Shadow Prey (8 page)

Betty May stuck her head through the curtain between the back room and the store. "Lucas, it's been a while," she said. She had a round face, touched by old acne scars, and a husky voice that might have sung the blues.

"There's not much around about Bluebird," said Earl. He looked at his wife. "He's asking about the killings."

"That's what everybody tells me," Lucas said. Earl was standing with his arms crossed. It was a defensive position, a push-off stance, one that Lucas had not seen before with the Mays. Behind her husband, Betty unconsciously took the same position.

"You'll have trouble dealing with the community on this one," she said. "Benton was bad, Cuervo was worse. Cuervo was so bad that when his wife got down to his office, after the police called her, she was smiling."

"But what about this guy in New York, Andretti?" Lucas asked. "What the hell did he do?"

"Andretti. The liberal with good accountants," Earl snorted. "He called himself a realist. He said there were people that you have to write off. He said that it made no difference whether you threw money at the underclass or just let it get along. He said the underclass was a perpetual drag on the people who work."

"Yeah?" said Lucas.

"A lot of people want to hear that," Earl continued. "And he might even be right about some people-winos and junkies. But there's one big question he doesn't answer. What about the kids? That's the question. You're seeing a genocide. The victims aren't the welfare queens. The victims are the kids."

"You can't think this is right, these people being killed," Lucas argued.

Earl shook his head. "People die all the time. Now some folks are dying who were hurting the Indian people. That's too bad for them and it's a crime, but I can't get too upset about it."

"How about you, Betty?" Lucas asked. He turned to the woman, disturbed. "Do you feel the same way?"

"Yeah, I do, Lucas," she said.

Lucas peered at them for a moment, studying Earl's face, then Betty's. They were the best people he knew. What they thought, a lot of people would think. Lucas shook his head, rapped the counter with his knuckles and said, "Shit."

Bluebird's funeral was... Lucas had to search for the right word. He finally settled on peculiar. Too many of the gathered Indians were shaking hands, with quick grins that just as quickly turned somber.

And there were too many Indians for one guy who wasn't that well known. After the coffin had been lowered into the ground, and the last prayers said, they gathered in groups and clusters, twos and threes, talking. An air of suppressed celebration, Lucas thought. Somebody had lashed out. Bluebird had paid, but there were others still at it, taking down the assholes. Lucas watched the crowd, searching for faces he knew, people he might tap later.

Riverwood Cemetery was a working-class graveyard in a working-class neighborhood. Bluebird was buried on a south-facing slope under an ash tree. His grave would look up at the sun, even in winter. Lucas stood on a small rise, next to one of the city's increasingly rare elms, thirty yards from the gravesite. Directly opposite him, across the street from the cemetery and a hundred feet from the grave, were more watchers. The catsup-colored Chevy van fit into the neighborhood like a perfect puzzle piece. In the back, two cops made movies through the dark windows.

Identifying everyone would be impossible, Lucas thought. The funeral had been too big and too many people were simply spectators. He noticed a white woman drifting along the edges of the crowd. She was taller than most women and a little heavy, he thought. She glanced his way, and from a distance, she was a sulky, dark-haired madonna, with an oval face and long heavy eyebrows.

He was still following her progress through the fringe of the crowd when Sloan ambled up and said, "Hello, there." Lucas turned to say hello. When he turned back to the funeral crowd a moment later, the dark-haired woman was gone.

"You talk to Bluebird's old lady?" Lucas asked.

"I tried," Sloan said. "I couldn't get her alone. She had all these people around, saying, 'Don't talk to the cops, honey. Your man is a hero.' They're shutting her down."

"Maybe later, huh?"

"Maybe, but I don't think we'll get much," Sloan said. "Where're you parked?"

"Around the corner."

"So am I." They picked their way between graves, down the shallow slope toward the street. Some of the graves were well tended, others were weedy. One limestone gravemarker was so old that the name had eroded away, leaving only the fading word FATHER. "I was talking to one of the people at her house. The guy said Bluebird hadn't been around that much. In fact, he and his old lady were probably on the edge of breaking up," Sloan said.

