The Death Of Blue Mountain Cat Part 10

Twenty-Six.

Caleb finished at the office early; it was still light. He got his car and headed to Uptown. Spaulding House on Wilson. As he pulled the Jaguar into the fenced rear yard, he noticed, for the first time in a long time, how depressing the building's dirty stone looked, how the wire-topped Cyclone fence surrounding its weed-filled yard gave the exterior a concentration-camp ambiance. He would have to have the building cleaned in the spring, and maybe tuck-pointed. And ask a tax accountant if he couldn't write off a wrought-iron fence. Spaulding House had had one, years ago, when it was a Roaring Twenties domicile for the very rich. Its present residents deserved no less despite their poverty. He'd have gra.s.s planted in the spring, too. And try to get the inmates to help him plant some trees. It would be an act of faith. And hope. Spaulding House was a hospice.

He put the gearshift in first, turned off the engine, and let out the clutch. Too cold to use the parking brake. He hadn't used it in cold weather since the time his brakes had frozen on. He locked the car, didn't bother to turn on the alarm, but he closed and locked the gate.

"Rafe's a f.u.c.king burnt marshmallow!" Brian was saying as Caleb walked in. In case anyone missed the reference, he added, "Black on the outside, soft and sweet on the inside." He spoiled the intended effect by looking around for the others' reactions.

Bill and Lenny and Paul hid their amus.e.m.e.nt with varying degrees of success.

Rafe laughed. "What'd a honky f.a.ggot like you know about sof'n sweet?" He nodded at Caleb and said, "Jack."

Wanting to head off further wrangling, Caleb said, "It's nice to see you still love each other."

Rafe laughed again. Brian said, "s.h.i.t," but the ploy worked. It actually wasn't far from the truth, although the two men could scarcely have been more dissimilar-Rafe was huge, healthy, black, straight, and HIV negative; Brian, emaciated, white, gay, and in the throes of AIDS.

"I'm going out," Rafe told Caleb. "You're on."

"What needs to be done?"

"The market called; van's down. They can't deliver nothin' till tomorrow. You might could pick somethin' up for the meantime."

"All right."

"I'll go if I can drive your car, Jack," Brian said.

"It has a manual transmission."

"So?"

"Do you know how to set a car alarm?"

"Is the Pope Catholic?"

Caleb threw him the keys.

Brian clenched his fists and shook them in a victory gesture. "Yes!"

After Brian was out the door, Bill said, "You never let me drive your car, Jack."

"Do you have a license?"

"No."

"Me neither, Jack," Rafe said.

"You never asked."

"Jack, kin I drive yo car?"

"Surely."

Rafe gave him a sly grin. "Jus axing. That car's mo' trouble'n it's worth." He lowered his voice so only Caleb could hear. "You'd best look in on Manny."

The walls in Manny's room were covered with graffiti-whatever came to the minds of his many visitors. Caleb had started it off one night, when Manny was talking about giving up, by scribbling Dylan Thomas's imperative just below the ceiling with a Magic Marker: "Rage, rage against the dying..."

Someone had added, "Get well soon so we can go to the beach."

Advertising slogans probably not meant as double entendres soon followed: BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE.

UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU-so DO I.

THE MARINES ARE LOOKING FOR A FEW GOOD MEN- ME TOO.

JUST DO IT.

To the cliche "G.o.d is dead-Nietzsche/Nietzsche is dead-G.o.d," someone added, "But Manny's still with us. Thank Whoever."

Even Rafe had put his two cents in: "Hang in there, Mann."

Manny took Caleb's large hand in his small ones, which were like gloved skeletons. "Jack, I put on a good front but most of the time I'm terrified."

"Most of us are, Manny, even those without AIDS."

"But why? It's not like I have a brilliant future."

Caleb had no answer. He shook his head.

"I used to be so lovely," Manny said wistfully.

"You still are inside. Inside, you're the most beautiful man I know."

"I've forgotten how it feels to make love, Jack. I've even forgotten how it feels to want it."

Caleb put his free hand over Manny's skeletal one. "You haven't forgotten how it feels to love? To be loved?"

Tears brimmed over in the smaller man's eyes. "Of course not."

Judging by his flourishing practice, Caleb thought, there were healthy legions who had forgotten, but Manny needed to figure that out for himself. He said, "Well?"

