Craig Johnson - Kindness Goes Unpunished

She looked genuinely shocked. “What?”

“I take that as a no?”

“Yes, that’s a no.”

I steered her out of the main gallery to the landing as Gowder appeared, and I nodded him toward us. “Osgood just arranged a little meeting with me out back.”

His eyes widened. “Put him off, and we’ll wire you.”

I shook my head. “No, I have every intention of being back at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital within the hour. This case is important, but Cady is more important.”

The detective sighed. “How you want to play it?”

“You guys go ahead and get set up. I’ll be along in a few minutes. If he sees us together it may not happen.” I reached into the pancake holster at my back and handed Vic my. 45, which she slipped under her jacket. “It’s probably nothing, but the people around this guy have an alarming tendency to turn up dead.”

Gowder looked around. “I’ll find that woman from the Academy. Maybe there’s another way into the alley than the Cherry Street entrance.”

Vic looked at me a moment longer then followed him. I stood there and watched as Osgood came down the stairs past me and disappeared into the crowd below; he was talking on his cell phone.

What was it the assistant district attorney had planned? I didn’t figure there was any real danger from him, but if Toy Diaz and he were in cahoots, then discretion was the better part of armed backup. And what about Cady? Was it something to do with her connection to William White Eyes? Or was it simply a ruse? Anyway, I had a meet.

There was a general commotion in the lobby. Of all the things I thought I might’ve seen coming through the brass revolving doors of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Lena Moretti with Dog on a leash would’ve probably been the last.

Two security guards, who seemed to be having a hard time keeping up, were following her closely. People were backing away, even though Dog seemed to be in his best form. Evidently the time in Lena’s company had done him some good, since he appeared freshly washed and trimmed. She pulled up with the brute and smiled as I got to the bottom of the steps. She was beautiful, flushed, and breathless.

“I brought you your dog.”

She reached the leash out to me, and I noticed that it was a black leather one rather than the extension cord we’d been using. I also noticed it matched her outfit, a sleek and sophisticated formfitting black skirt with a black ruffled cardigan over a black knit top. The opera was going to get a run for its money.

“Thank you.” Dog sat on my foot.

She studied my face. “I know it’s inconvenient, but I didn’t have anywhere to keep him tonight.” She glanced around the room, and I’m sure she was looking for her daughter.

I thought about the noise I’d heard while Vic and I had been on the sofa. “I, um…”

Her eyes flashed back to me. “I’m out tonight, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to check on him tomorrow, so I thought I’d just bring him over here.”

“Thank you.” Dog looked up at me, and I tried to think of what to say next, finally settling on the most important thing. “Cady opened her eyes.”

She softened and stepped forward, hugging my arm. “I know. Michael called me. It’s wonderful.” Her genuine happiness cut through the awkwardness. “I have to go. Can’t be late for Rigoletto. ”

She gave me a quick peck on the cheek and turned. I watched as the fluted skirt twirled just enough to show a shapely calf, and she disappeared back through the revolving doors. Like mother, like daughter.

Dog looked at me, and I wondered what the hell I was going to do with him. I looked at the two security guards, and the two security guards looked back at me. “Sir, the dog can’t stay.”

I petted Dog. “That’s okay, neither can I.”

It had begun raining on Broad Street, a gentle, misting drizzle that glossed the surfaces of the city and diffused the light from the globes above. Even the thunder was gentle in the soft, eastern spring, gently bouncing from the tops of the skyscrapers.

I flipped the collar up on my jacket and pulled my hat down a little as we started around the block; Dog seemed happy to be outside and, truth to be told, I was too.

I stopped at the corner and looked down the narrow alley. The yellow Hummer was there, and there was an identifying sticker in the window that stated OFFICIAL. There were a few other cars scattered along the building, but the windows were clear of condensation and nobody was in them.

A weirdo wearing sunglasses and a knit cap was smoking a cigarette under the awning of the back door, but I didn’t see Osgood. I turned up the alley and walked past an empty Cadillac where the brick pavement turned and ran alongside the building. There was a loading dock, just as he had said, along with a four-story brick warehouse with numerous alcoves that housed windows and doors. There was a chain-link fence at the end of the dock that blocked off the two-foot-wide area between the buildings. I tried to think of a better place for bad things to happen, but the alley was easily the dankest, most forbidding place I’d been in in a long time.

The kid in the knit cap called out to me as I got to the corner. “Hey, mister? You’re not supposed to be back here.”

I waved him off. “It’s okay.”

I looked ahead and saw Osgood in a trench coat with his hands in his pockets. His collar was flipped up too, and he nodded as I looked past him. He didn’t make any move to come toward me, so I continued to walk to him, wondering where Vic and Gowder might be, and then Dog paused.

It was at that precise moment that the assistant district attorney’s head exploded.

I watched as the headless body fell forward into the pools of rain-water that had collected on the uneven surface of the brick pavement. It wasn’t so much that Osgood’s head had exploded as it had vaporized in a crimson mist that had sprayed me along with Dog.

I had ducked and turned my head to the side with the sound, and I was lucky that I had, because deflected 10-gauge pellets smacked against the side of my hat and stung my neck and shoulder. Dog lunged on the leash and barked ferociously as I hung on to the leather strap and yanked him toward me.

There was a familiar roar, and I watched as a slug from my. 45 ricocheted off the surface of the narrow passageway between the buildings. Vic stepped from the doorway of the Academy’s loading dock and moved swiftly toward the alley in a two-handed stance, firing as she went, while Gowder ran toward the chain-link fence with his. 40 at the ready.

I looked up from Osgood’s twitching body to the eight-foot barrier with the razor wire strung across the top. I released the leash, and Dog charged toward Vic. I yelled as I started back out of the dead-end alley. “Grab him!”

As I rounded the corner, I took the deepest breath I’d taken since falling onto the street that morning. The pain blurred my vision, and I ran into the kid with the cap, slamming him backward as I stumbled over him and lost my hat. “Yo, man!”

I had regained the sidewalk, and it was a straight shot down Cherry to Broad, but the fifty yards looked like Ten Mile Road. It seemed to take forever, but I turned onto Broad in time to see a large man in a hooded sweatshirt covered with some kind of black rain slicker and with a firearm that looked like one of the old Ithaca Roadblockers sticking out of the unsnapped front; he had just turned the corner at Arch.

I grabbed my side, ran into traffic, and took a diagonal approach that gave me a geometric advantage. I heard brakes squealing as I thundered across Broad and felt the draft of a sedan as it missed me by about a foot. I stumbled a little as I made the median but bulled another car to a full stop on the other side, extended my hands, bounced from the grille, and pivoted across the street as another car swerved and disappeared behind me.