"Not too promising," Lucas agreed.

"So what're you doing?"

"Running around picking up bullshit," Lucas said. He looked one last time for the dark-haired woman but didn't see her. "I'm headed over to the Point. Yellow Hand's up there. Maybe he's heard something more."

"It's worth a try," Sloan said, discouraged.

"He's my last shot. Nobody wants to talk."

"That's what I get," Sloan said. "They're rootin' for the other side."

The Point was a row of red-brick townhouses that had been converted to single-floor apartments. Lucas stepped inside the door, pushed it shut and sniffed. Boiled cabbage, a few days old. Canned corn. Oatmeal. Fish. He reached back to his hip, slipped the Heckler and Koch P7 out of its holster and put it in his sport coat pocket.

Yellow Hand's room was five floors up, in what had once been a common-storage attic. Lucas stopped on the landing at the fourth floor, caught his breath and finished the climb with his hand on the P7. The door at the top of the stairs was closed. He tried the knob without knocking, turned it and pushed the door open.

A man was sitting on a mattress reading a copy of People magazine. An Indian, wearing a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled above his elbows, and jeans and white socks. An army field jacket lay next to the mattress, along with a pair of cowboy boots, a green ginger-ale can, another copy of People and a battered volume of Reader's Digest Condensed Books. Lucas stepped inside.

"Who are you?" the man asked. His forearms were tattooed-a rose inside a heart on the arm nearer to Lucas, an eagle's wing on the other. Another mattress lay across the room with two people on it, asleep, a man and a woman. The man wore jockey shorts, the woman a rose-colored rayon slip. Her dress lay neatly folded by the mattress and next to that were two chipped cups with a coil heater inside one of them. The floor was littered with scraps of paper, old magazines, empty food packages and cans. The room stank of marijuana and soup.

"Cop," said Lucas. He stepped fully into the room and looked off to his left. A third mattress. Yellow Hand, asleep. "Looking for Yellow Hand."

"He's passed out," said the tattooed man.

"Drinking?"

"Yeah." The man rolled off the mattress and picked up his jacket. Lucas pointed a finger at him.

"Stick around for a minute, okay?"

"Sure, no problem. You got a cigarette?"

"No."

The woman on the second mattress stirred, rolled onto her back and propped herself up on her elbows. She was white, and older than Lucas thought when he first saw her. Forties, he thought. "What's going on?" she asked.

"Cop to see Yellow Hand," said the tattooed man.

"Oh, shit." She squinted at Lucas and he saw she was missing her front teeth. "You got a cigarette?"

"No."

"God damn, nobody ever got no smokes around here," she whined. She looked at the man beside her, poked him. "Get up, Bob. The cops are here." Bob moaned, twitched and snored.

"Leave him," said Lucas. He moved over to Yellow Hand and pushed him with his toe.

"Don't fuck w' me," Yellow Hand said sleepily, batting at the foot.

"Need to talk to you."

"Don't fuck w' me," Yellow Hand said again.

Lucas prodded him a little harder. "Get up, Yellow Hand. This is Davenport."

Yellow Hand's eyes flickered and Lucas thought he looked too old for a teenager. He looked as old as the woman, who was now sitting slouched on the mattress, smacking her lips. The tattooed man stood bouncing on his toes for a second, then reached for a cowboy boot.

"Leave the boots," Lucas said, pointing at him again. "Wake up, Yellow Hand."

Yellow Hand rolled to a sitting position. "What is it?"

"I want to talk." Lucas turned to the tattooed man. "Why'n't you come over here and sit on the mattress?"

"I ain't done a fuckin' thing," the man snarled, suddenly defiant. He was rake thin and had one shoulder turned toward Lucas in an unconscious boxing stance.

"I'm not here to fuck with anybody," Lucas said. "I'm not asking for ID, I'm not calling in for warrants. I just want to talk."

