Kindness Goes Unpunished wl-3

by Craig Johnson

  It wasn’t hard to imagine Lena as she had been in her midthirties any more than it was hard to imagine what Vic would look like in her late fifties; each was a reminder of what could be and what was, with the grip of the past too strong and the grip of the future too frightening.

  “Where’s the Terror?”

  Obviously, she was reading my mind. “I got another note stuffed in my hat after I dropped it last night.”

  She placed a hand over her eyes and sighed. “Enough of this cloak and dagger stuff.” She leaned forward. “I have news for you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Not that it matters that much now, but Alphonse says Devon Conliffe was turning state’s evidence on Vince Osgood.”

  “I know that.”

  She looked at me. “How do you know that?”

  “Katz and Gowder had to tell me after I found out Billy Carlisle was William White Eyes.”

  “Who is Billy Carlisle, and, for that matter, William White Eyes?”

  I studied her for a long time. “Lena, how come you called Katz and told him to keep an eye on me?”

  Her eyes didn’t come back to mine, and she sat there quietly with her hands holding onto the paper cup of coffee. “I was worried about you.” A little time passed as we looked at each other. She smiled. “Well, I’m not one to pry into police matters for too long.” She picked up her purse from the sill, stood, and turned to look at me. “I’m too well trained.” She took a pair of sunglasses out and slipped them on. “Do you have plans for dinner?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Dinner?” She picked up her empty coffee cup and dropped it in the nearby trash can. “Victor and I thought it might be nice to have you and Vic for dinner late-afternoon? We’d be honored if you brought Henry. It’ll have to be early, since Victor has another performance tonight. About five? Nothing special, Lena’s Risotto a la Marinara Moretti.”

  I stayed seated and watched her continue to stiffen. “Lena, have I done something to upset you?”

  She didn’t look at me. “Possibly.”

  I listened to the flap of the sandals as she disappeared down the corridor of the ICU and wondered if I was developing an unwanted talent for driving women away.

  “That was well done.”

  I turned to look at the Indian as he raised his hat. He studied me as I took the top off the coffee Lena had given me and went ahead with a sip. “You think?”

  He adjusted the cap and leaned on the arm of his chair to get a better look at me. “You were using your cop voice. I think that was what pissed her off more than anything.”

  “Cop voice?”

  He nodded. “It is a pedantic tone you use when you are questioning a suspect that…”

  “All right…”

  “She has probably heard enough cop voices in her life.”

  He flexed his neck and moved to the chair Lena had just vacated. I offered him the coffee, and he took a sip. He handed it back to me and noticed my new bandage. “You are hurt again?”

  “Yep.”

  He picked up the paper that Lena had left on the floor. “Would you like to tell me or should I just read about it in the newspaper?”

  “Osgood’s dead, along with Shankar DuVall.” I raised my hands in innocence. “I didn’t kill either one of them.”

  “That is good.”

  I smiled with him and passed the coffee again. “I got another note…”

  “I heard. What is your new theory?”

  “I think the notes concern themselves with Indian statuary.” I pulled one of the books from my backpack and opened it to the photo of the Plains medicine man.

  He took the book and cradled it in his hands, and somehow it became more important. His fingers traced down the page. “You think that the preoccupation of William White Eyes with all things Native extends to the art world?”

  “Yep.”

  He took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I am relinquished of my duties at the Academy and can now assist you full time.”

  I felt guilty about not having kept him company. “How was the reception? It seemed like a success.”

  He continued to study the book. “It was.”

  “How was your speech?”

  “Brilliant.”

  I took another sip of the communal coffee. “You’re sounding pedantic.”

  He nodded and handed the book back to me. “I am now in cop mode.”

  “You know…” He watched me as I watched Cady. “You may be going back to Wyoming alone.” He continued studying me as I slipped the book back in the pack.

  “That is what you want?”

  I shifted in the chair. “I just can’t keep you here while I wait for…” I could feel the heat rising in my face, so I took a few moments to swallow and let the warmth dissipate. “I don’t know when I’m going to be able to go home.”

  He straightened in his own chair. “Maybe the wait will be shorter than you think.” He brought his large hands up and clapped the leather palms together like the report of a rifle with a voice that thundered from the high plains. “Cady!”

