The recent storm had swept across the Wyoming/Montana border, taken more than a dozen Powder River Energy poles with it and, in a fit of perversion, had left all the water pipes on the Rez and the contiguous area to freeze and bust.
The Bear’s bar, the Red Pony, was one of the first to succumb, and his home had rapidly followed suit. Henry had been our guest for the last two days and, with the rush on qualified plumbers, it was looking as if he was ours for the next week.
He dropped his hands and stood, walking to the window and staring with his dark eyes mirroring the gray light.
“You all right?”
He didn’t move, but the voice sounded in his chest. “Yes.”
“You don’t seem all right.”
He nodded, just barely. “Which is better, being all right or seeming it?”
I let the rhetoric settle in the room like mist after a rain. I knew better than to try and read the weather in him. Like the rest of the high plains, if you did he’d just change.
“It is Lee.”
Henry’s on-again-off-again relationship with his half brother was something he rarely brought up. “Didn’t you see him in Chicago on the way back from Philadelphia?”
“No. I called him and left a message, and then he called and left a message for me. I finally got him to commit to a meeting at a small bar on Halsted, but he did not show. I sat in this bar for forty minutes before the bartender asked if I was Henry Standing Bear.” He turned and pulled back the black hair to reveal a set of features, all of them jockeying on his face to see which would be the most striking. “I was the only Indian in the bar.”
“I’m glad I wasn’t there.”
“Hmm.” He turned back to the window. “Lee had called and left a message that he was not going to be able to make it.” This was not exactly a new occurrence in Henry’s dealings with his brother, but I remained quiet. “I had a dream about him and called three weeks ago and left a message, then called again yesterday, but the number had been disconnected.”
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.”
I asked Henry if he wanted to have lunch with us, but he said he had things to attend to, including lobbying the Tribal Council about my daughter’s wedding. I thanked him and told him to keep me posted about his brother.
My best buddy drifted down the hall, light on his feet like some great cat. He slipped back into my office and disappeared. I turned back to Ozzie. “Ready for lunch?”
He looked more than a little uncomfortable. “Sure, but if you’re busy . . .”
I pulled my jacket on and continued to listen as somebody, probably Vic, tore a strip off Fetterman Street. “Actually that was my other lunch date that just blew through here earlier, so it would appear that I am completely free.”
“Great. Well . . .” He put his hat on, a snappy Gus type that added a good six inches to his height, and started for the steps. “I’ve only got an hour, so we better get going.”
I shrugged at Ruby and Dog, who had raised his head to watch the action, and then followed Ozzie down the steps and past the photographs of the five previous sheriffs. Ruby’s voice trailed after me. “Isaac Bloomfield called and said your eye appointment with Andy Hall is at nine a.m. on Thursday.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah . . .”
Ozzie had already crossed behind the courthouse and was approaching the concrete steps that descended diagonally toward Main Street, and he moved quickly. My foot was still worrying me, so I called out to him. “Ozzie, hold up.” He waited at the top of the shoveled steps. “I got a little torn up a couple of months ago, and I’m still not completely healed.”
“Sorry about that.” He smiled, but I noticed his hands jiggled the change and car keys in his pockets. I guess he felt as though he should make some sort of conversation as we walked.
“Boy, that deputy of yours is a real pip.”
I nodded as we made our way down the steps. “Yes, she is.”
“And she golfs?”
“Apparently.”
He nodded as we passed the barbershop and the Owen Wister Hotel and approached the door of the Busy Bee Café alongside Clear Creek. The windows of the café were steamed with an inviting warmth and gave me a little hope that no matter how long the high plains winter might be, I’d have a place to go and eat.
I started to take my traditional spot at the counter, but Ozzie kept walking toward a table in the back along the windows and away from the few patrons already in the place. The chief cook and bottle washer, Dorothy Caldwell, turned from the grill to give me the high sign, her hazel eyes following us with interest.
Ozzie pulled out the chair in the corner, which left me with my back to the door and the room. I wasn’t used to that seat, but maybe developers in the modern West were more in danger of being shot in the back than sheriffs.
I draped my jacket over my chair and sat just in time for the queen bee herself to appear with two glasses of ice water and a couple of menus. Why she brought me a menu I’ll never know, but it was a ritual and I found comfort in it.
She looked around as if this portion of the restaurant was one in which she’d never been. “You guys hiding from the law?”
