Kindness Goes Unpunished

13

I watched as the headless body fell forward into the pools of rain-water that had collected on the uneven surface of the brick pavement. It wasn’t so much that Osgood’s head had exploded as it had vaporized in a crimson mist that had sprayed me along with Dog.

I had ducked and turned my head to the side with the sound, and I was lucky that I had, because deflected 10-gauge pellets smacked against the side of my hat and stung my neck and shoulder. Dog lunged on the leash and barked ferociously as I hung on to the leather strap and yanked him toward me.

There was a familiar roar, and I watched as a slug from my. 45 ricocheted off the surface of the narrow passageway between the buildings. Vic stepped from the doorway of the Academy’s loading dock and moved swiftly toward the alley in a two-handed stance, firing as she went, while Gowder ran toward the chain-link fence with his. 40 at the ready.

I looked up from Osgood’s twitching body to the eight-foot barrier with the razor wire strung across the top. I released the leash, and Dog charged toward Vic. I yelled as I started back out of the dead-end alley. “Grab him!”

As I rounded the corner, I took the deepest breath I’d taken since falling onto the street that morning. The pain blurred my vision, and I ran into the kid with the cap, slamming him backward as I stumbled over him and lost my hat. “Yo, man!”

I had regained the sidewalk, and it was a straight shot down Cherry to Broad, but the fifty yards looked like Ten Mile Road. It seemed to take forever, but I turned onto Broad in time to see a large man in a hooded sweatshirt covered with some kind of black rain slicker and with a firearm that looked like one of the old Ithaca Roadblockers sticking out of the unsnapped front; he had just turned the corner at Arch.

I grabbed my side, ran into traffic, and took a diagonal approach that gave me a geometric advantage. I heard brakes squealing as I thundered across Broad and felt the draft of a sedan as it missed me by about a foot. I stumbled a little as I made the median but bulled another car to a full stop on the other side, extended my hands, bounced from the grille, and pivoted across the street as another car swerved and disappeared behind me.

I dodged between two parked cars and turned the corner at Arch as well. People were screaming farther down the block, and a crowd had gathered. “Police! Has anybody seen…” About twelve people pointed south. I turned and ran.

He was cutting the corner and taking a left at the next street and was slowing down. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why he was walking; it was possible that he thought he was clear. I fought the urge to throw up and put my last scrap of energy into the final block.

There was a mob on the sidewalk near the Reading Terminal Market; something must have been going on at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. I looked up through the misting rain and read the moving sign: NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION NATIONAL CONVENTION.

As Vic would say, fuck me. Maybe I could buy a gun from Charlton Heston.

I tried to see the guy in the gray sweatshirt through the throng; he had seemed pretty tall, so I thought I might have a chance. I started walking toward the large overpass, convinced that he’d gone that way, saw a guy with a hood, but it was the wrong color. I wiped the rain from my face and felt a twinge at my neck; I was bleeding. It wasn’t too bad, but I wasn’t going to blend in if things got close.

I caught some movement across the street and a little down the block: gray hood. I couldn’t see the shotgun; he must’ve slipped it under the slicker. If it was actually one of the old Ithaca Mag-10s, he’d never have pitched it; it would be too difficult to get another.

I tried to keep up. He was hurrying now, but not so much that I couldn’t stay with him. He wasn’t going to blend either. He stopped at the next corner, and I panicked for a moment when I thought he was going to hail a taxi; instead, he pulled out a cell phone.

As Vic would say, fuck me again. I had forgotten about Cady’s mobile. I reached into my jacket pocket and dialed 911. He jumped the puddle at the curb, careful to hang onto the gun under his coat, crossed the street, and continued down the block as sirens began whistling through the night around us. A dispatcher answered the line. “Nine-one-one.”

“This is Sheriff Walt Longmire of Absaroka County, Wyoming. I’ve got a 10-32 at the southwest corner of Filbert and 11th. I am tailing a homicide suspect who just killed Assistant District Attorney Vince Osgood at the Academy of Fine Arts, and I need assistance.”