"I don't talk to the fuckin' cops," the tattooed man said. He looked around for support. The woman was staring at the floor, shaking her head; then she spat between her feet. Lucas put his hand in his pocket. The attic space was crowded. Ordinarily, he wouldn't worry about a couple of derelicts and a drifter, but the tattooed man exuded an air of toughness. If there were a fight, he wouldn't have much room to maneuver.

"We can do it the easy way or we can do it the hard way," he said softly. "Now get your ass over here or I'll kick it up between the ears."

"What you gonna do, cop, you gonna fuckin' shoot me? I ain't got no knife, I ain't got no gun, I'm in my own fuckin' apartment, I ain't seen no warrant, you gonna shoot me?"

The man stepped closer and Lucas took his hand back out of his pocket.

"No, but I might beat the snot out of you," Lucas said. Both the older man and the woman were looking away. If the tattooed man jumped, he would have no support from them. Yellow Hand wasn't likely to help the stranger, so it would be one on one. He braced himself.

"Take it easy, Shadow, you don't want to fight no cop," Yellow Hand said from the mattress. "You know what'd happen then."

Lucas looked from Yellow Hand to the tattooed man and guessed that the tattooed man was on parole.

"You know Benton?" he snapped. "He your PO?"

"No, man. I never met him," the tattooed man said, suddenly closing his eyes and half turning away. The tension ebbed.

"All I want to do is talk," Lucas said mildly.

"You want to talk with a gun in your pocket," said the tattooed man, turning back to him. "Like all whites."

He looked straight at Lucas, and Lucas saw that his eyes were light gray, so light they looked as though cataracts were floating across his irises. The man's body trembled once, again, and then settled into a low vibration, like a guitar string.

"Take it easy," Yellow Hand said again, rubbing his face. "Come on over and sit down. Davenport won't fuck with you."

There was another moment of stress; then, as suddenly as he'd become angry, the tattooed man relaxed and smiled. His teeth were a startling white against his dark face. "Sure. Jeez, I'm sorry, but you come on sudden," he said. He bobbed his head in apology.

Lucas backed up a few steps, wary of the sudden change, uneasy about the eyes. Witch eyes. The tattooed man moved over to Yellow Hand's mattress and sat down on a corner. Lucas watched him for a second, then stepped closer to Yellow Hand, until he was looming over him. He spoke at the top of the teenager's head.

"What do you hear, Yellow Hand? I need everything about Ray Cuervo getting his throat cut. Anything about this guy Benton. Anybody who was friends with Bluebird."

"I don't know about that shit," Yellow Hand said. "I knew Bluebird from out on the res."

"At Fort Thompson?"

"Yeah, man. His sister and my mom used to walk down below the dam and go fishing."

"What do you hear about him lately?" Lucas reached down and grabbed Yellow Hand's hair, just above his ear, and pulled his head back. "Gimme something, Yellow Hand. Talk to me."

"I don't know shit, man, I'm telling the truth," Yellow Hand said sullenly, jerking his hair free. Lucas squatted so he could look Yellow Hand straight in the face. The tattooed man watched Lucas' face over Yellow Hand's shoulder.

"Look. When Benton got killed, you got picked up as a witness," Lucas said, putting a friendly note in his voice. "That's on the record. There are some cops putting together a list. Your name is on it. That means some hardasses from Robbery-Homicide will be checking you out. They aren't going to be friendly, like me. They aren't gonna be no fuckin' pussycats. They aren't going to take care of you, Yellow Hand. If you give me something, I can deal them off. But I got to have something. If I don't get something, they'll figure I didn't squeeze hard enough."

"I could go back to the res," Yellow Hand said.

Lucas shook his head. "What are you going to smoke on the res? Sagebrush? What are you gonna do, sneak down to the tribal store and shoplift boomboxes? Gimme a break, Yellow Hand. You got all these nice K Marts you can work in the Cities. You got the candy man coming around every night. Shit, you got guys peddling crack at Fort Thompson?"

A tear trickled down Yellow Hand's face and he sniffed. Lucas looked at him. "What have you got, man?" Lucas asked again.