Kindness Goes Unpunished wl-3

by Craig Johnson

  When I was able to think again, I was in the shower trying to wash myself with one hand, the other with a bread bag over it, secured with a rubber band. I couldn’t be sure if I was ever going to leave the water; it wasn’t safe out there.

  Vic must have been reading my mind because, after about fifteen minutes, I became aware of her outline through the opaque surface of the shower door. I turned off the water and stood there, dripping.

  “Walt?”

  “Yep?”

  She waited a moment and then spoke again. “It was just sex.”

  “Uh huh.”

  It was a longer pause this time. “You’re still who you are, I’m still who I am, and we’re still who we are.”

  “Right.”

  I watched as she put earrings on and applied lipstick. “The only difference is that we had sex.”

  “Okay.”

  She laughed and turned toward the shower. “Are you all right?”

  I took a deep breath and winced a little. “Yep.” She waited, and I finally heard her let out a long sigh. I wiped the water from my eyes. “Vic?” I stared at the shower control and tried to stay focused. “We can’t ever do that again.”

  She chuckled as she went out, not closing the bathroom door behind her. “Speak for yourself, big guy.”

  I didn’t have any clothes upstairs, so I had to go down with a towel wrapped around my middle. She sat at the counter with another beer and the two-day-old Daily News that had the story about Devon Conliffe’s death on the front page.

  I memorized every detail of her appearance with just one glance: the wife-beater T-shirt; the brown, pebbled leather jacket with studded conchos; the belt with green copper studs; a dark green lace skirt which stalled out at midcalf; and a pair of clunky-heeled alligator packers.

  She had blown her hair dry so that it feathered down and covered her eyebrows, and she wore a turquoise choker and earrings, with my hat sitting ludicrously large on her head. I had known her for three years and, as good as she had always looked, she had never looked this good. “You want your hat back?”

  I clutched my towel and pulled my only suit jacket and tie from my bag. “Eventually.”

  She took a sip of her beer. “You’re being weird.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.” She smiled.

  “Look…” I wondered about what I wanted her looking at. “I’ve got a lot of things going on in my life, and the last thing we should be…”

  She cut me off with each word as a statement of its own: “Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” She tried to continue, but the urge to laugh was too much. I waited while she laughed at me. “Jesus, Walt, you’re acting like some fucking prom queen the morning after.”

  I stood there in my towel and felt ridiculous.

  She got up from the stool and dangled the bottle from her hand like she had on the bridge and walked toward me, slowly. “How about I make it easy for you? We’ll just call it rape. I raped you. There. Do you feel better?” She was very close now, and she smelled like our sex, which she hadn’t tried to cover up. She gave me a long look from toe to head, where she replaced my hat. “And, if you don’t get dressed, I may do it again.”

  It’s hard to scamper in a towel.

  Vic said she’d meet me at the Academy with Katz and Gowder and had left me to my own devices and the hospital. We had taken the same cab for a while; Vic’s attention stayed out the window as the city rushed by. I kept trying to detect a weirdness in her, but it just wasn’t there. It was quite possible that she had more experience than I did. Since the end of her marriage, she’d been briefly involved with a dentist and had had a ferocious weekend with some rodeo cowboy who’d then showed up at the office and been treated to a reenactment of the Battle of Benevento; Ruby and I had desperately tried to pretend that we weren’t listening.

  “I’ve only had sex with six women in my entire life.” It came out before I had a chance to edit it or make any additions, and I said it like I was talking about heart attacks.

  She turned her head and looked at me, with a little bit of sadness. “Oh, Walt…”

  When I got to the ICU, the head nurse told me they had been trying to call me. Cady had opened her eyes. Michael had been in the room. He was by her bed, standing easily on the one unwounded foot. “How ya doin’, Sheriff?”

  I looked at her, but her eyes were closed.

  “She had them open for about an hour and a half, and she closed them no more than ten minutes ago.”