There was a pause, but not much of one. “Sheriff, that was Filbert and 11th?”

“Roger that. A black male, tall, with a gray, hooded sweatshirt and a long, black rain slicker, headed east at a quick walking pace. The subject is armed with a tactical shotgun.”

“Roger that. Can you stay on the line?”

I laughed a short laugh with very little humor in it. “I’d really rather not have this cell phone in my hands when I catch up with him.” I started closing the phone as I crossed the street; the man was only about ninety feet ahead and slightly to the left. It was the guy from the crack house, Shanker DuVall.

“Sheriff…?”

I closed the phone and stuffed it back in my suit jacket, and silently cursed as he took a left at the next block and disappeared north up 10th. I picked up the pace and saw him slip across a parking lot behind the Greyhound Bus Terminal. I cut across the street at a diagonal, again hoping to gain a little distance.

There were rows of buses, most of them running, and I walked alongside one. DuVall was in front of another row on the opposite side of the lot; he was talking on the cell phone again.

There was a DMZ of about twenty yards that I wouldn’t be able to cross without him seeing me. I stopped and started to pull the phone from my pocket when I heard a thumping noise and looked up to see an angry bus driver yelling at me. Even through the windshield and the noise of the diesel, I could hear him plainly. “Hey buddy! You can’t be out here!” I motioned for him to keep quiet, but he honked the air horn, and the noise was tremendous. “Buddy, you’re not allowed out here!”

There wasn’t much choice, so I crossed the lot in the direction that I had last seen DuVall, but he was gone. I glanced between the parked buses and tried not to think about the last time I’d seen most of Vince Osgood.

When I got to the area where the shooter had been standing, I peered around the parked bus and saw nothing but a concrete wall and some weeds. I stooped down, checking to see if I could see any feet, but it was so dark there wasn’t any way to tell. I slid along the corrugated side of the big vehicle and wished I had my sidearm.

There was a pole at the end of the row nearest me, but it shed only scattered blocks of light through the bus windows. I wiped the rain off my face again, stepped around a large puddle, turned sideways, and started sliding between the concrete wall and the back of the bus; I figured it was the only direction DuVall could have gone. There was just enough room for me to squeeze after him. Evidently, he hadn’t had any trouble, but then he hadn’t had any trouble squeezing between two buildings and shooting Osgood either. It was possible that he’d left and that I was alone, playing Greyhound limbo for my own amusement. I tried not to think about the alternative.

I stopped for a second and listened, thinking I heard talking. I listened again, but there was nothing. The driver revved the engine of the bus I was pressed against a few times to get the big motor cleared out; I closed my eyes and held my breath until the cloud of exhaust and soot dissipated. The noise was all-encompassing, and I could see the access doors to the engine rattling as I turned my head and looked down the barrel of an Ithaca Mag-10 Roadblocker shotgun.

I could see only part of his face in the dark and within the shadows of the hood, but I could see his lips moving as his finger tightened around the trigger mechanism.

“What?” Here I was, trapped between a bus and a hard spot, and I couldn’t hear the last words I would ever listen to. He paused and then spoke again. His voice was much louder, but I still couldn’t make out the words. “What?”

“I said, I was gonna let you live!”

I yelled back. “Thank you.”

“But…” And he pulled the trigger.

The Ithaca Mag-10 Roadblocker was introduced a few decades back as a tactical 10-gauge designed to stop cars; hence the name Roadblocker. It was expensive, heavy, and carried only three rounds, the idea being that three two-ounce helpings of lead served at just over the sound barrier were enough. However, it had problems that could only be corrected with a longer forcing tube; without the modification, it had a propensity to jam.

And it did.

His eyes widened, and I saw him continue to pull the trigger as I slapped the barrel up; just because it hadn’t gone off didn’t mean that it still wouldn’t.

