Cripple Creek (4 page)

I'd been out of the life a long time now. But weeks back, Herb Danziger up in Memphis had somehow tracked me down and called
to tell me that Lou Winter, having exhausted appeals, was scheduled for execution.

Danziger was pro bono lawyer for Lou Winter at his initial trial. He'd put in thirty-some years making certain that big rich
corporations got bigger and richer, then one day ("No crisis of conscience, I was just bored out of my mind") he gave it up
and started taking on, in both senses of the phrase, the hard cases. Another six years of that before an unappeased client
stepped out of the doorway of Danziger's apartment house one evening as he returned home. Damndest thing you ever saw, the
paramedic who responded said. We get there and this guy is sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the wall and his
legs out straight in front of him. There's the handle of a hunting knife sticking out of his head, like he has a horn, you
know? And he's singing "Buffalo Gals Won't You Come Out Tonight."

He survived, but with extensive brain damage. His hands shook with palsy and one foot dragged, paving of his memory gone to
potholes. He'd been in an assisted-living home ever since. But old cohorts showed up regularly to visit, bringing with them
all the latest courthouse gossip.

"Early September is what they're saying. I'll keep you posted."

"Thanks, Herb. You doing okay?"

"Never better. Occupational therapist here would adopt me if she could. Who'd ever have suspected I had artistic talent? My
lanyards and decoupage are the best. Others look upon them and weep."

"Anything you need?"

"I'm good, T. You get up this way, just come see me, that's all."

"I'll do that."

Lou Winter had killed four children, all males aged ten to thirteen. Unlike other juvenile predators, he never molested them
or was in any way improper. He met them mostly at malls, befriended them, took them out for elaborate meals and often a movie,
then killed them and buried them in his backyard. Each grave had a small garden plot above it: tomatoes above one, zucchini
above another, Anaheim peppers above a third. From the ground of the most recent, only a short stem with two tiny leaves protruded.

It was my fourth, maybe fifth catch as detective, just a missing-persons case at the time. I'd been kicked upstairs arbitrarily
and had little idea what I was doing or how to go about it. Everyone in the house knew that—watch commanders, other detectives,
technicians in forensics, patrol, probably the cleaning lady. I was a week into the case with no land in sight when I knocked
off around six one night and went out to find a note tucked under my windshield wiper. I never did find out who put it there.
It had the name of the missing child on it, the one I was looking for, followed by the number four. It also had another name,
and the address of a pet shop at Westwood Mall.

A buzzer sounded faintly as I walked in. Lou Winter came out of the back of the store and stood watching me, knowing even
then, I think, who I was. When I told him, he just nodded, eyes still on mine. Something strange about those eyes, I thought
even then.

"I have a mother cat giving birth back there," he said. "Can you give me a few minutes?"

I went with him and stood alongside as, cooing and petting, tugging gently with a finger to urge the first kitten out, the
first of five, he helped ease her birth. No, not five: six. For, long after the others had dropped into our world, another
head began showing.

The last kitten had only one front leg, something wrong with its skull as well. Holding it tenderly, Lou Winter said, "She'll
reject it, but we have to try, don't we?" as he pushed the others aside and placed the new one closest to her.

"I'll get my things." A gray windbreaker. A gym bag containing, I would learn later, toothbrush and toothpaste, a Red Chief
notebook and a box of Number 2 pencils, several washcloths, six pair of white socks still in paper bands, a pocket-size paperback
Bible. "I'll just lock up." Taking a cardboard sign off a hook alongside, "Back in a Jiff," he hung it on the door. "Marcie
comes in after gym practice. Be here any minute now."

He never asked how I found him, never showed any surprise.

Once we'd left the store, I noticed, he began to seem awkward or uncertain, staying close to me, face bunched in concentration.
Macular degeneration, I'd learn later. Like many whose faculties decay slowly, he had compensated, memorizing his surroundings,
working out ways to function. But Lou Winter was more than half blind.

Outside the station house, a man in an expensive suit and shoes that cost about the same as the suit stepped up and introduced
himself as Mr. Winter's lawyer. He and Winter regarded one another a moment, then Winter nodded.

And that was Herb Danziger.

I hung up the phone after talking to Herb. Clouds moved along the sky as though, having misspoken, they were in a hurry to
get offstage. Across the street Terry Billings's legs stuck out from beneath his pickup as he worked on his transmission for
the third time this month, trying to wring out yet another few hundred miles.

I was thinking about Herb, about Lou Winter, and remembering what Dr. Vandiver had so untypically said.

Sadness.

Not for himself, but for the others, the children. Or for all of us. In some strange manner, Lou Winter was connected to humanity
as few of us are, but the connection had gone bad. Small wires were broken, sparks dribbled out at joins.

