Kindness Goes Unpunished wl-3

by Craig Johnson

  The assistant district attorney shook his head. “Never seen him before.” I was pretty sure he hadn’t seen him just now, either. “How’s your daughter doing?”

  “She’s improving, starting to have involuntary responses.” I thought about Henry. “We brought in a specialist.”

  He nodded. “I hear you’re doing a little investigative work?”

  I wondered where he had heard it. “Just keeping my hand in on account of Cady, nothing too serious.”

  He nodded some more. “Watch out for Gowder and Katz.” He glanced out the window. “The kike is Internal Affairs and could give a shit and a shake about the truth.” He continued to look at the sidewalk outside. “They’ve been after me for years, and I have no idea why.”

  Close to ten counts, I figured. “What can you tell me about Devon and Cady?”

  “Well…” He pulled at the end of his goatee. “I was kind of hoping that we could share information, you know? Help each other out?”

  I nodded, all innocence. “You bet.”

  Ian appeared with the scotch and water and motioned to my untouched beer. “You wan’ another?”

  “In a bit. Thank you.” He nodded and glanced at Osgood, who continued to study the surface of the table. His head came up after Ian had left.

  He took a sip of the scotch and rested it back on the paper napkin. “I’m assuming that your focus of interest is the connection between Devon and your daughter?”

  “Cady.”

  He looked at me for a moment longer. “Cady.”

  “You’d be right.”

  “There isn’t any connection.” I looked mildly surprised. “Between what happened to Devon and what happened to your…to Cady.” He leaned in. “Devon was involved in a lot of shit in which he shouldn’t have been involved.” I took a sip of my beer and waited. “He had a little problem, if you know what I mean.” He laid a finger alongside one nostril and sniffed. “His difficulties started with this guy, Shankar DuVall, who used to provide Devon’s medication for him. They started working on a barter system, you know, medication for legal services rendered.”

  I thought about the man that I’d tackled at the crack house, the one they called DuVall, but it had to be too much of a coincidence. “What’s this guy DuVall look like?”

  “Black, tattoos, and one big fucker. Pharmaceuticals and firearms are his thing. Something of an aficionado, I hear.”

  Not too much of a coincidence as it turns out. And big enough to throw somebody off the BFB, I figured. “So what happened with him and Devon?”

  “This ass DuVall and a buddy of his, Billy Carlisle, get caught with eight kilos of designer stuff in a roach-coach at the food distribution center in South Philly. They had this bright idea to sell the stuff like ice cream.” He raised a hand, pulling on an imaginary bell. “Ding-ding, get high! They showed pictures of the truck to the jury. There were little kids licking popsicles painted on the sides. You can imagine how that went over.” He took another sip of his scotch and shook his head. “Couple of criminal masterminds here. So, anyway…DuVall and Carlisle make offers to cooperate with us and the DA picks up the tab on DuVall, leaving Carlisle to dangle, figuring anything Billy-boy knows, he got from Shankar.”

  I worked on the label of my beer with my thumbnail. “Okay.”

  “It happens a lot. For a number of these shit bags, cooperating with the authorities means they get a 5k1.1, which means a substantial assistance letter from the prosecuting attorney.”

  “Cooperation means DuVall avoids the sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum prison term?”

  He held up four fingers. “Four years, three months. Eastern Pennsylvania leads the league with 41.1 percent of the defendants receiving reduced sentencing for playing ball.”

  “And Carlisle?”

  “Nineteen and seven.” He exhaled a short laugh. “All for driving an ice cream truck.”

  “But with enough dope to fill up all the nostrils on Mt. Rushmore.” I thought about it. “DuVall got four and three? That seems light.”

  “He played ball.”

  I tried to figure a way of introducing the Roosevelt Boulevard incident, but maybe Osgood would bring it up himself. “Where does Devon enter into this?”

  “He made a phone call to yours truly, wanting to see if there was anything I could do about Billy Carlisle.”

  “And was there?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.” He spread his hands in innocence. “I play by the rules.”

  In for a penny, in for a pound. “What about Roosevelt Boulevard?”

