book. “‘Cyrus E. Dallin, 1861–1944.’ He was from Utah.” The Bear moved a little closer to the statue but seemed distracted and looked at an area to the southwest. “‘Famed Native American scholar Francis LaFlesche described the nudity of the holy man typifying the utter helplessness of man in comparison to the strength of the Great Spirit, whose power is symbolized by the horns upon the head of the priest.’”

  The Cheyenne Nation walked past me. “Looks like a high-five.” I glanced up, and it did. “What now?”

  “Well, while we’re waiting for William White Eyes, we look for a note.”

  We looked for fifteen minutes. No note. Vic was sitting on the hillside looking at the book of statuary, and Dog had decided to join her. Henry and I were still searching the surrounding trees in hopes that the wind might have caught the note and landed it on a branch but had still found nothing. “It is not here.”

  “I’m beginning to think you’re right.”

  We walked back over and stood in front of Vic, and Henry asked. “Is this the only Medicine Man?”

  She placed a hand across the open page and looked up. “Yes.”

  I shrugged. “I guess we might as well head back to the hospital.”

  Henry had parked the Thunderbird across Edgely Street. We made our way to the car when I noticed a tricked-out, fully chromed Escalade bristling with oversized wheels, brush guards, and enough off-road lights to illuminate the Miracle Mile. It was stopped at a discreet distance, and I was thinking about William White Eyes when the tinted windowed vehicle made a casual U-turn and thrummed its way back toward the reservoir and the depths of Fairmount Park.

  “If you were an Indian in the city, where would you hide?” I held out my hand to Henry as we watched the Escalade disappear behind the sloping green of Athletic Field. “Gimme your keys.”

  “Why?”

  I started around the car toward the driver’s side and tossed the daypack into the backseat, feeling the weight of my .45 inside. “You drive too slow.”

  He stopped and looked genuinely hurt. “I do not.”

  “Give them to me!”

  He handed me the gold-colored anniversary keys that he had put on the lucky rabbit’s foot chain. Vic quickly climbed in the back with Dog, and Henry took shotgun. “Do not wreck Lola.”

  In the rearview mirror, I watched as Vic put her arm around Dog. “I’ll try not to.”

  I fired up the 430-cubic-inch police interceptor and began intercepting. Fortunately, we were parked in the right direction, so I gunned her and quickly motored across the hill, following the only road the Cadillac could have taken. At Fountain Green Drive we had to make a decision. Vic hung over the seat and pointed left. “Stay on the reservoir road. He’ll either double back or continue the loop back up 33rd.”

  She was right. We turned the corner in time to see a black Escalade continuing north on the four-lane. I made a turn on a late yellow, drifted to the right, and pulled in behind a delivery van in the slow lane. Back at Dauphin he stopped at the light, and we slowed behind the truck, but the light changed too quickly. “Damn.”

  Henry’s eyes stayed on the black SUV. “What?”

  “If he’d stopped at the light a little longer, I was going to get out.”

  “Yes, that worked so well last time…”

  Vic was still hanging between the seats as I pulled around the step-van and accelerated. The Cadillac made a left without hitting the turn signal, then a hard right on Strawberry Drive. “I don’t suppose either of you got the license number yet?”

  I hung back at the turn, but it’s hard to go unnoticed when you are a powder blue vintage convertible with a cowboy, an Indian, a brunette, and a dog inside. He had steadily accelerated as we approached the light at Strawberry Mansion Bridge, and by the time he got to the intersection, he was running a straight sixty. Fortunately, the light was green, and we shot onto the ramp of the bridge about ninety feet behind him, barely missing a bicyclist who shook his fist at us.

  The fifty-year-old steering on the big Bird felt a little loose as we dropped over the Schuylkill Expressway and watched as the Caddy continued to gain speed but easily make the corner at Greenland Drive. I hit the brakes a little as I turned the wheel, powered through the curve, and flattened the accelerator to the floor as the bulk of the cast-iron engine exploded internally, shooting us up the tree-lined thoroughfare at eighty.

  I noticed that Vic had pulled my .45 from the pack. “There’s a stop sign up here!”

  I saw the Escalade blow through
the sign with a squealing right and continue up the next street at full throttle. I looked over my left shoulder but couldn’t see anything but the forest for the trees. We were committed, and I only hoped that our luck would hold as I kept the pedal to the classic metal.

