Cripple Creek Read online

  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.

  I pulled into a visitor space, went in and gave my name and credentials to a sergeant at the front desk, who said someone would be with me directly. Directly, I surmised, here meant something on the order of any day now back home. Eventually Sergeant Collins came out from behind his desk and escorted me through a reef of battered metal desks to an office at the rear.

  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."

  "Course, first we have to figure out where there is."

  "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."

  "Wow. Now there's a recommendation."

  "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."

  "I know you don't, old friend. What I'm thinking is, with you back, maybe we do."

  CHAPTER SIX

  HAD A WONDERFUL BARBEQUE dinner that night, Tracy Caulding and I, at Sonny Boy's #2 out on Lamar: indoor picnic benches, sweaty plastic pitchers of iced tea, roll of paper towels at each table. There was no Sonny Boy's #1, Tracy told me—not that, after a bite or two, anyone was likely to care. Amazing, blazing pork, creamy cool cole slaw, butterbeans and pinto beans baked together, biscuits. "Biscuits fresh ever hour," according to a hand-lettered sign.

  For all its cultural razing, Memphis remains one of the great barbeque towns.

  Tracy lowered a stand of ribs she'd sucked dry onto her plate and, tearing off a panel of paper towel, wiped her mouth as lustily as she'd taken to the barbeque. She picked up another segment of ribs, held it poised for launch, told me: "Stan Dimitri and I had coffee together this afternoon. From organized crime? He filled me in on the Aleche network."

  "That what they're calling them now? Networks? To us they were just gangs."

  "Then for a while it went to crews. Now it's networks. This one's responsible for much of the money that gets dry-cleaned through Semper Fi Investments. Run by, if you can believe it, a Native American who passes himself off as some sort of Mediterranean. Born Jimmy McCallum, been going by Jorge Aleche for years now."

  "He the one with the nephew?"

  "Stan thinks so."

  "Stan thinks—that's the best you have?"

  Shrugging. "What can I say?"

  "Well . . . What I think is, it's time for a massive rattling of the cage."

  The second portion of ribs dropped
onto her plate. A third or fourth paper towel wiped away sins of the immediate past. Older sins took a bit longer.

  "And here Sam thinks you're out of touch." She held up her beer, tipping its neck towards me. "I know who you are, Turner."

  "I'd be surprised if you didn't. However big the city, the job's always a small town."

  "I started hearing stories about you the day I first hit the streets."

  "And I remember the first time I looked in a car's rearview mirror and saw the legend 'Objects May Be Closer Than They Appear.'"

  "What the fuck's that mean?"

  "That you can't trust stories."

  "Yeah, but how many of us ever get to have stories told about us?" She drained her beer. "You notice how these bottles keep getting smaller?"

  From the breast pocket of her blazer she took a narrow reporter's notebook. Found a free page, scribbled addresses and phone numbers, tore the page off and passed it me.

  "Consider it part of your orientation package."

  "You memorized all this?"

  "Some people have trick joints, like their thumbs bend back to their forearms? I have a trick memory. I hear something, see something, I've got it forever."

  "Buy you another beer before the bottles get too small? Alcohol kills brain cells, you know—could help wean you off that memory thing."

  "Worth a try."

  I got the waiter's attention, ordered another beer for Tracy, bourbon straight up for myself. He brought them and began clearing plates.

  "Speaking of stories, I remember one I read years ago," Tracy said. "I was into science fiction then, and new to reading. Every book I opened was a marvel. One of the older writers—Kuttner, Kornbluth, those guys. People lived almost forever. But every hundred years or so they had to come back to this center where they'd plunge into this pool and swim across it. To rejuvenate them, I'm sure the story pointed out. Symbol of rebirth. But what I got from it was how the water of that miraculous pool would take away their memories, wipe them clean, let them go on."

  I took a fond, measured sip of my bourbon. There was a time in my life when measured sips hadn't been called for. That whole measurement thing creeps up on us. Start off counting hairs in the bathtub drain, before we know it we're telling people we're only allowed a cup and a half of coffee a day, reading labels for saturated-fat content, trying to portion out our losses, like a double-entry accountant, to history and failing memory.

  "I'm not sure I know how to respond," I told Tracy.

  "Yeah. Me either. Exactly what I mean. Four hundred killed when the roof of a substandard apartment building collapses in Pakistan. A fifteen-year-old goes into his high school with an assault weapon and kills three teachers, the principal, twelve fellow students. Half the citizens of some country you never heard of go after the other half, kill or butcher them and bulldoze them into mass graves. There's a proper response to something like that? You get to wishing you could go for a swim, wipe it all away. But you can't."

  We tossed off the remainder of our drinks in silence and called it a night. Enough of the world's eternal problems and our own.

  "Check in tomorrow?" Tracy said.

  "First thing."

  "Where are you staying?"

  Since I was here on my own dime, I'd taken the cheapest room I could find, at Nu-Way Motel on the city's outer rings. Each unit was painted a different pastel shade, mine what I could only think of as Pepto-Bismol pink. A stack of fifties magazines inside would not have surprised.

  Walking Tracy Caulding to her blue Honda Civic, I gave her my location, room and phone number. "No need to write them down for you's my guess," I said, getting another glimpse of the smile that had lit up Sam's office back at the station. From habit I looked in to clear the car, saw a ziggurat of textbooks on the back seat.