  “What about it?” His voice was stiff.

  “I heard some stuff.”

  His eyes stayed steady. “What’d you hear?”

  “I heard you and Devon were involved in a shootout up north of here.”

  He kind of laughed. “What, you got a file?”

  I smiled and took another sip of my beer. He watched me, then took another sip of his drink and held it there alongside his head. “That was a Devon deal.” He sighed. “It almost lost me my job and may still if those two pricks Katz and Gowder have their way.” I tried to decide how much of what he was telling me was untrue. “Devon had a deal with these assholes, and he got scared and asked me to come along.”

  “So, they weren’t chasing you when you came out of your office?”

  “No, I made that up, but you gotta admit it sounded better than the two white lawyers going up to Fentonville for a drug deal.”

  “It does.”

  “I thought I’d use Devon’s connections for a little sting operation I was working on with the narcotics task force. Just laying the groundwork, you know. There wasn’t supposed to be a buy, but Devon was hungry, so things fell apart.”

  “I hear you did some damage to Ramon Diaz with a sawed-off shotgun?”

  He set the glass down. “It was him or me.”

  I had an idea that I had just heard the Osgood mantra and figured I’d just hear the same one if I brought up the small man at the shooting range. “Why has the thought that Devon might have committed suicide been so completely dismissed? I only met him once, but he struck me as a likely candidate.”

  “I wondered about that myself…”

  I was warming to the subject. “He was thrown almost twenty feet over the PATCO line to the alley below.” I leaned back in my chair and tried to make the facts self-evident. “Unless you had his assistance, I don’t know if that’s physically possible. I mean I couldn’t throw somebody that far.”

  He lifted his drink and looked at the ice swirling in the amber liquid. “Maybe you could if you were properly motivated.” Here’s where it was going to get tricky. Osgood was so used to spreading the bull about how tough he was, it was possible he was blind when someone else was doing it. I waited and didn’t say anything. He leaned in close. “All I’m saying is that I’d understand how a man could be driven to something hasty, under certain circumstances.”

  I looked at my beer, like a man with something to hide. “Spoken like a true attorney.”

  His mouth twitched to the side, and I thought I might have overplayed my hand, but he continued following my thread. “That’s my job, but I can see how the trash has to be taken out sometimes.”

  I brought my eyes back up to his. “That’s very understanding of you.”

  “Look…” He glanced around, and his voice dropped. “Sheriff, I don’t know if you did it and, to be honest, I don’t care. There’s no way they can mix me up in this, ’cause close to a thousand people can place me at the Painted Bride Art Center’s fund-raiser that night.” He sighed. “If you did it, happy motoring and God bless.”

  For the first time that night, I believed him. It didn’t mean that he and Devon weren’t involved in any number of dirty deals; it just meant that he hadn’t personally thrown Conliffe off the bridge. He didn’t strike me as a calculating killer. He might be stupid enough to get himself into situations where he had to kill people to get out, but only in the heat of
the moment.

  Maybe he was happy to believe it was me; it was a mystery solved as far as he was concerned. Whatever his motivation, I had more information to work with and the reputation of a ruthless and avenging father, for whatever good that was.

  I was saved from any more questions by Ian’s arrival. “Two more?”

  I shook my head. “I really have to go.”

  Osgood threw a twenty onto the table. “This one’s mine.” He pulled a card from his pocket as he put his jacket back on. “Look, if anything turns up, give me a call.” I nodded and took the card like a guilty man. “And if those pricks from IAD start being a problem…” He straightened his tie and let that one float as he turned to O’Neil and gestured to the twenty. “That gonna cover it?”

  The Irishman studied him. “Sure.”

  Osgood and I shook hands, and he swaggered his way from the pub. Ian watched along with me as Osgood climbed in the yellow Hummer and was gone.

  I swigged the last of my beer and handed it to O’Neil. “Where’s the Painted Bride Art Center?”

  He gestured with his eyes. “’Bout two blocks from ’ere.”

  Convenient. I got up. “You two know each other?”