Once I had wanted nothing more than to see Lou Winter convicted, then executed. I understood why Herb held on: in a world
all too rapidly emptying itself of Herb's presence, Lou was one of the few tangible links to his past, to what his life had
stood for, what he had made of it.

Was it really any different for me?

Lou Winter had been a part of my life and world for as long. It was altogether possible that in losing him I would be losing
some unexplored subcontinent of my self.

That same day, I remember, I stopped Gladys Tate for driving drunk. She was in husband Ed's '57 Chevy and almost fell twice
getting out. She'd already run into something and smashed the headlight and half the grille. When I mentioned that Ed was
going to be damned mad, she grinned with one side of her face, winked with the other, and said, "Ed won't care. He's got a
new toy." His new toy was a woman he met at the bowling alley up by Poplar Grove, the one he'd left town with. Gladys looked
off at the old church, now mostly jagged, gaping boards and yellowed white paint, though a skeletal steeple still stood. Then
her eyes swam back to mine. "My clothes are in the dryer," she said, "can I go home soon?"

THE BUSINESS CARD was for a financial consultant in offices just off Monroe in Memphis. That consultant thing had always eluded
me, I could never understand it. As society progresses, we move further and further away from those who actually do the work.
Consulting, I figured, was about as far as one could get before launching oneself into the void.

I came here with clear purpose. I'd be on my own, no attachments, no responsibility. Now I look around and find myself at
the center of this community, so much so that freeing myself for a few days in Memphis took some doing.

First call was to Lonnie. Sure, he'd fill in, no problem. Be good to be back in harness, long as he knew it was short-term.

"I'll try to keep it down to a minimum," I said.

"You're going after them, aren't you?"

"You wouldn't?"

"They hurt my daughter, Turner. For no good reason save she was there."

"Figure they can do whatever they want out here on the edge, I'm thinking."

"That's what they're thinking too. Just don't forget to give the local force a courtesy call."

"I'm not sure MPD wants to hear from me."

"Call them anyway. You still have any contacts there?"

"Tell the truth, I don't know."

"Find out. And if you do, cash them in for whatever they're worth. Nickel, dime—whatever."

Next call was to barracks commander Bailey, who pledged to send down a couple of retired state troopers to rotate shifts as
deputies. "Believe me, they'll appreciate the chance to get out of the house."

Then Val.

"Let me guess. You're going to be away for a while." She laughed. "Commander Bailey told me." She was counsel for the barracks,
after all. "Have to admit it came as no surprise. Any idea when you'll be back?"

"I'll call, let you know."

"You better."

"I'll miss you."

Another rapid burst of the laughter I had come so to treasure. "It's pitiful," she said, "how much I hoped you might say something
like that."

Forty minutes later I was heading up Highway 51 in the Chariot, Lonnie's Jeep, with an overnight bag of underwear and socks,
two shirts, spare khaki pants just in case, basic toiletries. The gun I never carried, a .38 Police Special Don Lee insisted
on providing me when I started working with him, lay swaddled in a hand towel, in a quart Glad bag, under the passenger seat.
I imagined that I could feel it pulling at me from there, a gravity I was loath to give in to or admit.

I hadn't been back to Memphis in, what, close to two years? At some essential level it never seems to change much. More fast-food
franchises and big-box stores pop up, the streets continue to crumble from center to sides, there are ever-longer sc entire
office buildings. When the economy goes bad, the first leaks spring at the weakest segments. The Delta's been hard hit for
decades. You cruise the main street in small towns like Helena, just down the river a piece, or over by Rosedale, half the
stores are empty as old shoes. The river's still impressive, but it ceased offering much by way of economic advantage long
ago.

Just inside the city limits, I stopped at Momma's Cafe for coffee and a burger. Place was all but hidden behind a thicket
of service trucks and hard-ridden pickups. Even here in the South, central cities become ever more homogeneous, one long stuttering
chain of McDonald's and KFC and Denny's, while local cafes and restaurants cling to the outskirts as though thrown there by
centrifugal force. Nowadays I find I have to lower myself into the city environment, any city environment, by degrees, like
a diver with bends coming up—but I'm going down. And Momma's was just right for it. From there I drove on in and dragged for
a couple of hours the streets I used to run as a cop, feeling the city slowly fall into place around me. Drove north on Poplar
where East High School once stood, now a nest of cozy aluminum-sided single-family dwellings with tiny manicured lawns front
and back. Drove by Overton Square. Cruised down Walnut, took the left at Vance and crossed Orleans. Hit Able and proceeded
north past Beale and Union. Swung by 102-A Birch Street where I'd shot my partner Randy.

When I worked out of it, Central Precinct was on South Flicker, second floor of the old Armor Station. Now it was housed at
426 Tillman in the Binghamton section, for many years a hard and hard-bitten part of the city that looked to be, especially
with the recent completion of Sam Cooper Boulevard just north, on its way back.

