“Mr. Benton?”
Benton looked up. Betty Sails stood in the doorway. A tentative, gray-faced Indian woman with a beehive hairdo, she was the office’s shared receptionist.
“Is he here?” John Lee spoke sharply, impatiently. He was a man who sweated hate.
“No, he’s not,” Betty Sails said. “But there’s another man to see you. Another Indian man.”
Benton frowned. “I didn’t have any more appointments today.”
“He said it was about Mr. Cloud.”
Glory be, an actual excuse. “All right. Give me a couple of minutes, then send him in,” Benton said. Betty Sails went away and Benton looked through Cloud’s file again. He didn’t need to review it but liked the idea of keeping the Indian waiting. Two minutes later, Tony Bluebird appeared at the door. Benton had never seen him before.
“Mr. Benton?” Bluebird was a stocky man with close-set eyes and short-cropped hair. He wore a gingham shirt over a rawhide thong. A black obsidian knife dangled from the thong and Bluebird could feel it ticking against the skin below his breast bone.
“Yes?” Benton let his anger leak into his tone.
Bluebird showed him a gun. “Put your hands on your lap, Mr. Benton.”
Three people saw Bluebird. Betty Sails saw him both coming and going. A kid coming out of the gym dropped a basketball, and Bluebird stopped it with a foot, picked it up and tossed it back, just as Betty Sails started screaming. On the street, Dick Yellow Hand, who was seventeen years old and desperately seeking a taste of crack, saw him walk out the door and called, “Hey, Bluebird.”
Bluebird stopped. Yellow Hand sidled over, scratching his thin beard. “You look bad, man,” Bluebird said.
Yellow Hand nodded. He was wearing a dirty T-shirt with a fading picture of Mick Jagger on the front. His jeans, three sizes too large, were cinched at the waist with a length of clothesline. His elbow joints and arms looked like cornstalks. He was missing two front teeth. “I feel bad, man. I could use a few bucks, you know?”
“Sorry, man, I got no money,” Bluebird said. He stuck his hands in his pockets and pulled them out empty.
“That’s okay, then,” Yellow Hand said, disappointed.
“I seen your mama last week,” Bluebird said. “Out at the res.”
“How’s she?”
“She’s fine. She was fishing. Walleyes.”
Sails’ hysterical screams became audible as somebody opened an outside door to the Indian Center.
“That’s real good about Mama,” said Yellow Hand.
“Well, I guess I gotta go,” Bluebird said, easing away.
“Okay, man,” said Yellow Hand. “See you.”
Bluebird walked, taking his time, his mind in another place. What was her name? It had been years ago. Anna? She was a pretty woman, with deep breasts and warm hazel eyes. She’d liked him, he thought, though they were both married, and nothing ever happened; nothing but a chemistry felt across backyard hedges, deep down in Minneapolis’ Indian Country.
Anna’s husband, a Chippewa from Nett Lake, had been put in the Hennepin County Jail. Drunk, late at night, he’d seen a Coke machine glowing red-and-white through the window of a gas station. He’d heaved a chunk of concrete through the window, crawled in after it and used the concrete to crack the machine. About a thousand quarters had run out onto the floor, somebody told Bluebird. Anna’s husband had still been picking them up, laboriously, one at a time, when the cops arrived. He’d been on parole and the break-in was a violation. He’d gotten six months on top of the remaining time from the previous conviction.
Anna and her husband had never had money. He drank up most of it and she probably helped. Food was short. Nobody had clothes. But they did have a son. He was twelve, a stocky, withdrawn child who spent his evenings watching television. One Saturday afternoon, a few weeks after his daddy was taken to jail, the boy walked down to the Lake Street bridge and jumped into the Mississippi. A lot of people saw him go and the cops had him out of the river in fifteen minutes. Dead.
Bluebird had heard, and he went down to the river. Anna was there, her arms wrapped around the body of her son, and she looked up at him with those deep pain-filled eyes, and . . . what?
It was all part of being Indian, Bluebird thought. The dying. It was something they did better than the whites. Or more frequently, anyway.
