Read Death Along the Spirit Road Online
Authors: C. M. Wendelboe
Death Along the Spirit Road (12 page)
People clapped. One girl whistled while another urged Lumpy to get up. A man did his best bull imitation while Lumpy lay in the street, his head hung down, trying to get his legs under him. A pickup sped around the corner toward him, but the driver swerved sharply and missed him by inches. The crowd roared. People laughed while Lumpy tried to stand, but he rolled over like a turtle caught on its back and started sobbing. The show was over for the night. The crowd walked back into Big Bat’s, and Manny looked down at Lumpy. “You’re drunker than hell.”
Lumpy craned his neck up. His slick black hair had fallen down into his eyes, and he peeked around a clump of locks as he held up an arm. “Help me up.”
Manny wrapped his arms around him and lifted him. Lumpy fell against his shoulder. “Where are you living?”
He draped his arm around Manny. “The housing.”
An odd couple, they staggered toward the finish line in an uncontested drunken three-legged race as Manny struggled to keep the shorter, heavier Lumpy from falling. They stumbled the four blocks to Lumpy’s building and he motioned to a downstairs duplex. He jabbed at the keyhole, failed, then handed Manny the keys.
Manny helped Lumpy inside and dropped him on the couch.
Psychology Today
and
National Geographic
magazines fought for what little space remained on the table in the tiny, claustrophobic apartment. Beside the table were stacks of
Law and Order
and
Police Times
. There was a narrow path toward the kitchen barely devoid of empty Budweiser cans, and another pathway that led to a bathroom that reeked of Lumpy’s Aqua Velva.
Psychology Today
and
National Geographic
magazines fought for what little space remained on the table in the tiny, claustrophobic apartment. Beside the table were stacks of
Law and Order
and
Police Times
. There was a narrow path toward the kitchen barely devoid of empty Budweiser cans, and another pathway that led to a bathroom that reeked of Lumpy’s Aqua Velva.
How had Lumpy come to this? Sober, the man was the most knowledgeable lawman Manny had met on any reservation. Drunk, Lumpy was just another down-and-out Lakota chasing his next buzz into a blackout. In some perverse way, he supposed he was one of Lumpy’s few friends, if rivals could ever be friends.
Manny turned to leave.
“Lizzy’s not my girlfriend.”
“Is that who those people back at Big Bat’s were talking about dissing you? Elizabeth?”
Lumpy nodded. “But she’s not my girl. I thought she was once, back in the day, but now she’s just too damned good to be with me on a Saturday night.”
“You see her tonight?”
Lumpy laughed and grabbed a pack of Marlboros from beside the couch. He shook one into his hand, and four more dropped onto the floor. He ignored them and grabbed his matches. When coordinating matches and cigarettes failed, Manny helped him.
Not my brand when I was smoking, which was what, a month ago. But damn they look good.
Manny felt that trembling he got whenever he had the urge for a smoke, the jitters that only nicotine could calm. He fought down the temptation to snatch one from the floor and light up, and concentrated on watching the Indian Marlboro man bring his lips to the cigarette.
Not my brand when I was smoking, which was what, a month ago. But damn they look good.
Manny felt that trembling he got whenever he had the urge for a smoke, the jitters that only nicotine could calm. He fought down the temptation to snatch one from the floor and light up, and concentrated on watching the Indian Marlboro man bring his lips to the cigarette.
“I saw her in the finance office tonight. I came back from White Clay with a case of Bud. I saw Lizzy’s office light on and sat outside. When I ran out of beer I figured my courage was up enough to talk to her. But she was too good for me. She said she was busy, but I know she wasn’t doing anything official there tonight.”
“What did you want to talk to her about?”
“Just talk,” Lumpy answered. “A man likes to talk with a woman now and again. Especially an old flame. At least I thought she was an old flame once. Right after Desirée left me.”
“So you said. Get some sleep.”
“Lizzy and Jason were having an affair!” Lumpy blurted out as Manny turned again to leave.
“You see this yourself?”
