"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 rarely 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.
"The man made a phone call from this office just after Don Lee booked him in, around one a.m. I know it's-"
"Sure it is. Now ask me if I care. Just give me five, ten minutes."
"Thanks, sweetheart."
"For what? I'm not doing this."
Never mind five or ten minutes, it was more like two.
She read out the number. "Placed at one-fourteen." A Memphis exchange.
"Any way you can check to see what that number is?"
"Like I haven't already? Nino's Restaurant. Two lines. One's the official listing, looks like it gets almost all the calls. The other-"
"Is probably an office or back booth."
"Must be a city thing," Mabel said in the verbal equivalent of a shrug. "That do it for you?"
"I owe you, Mabel."
"You just be sure to give Miss June and Don Lee my best when you see them."
"I will."
"'Scuse me, Mr. Turner?" Head bobbing, Buster stood in the doorway. "'Bout done here. S'posed to go wash the mayor's car now. One or two more besides, I s'pect." When his head went still, an arm rose. "Came upon this back in there."
A business card. I took it. Put a twenty and a ten in its place.
"Much obliged, sir."
"When's your anniversary, Buster?"
"Thursday to come."
"Maybe you could bring Delia over to my place that night, let Val and me fix dinner for you both. We'd love to meet her."
"Well now, I'd surely like that, Mr. Turner. 'Predate the asking. And forgive me for saying it, but Della'd be powerful uncomfortable with that."
"I understand. Maybe some other time."
"Maybe so."
"A shame, though."
"Yessir. It surely is."
CHAPTER FOUR
Latter-day city constables, we seldom know the outcome of our efforts. We take on the end runs and heavy lifting, fill in paperwork, testify at trials, move on. It's not Gunsmoke, not even NYPD Blue. Occasionally we hear on the grapevine that Shawn DeLee's been sent up for life, or, if we care to check computerized records and have time to do so, learn that Billyboy Davis has been re-renabbed by federal marshals on a fugitive warrant. To others our talk is forever of justice and community standards. Among ourselves it's considerably baser.
I'd been out of the life a long time now. But weeks back, Herb Danziger up in Memphis had somehow tracked me down and called to tell me that Lou Winter, having exhausted appeals, was scheduled for execution.
Danziger was pro bono lawyer for Lou Winter at his initial trial. He'd put in thirty-some years making certain that big rich corporations got bigger and richer, then one day ("No crisis of conscience, I was just bored out of my mind") he gave it up and started taking on, in both senses of the phrase, the hard cases. Another six years of that before an unappeased client stepped out of the doorway of Danziger's apartment house one evening as he returned home. Damndest thing you ever saw, the paramedic who responded said. We get there and this guy is sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the wall and his legs out straight in front of him. There's the handle of a hunting knife sticking out of his head, like he has a horn, you know? And he's singing "Buffalo Gals Won't You Come Out Tonight."