Robert Walker - Cutting edge

She nodded, smiling. “Yes, interested.”

He shook his head like a big dog and then fixed his eyes on her. “I talk to the One God, the Great Spirit, about it.

That's enough.”

“Bullshit. Tell me about it; trust me, it'll only make you feel better.”

“Me? Feel better? Not ever going to happen in this life, Doctor. Maybe when the Great Spirit comes for me, but not on this plane ever again. Besides, I had a shrink on my case, along with six physical therapists.”

“Yours is a real success story. Surprised the movie people haven't sought you out for one of those-”

They did and I refused. It wasn't exactly Robert Zemeckis and DeNiro beating down my door to make the offer.”

He dropped his gaze, staring through the solid oak table, and he began to tell her the story in as brief a clip as possible, knowing that if he fed her this, maybe she'd see him as more than the cripple he'd become, and perhaps she'd better understand why he was here now, downing whiskey. She listened without interruption.

“My partner, Jackson, and I, we had just gone off duty. We had hoisted a few when we heard the radio call on a heist nearby. In fact, we believed it had to do with a case we'd been working for months, so we responded.” He explained that the car accident had happened while he was on what had begun as a rather routine call, since it appeared the gunman had abandoned the scene long before they'd arrived.

“So at this point it'd become a routine investigation of a robbery at a downtown liquor store in Dallas. The scene had actually been secured, cordoned off. It should've been routine. But it ended in a high-speed chase gone bad. Thanks to my now dead partner, who was a worthless drunk, a rotten wheel man, and the best cop that I've ever known.”

“He was your senior partner?”

“The best. Learned so much from Wallace Jackson, but the crazy bastard got himself killed and very nearly killed me with him.”

“Stonecoat, you aren't still angry at Jackson, are you?”

“Hell, yes… Hell, yes… All right, hell, no… whichever answer keeps me off your office couch.”

She gave a little shake of the head, her silver-blond hair caught in the breeze created by the wafting overhead fan.

“Anyway, Dallas PD was embarrassed to its shorts by a press corps that'd already been vilifying them on an 'inside' investigation of the 'excessive number' of high-speed chases in the Dallas area resulting in the deaths of civilians and officers.”

“I get the picture.” She drank from her fizzling Coca-Cola.

“So the force was sorry for the loss of their black detective-one of a handful-and neither were they crazy about the idea of returning their Indian back to active duty.”

“You realize, don't you, that Captain Lawrence can't look favorably on a detective who sues his own department?”

“I dropped the damned suit before it ever got to court.”

“You dealt it out, I hear. You walked away without a fight.”

“Let's put it this way, Doctor. I wasn't walking, period, at the time.”

“I only meant that they paid you off without a fight.”

“And I'm telling you, I fought from my hospital bed, on my back, like a goddamned overturned turtle. And trust me, I had a greater enemy to fight than with the Dallas Police Department.”

“You'd have won a much heftier settlement. You had a good case. Obviously, no one was looking after your interests. What about the Police Benevolent League, what about the Patrolman's Fund, what about-”

“I started an action against the force. Lawyers got involved and fees got too heavy and too many for me. Still payin' 'em each month, along with rent.”

“But you won?”

“Won the right to sit home and wait for a check, yeah. It took two years and a divorce for me to find a new situation while I lived on disability checks and TV dinners and beer. My so-called wife didn't even bother to come down to the hospital; said she'd had enough of life as a cop's wife. Meantime, the problem I was having with my own department in Dallas was due to a bureaucracy mired in itself, along with my police superintendent, who sold me and Jackson out. This creep was worried about his own job, so he just made certain that the redskin would stay off the payroll, nailing the coffin shut on the Indian problem he'd had all along.”

“Nothing like having your superior go to bat for you,” she commiserated.

'The bastard was nobody's superior. His main interests were his own interests,” he replied. “But it taught me a valuable lesson.”

“Oh, and what's that?”

“Never get blindsided. Never assume anything, and never underestimate the depths to which human nature sinks.”

“So, you rehabilitated yourself physically, but it sounds to me as though you have a ways to come back emotionally. I mean, you've got to learn to trust again if you're ever to fully-”

“As you have seen, and so you shall see, this man is fully recovered in every way. I wear more body armor, sure, and I like it that way!” he said with a flourish of his large right hand, tipping his bottle at her and downing the drink in a final gulp. “Thank the Great Spirit, Houston wasn't being too choosy. That explains why Lawrence was saddled with the likes of me, wouldn't you say?”

“With a mandate and a federally funded program to train one thousand new foot soldiers in President Clinton's war against crime, and given your experience on the force, I really shouldn't-”

“Wonder? The redskin is put to great use now…

Some help I'll be in the war against crime here in Houston, sitting down in that hole Lawrence has found for me.

Then the bastard has the balls to pretend he likes me by telling jokes about… well, never mind.

“ He leaned back in the cushion, uncomfortable now.

“You okay, Lucas?”

“Can't sit in one place too long. Insides start to act up on me. A pain that is coming from deep within is always also a going-back pain, so it hurts both ways.”

An old Indian expression, she guessed. Want to get out of here?

Yeah, any ideas?

Park's not far from here.

“Park?”

“Municipal Zoo.”

“Animals… I love animals,” he replied. “They never ask anything from you, never take anything from you, and they never lie to you.”

She eyeballed him, wondering about the double entendre of his words. “That's certainly true, and lovely in the way you express it,” she finally agreed.

“So, let's do it. Let's go see some honest citizens of Houston. All in the zoo, right?”

She wondered just how seriously to take him. Was he kidding, half kidding, or deadly serious? Did he know that she'd told a few lies to get his attention? Was he including her in with all the dishonest citizens of the city, everyone outside of a cell? Was he saying that people in prison were more straightforward and honest than the average citizen, or was he just talking about animals? His mind seemed as agile as a fox's.

She grabbed the check, but not quickly enough. He grabbed her hand, pried the check from her and plunked a twenty over it. “This'll take care of everything,” he said.

Machismo in a cripple, she thought. Kind of nice, far. more so than in others. He was on his feet and offering a hand to her as she slid out of the booth. She sensed that it was important to him that she accept his helping hand. She imagined how difficult it must be for him to begin his career over again here in Houston, only to find the same foot on his neck as he'd had in Dallas.

They took her car, and while she drove, he continued to talk more freely, as if a floodgate had been opened. He cursed the duty he'd pulled, paperwork, mold and ancient files.

“Everything about Dallas has become a curse then, hasn't it, Doctor? As a result of my prior experience in Dallas-Fort Worth as a detective, Lawrence assigned me to the Cold File Room, the pits, the bottom basement of police work here.”