“Yeah.” He belched and flicked his ash into an empty beer can. It bounced off the rim of the can. Manny tamped out the ember that had landed on the carpet with a shower shoe growing mold. “A couple weeks before he was murdered, I was on my way home from work when I saw Lizzy’s Impala at the finance office. It was dark and I was surprised to find the lights were still on. I was even more surprised to find her door unlocked. Remember when we had to check building doors when we were rookies?”
Manny nodded.
“When I went inside, I heard a commotion. Terrible yelling from her office. Shit hitting the wall. Lizzy and Jason were fighting something awful. There was file folders scattered all over. One file drawer had been ripped from the cabinet and turned upside down. Another was wide open. Lizzy never had a thing out of place in that office, and Jason was going through drawers, with Lizzy yanking on his arm. She tried to pull him away, but he was too big. Things would have been a lot worse if I hadn’t put the run on him that night.”
“What were they arguing about?”
Lumpy brought his face to his cigarette for another drag. “Don’t know. But there’s only one reason a man and woman fight like that: lovers’ spat. After I kicked him out, I thought she’d be friendlier. But all she wanted was for me to leave, too.”
Lumpy paused, and Manny knew that the pause would last until morning. Snores arose from Lumpy’s head, tilted back on the pillow. Drool formed on one corner of his mouth and dripped on his shoulder.
Before Manny left, he took Lumpy’s cigarette from his fingers and dropped it into a beer can. He propped Lumpy’s limp legs on the couch and slipped his boots off. His head lay off to one side of a cushion, and a hollow snoring continued from his open mouth. Lumpy had popped the top buttons of his shirt, exposing his flabby, hairy chest. Manny laughed.
I’ve found the elusive Lakota yeti.
I’ve found the elusive Lakota yeti.
Manny started out of Lumpy’s apartment and noticed a portable evidence kit among the rubbish. He opened the case and glanced over the contents until he spotted what he was after.
Raindrops peppered Manny’s neck. He looked up at the moon peeking around dark storm clouds. He never noticed storm clouds in D.C., though he was certain they lingered somewhere between the smog and the fog that occasionally rolled in from the ocean. Either he was too busy to look, or the pollution prevented such a sight. He was glad to see them again.
Kids stuffed into a multicolored International pickup drove by him and shouted obscenities. They disappeared around the corner, but soon they drove by him again, tires squealing, dark smoke billowing from a broken exhaust manifold. Three kids sat in the truck bed. Their pants were pulled down, and their bare butts waved to him in passing. Manny laughed. Not because he wanted to, but because these kids represented all the kids on all the reservations, so far behind the times. He wanted to run them down and tell them that mooning died out about a century ago, but he was too busy laughing. If it made them happy to moon an FBI agent, let them have their fun.
He finished stretching his hamstrings, checked his laces one final time, then started off for a run that would take him past the powwow grounds and around the housing toward Oglala Lakota College. Within the first mile, his lungs lost their familiar burning and he settled into his pavement-eating gait. It was the same lope that he had as a cross-country runner in high school when he tried so hard to impress Desirée Chasing Hawk. The same lope that followed him during his army days. The same lope that caused him to fall far behind his younger academy instructors, then allowed him to pass them miles farther down the road. No matter how hard he’d tried altering his running style, no matter how hard he worked to increase his speed, his lope was predestined. Unc said it was that lope that all Lakota warriors possessed, back in the days when it meant something to be able to run for hours without stopping.
He knew that the abuse he’d piled on his body wasn’t supposed to be part of his heritage. Unc had died from diabetes, the bane of the Oglala. Manny was determined to live long enough to be a pain in the ass—like old Chief Horn.