"Why am I still so afraid?"

"It keeps you fighting?"

"Yes."

"When you're ready to let go, you'll stop feeling fearful."

"What will I feel?"

Caleb thought about patients who'd been lucid at the end. "Peace. Acceptance."

Manny sighed. "We've had this conversation before. Why can't I remember?"

"Human nature. Sometimes when what we're approaching is particularly awful or awesome, we can't bring ourselves to go straight at it. So we spiral toward it."

"Like Skylab on a decaying orbit?"

"I was thinking more of Dante in his descent into the Inferno."

"I never read that." Manny let his tone speak for the hard fact neither could say-he never would. He was too weak to hold a book or concentrate on printed words.

"I have a copy I'll bring in and read for you if you like. Ciardi's translation."

"I'd like that."

Manny's eyes drifted shut and his grip on Caleb's hand loosened as his breathing slowed. When he was finally asleep, Caleb turned off the light and went away.

Twenty-Seven.

They needed a professional opinion, so Thinnes and Oster took Caleb along when they went back to reinterview the widow.

"I remember waking up here," she said. "That's all." She paused, as if checking the statement against her memory, then added, "And a woman with wild hair was asking me questions."

There was a long pause.

Words leaked into Thinnes's awareness from the BS of his life. The time Before the Shooting. The vacuum of s.p.a.ce. Nature abhors a vacuum...Fools rush in...

With words.

Lauren Bisti's spilled into the quiet. "I was dreaming, I think."

The silence returned, not an absence of sound, but the white noise from the heating system and the mind-numbing drug of daytime TV.

Thinnes was about to interrupt it when Caleb said, "Tell us about the dream." His voice was soft and comforting as a cat's purr.

Oster opened his mouth to protest; Thinnes stopped him with a look. Lauren Bisti didn't seem to notice.

"I was in jail. The cell was crowded with people yelling and pushing. And there was a window-not to the outside-but into another room full of people. Then a woman came running up to the window. She was covered with blood and screaming. And all the others in the room were trying to quiet her."

Caleb said, "Go on."

"That's all I remember." She smiled wistfully. "The rest faded away." She looked at Caleb as if confirming that he understood. "When I was little, I used to see fairies out of the corner of my eyes. But when I tried to look at them directly, they disappeared."

Oster said, "Who killed your husband, Mrs. Bisti?"

Carl must be getting tired, Thinnes decided. He was usually more subtle.

"I can't tell you."

Caleb said, "Tell us about your husband."

She pressed her fingers over the lower part of her face while she thought about him, and her eyes widened as if she were smiling behind them. Then she clasped her hands below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "He was beautiful. Physically, I mean, as well as talented. And smart. And considerate. Loving." She paused. Her face seemed to crumple; she sobbed as she added, "He's gone."

They waited for her to get herself under control. Caleb handed her a tissue, and she blew her nose.

Oster said, "Did he have any enemies?"

"Besides his own people-on both sides?"

"Yeah."

"There were the developers his installations ridiculed. And black-market antiquities sellers, and the preservationists. And some of the Navajos may have thought his works mocked them."

"Didn't they?" Thinnes asked.

"They didn't think he knew what it meant to be a Navajo. He knew! When he was out there, he didn't try to pretend he was a native, but he felt their connection to the land. He studied the language. He learned about the culture. He felt he was an exile returned home for a visit."

"But he was never accepted as a Navajo," Caleb said quietly.

She shrugged. "He understood the Navajo mind-my word. He would have said the mind of the Dine. He knew how it felt to be a stranger to the mainstream culture."

"So why did he make fun of them with his work?" Thinnes asked.

"Because he couldn't stand to see the old ways forgotten or exploited. Is what he did any more irreverent than gluing sandpaintings to cardboard to sell to tourists?"

They had her go over the twenty-four hours preceding the murder. Nothing had happened. They pressed her on the subject of stolen artifacts.

"The 'artifacts' David used in his works weren't real," she said, "even if they did have certificates of authenticity. They were all carefully crafted fakes."

"Crafted by whom?" Caleb asked.

"I don't know. I suggest you ask the 'experts' who authenticated them or whoever allegedly dug them up."

"You saying the paperwork was forged?" Oster demanded.