When Bluebird walked out of the room after slashing Benton’s throat, he’d looked down at the man’s face and thought he seemed familiar. Like a famous person. Now, on the sidewalk, as he left Yellow Hand behind, as he thought about Anna, Benton’s face floated up in his mind’s eye.
Hitler, he thought. John Lee Benton looked exactly like a young Adolf Hitler.
A young dead Adolf Hitler.
CHAPTER
2
Lucas Davenport lounged on a brocaded couch in the back of a used-book store, eating a roast beef sandwich. In his lap was a battered paperback copy of T. Harry Williams’ biography of Huey Long.
T. Harry had gotten it right, Lucas reflected. The man in the white suit flashing among the Longites as they stood outside the governor’s office. The shot. The Kingfish hit, the screaming, the running. The cops going berserk.
“Roden and Coleman fired at almost the same time, with Coleman’s bullet probably reaching the man first,” T. Harry wrote. “Several other guards had unholstered their guns and were blazing away. The man crumpled and fell facedownward near the wall of the corridor from which he had come. He lay there with his face resting on one arm and did not move and was obviously dead. But this did not satisfy some of the guards. Crazed with rage or grief, they stood over the body and emptied their guns into it. It was later discovered to have thirty bullet holes in the back and twenty-nine in the front (many of these were caused by the same bullet making an entry and exit) and two in the head. The face was partially shot away, and the white suit was cut to ribbons and drenched with blood.”
Murder was never as neat as it was on television. No matter how brutal it was on the screen, in real life it was worse. In real life, there was always an empty husk lying there, the spirit departed, the flesh slack, the eyes like ball bearings. And it had to be dealt with. Somebody had to pick up the body, somebody had to mop up the blood. Somebody had to catch the killer.
Lucas rubbed his eyebrow where the scar crossed it. The scar was the product of a fishing accident. A wire leader had snapped back from a snag and buried itself in his face. The scar was not a disfigurement: the women he knew said it made him look friendlier. The scar was fine; it was his smile that was scary.
He rubbed his eyebrow and went back to the book. He did not look like a natural reader, sitting on the couch, squinting in the dim light. He had the air of the street about him. His hands, which were covered with a dark fuzz for three inches below his wrists, seemed too large and blocky as he handled the paperback. His nose had been broken, more than once, and a strong neck was rooted in heavy shoulders. His hair was black, just touched with gray.
He turned the page of the book with one hand and reached under his jacket and adjusted his holster with the other.
“ ‘Kingfish, what’s the matter?’
“ ‘Jimmie, my boy, I’ve been shot,’ Huey moaned . . . .”
Lucas’ handset beeped. He picked it up and thumbed the volume control. A woman’s voice said, “Lieutenant Davenport?”
“Go ahead.”
“Lucas, Jim Wentz needs you down at the Indian Center on that guy that got cut. He’s got a witness he wants you to look at.”
“All right,” Lucas said. “Ten minutes.”
It was a beautiful day, one of the best of a good autumn. A murder would damage it. Murders were usually the result of aggressive stupidity mixed with alcohol and anger. Not always. But almost always. Lucas, given the choice, stayed away from them.
Outside the bookstore, he stood on the sidewalk for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the sun and finishing the last bite of the sandwich. When he was do
ne, he threw the sandwich bag into a trash barrel and crossed the street to his car. A panhandler was working the sidewalk, saw Lucas and said, “Watched yer car for ya?” and held out his hand. The panhandler was a regular, a schizophrenic pushed out of the state hospital. He couldn’t function without his meds but wouldn’t take the mind-numbing drugs on his own. Lucas passed him a dollar and dropped into the Porsche.
Downtown Minneapolis is a workbox of modernist architecture, blocks of glass and chrome and white marble. The aging red wart of City Hall hunkers in the middle of it. Lucas shook his head as he rolled past it, took a left and a right and crossed the interstate. The glitter fell behind, giving way to a ramshackle district of old clapboard houses cut into apartments, junker cars and failing businesses. Indian Country. There were a half-dozen squad cars outside the Indian Center and Lucas dumped the 911 at the curb.
