by James Sallis
I grabbed hold of his hand, shook my head.
"Doctor's orders," he said.
"The doctor's here?"
"Not at the moment, mate."
"He's not, and we are. But he's still making decisions for both of us?'"
"You're refusing medication?"
"Do I need it?"
"You have to tell me."
"That I refuse?"
"Yes. So I can chart it."
"Okay, I refuse medication."
"Right you are, then." He picked up the clipboard, made another notation. "Surgeons here like to keep their patients snowed the first twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Some of the nurses question that, and rightly so. But who are we?"
"Besides the ones at bedside going through this shit with us, you mean."
"That's exactly what I mean."
"How long have I been here?"
"Came in around six, p.m. that is, not long before my shift started. That's to intensive care, mind you. You were in OR before, I'd guess an hour or so, started off in ER. They wouldn't have kept you down there long with a GSW, you being police and all."
"What's your name?"
" Ion."
Dawn nibbled at the window.
"Do you know what happened to me, Ion?"
"Shot on duty's what I got at report, just back from OR, standard ICU orders, no complications. Always anxious to get home to her young husband, Billie is. Hold on a sec. I'll get the chart, we can sort this out."
He was back in moments. Phones rang incessantly at the nurse's station outside my door. There must have been an elevator shaft close by. I kept hearing the deep-throated whine of the elevator's voyage, the thunk of it coming into port, the shift in hallway sounds when the doors opened.
Ion pulled a molded plastic visitor's chair up beside the bed, went rummaging through the chart.
"Looks as though you responded to a domestic dispute called in by neighbors. Got there and found a man beating his wife with a segment of garden hose. You took him down-"
"From behind, with a choke hold."
"Oh?"
"And the wife shot me."
"Coming back to you, is it?"
"Not really. But I know how these things usually go."
Perfunctory rap at the door, around the sill of which a face then leant. Young woman with something very close to a Marine buzz cut and a diamond stud in her nose.
"That time already?" Ion said. "Be right with you, C.C. Just give me a minute.
"Shift change," he told me, looking back down at the chart. "Here we go… Bullet passed cleanly through your upper thigh, no major vessels involved. There'd have been a lot of blood, I imagine. A couple of major muscle groups got more or less dissected. All put back right, but muscles take an amazing time to forgive you."
"That why I can't move?"
"That would be the restraints. Sorry." Ion unlashed trailing nylon ties from sidebars of the bed, slipped padded cuffs off wrists and ankles. "Seems you reacted poorly to one of the sedatives, hardly uncommon. But all that lot should be well out of your system by now."
The stud-nosed face appeared again in the doorway.
"C.C. What is it, you've a bloody bus to catch? You're here for twelve hours. Go take some vitals, pretend you're a nurse. I'll be along straightaway, just as I said."
I thanked him.
Standing, he pulled up a trouser leg and rapped knuckles at the pinkish leg thereunder, which gave off a hollow sound. "I've been where you are, Officer, right enough. Compliments of Miss Thatcher."
He never showed up beside my bed again. When I asked, I was told that he'd been assigned to another unit, that all the nurses rotated through the various intensive cares.
"How many ICUs are there?"
"Seeks." Six.
"That's a lot of care."
"Is hard world."
Angie was, what, twenty-four? On the other hand, she was Korean-so maybe she did know, from direct experience, how hard the world could be.
I thought I knew, of course. Weeks of physical therapy, weeks of furiously sending messages down the spinal column to a leg that first ignored the signals then barely acknowledged them, weeks of watching those around me-MS patients, people with birth defects, victims of severe trauma or strokes-taught me different. My world was easy.
Four months later, back at work though still on desk duty, I had personally thanked everyone else involved in my medical care, but in trying to track down Ion found that he'd not merely been assigned to another ICU, as I'd been told, but had left the hospital's employ.
