Junkyard Dogs (3 page)

“Seven-thirty. Then I’ll let you take me out to dinner.”

I took the weight off my sore foot and looked down at my boots, which were covered with buckled galoshes. “That’s a nice part of town. The houses around there usually go in a hurry. What do they want for it?”

“One-seventy-one, but I think I can get it for one-sixty-two. Alphonse says he’ll front me the down, and then I can just pay him back when I can, sans interest.”

Alphonse was Vic’s uncle who had a pizza parlor in Philadelphia and, other than Vic’s mother, Lena, the only non-cop Moretti. “How’s the rest of the family feel about this?”

“They don’t know about it.” As a general rule, the machinations of the Moretti family made the Borgias’ seem like Blondie and Dagwood.

Her shoulder bumped into my arm as she changed the subject. “So, your daughter and my brother are getting married this summer?”

I took a deep breath with a quick exhale. “All I know is what I get from the answering machine at home.”

“At least you’ve got a home.” She shifted her weight again, this time in not-so-simple dissatisfaction. “Mom says the end of July.”

I shrugged. “Mom would know.” I thought about Vic’s mother, and the brief time I’d spent in Philly almost a year ago. “Did she mention whether they were thinking of doing it here or in Philadelphia?”

She looked up at me. “There was supposedly talk about some special place on the Rez—Crazy something . . .”

I thought about it. “Crazy Head Springs?”

“That’s it.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Why uh-oh?”

“It’s where I once helped raise the powwow totem; it’s a sacred place for the Cheyenne but controversial. Crazy Head was a Crow chief, but part of the break-off Kicks-in-the-Belly band.”

“Like Virgil?”

“Yep, like Virgil.” Virgil had been one of our holding cell lodgers who, after having been released, had gone MIA. “The Cheyenne don’t like the idea of a Crow chief being exalted on their reservation. Henry took Cady along with us when she was seven, and she’s always said she wanted to be married there.”

Vic shook her head. “We’ll see if it lasts till the summer.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Her eyes met mine, but she diverted again. “So, has the Basquo talked to you?”

I started to yawn and covered my mouth with my hand. “About what?”

“Quitting.”

I stopped in mid-yawn. “What?”

I studied her a moment more, but my eyes were drawn to an approaching lab coat flapping toward us from the hallway. I swiveled my head to meet Isaac Bloomfield, surgeon and all-around Durant Memorial physician-in-charge. As a member of the lost tribe, who must’ve really been lost when he settled in Wyoming, Isaac Bloomfield had set up practice in Absaroka County more than a half century ago. He had been one of the three living inmates of Dora-Mittelbau’s Nordhausen when Allied troops had liberated the Nazi
Vernichtungslager
. “How’s the patient?”

“Well, that’s the first time we’ve ever had that happen.” He looked up at me through the thick lenses of his glasses, which magnified the multiple layers of skin around his eyes. “His hair has grown through his long underwear.”

Vic made an unflattering noise through her nose.

“Probably more than we needed to know, Doc.”

He adjusted his glasses and motioned with his almost bald head toward the double doors of the ER. “Walter, I need you to come with me.” He glanced back as Vic started to follow. “Alone.”

I turned to her as I followed the thin man into the inner sanctums of Durant Memorial. “Stay here. I want to know more about the house and the wedding. And Sancho.”

She stuffed her hands in the pockets of her duty jacket and called after me. “I’ve got that appointment at seven-thirty.”

The Doc walked me into the first examination room and closed the door. I glanced around and noticed we were the only ones there; that’s why I’m a sheriff, because I notice things like that. “Where’s the patient?”

He placed the edge of the clipboard on the counter next to a sink and studied me. “In the next room.”

“Please tell me he didn’t just have a heart attack.” I thought about it. “You know the family has a history.”

“Yes, but the patient in question suffers primarily from diabetes, not heart disease.”

“All right, then.” I looked at him. “What’s up, Doc?”

I stood there in his disapproving silence. He slowly brought his gaze up. “You’ve had a rough year. A very rough year.” He peered at me and tapped the examination bench. “Climb up here.”