“Three witnesses,” the Homicide detective told him. Wentz had a flat, pallid Scandinavian face. His lower front teeth had been broken off in a fight, and he wore crowns; their silvery bases glittered when he talked. He counted the three witnesses on his fingers, as if he didn’t trust Lucas’ arithmetic.
“There’s the receptionist,” he said. “She saw him twice and says she can identify him. There’s a neighborhood kid. He was playing basketball and says this guy had blood all over his pants. I believe it. The office looks like a fuckin’ swimming pool.”
“Can the kid identify him?” Lucas asked.
“He says he can. He says he looked the guy right in the face. He’s seen him around the neighborhood.”
“Who’s number three?”
“Another kid. A junkie. He saw the killer outside the place, talked to him. We think they know each other, but he’s not talking.”
“Where is he?” Lucas asked.
“Out in a squad.”
“How’d you find him?”
Wentz shrugged. “No problem. The receptionist—the one who found the body—called nine-one-one, then she went over to the window for some fresh air. She was feeling queasy. Anyway, she saw this kid and the killer talking on the sidewalk. When we got here, the kid was up the block. Standing there. Fucked up, maybe. We just put him in the car.”
Lucas nodded, walked down the hallway and stepped inside the counseling office. Benton lay faceup on the tile floor in a pool of purplish blood. His hands extended straight out from his sides as though he had been crucified. His legs were spread wide, his blood-flecked wingtips pointing away from each other at forty-five-degree angles. His shirt and sport coat were saturated with blood. There were footprints and kneeholes in the puddle of blood, where the paramedics had tracked through, but no medical debris. Usually the packaging from the syringes, sponges, tape and compresses was all over the place. With Benton, they hadn’t bothered.
Lucas sniffed at the coppery smell of the blood as the detective came in behind him.
“Looks like the same guy who did Ray Cuervo,” Lucas said.
“Maybe,” Wentz said.
“You better get him or the papers’ll start peeing on you,” Lucas said mildly.
“Could be worse than that,” the Homicide cop said. “We got a rough description of the guy who did Cuervo. He had braids. Everybody says this guy had short hair.”
“Could have cut it,” Lucas suggested. “Got scared . . .”
“I hope, but it don’t feel right.”
“If it’s two guys, that’d be big trouble . . . .” Lucas was getting interested.
“I know, fuck, I know.” Wentz took off his glasses and rubbed a heavy hand up and down the side of his face. “Christ, I’m tired. My daughter piled up the car last Saturday. Right downtown by the IDS building. Her fault, she ran a light. I’m trying to deal with the insurance and the body shop and this shit happens. Two hours later and I’d be off . . . .”
“She okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He settled his glasses back on his nose. “That’s the first thing I asked. I say, ‘You okay?’ She says, ‘Yeah.’ I say, ‘I’m coming down and I’m gonna kill you.’ ”
“As long as she was okay,” Lucas said. The toe of his right loafer was in the blood puddle and he stepped back a few inches. He was looking at Benton’s face upside down. It occurred to him that Benton resembled someone famous, but with the face upside down, he couldn’t tell who.
“ . . . the apple of my eye,” Wentz was saying. “If anything happened to her . . . You got a kid now, right?”
“Yeah. A daughter.”
“Poor fuck. Wait a few years. She’ll wreck that Porsche of yours and the insurance company will own your ass.” Wentz shook his head. Goddamned daughters. It was nearly impossible to live with them and clearly impossible to live without them. “Look, you might know this kid we got in the car. He said we weren’t to mess with him ’cause Davenport was his friend. We think he’s one of your snitches.”
“I’ll go see,” Lucas said.
“Any help . . .” The Homicide cop shrugged.
“Sure.”
Outside, Lucas asked a patrolman about the junkie and was directed to the last car in line. Another patrolman sat behind the wheel and a small dark figure sat behind him, the two separated by a steel screen. Lucas bent over the open front window on the passenger side, nodded to the patrolman and looked into the backseat. The kid was bouncing nervously, one thin hand tangled in his dark hair. Yellow Hand.
“Hey, Dick,” Lucas said. “How’s things at K Mart?”
