He looked at me. “You know, I leave you here with this beautiful woman, wine, candlelight…And you talk like cops.”
Lena set her glass down. “You were a cop.”
“Not anymore. You want to talk cop stuff, you talk to your husband; you want to talk women, wine, or song, you talk to me.”
She held the glass with both hands and didn’t look at him. “Do you still have those friends of yours in the DA’s office?”
“No.”
Now she looked at him. “Are you going to make me ask Victor?”
He sipped and thought about it, finally sighing. “What do you want to know?”
“There’s some kind of connection between Osgood and the Conliffe boy, something I overheard or read somewhere, something recent.”
“I’ll make a phone call…tomorrow, but only on one condition.” We waited. “No more cop talk.”
I called Henry from O’Neil’s. He had a number of ceremonies he wanted to perform in Cady’s hospital room and told me he would relieve Michael, and to take the rest of the night off. I told him I wasn’t sure I could do that. “Then you have to help.”
“I’ll help.” I could hear him talking to the nurses and wondered about the other patients and the upcoming rituals. “How did the installation at the Academy go?”
“Wonderfully well. They are very accommodating.” I thought about the woman with the keys and the security pass. “You are coming to the reception.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I can, but somebody’s got to stay with Cady.”
There was silence on the phone. “She will be better by then.” The heat in my face hit like exhaust, and the stinging in my eyes wouldn’t go away. Even across the telephone lines, he felt it. “Do me a favor?”
“Yep?”
“Wait until very late. I am not sure that they like pagan ceremonies…and bring some eagle feathers.” The line went dead.
Ian looked at me as I hung up the phone. “Trouble?”
“Just a little. I have to find some eagle feathers.”
He crossed his muscled arms on the bar, the intertwined Celtic snakes writhing up his forearms. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He probably got stranger requests. I looked around the room and spotted an empty table near the window. The place was crowded, but not as bad as I might have suspected. “Not too busy?”
The Irishman shrugged. “The band cancelled.”
“What happened?”
He slid an unasked for Yuengling longneck across the bar to me. “Started drinking too early.”
“Irish?”
He smirked. “French, I think.”
“Damn French.”
“Yah, they’ll fuck up the EU, wait and see.”
I glanced back at the still-empty table. “I think I’m going to go sit over by the window.”
He swallowed a fearful dollop of what the Scots call the creature. “Yer too good to drink at the bar, Sheriff?”
“I have to meet with a lawyer.”
“Cady’s comin’?”
I took a breath as I stood. “No, and that’s something I probably need to…” It was then that I noticed Osgood standing at the front door. I raised a hand and got his attention, motioning toward the table in the corner. Ian’s looks had sharpened, either at my statement or Osgood’s appearance. “I’ll have to tell you about it later.”
“I’ll keep me eyes out fer eagle feathers.”
I took my beer and napkin to the table and eased my back against the wall, a good frontier sheriff. “Howdy.”
“How are you?”
“I’m good. Can I buy you a drink?”
He took off his suit jacket and hung it carefully on the back of his chair, loosened his tie, and rested his arms on the small table. He nodded before looking around the place. “Why’d you want to meet here? The place is a dump.”
I nodded at O’Neil and turned back to Osgood. “Cady lives only about a half a block away.”
“Oh.” That’s all he said.
Ian approached, and I noticed that Osgood didn’t bother to look up. “Scotch and water, anything over twelve years old.”
Ian looked at him for a second more, then turned and walked away. I watched Osgood. “You two know each other?”
The assistant district attorney shook his head. “Never seen him before.” I was pretty sure he hadn’t seen him just now, either. “How’s your daughter doing?”
“She’s improving, starting to have involuntary responses.” I thought about Henry. “We brought in a specialist.”
He nodded. “I hear you’re doing a little investigative work?”
I wondered where he had heard it. “Just keeping my hand in on account of Cady, nothing too serious.”
He nodded some more. “Watch out for Gowder and Katz.” He glanced out the window. “The kike is Internal Affairs and could give a shit and a shake about the truth.” He continued to look at the sidewalk outside. “They’ve been after me for years, and I have no idea why.”
Close to ten counts, I figured. “What can you tell me about Devon and Cady?”
“Well…” He pulled at the end of his goatee. “I was kind of hoping that we could share information, you know? Help each other out?”
I nodded, all innocence. “You bet.”
Ian appeared with the scotch and water and motioned to my untouched beer. “You wan’ another?”
“In a bit. Thank you.” He nodded and glanced at Osgood, who continued to study the surface of the table. His head came up after Ian had left.
He took a sip of the scotch and rested it back on the paper napkin. “I’m assuming that your focus of interest is the connection between Devon and your daughter?”
“Cady.”
He looked at me for a moment longer. “Cady.”
“You’d be right.”
“There isn’t any connection.” I looked mildly surprised. “Between what happened to Devon and what happened to your…to Cady.” He leaned in. “Devon was involved in a lot of shit in which he shouldn’t have been involved.” I took a sip of my beer and waited. “He had a little problem, if you know what I mean.” He laid a finger alongside one nostril and sniffed. “His difficulties started with this guy, Shankar DuVall, who used to provide Devon’s medication for him. They started working on a barter system, you know, medication for legal services rendered.”
I thought about the man that I’d tackled at the crack house, the one they called DuVall, but it had to be too much of a coincidence. “What’s this guy DuVall look like?”
“Black, tattoos, and one big fucker. Pharmaceuticals and firearms are his thing. Something of an aficionado, I hear.”
Not too much of a coincidence as it turns out. And big enough to throw somebody off the BFB, I figured. “So what happened with him and Devon?”
“This ass DuVall and a buddy of his, Billy Carlisle, get caught with eight kilos of designer stuff in a roach-coach at the food distribution center in South Philly. They had this bright idea to sell the stuff like ice cream.” He raised a hand, pulling on an imaginary bell. “Ding-ding, get high! They showed pictures of the truck to the jury. There were little kids licking popsicles painted on the sides. You can imagine how that went over.” He took another sip of his scotch and shook his head. “Couple of criminal masterminds here. So, anyway…DuVall and Carlisle make offers to cooperate with us and the DA picks up the tab on DuVall, leaving Carlisle to dangle, figuring anything Billy-boy knows, he got from Shankar.”
I worked on the label of my beer with my thumbnail. “Okay.”
“It happens a lot. For a number of these shit bags, cooperating with the authorities means they get a 5k1.1, which means a substantial assistance letter from the prosecuting attorney.”
“Cooperation means DuVall avoids the sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum prison term?”
He held up four fingers. “Four years, three months. Eastern Pennsylvania leads the league with 41.1 percent of the defendants receiving reduced sentencing for playing ball.”
“And Carlisle?”
“Nineteen and seven.” He exhaled a short laugh. “All for driving an ice cream truck.”
“But with enough dope to fill up all the nostrils on Mt. Rushmore.” I thought about it. “DuVall got four and three? That seems light.”