“Isaac, I don’t have time . . .”

He patted the clipboard. “Neither do I. I have every intention of retiring soon and handing the responsibility for this place over to the new young man we’ve hired.”

“Who?”

He ignored me and patted his clipboard again. “These are the mandatory examination papers for the county health plan and, if you do not sit down, I will have them cancel the coverage.”

I took a deep breath and looked at him; he was studying the contents of the folder that contained a running documentary of my physical misadventures. The Doc usually dragged me in for the health insurance examination whenever he felt it was high time and long enough.

Bushwhacked.

“Ruby called you, didn’t she?” He didn’t say anything, so I sighed, stepped up, and sat.

He placed the file on the gurney beside me, reached out and thumbed both sides of my knee, pressing up on the cap through my jeans. “How’s the knee?”

I winced. “All right, till you started monkeying around with it.”

He looked up at me, all the world the likeness of some venerated Caesar and just as forgiving. “The shotgun wound to your leg has healed moderately well?”

“Yep.”

“No lingering symptoms from pneumonia from drowning?”

“I didn’t really drown.”

His voice was sharp. “When you have to be resuscitated, you drowned.”

“Okay.”

“Take off your coat.”

I did, and he took my left hand and examined the scar tissue. He held my upper arm and turned my forearm, rotating the elbow. “Does this hurt?”

I lied. “No.”

He unsnapped my cuff, raised the sleeve of my shirt, and looked more closely at the elbow itself. “You have some swelling here, under the scar tissue.”

I lied again. I didn’t usually lie, but with the Doc it had become a habit. “I’ve always had that.”

He shook his head and manipulated my shoulder. It sounded gravelly like Geo Stewart’s. “The shoulder?”

“It feels great.”

“It doesn’t feel great to me, and it doesn’t sound so good either.” He frowned as he compressed the joint and lifted my arm. “How’s that?”

It actually hurt like hell, so I pulled my arm loose. “Not so great, which is why I’ve dropped mandatory departmental saluting.”

“How is your foot?”

“Fabulous.”

He studied me with a look, and the only description that might apply would be askance. “You’re still limping.”

“I’ve come to consider it a character trait.”

“Take off your hat.”

“I don’t think that’s going to help with the limp.”

He placed his hands on my head, adjusted the angle, and pulled my left eye down for a look; this was the part I was dreading. He released my head and got a small plastic bottle of something from the cabinet behind him. “These drops are for your eyes; would you like to do it, or would you prefer I administer them?”

“How many drops?”

He held up two fingers, and I did my part for the advancement of medical science. My vision became blurry as he studied his wristwatch and waited. After a bit, he reexamined my eyes. “Well, your pupils don’t show any particular abrasion, but it’s the damage to the ocular cavity that has me worried.” He released me, picked up the file, and stepped back, folding his arms over the folder and his chest. “I can’t make out any detachment of the retina, but it’s possible that there’s some trauma.” He thumbed his chin and continued to look at me like a card player would an inside straight.

“I could’a been a contender, Doc.”

“You could also go blind as a bat in your left eye if you get hit there again.”

I froze. “What?”

“Just a little medical humor. If you’re not going to take your condition seriously, why should I?” He hugged my file a little tighter. “Still having the headaches?”

“Only when I come in here.”

I had made the mistake of mentioning to Ruby that I had had a few recurring headaches, which must have resulted in this examination. I started to edge my rear end off the table.

“How often?” He continued to study me without moving out of my way.

I took a breath and settled. “Every once in a while.”

“What about the flashes?”

“It was a onetime thing; I just moved my head too fast.” Once again, it was a lie, and I was pushing my luck because the Doc was pretty good at spotting them. After those smiling government
Gruppenführers
with black uniforms had taken him away, Isaac Bloomfield had become a walking polygraph test.

“You’re sure?”

The trick to a good lie, no matter how outrageous, is sticking to it. “Yep.”

He shook his head very slightly, just to let me know he knew I was lying. “Walter, I have a deal for you.”

“Okay.”