Two or three purportedly official calls from Officer Turner at MPD, and I was pulling into the parking lot of an apartment complex in south Memphis. No sign of air conditioning and the mercury pushing ninety degrees, so most of the apartments had doors and windows open, inviting in a nonexistent breeze. Parking lot filled with pickups drooling oil and boxy sedans well past expiration date. The one-time swimming pool had been filled in with cement, the cement painted blue.
I knocked at the door of 1-C. Had in hand a sack of goodies with a gift bow threaded through the paper handles-candy, cookies, cheese and water biscuits, thumb-sized salamis, and summer sausage.
"Whot?" he said as the door opened. Puffy face, sclera gone red. Wearing shorts and T-shirt. The foot on his good leg was bare; a shoe remained on the other. Van Morrison playing back in the depths. "Tupelo Honey."
"Whot?" he said again.
"You don't remember me, do you?"
"And I should?"
"Officer Turner. Came in with a GSW long about August. You took care of me."
"Sorry, mate. All a blur to me."
Motion behind him became a body moving towards us. Buzz-cut blond hair, diamond stud, not much else by way of disguise. Or of clothes, for that matter.
"I just wanted to thank you," I said, passing across the bag. "Forgive me for intruding."
He took the bag and pulled the handles apart to look in. The bow tore away, dropping to the floor.
"Hey! Thanks, man." He stared for a moment at the bow on the floor by my foot. "You take care, okay?"
None of us, I thought later at home, remembering his kindness and concern, thirty straight leg lifts into what amounted to an hour-long regimen, wall slides and step-ups to go, muscles beginning at last to forgive me, none of us are exempt.
CHAPTER THREE
The man back in our holding cell, Judd Kurtz, wasn't talking. When we asked him where the money came from, he grinned and gave us his best try at a jailyard stare. The stare just kind of hung there in no-man's-land between close-cropped brown hair and bullish neck.
We made the necessary calls to State. They'd pull down any arrest records or outstanding warrants on Kurtz, run the fingerprints Don Lee took through AFIS. They'd also check with the feds on recent robberies and reports of missing funds. Barracks commander Bailey said he'd get back to us soonest. We woke bank president Stew Daniels so he could put the money in his vault.
"Want me to stay around?" I asked Don Lee. By this time dawn was pecking at the windows.
"No need to. Go home. Get some sleep. Come back this afternoon."
"You're sure?"
"Get out of here, Turner."
Still cool out by the cabin when I reached it, early-morning sunlight skipping bright coins across the lake. Near and far, from ancient stands of oak and cypress, young doves called to one another. Mist clung to the water's surface. I didn't come here for beauty, but it keeps insisting upon pushing its way in. Val's yellow Volvo was under the pecan tree out front. Two squirrels sat on a low limb eyeing the car suspiciously and chattering away. As I climbed out, Val stepped onto the porch with twin mugs of coffee.
"Heard you were back in port, sailor."
"Aye, ma'am."
"And how's the Fairlane?"
"Not bad, once you discount crop dusters trying to land on the hood."
I'd finally broken down and bought a car, from the same old Miss Shaugnessy who rented out her gara
ge to Jimmy Ray, who bought beer for minors. Thing was a tank: you looked out on a hood that touched down two counties over. Miss Shaugnessy'd bought it new almost forty years ago, paying cash, but never quite learned to drive. It had been up on blocks since, less than a hundred miles on the odometer. Lonnie was the one who talked her into selling it to me. Went over with a couple of plate lunches from Jay's covered in aluminum foil and a quart of beer and came back with the keys.
I don't remember too much more about that morning. Val and I sat side by side on the porch on kitchen chairs I'd fished out of the city dump up the road. I told her about Don Lee's latest catch. About the money in the nylon sports bag. Told her I was tired, bone tired, dead tired. Watched sparrows, cardinals, and woodpeckers alight in the trees and bluejays curse them all. A pair of quail ran, heads and shoulders down like soldiers, from brush to brush nearby. A squirrel came briefly onto the porch and sat on haunches regarding us. I think I told Val about the pork chop.