And it did.

The sound of the buses was bad enough, but the blast from the business end of the 10-gauge shotgun made me hear a high-pitched squeal that felt like a band saw cutting through my brain. I held the barrel above me as the back glass and parts of the bus’s aluminum skin skittered down on my face. He tugged at the heated metal of the shotgun, but I yanked, and the weapon came loose, skimmed over me, and clattered onto the ground.

I turned my head, but he was gone. I sidestepped and looked down; he had fallen, and his arm was lodged between the dual wheels of the Greyhound-center shot to the head. I looked up, and Gowder stood about ten yards away in a two-handed stance with his. 40 still pointed at the now-dead man.

He looked up at me and said something, but all I could hear was the ringing and all I could do was look back, breathe as deeply as my ribs would allow, and try to stop shaking.

It was a source of great interest to the Philadelphia Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office of Southeastern Pennsylvania that Shankar DuVall was leaking onto a stainless-steel table at the city morgue. Gowder said that he got a ride to my call, started walking, and when he saw someone trying to shoot somebody behind the bus, he had taken appropriate, if deadly, action. I was glad that he had, and I reflected that opinion in my formal statement and recorded interview for the investigators.

I looked at the battered tactical shotgun lying on the table between us; it hadn’t had an easy life, and I was starting to think that I hadn’t, either. Gowder was sitting across from me without his gun or his badge. Both of us periodically glanced at the large mirror on the wall under the military clock and wondered who was on the other side. It was 2:33 A.M. I smiled at him and listened to my voice; it sounded as if I were underwater. I could talk, but I still couldn’t hear that well. “I’m glad you shot a bad guy, or we’d be here all night.”

He smiled and said something.

“What?” He smiled some more and pointed to his own ears. “They say it isn’t permanent, that it should get progressively better in the next seventy-two hours, half of which I intend to be asleep.” He looked at the surface of the table and probably was seeing all sorts of things that were not there. After a while, I placed a hand out and got his attention, the dark eyes slowly rising to mine. “If you hadn’t shot him, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

He nodded. After a while, he nodded some more.

They turned us loose; they were through with me, but Gowder would have to sit through another battery of interviews in the morning. By the time we got to the main hallway of the third floor, there was a group waiting for us.

Asa Katz leaned against the wall, and I almost didn’t recognize him in tennis shoes, jeans, and a blue windbreaker. Every time I’d seen him, he’d looked like a print ad for GQ, but right now he just looked like one tired cop. Vic was also there, still in her clothes from the reception. She looked great and was the only one of us who didn’t look exhausted.

Katz spoke to Gowder and then said something to me.

“What?”

They spoke among themselves, and then Vic smiled up at me, slipping her arm through mine and leading me down the hallway and into the elevator. She took Cady’s cell and called someone as we left the Roundhouse.

She thanked the cops who had given us a ride back to Cady’s, unlocked the door, and watched as I walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer; I was feeling a little edgy and thought a nightcap might help. I motioned to Vic and she nodded yes, so I pulled another one from the icebox.

Dog came over for a wag and a pet. I placed the two beers on the counter, sat at one of the stools, and ruffled his ears. My. 45 was lying there, along with my hat. I touched the brim and watched as it pivoted on the crown in a lazy circle.

Vic opened the Yuengling longnecks and slid mine toward me. I sighed and smiled at her as she looked back at the door and Dog barked. Maybe it was my ears-most likely it was recent circumstance-but I found my hand on the big Colt as Vic paid the delivery guy and came back with a pizza box. She acted like she hadn’t seen my hand on my gun, put the pepperoni with extra cheese and anchovies on half on the table, and retrieved two plates and silverware. She pulled two paper towels from the holder above the sink, handed me one, and said something.

“What?”

She shook her head, opened the box, and placed a slice with anchovies on my plate. I wasn’t particularly hungry, but as near as I could remember, I hadn’t eaten since lunch. I chewed in a mechanical fashion and sipped my beer.