He started to speak but then stopped. After a moment he licked his upper lip and tried again. “I will sign these forms indicating that you are in fine shape, which you are for a young man with this many accumulated injuries.” I liked it when the Doc called me a young man and tried not to dwell on the fact that he was in his eighties. “But, only on one condition.”

There was always a catch with the Doc. “And that is?” “You have Andy Hall in Sheridan do a complete examination of your left eye.”

“All right.”

I had started to get up again, but it was too quick of an answer and he placed a hand on my knee, the bad one, to stop me. “I will set up the appointment.”

I hedged. “I can do it, just give me his number.”

“No, I will make the appointment for you. What time this week is good?”

“This week?” Even with my blurred vision, I could see his large brown eyes studying me.

“Yes.”

Damn. I thought about it and figured the more time I had, the more time I’d have to get out of it. “Friday?”

He produced a pen from his lab coat pocket and scribbled on the top of the forms with a flourish followed by a stabbing period. “Thursday.”

“That’s Valentine’s Day.”

He smiled, his mission accomplished. “Maybe your heart will be in it.”

I pulled on my coat and put on my hat. “All right, now that you’re through cutting me off at the pass, do you mind telling me how Geo Stewart is?”

“Routine dislocation of the left shoulder.”

“Well, that would explain why he was waving at passing traffic with only one arm.”

Isaac nodded. “I’d like to keep him here for observation, but there’s something else that’s come up in casual conversation that I thought you might need to know.”

“Now why do I not like the sound of that?”

Isaac Bloomfield cleared his throat. “It would appear, that at the dump—”

“You mean the Municipal Solid Waste Facility?”

The Doc continued as if I hadn’t interrupted. “They have found a body part.”

“We could put it in the lost and found.” I stared at him as he scratched his substantial beard. “Are you sure it’s a finger, Geo? ’Cause if we drive all the way out there, and it’s the end of a leftover bratwurst . . .”

“Not ’less they started puttin’ fingernails on hot dogs.”

I looked around the room. Neither Saizarbitoria nor Doc Bloomfield was offering much help. I sighed and chewed on the inside of my lip. “I don’t suppose there’s an engraved ring with the owner’s name inside on that finger, is there?”

He thought about it. “Nope, just the finger.”

“That was a joke, Geo.”

“Oh.”

I studied the old man and decided that his hat might’ve been a red and white floral pattern when it started out, but the accumulated grease gave it a rich patina that approached black. Curls of dirty silver escaped from underneath the cap and reached down past his predominant Adam’s apple. His skin was roasted a burnt coffee from the acid of long, hard labor and more than a few lines were etched around the welled sockets of his mouth and his Caribbean blue eyes.

Whenever I saw his eyes up close, I wondered what he would look like if he ever washed or shaved. Chances were, the collective county would never know.

“Can he travel, Doc?”

The attending physician nodded and crossed his arms over his ever-present clipboard. “I suppose so. His family members are still in the waiting room.”

I took a deep breath and leaned in as close to Geo as the fumes would allow. “Promise me, this time, you’ll ride inside the car?”

 

 

I pulled my ten-year-old Ray-Bans from my breast pocket and steered them onto my face to give my dilated pupils a little relief. Even though the skies were gloomy, damp, and gray like a dead body, there was enough of a glare to affect my sight. It was that part of the winter that stretched out like a Russian novel—a really, really long one.

I carefully picked my way across the frozen moguls of the Durant Memorial Hospital parking lot with Santiago Saizarbitoria trailing along behind me.

I wanted a little time with the Basquo alone.

It wasn’t very far to the reserved emergency vehicle spot, but I was glad I’d remembered to put my galoshes back on. I started to open the driver’s side of my truck but then remembered that my eyes were still dilated. I stepped back to look at Sancho. “Sorry, I forgot.”

I walked around the front of my unit to the unfamiliar passenger side of the Bullet. When I opened the door, there was a surprise—Dog was seated in the front. He turned to look at me as if I’d lost my mind. He had Saint Bernard in him and some German shepherd with a bunch of other things, most of them domesticated except for when you had bacon—then he was part great white shark.