Next thing I know she's beside me on the bed and I'm suddenly awake. No direct sunlight through east or west windows, so most likely the sun's overhead.
"What, you didn't go in to work today?"
"New policy. State employees are encouraged to telecommute one day a week."
"What the hell for?"
"Clean air legislation."
"Someone's been trucking in the other kind?"
"Sorry. Thought you were awake, but obviously you're not quite. I did mention the government, right?"
"See your point."
"You said to wake you around noon. Coffee's almost fresh and Cafe Val's open for business. Need a menu?"
"Oatmeal."
"Oatmeal? Here I hook up with an older man, expecting to reap the benefits of his life experience-plumb the depths of wisdom land all that-and what I get is oatmeal?"
She did, and I did, and within the hour, following shower, shave, oatmeal breakfast, and a change of clothes, I pulled in by city hall. The Chariot and Don Lee's pickup were still there, along with June's Neon. Blinds were closed.
Those blinds never get closed except at night.
And the door was locked.
If I hadn't been fully awake before, I was now.
I had a key, of course. What I didn't have was any idea where the key might be. Time to rely on my extensive experience as a law-enforcement professional: I kicked the door in. Luckily a decade's baking heat had done its work. On my third try the doorframe around the lock splintered.
Donna, one of two secretaries from the other half of city hall-mayor's office, city clerk, water and sewage departments, the administrative side of things-appeared beside me to say "We have a spare key, you know." Then she glanced inside.
June lay there, shamrock-shaped pool of blood beneath her head, purse still slung over her shoulder. She was breathing slowly and regularly. Bubbles of blood formed and broke in her right nostril with each breath. As on a movie screen I saw her arrive for her shift, surprising them in the act. She'd have keyed the door and come on in. One hand on the. 22 that had spilled from her purse when she fell, I imagined. She'd have realized something wasn't right, same as I did.
Two smaller questions to add to the big one, then.
Why was June carrying a gun in her purse?
And was Don Lee already down when she arrived?
He lay on the floor by the door leading back to the storage room and holding cells. A goose egg the color and shape of an overripe Roma tomato hung off the left side of his head. Glancing through the open door I saw the holding cell was empty. Don Lee's eyes flickered as I knelt over him. He was trying to say something. I leaned closer.
"Gumballs?"
He shook his head.
"Goombahs," he said.
Donna meanwhile had put in a call for Doc Oldham, who, as usual, arrived complaining.
"Man can't even be left alone to have his goddamn lunch in peace nowadays. What the hell're you up to now, Turner? This used to be a nice quiet place to live, you know? Then you showed up."
He dropped to one knee beside June. For a moment I'd have sworn he was going to topple. Droplets of sweat, defying gravity, stood on his scalp. He felt for June's carotid, rested a hand briefly on her chest. Carefully supported her head with one hand while palpating it, checking pupils, ears.
"I'm assuming you've already done this?" he said.
"Pupils equal and reactive, so no sign of concussion. No fremitus or other indication of respiratory difficulty. No real evidence of struggle. Someone standing guard at the door's my guess. A single blow meant only to put her down."
Oldham's eyes met mine. We'd both been there too many times.
"Not bad for an amateur, I was about to say. But you're not, are you? So I was about to make myself an asshole. Not for the first time, mind. And, I sincerely hope, not for the last." Grabbing at a tabletop, he wobbled to his feet. "I need to look at the other one?"
"Pupils unequal but reactive. Unconscious now, but he spoke to me earlier and responds to pain. Doesn't look to be any major blood loss. Vitals are good. BP I'd estimate at ninety over sixty, thereabouts."
"Ambulance on the way?"
"Call's in."
"Could take some time. Rory ain't always easy to rouse, once he's got hisself bedded down for the day. Damn it all, we're looking at a major goddamn crime scene here."
"Afraid so."
"Ever tell you how much I hate court days?"
"Once or twice."
"There're those who'd be pleased to pay for your ticket back home, you know." He leaned heavily against the wall, reeling down breaths in stages, like a kite from the sky. "But you ain't going away, are you, boy?"