  His eyes stayed on the street. “He’s been in a couple’a times, with Devon Conliffe, actually.” I turned and looked at him. “They had a few heated conversations.”

  “Have you told the police anything about that?”

  He smiled. “Thought that was what I was doing now.” He had something behind his back. He deftly swung his arm around and placed it against my chest. It was a beaten up Philadelphia Eagles helmet braced with painted eagle wings on either side. I looked at him, and he smiled. “Close as yer gonna get, Sheriff.”

  It was still too early to head to the hospital and, after the conversation with Osgood, I figured I needed a little fresh air, so I went up on the bridge. The north side wasn’t locked this time, so I could get my first look at the actual crime scene. I looked down on the traffic headed for New Jersey, the taillights of the cars making a random, red-dotted line over the arch of the bridge. I leaned against a large metal bar and watched as a man ran by. He was wearing a reflective vest and was going at a pretty good clip. He glanced at the football helmet dangling from my hand, said “Yo, man, maybe next year,” and kept on going.

  I reached the general area where Devon had taken the plunge and looked over the edge toward the PATCO line. It would be difficult to throw a man that far. I thought about the man called Shankar DuVall. The guy fit and certainly would have been able to flip Devon like a poker chip. I’d have to see what Katz and Gowder knew.

  There were a few vehicles parked along one side of the alley, and I thought it might have been better for Devon if he’d hit one of them instead of the patchwork of concrete, asphalt, and brick below.

  A graffiti artist had written ROB LOVES MELISSA on a billboard on top of the building to my right. I thought about the Little Birds and wondered how Melissa was doing these days. I was surely and not so slowly becoming an expert on wounded women.

  The building to my left was an old warehouse that looked as if it were being converted into residential loft space. Whoever had picked the spot for Devon’s murder had done a pretty good job of finding an area in a city of six and a half million people where nobody would see what happened.

  Without the anonymous note that I had received at the hospital, I could have believed a suicide. With all the shit that he and Osgood were involved with and the damage he had done to Cady, who was the one decent thing in his life, I could see the logic of that scenario.

  Katz and Gowder had been awfully quick to dismiss the possibility, though, even before I had received the note. Why? And what possible advantage could anyone hope to gain by taking credit for a homicide they didn’t commit? And why tell me? Someone didn’t want me to investigate this murder and was trying to warn me off. YOU HAVE BEEN DONE A FAVOR, NOW LET IT GO.

  I slid my hand along the powder blue railing and felt something under my fingers. I leaned over the edge, far enough to see whatever it was that was taped to the underside of the barrier. The tape and the paper looked fresh, so it had been placed there recently. It was an envelope and, as before, it read SHERIFF.

  I’ll be damned.

  I thought about waiting for fingerprints but, if my pen pal was the one who killed Devon, he wasn’t that stupid. I pried a finger under the flap and opened it. It was the same place-card stock, this time with the typewritten message that read GO BACK TO THE INDIAN. Same dropped out spot on the typewritten O.

  I stared at it and suddenly felt someone at my side. I started and turned with the football helmet automatically swinging back.

  “Whoa, big guy.” She was short, dark-haired, and wore a black leather jacket with the collar turned up. A bottle of beer dangled from her hand as she turned and placed both elbows on the railing with utter nonchalance. She took a sip. “Don’t do it. Human life is a valuable commodity…” She paused for a second. “Ah, fuck it, I can’t remember the rest.” Vic turned and looked at me, then at the helmet in my hand. “But I can see why you’d want to jump after last season.”

  10

  “So, are you trying to fuck my mother?”

  I watched the taxi driver’s head turn toward us as she finished off the beer and dropped the empty bottle on the floor of the cab. The driver’s voice was high and foreign. “Madam?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m the emissary from Wyoming; you don’t write, you don’t call.” She propped an elbow on the sill of the open window and pushed her fingers into the black hair. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  The driver’s voice rose again. “Missus?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  She looked out at the city night speeding by. “I got a flight in earlier and saw the two of you at my Uncle Alphonse’s. You looked pretty cozy together so I didn’t want to intrude.”

  “Kind lady?”