  I spilled the coffee. The head nurse was standing, but she remained behind the desk; she was probably afraid that the Indian was on the warpath. I turned back toward him with my face set, but when my eyes rested on Cady, hers were open, and they were not staring at the ceiling but at us.

  I felt myself rising from my chair and walking toward the bed, and her eyes followed me. I couldn’t breathe, and my vision was clouding with the pent emotion of what seemed like a lifetime. I had never seen eyes as beautiful as the ones I was looking into now.

  I reached out and took her hand with my battered, finger-guarded paw. “How long have you known?”

  He smiled and shook his head at my ignorance. “Just now.”

  I was standing there looking at him when I thought I felt a mild pressure in my hand that a man without hope would have perceived as a reflex action. I turned and looked at Cady, and her eyes stayed steady with mine. I gently squeezed her hand in return and, once again, ever so gently, she squeezed back. I kneeled down by the bed, the tears stinging. “I see you. I see you, and I felt that just now…” I stayed with those eyes, staying with them just as sure as I held onto her hand. “Don’t you go away. Don’t you ever go away again.”

  She didn’t nod or even move, but I knew she could hear me and understand. I squeezed her hand again, but she didn’t squeeze back this time, and that was okay. She was probably tired, and we had a long way to go.

  It was Dr. Rissman’s day off. Another surgeon from the floor below said that it was a cognitive effect that denoted a reactive concept but not necessarily one of perceptivity. He started to give me the reactivity/perceptivity routine, but I refused delivery and told him “The Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time” was on its way back, so get ready.

  The narrow rays of hope I’d been nurturing cracked across the ICU like the sound of Henry’s hands, and I sat at the side of Cady’s bed for the next hour and forty-three minutes until her eyes closed again.

  They wanted to run more tests, and I was the thing that was holding them up. I didn’t want to let go and wanted to be there when her eyes opened again, but one of Henry’s thunderclap hands rested on my shoulder, and I felt the tug of home from two mountain ranges away.

  I brushed the sleeve of my shirt across my face, smearing the residue of sentiment and careful to avoid the parts that were freshly stitched. I laughed.

  “What is it?”

  I tried stretching my shoulders without pulling at my beat-up, Raggedy Andy head. “I was just thinking that if my face was the first thing I saw when I came to, I might go back to sleep myself.”

  I looked to see if she would respond when he dragged my hand away, but she didn’t. Like Sleeping Beauty, she was enchanted again, and all I could do was wait.

  It was a beautiful day, and the warmth of the sun felt good on my back. Henry had picked the Vietnamese stir-fry place near the university for an
early lunch, and the food was actually pretty good. The guy had almost dropped his spatula when the Indian ordered in Vietnamese. Since it was a Saturday and the students were otherwise engaged, we occupied one of the picnic tables; my two regular pigeons hopped over and stood beside my boots. I motioned with my plastic spork. “Mutt, Jeff, meet Henry Standing Bear.”

  Henry nodded at the two freeloaders. “Ha-ho, Mutt and Jeff.” Mutt cocked his head at the baritone Cheyenne, but Jeff kept his beady eyes on my fried rice.

  I looked toward the facade of Franklin Field and thought about what had happened today. I thought about the chain of violence and death that had been at least momentarily reversed. I thought about acts of kindness and acts of risk that were due a reward.

  Henry ate his shrimp with rice and looked at me but didn’t say anything. He took a sip of his green tea and studied me with the steady, dark eyes. “What do you think they will find at the medicine man statue?”

  I took a deep breath, and it seemed like my ribs didn’t hurt as badly. “Now that I’ve had time to think about it, nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “I think William White Eyes was going to be there.” I put my paper plate on the ground so that Mutt and Jeff could get a shot at some rice. “He’s not going to show for Philadelphia’s finest, but he will for us.”

  He sat the cup down. “This is not over then, is it?”

  “He saved Cady.” He didn’t reply. “You and I both know that if she hadn’t gotten medical attention as quickly as she did, she’d be dead.” It felt good having some idea of what I was going to do. “He exposed himself, not once, but a bunch of times to make sure that we were okay.” I used the finger guard to scratch at the stitches at my jaw. “That’s just not something I can walk away from.”

  “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 c
ontinue 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.