I nodded and crossed my ankle, giving it a little relief. “Did you try that, what’s it called? The place where you’ve tracked him down before?”
“The Chicago Native American Center. They have not heard from him longer than I have.”
“He’ll show up.” I felt weak saying it.
“Yes.”
“He always has.”
“Yes.”
I listened to the tinking of the radiators and the sound of my own breathing. “You going to Chicago?”
“Not yet.” The response had an ominous tone.
I nodded at my desk some more. “Well, let me know.” I thought about the conversation Vic and I’d had about Cady’s upcoming nuptials and changed the subject. “Cady . . .” I paused. “She, well . . .” I paused. “She wants you to marry them.”
“Yes, I know. She also wants to have the ceremony at Crazy Head Springs at about the same time as the Chief ’s Powwow in July.”
I sat up a little. “How do you know all of this?”
“She called me last night while you were at the junkyard.” Once again, he did not turn but his tone of voice changed along with the subject. “Who else do we have for this foursome?”
“Nobody—you and I are the core.” At least he had said we. “Cady called you last night?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t call me.”
“You are not marrying them.” He came back and sat in the chair by the door. “Why is it I have a feeling that this golf tournament has something to do with a case?”
“It might, but it’s more preemptive than a case.”
“I see.”
I wasn’t sure that he did. “I’ve got a little situation developing with Rancho Arroyo and the junkyard.”
“To the best of my knowledge and what I read in the papers that case has been an ongoing one for the last few years.” Henry was fully aware of the historic antagonism between the two parties and familiar with the Stewart garage as he always got Lola, his vintage ’59 Thunderbird, serviced there.
“I have a more than sinking feeling that it may be coming to a head.”
“And how, if you do not mind my asking, is a golf tournament going to assist in this situation?”
I uncrossed my legs, hitching my foot under my desk for balance, and leaned back in my chair. “I want to keep an eye on what could be potential conflict and was thinking that a higher profile for the sheriff’s department might calm things down a little.”
The sarcasm in his reply was wader deep. “Yes, that has always worked before.”
“C’mon, it’s not like I’m asking you to take a bullet—I’m asking you to go golfing.”
“Do you remember the last time we golfed?”
I paused. “California; we had a great time.”
“We were arrested.”
I looked down at the blotter on my desk. “That was almost forty years ago, and we’re mature adults now.”
“Hmm.” This hmm sounded about as convincing as the last one. “Did she ask about me?”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Dobbs.”
I figured I’d not feed his ego. “Why would she ask about you?”
His head tilted back, and I could tell he was summoning up visions of his ill-spent youth. “I always found her attractive and thought she might’ve felt the same way.”
“Well, she’s available.” That got him to turn and look at me.
Vic appeared in my doorway with the delicate down-curve before the kicked-up corner of her lip; it could’ve been a smile, at least the way rattlesnakes smile. I glanced up at her. “You don’t happen to know any golfers, do you?”
She flicked her eyes at Henry and then back to me. “Not in a February where the mercury hasn’t risen above the big fat zero I don’t.” She shook her head. “Have you got two harebrained schemes going at once?”
I took my hat off and set it on my desk, brim up so the luck wouldn’t run out; lately, I needed all I could get. “Just a little community-oriented law enforcement.” I tipped the brim with my finger and watched it spin. “You think Saizarbitoria golfs?”
She readjusted her shoulder on the doorjamb. “You can ask him when he gets back from checking the bar code on that crappy cooler with every friggin’ retailer in town. He should be in a really good mood by then.”
“Speaking of, what kind of a mood has he been in?”
“Shitty, when he’s in any mood at all. Most of the time he spends gazing out windows or at his own belly button.”
I spun my hat some more. “Seems like textbook stuff?”
“Pretty much, but you combine that with sleep deprivation because of the Critter . . .” She grew quiet, and we all three listened to the radiator.
The intercom on my phone buzzed, and I punched the button. “Yes?”
Ruby’s voice rattled from the plastic speaker. I don’t know why she bothered with the intercom; I could hear her down the hall. “We’ve got a 10-50 out on the bypass. I don’t suppose anybody would like to work for a living?”
Vic yelled over her shoulder. “Got it!” She pushed off the doorway but still stood there, placing her fists on her hips. “This shit with the Basquo is complicated. Have you ever considered that you may not be able to keep him?”
I glanced at Henry and decided to lighten the environs. “What, are you afraid of the competition?”
There was that little bit of silence as you wait for a response, the one that tells you that you might’ve just said something wrong. Her eyes sharpened, she stepped over and palmed Henry’s coffee mug from my desk as a rudimentary form of housekeeping, and started out. I was about to say something when she abruptly turned, leaned in the doorway of my office, and studied me with a great deal of intensity. “No, I just don’t want you to do what you normally do in these situations and get your tender little feelings hurt.” I started to stand, but she turned, walked down the hallway, and called back, “By the way, dumbass, did it ever occur to you that I golf?” She turned and disappeared.
Henry stood and looked at me. “As your trusted Indian scout, it is important for me to warn you that you are now on perilously thin ice.”
I grabbed my hat, lifted my jacket from the back of my chair, came around the desk, and followed her. “Vic . . .”
Henry joined me in the hallway as she looked back, shaking her head. “I played in the Mike Schmidt Celebrity Tournament back in Philly.”
“Vic.”
“And won.”
We followed her into the dispatch area, and I noticed my Indian scout was careful to stay behind me. Vic paused at the steps just long enough to turn back and gesture with her fist out, finger pointing down. “Can you hear this? No? Then let me turn it up for you.” She rotated her hand, and it was only then that I could see which finger it was—the South Philadelphia Municipal Bird.
From beside the dispatcher’s desk, I watched as she sashayed out—the bell at the front door jangled viciously and the compression of the shock absorber most certainly had kept the heavy glass from shattering onto the sidewalk.
Henry’s voice sounded behind me. “I do not mean to be critical, but if that is your recruiting technique . . .”
I was about to answer when I glanced over and saw Ozzie Dobbs Jr. waiting on the bench, his eyes a little wide. “Hi, Ozzie.”
He stood, looked down the steps, and then back to Ruby. “Your dispatcher said you were in a meeting.”
I nodded. “I was.”
“Oh.”
I heard the motor in Vic’s unit fire up, and the tires squeal. “Ozzie, have you met Henry Standing Bear?”
He immediately became all smiles and extended his hand nervously the way people do when the only Indians they’ve ever been around are sports mascots. “You’ve got the bar out near the reservation, the Red Horse?”
The Cheyenne Nation smiled, suffering fools easily—hell, they’d been doing it for more than two hundred years. “Pony, the Red Pony.”