  I had guessed we’d pushed our luck about as far as it would go when I saw the brand-spanking-new Grand Cherokee pulling the two-bay horse trailer just as we got to Chamounix Drive. I cut the wheel, and we dropped off the road, easily outrunning the laboring Jeep and jumping the street. We missed an oncoming Volvo station wagon in the other lane, slid into the gravel approach to the stables, and clipped the sign as everybody blew their horns. I saw the Jeep turn into the stables as we renegotiated the asphalt and straightened into our lane. I looked down the road ahead of us but could see nothing.

  “I cannot believe you just dented Lola.”

  I ignored him and slowed, asking over my shoulder. “Where does this go?”

  She slid the mechanism back on the semiautomatic. “It connects with Conshohocken Avenue, turning back where we came from, or down Falls Road and the expressway.”

  I yelled over the engine and wind noise. “Which way would you go?”

  “Expressway!”

  We rounded the corner, drove behind a large mansion, and suddenly the point became moot. There were large sawhorses across the road that effectively blocked entry and declared in large black and orange letters, ROAD CLOSED DUE TO CONSTRUCTION.

  I hit the brakes, and we all looked at each other. Vic gestured with her chin. “Go on ahead around the circle and back down.”

  I followed her directions and continued around and back onto the drive, where we could see straight down Chamounix. There was no Escalade. She gestured to the right, where an unlabeled road disappeared into the trees. “There.”

  I made the turn and hit the throttle again. “Where does it go?”

  “Nowhere. It dead-ends in about a quarter mile.”

  I made a sweeping turn and looked down at a pastoral idyll. I could see the Cadillac backing up with the beginning of a three-point turn at the end of the road. I hit the gas and barreled down the two-lane drive with no name, rapidly coming up on the black Caddy. He finished the turn and whipped the big vehicle straight at us. My nerve stayed steady as we approached each other at a climbing sixty.

  Henry grabbed the dash. “What if it is not William White Eyes?”

  Almost in answer, I felt and saw two things: the tinted side window on the Caddy was down and something was being thrust between the side-view mirror and the windshield. At the same time, I felt Vic rise and shoot just as the tick-tock compressed fire of a fully automatic weapon blistered the surface of the road in front of us and ripped its way up the front of the Thunderbird.

  I veered to the right as the windshield exploded, and I tried to yank Vic down by her leather jacket. The return fire of the big Colt had struck home, and I watched as the heavy slugs bit into the hood, windshield, and door of the Escalade as it rushed by us and glanced off the side of the T-bird.

  I hit the brakes and turned the wheel, stretching our momentum into a sliding turn, but at least two of the tires were flat, and we warbled to a stop; the Escalade was about fifty yards back down the road. I threw the door open and pushed off from the side of the car. I’m not sure what I thought I was going to do without a sidearm, but I figured I’d think of something when I got there. I heard Dog barking and coming up fast behind me.

  In the reflection of the Cadillac’s side mirror I could see someone frantically attempting to do something and desperately hoped that he wasn’t about to reload. I got about halfway there when Dog overtook me, and I yelled at him to come.

  The man in the Cadillac turned, roared the motor, sprayed grass and turf as he reached the curve, and was gone. I slowed to a stop and stood there in the middle of the road with the spent shells of the 9 mm scattered across the pavement. I made a few silent vows to myself as my jaw muscles clenched and stretched at the sutures.

  Toy Diaz. Had to be.

  I placed my hands on my knees and attempted to catch my breath as Dog came over and stuck his nose in my face. My sides were killing me as I made the slow walk back to the T-Bird. I was dizzy, and I was sweating, and it seemed very hot as I looked up at the big convertible, which was stretched across the road. Henry was in the back, and I picked up my pace. There was blood on the white leather of the cavernous seat, a lot of blood.

  Henry had pulled her down and had cradled her head while applying pressure to the wound with his shirt. One of the slugs from the assault rifle had caught her in the side, just under the arm at the oblique muscles. It was hard to say where else the slug had gone. I leaned in and looked at her tarnished gold eyes, which were already glazing with shock. She raised a blood-coated hand and smiled. “Stop being weird.”