“Oh, man, Davenport, get me outta here.” Yellow Hand’s eyes were wide and frightened. He kept bouncing, faster now. “I didn’t do nothing, man. Not a fuckin’ thing.”
“The people at K Mart would like to talk to you about that. They say you were runnin’ for the door with a disc player . . . .”
“Shit, man, it wasn’t me . . . .”
“Right. But I’ll tell you what: You give me a name, and I’ll put you on the street again,” Lucas said.
“I don’t know who it was, man,” Yellow Hand squealed.
“Bullshit,” grunted the uniform officer in the driver’s seat. He shifted a toothpick and looked at Lucas. He had a wide Irish face and a peaches-and-cream complexion. “You know what he said to me, Lieutenant? He said, ‘You ain’t getting it out of me, dickhead.’ That’s what he said. He knows who it was.”
“That right?” Lucas asked, turning back to Yellow Hand.
“Fuck, man, I didn’t know him,” Yellow Hand whined. “He was just this fuckin’ guy . . . .”
“Indian guy?”
“Yeah, Indian guy, but I didn’t know him . . . .”
“Bullshit,” said the uniform.
Lucas turned his head and looked at the uniform. “You hold him here, okay? If anybody wants to transport him, you tell them I said to hold him here.”
“Okay. Sure. Whatever.” The uniform didn’t care. He was sitting in the sunshine and had a pocket full of peppermint toothpicks.
“I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” Lucas said.
Elwood Stone set up a hundred feet from the halfway house. It was a good spot; the inmates could get their cocaine on the way home. Some of them, the inmates, were running on tight schedules: they were clocked out of their jobs and allowed a set amount of time to get home. They didn’t have the leisure to run all over the place, looking for toot.
Lucas spotted Stone at the same time Stone spotted Lucas’ Porsche. The dealer started running south down the street, but it was all two- and three-story apartments and townhouses with no spaces between them to run into. Lucas cruised alongside until Stone gave up, breathing hard, and sat on the stoop of one of the apartments. As he sat down, it occurred to Stone that he should have tossed the tube of crack into the weeds. Now it was too late.
“Stone, how are you?” Lucas said amiably, as he walked around the nose of the 911. “Sounds like you’re a little out of shape.”
“Fuck you, Davenport. I want a lawyer.” Stone knew him well.
Lucas sat on the stoop beside the deale
r and leaned back, tilted his head up to the sun, taking in the rays. “You ran the four-forty in high school, didn’t you?”
“Fuck you, Davenport.”
“I remember that track meet against Sibley, they had that white boy, what’s his name? Turner? Now that boy could motor. Christ, you don’t see that many white boys . . .”
“Fuck you, I want a lawyer.”
“So Turner’s old man is rich, right?” Lucas said conversationally. “And he gives the kid a Corvette. Turner takes it up north and piles it into a bridge abutment, you know? They had to stick him together with strapping tape to have a funeral.”
“Fuck you, I got a right to an attorney.” Stone was beginning to sweat. Davenport was a stone killer.
Lucas shook his head with a stage sigh. “I don’t know, Elwood. Can I call you Elwood?”
“Fuck you . . . .”
“Sometimes life ain’t fair. You know where I’m coming from? Like the Turner kid. And take your case, Elwood. They’ve got all bureaucrats on the sentencing commission. You know what they did? They cranked up the guidelines on possession with intent. Guess what the guidelines are for a three-time loser going down on possession with intent?”
“I ain’t no fucking lawyer . . . .”
“Six years, my friend. Minimum. Cute guy like you, your asshole will look like the I-94 tunnel when you come out. Shit, if this had been two months ago, you’d of got off with two years.”
“Fuck you, man, I want an attorney.”
Lucas leaned close to him and bared his teeth. “And I need a few rocks. Now. You lay a few rocks on me, now, and I walk away.”
Stone looked at him in wild surmise. “You? Need rock?”
“Yeah. I need to squeeze a guy.”
The light in Stone’s eyes went out. Blackmail. That made sense. Davenport actually smoking the stuff, that didn’t make sense. “I walk?”