Sam Hamill had been a rookie along with me. Now, heaven help him, he was Major Hamill, the watch commander. Forty pounds heavier
than back in the day, a lot less hair, deltas of fat deposits around the eyes. Wearing a navy gabardine suit and a charcoal
knit tie that would have been the bee's knees circa 1970.

"Turner. Good Lord."

"Never know who or what's likely to walk into a police station, do you?"

He came up from behind the desk to shake my hand. Took some effort. Definitely the coming up from behind the desk.

Probably, too, in another way, shaking my hand.

"So how the hell've you been?"

"Away."

He eased himself back into his chair in a manner that brought

hemorrhoids or getting shot in the butt to mind. "So I heard. Guys that told me, it was like, 'Hey, he's gone. Let's celebrate.'"

"Don't doubt it for a minute."

We sat regarding one another across the archipelago of his desk.

"You fucked up bad on the job, Turner."

"Not just on the job."

"What I heard." He stared, smiled and wheezed a bit before saying, "So where've you been?"

"Home, more or less."

"And now you're back."

"Briefly. Touching down. Here and gone before you know it."

"I was just on the phone with Lonnie Bates."

"Guess that explains why Sergeant Collins at the desk had me cooling my heels."

"Sheriff Bates speaks well of you. Seems a good man."

"He is. Would have made a great con artist. People tend to see him as just this hicktown officer, and he plays up to it, when
the truth is, he's as smart and as capable as anyone I've ever worked with. Same goes for his deputy."

"Other deputy, you mean."

"Other deputy, right."

Sam nodded. When he did, cords of loose skin on his neck writhed. "Bates told me what happened."

He fiddled with a Webster cup. Clutch of ballpoint pens, letter opener, scissors, six-inch plastic ruler, couple of paper-sheathed
soda straws, a cheap cigar in its wrapper.

"Deputy sheriff from another county won't hold much water here in Memphis."

"I know that. On the other hand, I do have a fugitive warrant."

"So Sheriff Bates informed me. So after I hung up from talking to him, I called over to our own sheriff's office and spoke
with the fugitive squad there, people you'd ordinarily be expected to coordinate with. We help them out sometimes. Game of
'Mother May I?' is mostly what it is. You know how it works."

I nodded. "They give you permission to take one giant step?"

"So happens they did."

"Your town, Sam, and your call. Just I'd appreciate being there."

"Judd Kurtz doesn't ring any bells?"

"Not with me. Nino's we know. Also Semper Fi Investments. We keep an eye out. Hang on a minute."

He punched in an interoffice number, waited a couple of rings.

"Hamill. Any word on the street about a missing quarter-mill or so? . . . I see. . . . Say I was to whisper the name Judd
Kurtz in your ear, would it get me a kiss? . . . Thanks, Stan."

He hung up.

"Stan heads up our task force on organized crime. Says a week or two back, a minor leaguer made his rounds—passed the collection
plate, as Stan put it—then went missing. Rumor has it he's a nephew to one of the bosses. Stan also says someone's tried his
best to put a lid on it."

"But even the best lids leak."

Sam nodded.

"Stan have any idea where we can find this supposed nephew?"

"You really been away that long, Turner? You think we're gonna find this guy? What, he ripped off one of the bosses, then
got himself arrested in the boondocks, made them send in the thick-necks? Those sound like career moves to you? Nephew or
not, he's under Mud Island by now."

"In which case I need to find the thick-necks."

"How did I know?" Eyes went to the window looking out into the squad room. All the good stuff happened out there. He used
to be out there himself. "You know your warrant doesn't cover them."

"I'm not asking you to help me, Sam. Just hoping you and your people won't get in my way."

"Oh, I think we can do a little better than that."

Again he punched in a number. "Tracy, you got a minute?" Ten, twelve beats and the door opened.

Thirtyish, button jeans, dark T-shirt with a blazer over, upturned nose, silver cuffs climbing the rim of one ear.

"Tracy Caulding, Deputy Sheriff Turner. Believe it or not, this man used to be one of ours. The two of us came on the job
together, in fact."

"Back home, his sheriff got taken down by some of our local hardcases. Turner would like to meet them."

"Taken down?"

"He's alive. Badge is gonna spend some time in the drawer, though."

"That really blows."

"No argument from me. City rats gone country, Tracy. It's not their territory, what the fuck? They're in, they're out, they're
gone."

"Where am I in this, Sam?"

"You ever said 'sir' or 'boss' your whole life?"

"Not as I recall. My mother—"

"Was a hardcore feminist, six books, whistle-blower on the evils of society. I do read personnel files, Tracy."

She smiled, quite possibly in that moment adding to global warming.

"Thing is, Turner here's been away a while. We don't want him getting lost. Show him around, help facilitate his reentry."

"Ride shotgun is what you mean," Tracy Caulding said.

"I don't need protection, Sam."