  15

  It was as bad as it looked and maybe a little worse. The 9-mm slug had taken a hard left where her love handle would have been if she’d had one, and a second had clipped her just above the collarbone and had taken a bit of the shoulder blade with it. My attempts at filling the available beds at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania had not gone unnoticed, and Rissman had asked if I wanted all my people in one wing. I noted that it’d be convenient.

  I called the Moretti family, although Vic had told me not to, and sat down in the hallway to await the onslaught. Chavez had taken our statements; he said that Asa Katz would be here momentarily but that Gowder was still being queried about the Shankar DuVall shooting.

  “How’s that going?”

  He shrugged and slipped the papers into his aluminum clipboard. “I’d put it down as a service to society, but you never know.”

  Henry said he had a few loose ends to tie up and that he’d be back in a couple of hours. I apologized for getting dents and bullet holes in Lola, but he didn’t say anything. He took Dog, and I figured I was in deep trouble.

  I went up to Cady’s to wait for Vic to get out of surgery and found Jo Fitzpatrick sitting in a chair by my daughter’s bed. Jo was incognito in jeans, a worn pair of rough-out boots, and a weathered Carhartt coat that looked familiar. They were deep in the throes of a one-sided conversation concerning the case of the Atlantic City company that had attempted to do a little under-the-table trading. Evidently the case had been transferred to Jo, and she was getting Cady up to speed, even if all my daughter could do was look at her while she talked and occasionally squeeze her hand. It was hard to breathe when I went into that room.

  “What happened to you?”

  I had a tendency to forget what I looked like as of late. “I thought I might blend in better if I had a few more bandages.” She looked at me doubtfully as I stepped to the other side of the bed and reached out to hold Cady’s other hand. “How is she?” Cady squeezed back, and I watched as her eyes slowly tracked from Jo to me. I sighed and listened to my breath rattle as she squeezed my hand again.

  “She’s looking much better, don’t you think?”

  “Yep.”

  She waited a few moments before speaking again. “I had a little time this morning and thought I’d come over and help out.”

  “Thank you.” I kept my eyes on Cady’s, but hers had closed. I gently slipped my hand away. “Jo, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  It was a slow response. “I guess not.”

  “What would you say your firm’s position is toward Cady?”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  I swallowed. “I’m thinking of taking her back to Wyoming and, without the ability to consult with her in all this…”

  She stepped a little forward and into my line of sight, and I could see from the general attitude of her body that she was more relaxed. “Cady is one of the best lawyers in the firm.” Her voice broke a little, and I could hear the wind outside the windows and in between her words. “David Calder, the senior partner, called me up to his office yesterday morning to make sure that we were doing everything we could for h
er.” When I glanced over, tears were on her face. “He said that no matter what it took, and no matter how long it took, we were to be committed to Cady’s recovery and her continued position in the firm.”

  I nodded and looked back at my daughter. “Then I think we’re going to go back home.”

  “To Wyoming?” She sounded a little relieved.

  “As soon as she can.” I squeezed Cady’s hand again, but she was asleep. “I’ve got a few things to attend to and so does she.” I smiled and looked at the young lawyer on the other side of the bed. “Can I ask you another question?”

  She smiled back and wiped her face. “Sure.”

  I waited. “Who assigns the pro bono cases at the firm?”

  She coughed and swallowed, wiped her eyes some more, and then cleared her throat, gesturing with her hand to explain the time it took to respond. “That would be me.”

  I nodded. “You.”

  “Yes.”

  I nodded some more. “So, you assigned William White Eyes to Cady?”

  She stayed steady. “Yes.”

  “Jo…” I smiled again, just to let her know I wasn’t going to jump over the bed and handcuff her, and went and sat in one of the chairs beside the window. I thought that maybe if I sat down it would be easier for her. I picked up the book on the public art of Philadelphia. She didn’t move, and her back was to me. “The way I figure it, Osgood pressured Devon…”

  “I told them to not let Cady find out about any of this stuff.”

  I kept looking at the book. It was an old trick, but she didn’t fall for it and stayed as she was. “Well, it looks like you were right.” I waited, but she stayed silent. I flipped through the book to the section on northwest Fairmount Park. “Where’s Riley Elizabeth?”

  At that, she turned and looked at me. “What?”

  “I was wondering where your daughter is?” I studied the book as she crossed to the other chair, sat, and folded her hands in her lap.