There was a gaggle of police vehicles and EMTs, all with their gumballs going, at the front of the Fort, so before anybody with more authority could get back to where we were, I handed the shotgun to a patrolman named Fraser. His partner rolled the already complaining man over and cuffed him.
“This one had an automatic, but I think it dropped into the sewer grate.”
Fraser smiled. “We’ll light it up and take a look.”
“Everybody okay over there?”
“Moretti stepped on a nail, so the big pussy’s going to have to get a tetanus shot.”
The large man in the cuffs cocked his head and stopped groaning long enough to yell toward me. “Hey, motherfucker, my ribs are broken!”
I looked back at Fraser. “What was all the gunfire?”
“Hey, motherfucker, who are you?!”
He motioned to the drug dealer. “One of his buddies threw a few into the stairwell before shooting himself in the leg.”
“Motherfucker, I asked you a question!”
The other cop yanked him a little to the side. “Shut the fuck up, DuVall!”
“Who went out the window with this guy?”
The patrolman looked serious for a moment. “Johnston.”
Two of the EMTs were working on Rayfield by the time I got there. He had dislocated his shoulder and broken a collarbone, but he was smiling when I leaned against the porch, eye to eye with him. They were stabilizing his arm and preparing a gurney to transport. “How you feeling?”
He groaned. “Like shit. How’d we do?”
I looked around at the assembled cops, spotting Chavez and some of the others smiling like guys who had gotten away with something. “I think pretty good.”
My nostrils flared, and my nose hurt. I rubbed it cautiously and looked at Cady. I thanked Lena and apologized for being late, but I didn’t ask the usual changing-of-the-guard question, whether there had been any improvement, and Lena hadn’t volunteered any information. I wondered if that was the first phase in giving up, if I had passed over some threshold of hope. I didn’t want to start saying Cady as I had said Martha, with a level of such misery and despair that I just couldn’t say it without people looking away.
I sat in the chair by Cady’s bed and remembered a game we used to play when she was around eight. If I would get home late, later than her bedtime, I would carefully make my way down the creaking hallway of our rented house, softly push apart the painted surfaces of the door and jamb, and stand in the backlight of the doorway. She was supposed to be long asleep, and she was a very good actress, but I could tell. If I thought it was a performance, I’d walk over to the bed and place my face only inches from hers, say the magic word, and be rewarded with an explosion of giggles.
I scooted my chair over and rested my chin on the sore arm that I had carefully placed on Sleeping Beauty’s bed. I leaned in very close to her face and whispered. “Faker.”
She didn’t move.
Craig Johnson
Kindness Goes Unpunished
8
This time I got the ride downtown; as a matter of fact, I got a ride to another state.
The big Crown Vic took the Broad Street entrance ramp onto I-95 southbound. There were ducks on a lake off to the right; I felt like joining them.
By the time the PPD had gotten its investigative ducks in a row and been fully informed about what I’d been up to, it was late in the afternoon. Katz and Gowder had picked me up from Cady’s, where I had retreated for a shower, and hadn’t mentioned anything about missing our breakfast. Henry had taken the afternoon shift at the hospital and had called to warn me of the detectives’ impending arrival. I had taken Dog for a walk, and they had been waiting when I returned.
I studied the small red dots on the frames of Katz’s designer glasses and wondered where he had gotten them. “So, you guys are going to drive me back to Wyoming?”
He sighed deeply as Gowder changed lanes, took the unmarked car into the far lefthand one, and leveled off at an even ninety; evidently, wherever we were going, we were in a hurry.
Katz cleared his throat. “I’m trying to figure out if I have made a terrible mistake.”
I could feel my face redden a little. “No, you haven’t…”
He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I’m trying to figure out if you are going to be an asset or a detriment.”
Gowder was watching me in the rearview mirror as I answered. “An asset. Cross my heart.”
Katz blinked for the first time. “We have about 350 homicides per annum here in Philadelphia, and we try to keep the number of police officers on that list to a minimum.” He glanced at Gowder, who might have smiled. His eyes returned to me. “Do you have any idea how lucky you were last night?”
“Probably not.”
He nodded. “Personally, I don’t think you have any idea, but since the Chief Inspector’s son was injured…”
“He stepped on a nail.” It was the first time Gowder had spoken, and Katz looked at him like he was a potted plant with blight. He stared at the side of Gowder’s head until Gowder leaned an elbow on the window ledge and covered the smile with his index finger.
After a moment, Katz looked at me again. “So, do you mind telling me how your adventures last night are going to aid in our investigation?”
“They’re not.”
He compressed his lips. “You can’t do things like that anymore.”
We rode along in silence, Katz studying me a while longer before handing me a manila envelope with more than a few files inside. I looked back up at the two of them as we rocketed down I-95. “Devon Conliffe?”
Katz spoke over his shoulder. “You’ve got thirty minutes.”
I opened the envelope. “Do you guys mind if I ask where we’re going?”
“The opera.” Gowder smiled, and the mole under his eye kicked up in the rearview mirror.
The Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware, incorporated the same wedding-cake characteristics as Philadelphia’s City Hall but with slightly less drama, inside or out. French Second Empire with a cast-iron facade, it was lit from below with floodlights that highlighted the detail.
A grumpy, elderly gentleman was sitting on a stool in the lobby and ushered us into the main auditorium, where Gowder and I sat just below the balcony. Katz continued on into the dark of the theater to a large soundboard that straddled two rows at house center and tapped the stage manager on the shoulder.
The young woman pulled her earphones aside and spoke with him. He waited as she returned to her headset, prefacing and ending her conversation into it with the word “Maestro.” The seats were comfortable; I watched as Gowder propped his feet over the back of the next row, and I noticed that his socks did, indeed, match today’s ensemble. He whispered, with his head inclined toward me. “Where in the world did you get the idea for the crack house?”
I also whispered. “OIT.”
“What’s that?”
“Old Indian Trick.”
He smiled the becoming smile, and we watched the rehearsal. It was the end of Act II, where Monterone confronts the hunchback, reaffirming the curse he had placed on Rigoletto and the Duke. The irony of the father/daughter opera was not lost on me, and I could only hope that Cady and I would have a happier ending.
The scenery and costumes were brilliant, with the Duke’s salon and adjoining apartments drifting to the sixteenth-century Mantuan skyline. It was night, and the jester was watching as the tortured father was dragged away. Inspector Victor Moretti cut a bold figure as Monterone, in a torn robe stripped aside to reveal his lashed back. He was tall and lean like a Doberman, and even from this distance I could feel his eyes. Lena was right about his voice; Victor could sing his baritone ass off.