  "What's this? Not a dedicated law officer?"

  She held up her hands, palm out, in mock surrender. "Got me dead to rights."

  "Graduate school, from the look of it."

  "I confess. M.A. in social work, six credits to go."

  She leaned back against the rear door, tugging at the silver-cuffed ear.

  "Cop was the last thing I thought I'd be. From the time I was eleven, twelve years old, I was going to be a teacher. Nose forever in a book and all that. But I grew up in a trailer park, no way my parents could afford even local colleges. I had grand ambitions, though, applied all over the mid-South, even places like Tulane and Duke. Memphis State came through with a full scholarship. I had a job teaching sixth grade promised before I'd even graduated. Five weeks in, I walked away from it."

  She put her hand on my arm.

  "Everything I'd taken for granted all those years was gone. I had no idea who I was, what I could do, and I had to work. Of a Sunday morning I was reading want ads when one at the very corner of the page caught my eye. Police badge to the left. Have a degree? it said. Want to make a difference?—or something equally lame. Another of the department's periodic thrusts to improve its image. Wanted people with degrees, offered an accelerated training program for those who qualified. So here I am. Telling you way more than you wanted to know. Sorry."

  "Don't be."

  She was in the car now, looking out.

  "We should talk about counseling and social work sometime," I said.

  "Did a bit of it yourself, from what I hear."

  "More like I muddied the water."

  "So we should. Just don't tell me I'm wrong, okay?" Hauling her seat belt across. "See you tomorrow, Turner." Face in the rearview mirror as she drove away. Objects may be closer than they appear.

  Back at the motel I punched my way through a thicket of numbers, 9 for an outside line, 1 for long distance, area code, credit-card number, personal code. Quite the modern lawman.

  "Sheriffs office."

  "Who's speaking?"

  "Rob Olson."

  "Trooper?"

  "You bet. Who's this?"

  "Turner, up in Memphis."

  "The deputy, right?"

  "Right. Don't guess Lonnie'd be around this late, would he?" "He's always around. Though it might be best if you didn't tell him I said that." Miles and miles away, coffee got slurped. "Be here right this minute save he's out to an accident. Told him I'd go but he wouldn't hear of it. You hold a minute, Turner? Got someone on the other line."

  Then he was back.

  "That's Bates on line two. He's at the hospital with an accident victim, wants to speak with you. Hold on, I'll try to transfer you."

  Some time went by.

  "Turner. You there? I can't get this damn thing to work. And I think I just hung up on the sheriff. He's still over to the hospital. You wanta call him there?"

  He gave me the number, and I did.

  "Those boys at the barracks are the best you'll see at paperwork," Lonnie said when I told him what happened. "Other things . . ."

  Someone was there by him, complaining. I'd probably called in to the ER nurse's station, which might be the only line functioning this time of night. The local hospital wasn't a hell of a lot larger or more complicated than our office.

  "Official police work," he said. "Chill, Gladys." Then to me: "So you're still in Memphis. Any action?"

  I filled him in on my visit. Connecting with Sam Hamill, meeting Tracy. Think I may have found out where to go to get what I'm looking for, I told him.

  "That's good. Quick."

  "I followed your advice."

  "Hamill put you and Tracy together knowing she'd give up the contact, he wouldn't have to." As always, Lonnie was a move ahead.

  "Way I saw it, too."

  "So why the fancy footwork?"

  "Maybe they figure I can take care of a problem they haven't been able to."

  Lonnie was silent for a moment.

  "In which case, since Hamill laid out the official face of the thing for you, even assigned an officer, the MPD can in no way be held responsible. Either you handle it and you're home before anyone knows better—"

  "
Or I get, as our British friends say, nicked for the deed, in which case Sam and the MPD disclaim to their heart's content."

  "Clean."

  "More than one way to get the job done."

  "Always. Damn! Now the goddamned beeper's going off. Hang on."

  I heard voices behind, just out of range of intelligibility.

  "Shirley checking in," Lonnie said moments later.

  "You've got a beeper now."

  "Simon has a band concert tomorrow, some kind of solo. Wife wanted to be sure I would make it, gave me hers." Simon in buzz-cut and baggies was the older of two sons. The younger, Billy, despite the flag of multiple piercings, had no direction any of us could discern but was a sweetheart, maybe the closest thing to an innocent human being I've known.

  "How's June?"

  "Cleared by her doctors and home with us. Mostly herself, but sometimes it's like she's not really there, she's gone off someplace else."

  "Not surprising, with what she's just been through."

  "I hope."

  "Give it time. Don Lee?"

  "Stable, they keep telling me—though he hasn't come round yet. Wait and see, they say, we just have to wait and see."

  Gladys was back, loudly demanding return of the phone he'd taken hostage. Lonnie ignored her.

  "Trooper said you wanted to talk to me. What's up?"

  "May be nothing to it, but the accident I answered the call to?"

  "Yes?"

  "It got called in as a collision, but what happened was, Madge Gunderson passed out at the wheel and ran into a tree."

  "Madge okay?" Madge had been a not-so-secret drinker most of her life. Her husband Karel died last year, and since then, maybe from grief, maybe from the fact that she didn't have to hide it anymore, the drinking had kind of got out of control.