  I sat down in the chair by the bed and stared at her motionless face, at the ceremonial Cheyenne trappings still surrounding her, and started to cry. I couldn’t stop. All the pent-up emotion of the last week found fissures in my stalwart act and began cracking like ice dropped into hot water. I could feel the strike of tears dripping onto the two-fisted grip of my hands. I wasn’t aware of Michael moving, but I felt his hand on my shoulder. The wretched, cynical husk that had written Cady off and had prepared me to let her go was dying. The transition from malice to relief was quick and, when my eyes could refocus, I noticed that I’d crushed the finger brace.

  Michael and the nurse kneeled in front of me, both of them looking at the twisted aluminum wrapped around my broken finger. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

  I tried to catch my breath and noticed that my ribs weren’t aching either. I looked past the nurse’s head and could see that Cady had opened her eyes again. I smiled. “Not anymore.”

  Rissman had been called; he had left a message that he wanted to talk with me when I arrived. He was trying to keep my attention as I watched Cady’s eyes and counted how long it took her to blink. He said that most comas end with the patients opening their eyes and regaining consciousness, but that 10 percent of those who do fall into the category of Apallic Syndrome and don’t respond to environmental stimulus.

  I squeezed Cady’s hand, but she didn’t respond. Her eyes looked into the distance to places I could not see. The color was clear, and the whites as bright as I’d ever seen them.

  He said that for her to regain consciousness, both reactivity and perceptivity would have to be present.

  I bit my lower lip and could feel the heat returning behind my eyes.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying?” He looked at the ceiling, the floor, and my left shoulder.

  I looked across the bed at him. “She’s going to make it.”

  He shook his head. “Please don’t get your hopes too high. Even in the best of circumstances…”

  “She’s going to make it.” I sometimes underestimate the vigor of my statements, and I’d imagine it has to do with having to deal with the law on a continual basis. I rarely let emotion get a strong grip on me or have an influence in my responses, but this was different. I’d been waiting so long for hope that I wasn’t letting it slip away. I’d seen what the hopeless approach was like, and I was never going back there again. “She’s going to make it.”

  Rissman said that he was ordering some more tests now that she had opened her eyes and that I had at least a few hours. Michael said he’d be happy to stay and wait for Cady while I went to the reception. I tried not to concentrate on the features he shared with Vic.

  “This section tells the story of the Autumn Count; it is a legendary buffalo robe inscribed by Crazy Horse that supposedly had the ability to tell the future.” He looked up at us. “I have never heard it mentioned outside the tribal council and certainly never by a white man.” He looked back at the ledger and turned the page. “This is the most comprehensive history of the Notame-ohmeseheestse I have ever read outside of the reservation.” He shook his head. “I would very much like to meet this William White Eyes.”

  Katz pulled out a chair and sat down across from Henry, while Gowder leaned against the table with his arms folded. Vic stood beside him. “Welcome to the fucking club.”

  The Academy staff was setting up the finishing touches on the reception that was scheduled to open in less than an hour, and it promised to be quite the w
ingding. The main hall was festooned with billboard-sized enlargements of the Mennonite Collection, as it was now called, and it was a little odd to have a gigantic Lonnie Little Bird looking at me from behind the table where Henry sat. I could almost hear the “um-hmm, yes, it is so” drifting across the marble-floored hall.

  “What about page seventy-two?”

  He flipped the pages, placed a hand gently in the corner, and held the book open. “It is a record of business dealings, numbers, but there is a code that I do not understand.”

  I glanced at Katz, who nodded. “Money laundering accounts.”

  “So, this ledger possibly gives us the numbered accounts of Toy Diaz’s operation?” Katz shrugged, probably weighing the evidentiary value of a prosecuting attorney holding up the ledger in a court of law. “But I guess without William White Eyes’ corroboration, these things are pretty much useless?”

  Henry looked back at me. “They are incredible works of art.”