I took the menu she proffered but then laid it flat on the surface of the yellow-speckled Formica table. “Yep, and if you see a deceptively diminutive deputy pull up, you’ll let us know?”
She crossed her arms along with the tiny pad and stubby pencil and looked at me through her mostly salt and not much pepper bangs. “What did you do now?”
“I didn’t know she golfed.”
The expression on Dorothy’s face didn’t change. “That’s a new one.”
“Yep.”
Ozzie, figuring that the conversation was complete, handed his menu back to her. “I’ll have the BLT, hold the mayo.”
Dorothy nodded, took his menu, and plucked mine out of my hands. “The usual?”
“Yes, please.”
Ozzie looked uncertain. “What’s the usual?”
She looked at him. “I haven’t decided yet.”
He paused for only a second. “I’ll stick with the BLT.”
As Dorothy retreated behind the counter, Ozzie turned back to me and spoke in a low voice. “Before we get started, I just wanted to tell you I was going to drop those charges against George Stewart.”
I was a little shocked, and my face probably showed it. “Well . . . I was hoping that would be the case.”
He took a deep breath and exhaled through distended nostrils, continuing to make eye contact with only the table. “The man is dangerous, but I figure we ought to let bygones be bygones.”
My plan was to just let him talk, but it appeared that he was done. “That’s very big of you.” I looked around to make sure I was sitting with the right guy. “Just so you know, he hasn’t filed any charges against you even though he bruised a few of his ribs and cracked his head open.” I tried looking out the windows but settled for watching the drops of condensation roll down at a low rate of speed. “I guess Geo’s not the kind to take that sort of thing seriously.”
“And I am?”
I took a sip of my water just to slow us down. “No, that’s not what I said.”
The small man leaned in, the brim of his hat only a few inches from mine. “He walks up and down that fence line with a rifle like he’s in some kind of range war.”
Probably waiting for your mother, I thought, but kept that to myself. “He shoots the rats that you’ve been complaining about.” I thought, with the turn of events, it was possible that Ozzie knew more about the relationship between the junkman and his mother, so I tested the waters. “Have you discussed any of this with your mother?”
He looked genuinely surprised at that one. “What?”
“Your mother, have you talked to her?”
He shook his head as if to clear my words from it. “What does my mother have to do with any of this?”
“Well, she was there.”
His mouth hung open. I wasn’t sure how much he knew about the situation, but I was certain he didn’t know
how much I knew. “Look, Sheriff, just because my name is Junior doesn’t mean I have to check everything I do with my mother.” He was really steaming up now. “Did you check with your mother about our meeting today?”
I took a breath of my own and waited as Dorothy planted two iced teas on our table, glanced at us, and then made a silent retreat. When she was completely gone, I turned to look back at him.
He was a good-looking man, small but athletic. I could only imagine how difficult growing up with his father, a truly hard man, must’ve been. How strange it was to inherit somebody else’s dream and be forced to deal with the realities of it day after day. He was in a difficult position in more ways than one, whether he was totally aware of it or not. Ozzie Jr. must have had suspicions. It could be that these suspicions were what were fueling the current crisis, but only by making the situation clear could I deflect them and that meant betraying a trust; I wasn’t that desperate—at least not yet.
“My parents have been dead about twelve years, Ozzie, but there’s hardly a day goes by that I don’t wish they were here so I could ask them some damn thing about fixing potato salad, wiring my house, or how I’m doing raising their granddaughter.” I smiled, just to let him know we didn’t have to draw our flatware and go for each other’s throats.
His eyes were the same sad ones his mother had, and he was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry; there really wasn’t any call for me to say that.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, no it’s not.” He took a sip of his iced tea and stared at the table again, and I got the feeling he wanted to slow things down a little himself. “I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately, and I’ve been saying a lot of things.” He looked up at me. “Now that you mention it, my mother and I had an argument when she came home last night, and I haven’t seen her since.”
I thought that I’d seen Betty Dobbs close to ten. “When did she get home?”
“I guess it was about midnight, but then she went out again and I’ve been worried sick.” He played with his napkin. “She said she saw you last night. Was that at the hospital?”
It’s at this point that a smart man would lie, and a stupid one would tell the truth—I hedged. “No, I didn’t see her at the hospital.” He was waiting for more on that, but I shifted gears and took us back in the direction I’d originally intended. “Ozzie, I’m really pleased that you’ve decided to take this course with things. I think it’s going to save a bunch of heart-ache down the road.”
Junkyard Dogs Page 7