I tried not to laugh at the situation; here we were with so much to say, and I couldn’t hear. I made a conscious effort to not look over to the couch, but something stirred rather deeply in the reptilian coil of my primal nature, and I felt very much like doing it again.

I concentrated on the food instead and finished half of it to Vic’s quarter as Dog alternated between us for the crusts. After a while, she stood, saying something with a sense of finality.

“What?”

She placed her hands together, laid them alongside her head, and closed her eyes. I nodded and watched as she stood there for a moment longer, then turned and went up the spiral staircase to the guest bedroom above.

I sat there wondering if I was supposed to follow. I sat there wondering if I wasn’t supposed to follow. I sat there wondering.

The answer came to me as I finally noticed the sheets, blanket, and pillow that made up a makeshift bed on the epic sofa. I reached up with the protector on my index finger and used the other digits to feel the gauze padding where the EMTs had patched my neck. I picked up my hat, turning it over and looking at the marks where one of the pellets had raced across the brim and missed my head by a quarter inch.

Cady was lying at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in a coma after having been pushed down the stairs at the Franklin Institute by Devon Conliffe.

Devon Conliffe was dead after being thrown from the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.

Osgood was dead, shot in the head by Shankar DuVall.

Shankar DuVall was dead after being shot by Gowder for trying to kill me behind a Greyhound bus.

That’s all I knew.

I turned out the lights, put my hat on since it was easier to wear than to carry, and wondered who was next. I picked up my sidearm, jacking the slide mechanism to make sure that it was empty, glanced up at the balcony, where the light from the guest bedroom was off, and limped over to the sofa. Even after having Vic call and finding there was no change, I wanted to get to the hospital at a reasonable hour in the morning, so I thought that maybe I should try to get to sleep.

My hat seemed out of shape; maybe the shotgun blast had done more damage than I’d thought. I flipped it onto the coffee table and placed my gun under the brim, pulled off my boots, and shrugged off my filthy jacket, shirt, and tie, trying carefully to avoid my numerous and sundry injuries. I stripped off my blood-spattered jeans and collapsed gently onto the sofa with a groan that caused Dog to come over and rest his head on the cushion beside mine. I petted him with the back of my hand and watched as he curled up on the floor, the ever-vigilant protector.

The ambient glow from the bridge cast blue through the glass of the cupola. The rain had subsided to a soft drizzle that shifted the light from above. There was probably a comforting sound that went along with it, but I couldn’t hear it; all I had was the ringing.

Cady’s eyes had opened. I thought of going to the hospital now. I wanted to see those clear, cool, gray eyes again. I wanted to watch them blink and know that her fine mind was working in there somewhere, finding its way back, but that was stupid. I was tired, filthy, and couldn’t hear.

I pulled the covers up and started to roll over, but my ribs reminded me that I couldn’t, and my eyes wouldn’t stay closed, so I stared at my hat. It would be a shame if it was ruined-it had gone through so much-but if it no longer fit, it no longer fit. I thought of trying it on again and started to reach for it. The inner band was brown and the lining a shiny rayon red, but something was poking up from the liner that was pointed and white.

“Well, hell.” I was still underwater, but I know the words had slipped from my mouth. I blinked and looked again, hoping that perhaps my eyes were playing tricks on me along with my ears, but it was still there. I let sleeping Dog lie and reached over, using my middle and ring fingers to pull the tiny envelope from the battered piece of beaver. The usual typewritten word struck across the crisp stock, and again it read: SHERIFF.

I thumbed open the flap, pulled out the tiny place card, and flipped it over: MEDICINE MAN.

I stared at it, trying to figure out the significance of the two words, but again all I could think of was Henry. He wasn’t the only medicine man I knew, but he was definitely the only one I knew in Philadelphia. I thought about the last note. SEE PAGE 72. LOOK WEST, YOU CAN FIGHT CITY HALL. I assumed that one had to do with the ledgers but, in combination with the earlier note, I wasn’t sure.