The fresh scent of the impending thunderstorm helped him through the first agonizing mile, and he entered his zone, where thoughts came fast at him like arrows on steroids. The zone slowed down those arrows just enough that he could catch each one and analyze it. Nothing had changed on Pine Ridge. He knew he wasn’t welcomed here by the tribal police. The Lumpys of the reservation, the progressives, saw themselves as the future of Pine Ridge; they wanted to put the run on traditionalists whenever they could. Traditionalists wanted things to remain just as they used to be, without the need for federal intervention. In many ways, they wanted what AIM and all the Reubens of the reservation had wanted: to return to the very basics of life that once made the Lakota the strongest nation on the Plains, their defiant independence their staunchest ally. In any case, no one on the reservation had any use for the Mannys.
Sweat stung Manny’s eyes and he wiped it with his sweatshirt as Reuben popped into the zone. Manny recalled how conversational he had been when he interviewed him, like they had only parted the day before. Like they were two brothers who weren’t separated by Reuben’s twenty-five-year stint in the state pen and Manny’s decision to enter law enforcement. Reuben had answers for everything. Manny knew his brother had his lines memorized. It was his challenge to look for the opening that would finally prove—or disprove—Reuben was Jason’s killer.
A car came up on his six, and he hugged the side of the road. A single headlight followed him, closer than it should be, and he shot a look behind him. The car veered right for him, tires biting the gravel, accelerating. Manny took a dive for the ditch as a car door opened in passing. The door clipped him on his shoulder and sent him rolling to the ground. He caught sight of two boys as the car passed by and sped off.
Manny stood and brushed dirt off his running shorts and pulled his shirt down over his paunch. He stretched his shoulder where the car door had hit him, and a deep scratch across one delt was throbbing, but he was in one piece. He resumed his run, vigilant for the car. When he came around the corner by the powwow grounds again, he slowed to a fast trot, then a slow walk. He sucked in air to purge the fire in his lungs and bent over when a stitch came to his side. After a minute, the pain disappeared and he walked the remaining three blocks to his apartment.
Low growling from behind caused him to jump as he neared his door. A patchy border collie crouched as it advanced on him, its hackles standing straight on its back. Manny squatted. He had always had a way with animals. They trusted him. Liked him.
It was a Lakota thing.
The dog’s hackles flattened, its teeth receded back into its mouth. Manny held out his hand while the dog approached. Close. Close enough to lick his hand.
It was a Lakota thing.
The dog’s hackles flattened, its teeth receded back into its mouth. Manny held out his hand while the dog approached. Close. Close enough to lick his hand.
The dog lunged. Manny jerked away, but the dog buried canines into the web of his hand. Manny instinctively reached for the gun on his belt—the gun that he hadn’t carried since he began teaching at the academy. Manny looked for something to fend the dog off, but the mongrel turned and trotted down the street in search of fresher meat.
Manny cursed himself for not bringing a gun. Why had he reached for it after all this time of not wearing one? Not enough dangers lurked in the academy classroom to warrant carrying a gun. He had gotten used to not carrying, though he qualified as best he could every quarter, but the first thing he did tonight when danger faced him was reach for a gun that wasn’t there. As a tribal policeman, he’d practiced the basics of police work, including marksmanship and tactics. Even though he had never actually had to fire it on duty, he was always prepared back then.
Even rookies have more street sense than he did right now, and being back here on the reservation revealed the dangers of losing his edge over the years of being—what?—civilized? Even the Living Legend needed to keep his wits about him.
He straightened and held his hand high. Two gaping holes where the dog had nailed him dripped blood down his hand and wrist to pool in the crook of his arm. He fumbled for his door key with his other hand, as he held his injured hand away to avoid bleeding on his new sweatpants.
He found the keyhole. Dropped the keys. Bent down to pick them up when the door next to his apartment opened. Desirée stuck her head out and looked to the street. She wore a sheer teddy that revealed everything, and Manny didn’t want to have to fight her off tonight. After a day getting no closer to solving the homicide, getting into a lame fight with Lumpy, getting waylaid by a couple kids in a one-eyed car, and getting ambushed by a Trojan mongrel, the last thing he wanted to do was come up with some excuse not to keep Desirée out of his apartment. He scurried around the corner and squatted while he willed his breathing to stop. He was certain she heard his heart beating as she stepped into the cool night air. She looked around a final time before she shut the door.
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