"No, sir."
"You sure 'bout that?"
"I am."
He pushed himself away from the wall.
"Good. Things been a hell of a lot more interesting around here since you came." Doc Oldham and I packed the two of them off to the hospital up Little Rock way, then he had to demonstrate his new step. He'd recently taken up tap dancing, God help us all, and every time you saw him, he wanted to show off his latest moves. This from a man who could barely stand upright, mind you. It was like watching a half-rotted pecan tree go au point. But eventually he left to make another try at his goddamn lunch, and I went to work. I'd barely got started when Buster arrived. Buster filled in as relief cook at the diner, cleaned up there most nights, snagged whatever other work he could. I never could figure what it was about him, some kind of palsy or just plain old nerves, but some part of Buster always had to be moving.
"Doc says you could use help gettin' th'office cleaned up," he said, looking around. When his head stopped moving, a foot started. "'Pears to me he was right."
"You don't have to do that."
"Well, no sir, I don't," he said, grinning. Then the lips relaxed and his eyes met mine. A shaky hand rose between us. "Sure enough could use the work, though."
"Twenty sound okay?"
"Yessir. Sounds right good. Specially with my anniversary coming up and all."
"How many years does this make for you and Delia?"
"Fifty-eight."
"Congratulations."
"She the one deserves congratulations, puttin' up with the likes of me all these years."
Buster went back to the storage room to find what he needed as I sank in again. Buster could clean the stairs at Grand Central Station during rush hour without getting in anyone's way. Someone once said of a Russian official who survived regime after regime that he'd learned to dodge raindrops and could make his way through a downpour without ever getting wet. That's Buster.
Don's desk tray held his report, with a photocopy of the original speeding ticket stapled to it. In the ledger he'd logged time of arrest, reason for same, time of arrival at the office, booking number. The column for PI (personal items) was checked, as was that for FP (fingerprinted) and PC (phone call).
Just out of curiosity, I paged back to see when we'd last fingerprinted or given a phone call. We rar
ely had sleepovers, and when we did they were guys who'd had a little too much to drink, bored high school kids caught out vandalizing, the occasional mild domestic dispute needing cool-off time.
Four months back, I'd answered a suspicious person call at the junior high. Dominic Ford had offered no resistance, but I'd brought him in and put his stats in the system on the off chance that he might be a pedophile or habitual offender. Turned out he was an estranged father just trying to get a glimpse of his twelve-year-old daughter, make sure she was okay.
Six months back, Don Lee responded to a call that a man "not from around here" was sitting on the only bench in the tiny park at the end of Main Street talking to himself. Thinking he could be a psychiatric patient, Don Lee printed him. What he was, was minister of a Pentecostal church in far south Memphis, out towards the state border where gambling casinos afloat on the river have turned Tunica into a second Atlantic City. He'd only wanted to get back to the kind of place he grew up, he said. Touch down there, feel it again. He'd been sitting on the bench working up his sermon.
The previous entry was for that time, a year ago, when Lonnie, Don Lee, and I discovered how Carl Hazelwood had been killed-the day the sheriff got shot.
All these years, I'd never seen anything remotely resembling a jailbreak and assumed they only happened in old Western or gangster movies. But it was obvious this crew had come here specifically to spring Judd Kurtz. Goombahs, Don Lee had said. Even among the most hardassed, there aren't many who'll step up to a law office, even a far-flung, homespun one like ours, with such impunity.
I sat looking at that tick underneath PC. Then I made my own call, to Mabel at Bell South.
"Don Lee and Miss June gonna be okay?" she said immediately upon hearing my voice.
"We hope so. Meanwhile, I need a favor."
"Whatever I can do."
"How much do you know about what went down over here?"
"Just someone stormed in and beat crap out of the two of them's all I heard."
"That someone came to town to break out a man Don Lee had detained on a traffic violation."
"Take safe driving seriously, do they?"
Known for her biting wit, Mabel was. Not to mention the choicest gossip in town.