GO BACK TO THE INDIAN had been a location, and perhaps a portion of the note about CITY HALL was, too; if that was the case, then MEDICINE MAN might also be a location. I thought about the Indian sculpture at Logan Circle and started wondering about Billy White Eyes’ fixation with all things native and the public art of the greater Philadelphia region.

I woke up still wondering. When Vic came down the stairs in the morning in an oversized green T-shirt, I had coffee waiting for her.

I slid her the mug; she yawned and perched on a stool. I tried not to notice her legs. “What’re you doing up?”

I sipped my own coffee and sat down to look over the collection of books I had scattered over the surface of the counter. “I needed to call the hospital, and I had some thoughts.”

She looked at me for a moment. “Your hearing’s back?”

I continued to study the open books. “Not completely, but it’s a lot better.”

I had discovered Cady’s library along one of the long walls of the living area. When the law firm in Philadelphia had hired her, she had begun accumulating books on what was to be her adopted city. There were books on its history, its architecture, politics, food, sports and, most important for the moment, its statuary.

“Did you know that Philadelphia has one of the largest collections of public sculpture in the world?”

“So?”

I thought about the prophet having no honor in his own country and that if you wanted a shitty impression of Philadelphia all you had to do was ask a Philadelphian. I held up the note from the crease of the book. “I got another note last night.”

Now she was awake. “Where?”

“I literally pulled it out of my hat.” I looked at her. “Who gave it back to you last night?”

She studied the note and glanced up at me, distracted. “The coat check guys. They said that one of the serving staff had picked it up in the alley behind the Academy.”

I thought of the dark-haired kid smoking the cigarette. “I’ll be damned…”

“What?”

I shook my head at my own stupidity. “There was a kid at the back door of the Academy, and I ran into him when I was chasing Shankar DuVall.” I looked up at her. “It had to be William White Eyes.” I thought back. “He was wearing sunglasses and a cap to disguise himself, but it was the same voice as the one who was driving the SUV, using the same phrase ‘hey man’ or ‘yo man.’ Something like that.”

“Walt, I would say that a full 70 percent of the residents of Philadelphia use the term ‘yo man.’”

I kept my eyes steady with hers. “It was him, and that was also him on the bridge.”

“What bridge?”

“When I met you here in Philadelphia.”

“All right, just for argument’s sake, let’s say it was. Why is this kid following you around?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t think it’s possible that he’s involved with this Toy Diaz group and the recently deceased Shankar DuVall?”

“He was, but I don’t think he is now, and I don’t think he’s a killer. I think he was the cook and the accountant.” She started shaking her head before I could finish. “Look, the drug business is like any other business; if you don’t keep track of your money, you don’t make money.”

“Granted.”

“If you’re running a drug operation, you can’t exactly walk into the office of the nearest CPA. You need somebody good with numbers, somebody you can trust, but somebody under the radar.”

She nodded. “Gladwyne on the Main Line, Ivy League, Phi Beta Kappa, and Rhodes Scholar William Carlisle.”

I refilled my mug and held onto the pot. “But somehow Billy Carlisle became a loose cannon in the Diaz organization somewhere around the same time he became William White Eyes, and I think that happened because of Cady.”

“In the pro bono appeal?”

“Yep.”

She smiled. “You think your daughter had a strong enough moral influence on this guy that it turned him?”

I poured her some more coffee. “You’d be amazed at the influence a woman can have for good or bad.”

She grinned and nodded her head. “Uh huh.”

I set the pot back down. “I don’t think Billy Carlisle was that bad of a guy to begin with. I think he made some bad choices and got involved with some bad people. I think he got reminded of his conscience in his dealings with Cady, and I think she became emblematic of something.”

Vic nodded and looked down at the collection of books I had spread across the counter. “What’s all this shit, anyway?”