  I reached over and took the ledger from him. “You’ve been hanging around in museums too long.” I handed the book to Katz, who stacked it on top of the other one. “I guess we need Billy Carlisle.”

  The detective dropped his head. “I’ve got a wife and kid who’ve forgotten what I look like.” He scooped up the ledgers, placed them under his arm, and glanced at Gowder. “I’ll head back to the Roundhouse and get Meifert on a search for Carlisle. You?”

  “I might hang around.”

  I put my hat back on, and we all stood. I made the general announcement. “Cady’s eyes opened.”

  The Cheyenne Nation was the first to respond, even if his expression stayed the same. “Of course they have.” He reached out and thumped both paws on my shoulders. “I wondered why you were acting strangely.” I glanced at Vic, who covered her mouth. Henry had followed my look and then added. “We will retire to the hospital after the reception.”

  “I may not last that long.”

  He smiled. “I understand. I will meet you there.”

  Michelle Reddington, the dapper woman with the black dress and security pass, came around the corner from the gift shop and took Henry up the ornate, brass-railed stairs toward the Great Hall, where the majority of the photographs had been hung. He paused at the railing, looked back at me, motioned with his right hand in a fist against his chest, and then pointed his index finger down, the Cheyenne sign-talk for hope/heart.

  I smiled back and brought my open right hand within a foot of my face, lowering it down and out to the right with a slight bow: thank you.

  Katz and Gowder were equally congratulatory, but I told them what Rissman had said about being overly optimistic. They agreed that whatever the outcome, Cady’s eyes opening was certainly a good sign. Vic stood apart, clutching herself with her arms and smiling; after a moment, she turned and walked away.

  Katz excused himself, and suddenly Gowder and I found ourselves looking at each other. “I owe you an apology.”

  He waved me off. “Forget about it.” He gestured toward the bar up on the mezzanine. “C’mon, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  As we were walking up the steps, I noticed that the gates had opened and the lower lobby was filling with well-dressed receptionees. Vic and Katz were carrying on a conversation by the revolving door at the front, and I started wondering what they were talking about-and then wondering why I was wondering. It was about that time that I noticed Vince Osgood and a beautiful young woman handing over their wraps at the coat check. This was beginning to have all the makings of an interesting evening.

  Gowder ordered a gin and tonic; I ordered a Yuengling. We wandered up the rest of the stairs and decided to beat the rush to the exhibit. There were about two hundred of the photographs, some in montage, some in their original snapshot format, and some enlarged to the size of doors. Dena Many Camps’s poetry was etched across the bottoms and sides of the large ones in a bold italic.

  I sipped my beer. “You mind if I ask you a question?”

  He studied the photo of the chiefs, who were holding one end of the American flag while some cavalry officers held the other. “Go ahead.”

  “This case seems pretty important to you and Katz.”

  “Is that your question?”

  I tipped my hat back. “Yep.”

  He thought about it for a while. “Different reasons; with Katz it’s a way of cleaning house. Dirty cops, dirty lawmakers, dirty lawyers bring out the inquisitor in him, and the last thing anyone in Philadelphia ever wants to hear is that Asa Katz wants a sniff of him. He did fourteen years with homicide and they tried to kick him over to cold case, but he took Internal Affairs Division.”

  “That kind of move can make a man unpopular.”

  Gowder smiled. “He doesn’t care. He never went in for that cult-of-the-cop shit.”

  “So it’s Osgood?”

  “For Katz.”

  I nodded. “He’s here.”

  “Osgood? Yeah, I saw him. Why do you think I stayed?”

  I smiled back. “And you?”

  He glanced at the picture of Henry’s father sitting on the steps with the cat. “You know all these people?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded and chewed on an ice cube. “You know that crack house you guys took out earlier this week? I was born two blocks away from there.”

  I studied him carefully. “You mind if I ask you another question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You guys were interested in Devon because of the money laundering thing, but who put you onto Cady and me?”

  He took a sip of his drink and smiled. “Asa got a phone call from somebody who wanted you looked after.”

