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“No, I’m not.”
“I still don’t think you understand my status. I’m effectively ca
“I have melanoma. It’s already gone into my organs. You can’t hurt me,” she said. She tried to hold her eyes on his, but they watered around the edges and she blinked and looked away.
“Good try,” he said.
JOHNNY AMERICAN HORSE’S window at St. Pat’s looked out upon a neighborhood of early-twentieth-century buildings and sidewalks shaded by dense rows of maple trees. The buildings were brick, solidly constructed, undiminished by time, but the porches were made of wood and the cracked paint on them gave the dwellings a look of weathered gentility. Blue-collar people and college students lived in the buildings, and on Thursday evenings during the summer many of them walked together down to the free concert and dance in the park by the river. The yards were green and cool, sometimes bordered by tulip beds, and the people who lived in the apartments planted vegetable gardens between the alleyways and the back porches, which were usually enclosed with latticework. If a man chose to live in town, this was a fine neighborhood to raise a family in, Joh
When he woke Tuesday morning he was handcuffed to the railing of the bed and could not see out the window into the street, but even before the soft edges of his sleep had disappeared from his mind, he knew there was something different about this day. He could hear the sweep of rain on the window glass-not a shower, either, but a hard, driving rain that ran off the eaves and through the guttering and over the hospital lawn into storm drains. Joh
He pushed the button for the nurse who would come to the room and then tell the U.S. marshal on the door that Joh
He used the toilet, then waited for the marshal to hook him up again.
“It looks like you’re going to Fort Lewis tomorrow. Sorry to lose you, Joh
He was a heavyset, prematurely balding man named Tim, who had a small Irish mouth and big hands, and was evidently addicted to the candy bars he carried in his pockets as a surrogate for the booze he was trying to get rid of at Twelve-Step meetings.
“Who told you that about Fort Lewis?” Joh
“Forget I mentioned it. That’s true, you have the DSC from Operation Desert Storm?”
“Yeah, you want it?”
“Shouldn’t kid like that,” Tim said.
A floral delivery man tapped on the door and Tim let him in. The delivery man started to set a vase of cut flowers on the table by Joh
Tim peeled back the decorative foil wrapped around the vase, shifted the flower stems around in the water, and examined the greeting card inside the small envelope attached with a paper clip to the foil. Then he set the vase down on the table. “Looks like somebody sent you a nice bouquet. Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Sure,” Joh
“How’d you get messed up like this?”
“It was easy. I was me,” Joh
“You sound like you might be a Twelve-Step guy yourself.”
“I’m not,” Joh
As the marshal and the nurse left the room, Joh
Joh
They still won’t let me visit you, but look across the street at noon and you’ll see your gal with the 8:30 blues. We’re going to beat this, baby.
Love, A.
Joh
The rain had turned to hail, and it bounced on the windowsill as brightly as mothballs against the grayness of the day. When Joh
THAT MORNING I left the office and went home, unable to work, concentrate, or think on any subject except the telephone threat that had been made against Temple and the child she was carrying. I had now talked to the sheriff’s office, Fay Harback, and the FBI agent Francis Broussard and had gotten nowhere. Lucas had been set up on a bogus marijuana bust and suspended from the university, and Temple had almost drowned in the Blackfoot River after the brake-fluid line on our truck had been cut. No one was in custody for any of the damage done to my family, nor had anyone even been questioned. My own relationship with every law agency in the area had become that of gadfly and public nuisance.
Most television cop dramas make use of the following storyline: A likable individual is raped or assaulted, or a hardworking family loses one of its members to a serial killer, or a blue-collar stiff with a juvenile felony on his record gets jammed on a bad beef and is about to be sent to the pen. What happens? A half-dozen uniforms and five detectives with shields hanging from their necks show up at the crime scene and invest the entirety of their lives in seeing justice done. Every law officer in the script, male and female, seems to have an IQ of 180 and the altruism of St. Francis of Assisi. They verbally joust with the rich and powerful, walk into corporate board meetings where they hook up CEOs, and are immune to the invective flung at them by an unappreciative citizenry.
The federal agents who wander into the script are even more impressive. They have ta