“Research. The kid’s a genius. What’s the one thing he figured I’d eventually pick up on and even be drawn to?”

She looked at the books. “Statues?”

“Indians.”

Her eyes widened. “Fuck me.”

“The first note wasn’t Henry. GO BACK TO THE INDIAN was the statue at Logan Circle. I think LOOK WEST, YOU CAN FIGHT CITY HALL means the Indian statues facing west at City Hall.” I turned one of the books and shoved it toward her and pointed at the photograph of a Plains medicine man on horseback, his arm raised above his buffalo headdress. “Dauphin at West Thirty-third Street, east Fairmount Park.”

“Medicine man.”

I nodded. “I’m headed over to the hospital, but I thought I might stop off at City Hall since it’s on the way. The City Hall note came before the medicine man one, and the sequence might be important.”

The wedding cake that is the City Hall of Philadelphia was designed to be the tallest building in the world, but by the time it was finished, the Eiffel Tower and the Washington Monument had surpassed it. On four and a half acres of Penn Square, its domed tower tops out just shy of 550 feet to the top of Willy Penn’s hat. There are 250 other statues that adorn the interior and exterior of the building to keep him company.

We got out of the cab at the west side of the building and walked across the sidewalk with Dog as though we were approaching some fantastic ship that had been docked at the center of the metropolis.

“I hate this building.”

I ignored her and studied the facade. “It’s Second Empire, the same as the Louvre.”

“It’s fruity.”

“This is quite possibly the greatest architectural achievement of the late nineteenth century.”

I allowed my eye to cast over the dormer pediment figures on the west side of the building and walked a little ahead of Vic as she stopped to buy an Italian ice from one of the vendors that populated the area. Dog strained a little at the leash and attempted to be a part of Vic’s transaction, but I gently yanked him back.

It was a beautiful day, and the skies and streets were washed clear with the previous night’s storms. I could feel the humidity, and the air felt like the breath of someone close. I dragged Dog along behind me as I angled a little to the left and stood there, studying the dormer caryatids. Above them were two colossal bronzes at the north corners of the tower, twenty-four to twenty-six feet in height: one was an Indian maiden, the other a brave.

I looked at the more than two hundred vertical feet between the statues and me as Vic came over with two cups of Italian ice. “We don’t have to climb this ugly fucker, do we?”

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do.” I took my ice and spooned out a mouthful; it was pina colada, and it was very good. “Is there a tour of the building?”

“Yeah, or at least there used to be.”

I clarified my question. “When?”

“When it used to be my division, it was Monday through Friday at 12:30.”

“It’s Saturday.”

“It’s Philadelphia; nothing’s easy.”

I sidled a little more to the left, continuing to study the massive sculptures. “A woman with a child, and a man with a dog.” I looked down at Dog, who seemed to be taking an inordinate interest in my ice. “You don’t have any notes on you, do you?” He sat in expectation of a treat. I turned back to Vic. “Do you think we’re supposed to figure it out from here?”

She shrugged and continued eating her lemon ice. “That hasn’t been the case so far.”

I went back to ignoring Dog and studied the tower. LOOK WEST, YOU CAN FIGHT CITY HALL. It didn’t make sense that William White Eyes would leave a note in a place where we couldn’t get it. He hadn’t done that before, and I think he was a creature of habit, albeit a creative one. As I finally succumbed and lowered the cup to Dog so that he could lap the remaining syrup at the bottom, I thought I heard somebody say something.

I looked at Vic, who was standing another twelve feet closer to the northwestern corner of the building. “What?”

She stared back at me. “Huh?”

“What’d you just say?”

She looked at me quizzically. “Is your hearing going again?”

I stood there. “Didn’t you just say something?”

“No.”

This time the voice came from directly behind me. I turned and looked at the grizzled man who owned the Italian ice cart-a stocky balding man with a soiled red apron and striped shirt. “Excuse me?”

He smiled and said it a little louder this time. “Medicine Man.”