  “Who?” He kept looking at the picture, but the message was loud and clear.

  I left him behind and walked along, looking at the familiar photographs. I stalled out at the one of Frank White Shield’s wife, who was stringing snap peas on the front porch of their two-room cabin. The photo was compelling, but it was Dena’s words that froze me. can you hear the sound of old women clacking their old tongues to the roofs of their mouths in the dust? this is prophecy so never ask the Indian whether she’d take the million dollars or the match. gasoline is on the shelf in all our houses.

  I hadn’t noticed that Vic was standing beside me. “You look nice, Walt.” I wasn’t sure what to say, so I self-consciously straightened my tie. She made an exasperated sound and reached out to straighten my now crooked tie. “I said you look nice. Stop fidgeting.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And stop apologizing.”

  “Okay.” She studied the photograph and was reading Dena’s poetry, the point of her nose turned up. I couldn’t help but wonder if the world had changed, that things were, indeed, different. “Lucian calls it my union-organizer suit jacket.” She wasn’t really paying attention to me but was thinking about Dena’s words. “You look great, too.”

  Her head turned back to me. “Thank you.”

  She smiled, and I smiled back. “Why do I have a feeling that what we did this afternoon was for my benefit?” She didn’t say anything, but took a sip of her dirty martini, and I watched the iridescent sparkling in the tarnished gold eye, and was thinking that I was doing exactly what I’d been fighting against for years: falling in love with my deputy.

  Someone was standing beside us. It was Osgood and the young woman I’d seen with him in the lobby. “I’m sorry if I’m interrupting.”

  “Howdy.” I stepped back and introduced Vic. The blonde’s name was Patricia Fulton, and she was making it abundantly clear that we hillbillies were not the people she had come to meet. He dismissed her to get drinks, which produced volumes of lower lip, but she disappeared.

  Osgood gave Vic a strong look, from her turquoise choker to her boots, and I had the urge to toss him off the balcony. “So, you’re from Wyoming?”

  She finished off her cloudy cocktail and took an olive out that had been impaled by a tiny, plastic sword. “I’m from Ninth Street, shitbird, and don’t you
forget it.” She bit the olive, turned, and started for the bar in a calculated retreat.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No.” We both looked after her.

  “Is she a Moretti Moretti?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  He sighed, and his head dropped a little. “Man, I can’t catch a break.” He noticed my stitches and the finger guard. “What happened to you?”

  I shrugged. “I got mugged.”

  “When?”

  “This morning. It’s no big deal.”

  He leaned in closer to me, and his voice dropped. “I have some information for you.”

  I waited. “Okay…”

  “Not here.” He glanced around. “The bridge. Later?”

  I took a moment to respond. “No.”

  He studied me. “What do you mean, no?”

  “I mean no. I’ve got other things I have to do tonight and running to the other side of town and hanging around on bridges is not one of them. If you’ve got something to tell me, just tell me.”

  “It has to do with your daughter.”

  “Cady. Then I’m interested, but I don’t have the time to go anywhere else.” I pulled out my pocketwatch. “As a matter of fact, I’m only going to be here for about twenty more minutes.”

  He thought about it. “I’ll meet you outside.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s an alley behind the building; it turns a corner and there’s a loading dock. I’ll meet you there in fifteen.”

  I took a tip from the blonde and tried to look bored. “You bet.”

  I left him and continued around the gallery, careful to catch Gowder’s eye as I got another beer from the bartender and retrieved Vic. “You got your sidearm?”

  She looked genuinely shocked. “What?”

  “I take that as a no?”

  “Yes, that’s a no.”

  I steered her out of the main gallery to the landing as Gowder appeared, and I nodded him toward us. “Osgood just arranged a little meeting with me out back.”

  His eyes widened. “Put him off, and we’ll wire you.”

  I shook my head. “No, I have every intention of being back at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital within the hour. This case is important, but Cady is more important.”