  I sighed. “Your mother has been a great help.”

  “You say that like I’m not gonna be.”

  The driver wasn’t giving up. “Madam?”

  Vic looked annoyed and glared at him through the rearview mirror. “What!?”

  He sounded apologetic. “You cannot leave that beer bottle in the cab.”

  Vic looked at him for a moment and then picked up the container by sticking an index finger in the opening. “This bottle?” She then slung it from the open window and over the railing into the Schuylkill River. I almost rebroke my nose on the Plexiglas divider when the driver hit the brakes.

  It was only a three-block walk the rest of the way to the hospital, and I watched Vic as she soaked up her hometown. “No, I can see that you’re going to be a great help.” She looked different in the city, as if she were home. She didn’t blend in Wyoming, but here it was as if all the pieces fell into place. I had never seen the clothes she was wearing-the black leather jacket, black T-shirt, black slacks, and black Doc Martins. “Does your family know you’re here?”

  “Only Alphonse. I went in after you guys left.”

  “How come you didn’t come in before?”

  She pursed her lips and glanced toward the river. “I like to time my entrances.”

  The security guards at HUP looked up as we passed by but looked back down as we went up the escalator to the elevators on the mezzanine. Vic stopped and was looking at the note. “It could only mean Henry.”

  “That’s what I thought, but I don’t get it.”

  “Maybe the Indian will.” She threw an arm up to hold the automatic doors of the elevator. “You got a key to Cady’s place?”

  I stood there, unsure. “You’re not coming?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t do this kind of thing well, so I just don’t do it.”

  “Don’t you want to say hello to Henry?”

  “I’ll see him soon enough.” It was an awkward moment, but then she smiled and gestured behind me with her chin.
“Normally, I’d say let’s go get the asshole who did this, but I think somebody beat us to it.”

  I had to blink to adjust my eyes to the artificial light in the ICU. I could smell burning cedar and sage. The night nurse started to stand but noticed it was me and sat back down. She looked at the helmet in my hand and just smiled. Evidently, Henry had already worked some magic just by getting the clearance that would allow us to perform the ceremony.

  He turned and looked at me, registering no surprise when I told him that Vic had arrived. I looked at the intricate arrangement of items in the room. “It is already working.”

  I handed the Bear the football helmet. “Good thing you didn’t need a tomahawk or I would’ve had to go to Atlanta.”

  He studied the helmet and the wings with trailing feathers. “This will do.”

  There was a buffalo skull at Cady’s feet with the nose pointed toward her. There were two black stones by her right side on the bed, two red ones on her left, and a red one and black one on the pillow above her head. There was a ceramic bowl that was filled with dirt on one of the carts. Evidently, as a stranger in a strange land, the Bear had great gathering skills.

  He put the helmet on one of the monitors, and I watched as he laid sticks on the bed in two parallel lines with each pair of ends joined by a V-shaped connection; it was a Hetanihya, or Hetan, a man figure. It looked as if the Bear was performing a Cheyenne sweat lodge ceremony but without the sweat or the lodge.

  His beaded medicine bag was also draped over the cart; he took his ceremonial pipe, the bowl of which was carved from catlinite into the shape of a buffalo, from it. He fit the buffalo into the stem, filled the pipe, lit it, and then drew a circle around the Hetan with the stem. He puffed on the pipe for a while, then motioned me to the opposite side of the bed and handed it to me. I smoked for what I thought was a commensurate amount of time, then handed it back to him. We went through four bowls of tobacco, and then the Bear scattered sweetgrass and juniper on the stones surrounding Cady. He picked the pipe up and pointed it to the cardinal directions and rested it against the buffalo skull, the stem between the horns. Then Henry took a medicine bundle out of the green velvet bag that he always carried with him-and which, according to him, had saved him from dying of a gut-shot wound deep in a Bighorn Mountain blizzard. He placed the bundle on the pillow by Cady’s head and handed me an old turtle rattle that was decorated with teeth and hair and deer toes. I wasn’t told to shake the rattle, so I remained still. Henry spoke in a quiet but authoritative voice.