Indian Country Noir (Akashic Noir) Read Online Free Page B

chimpanzees. Like the politicians who sent in the
federal troops against the army of veterans who'd camped in Washington, D.C. this past summer asking that the bonuses
they'd been promised for their service be paid to them. Men
I knew who'd survived the trenches of Belgium and France
dying on American soil at the hands of General MacArthur's
troops.

    The light outside faded as the sun went down while he
wrote. By the time he was done he'd filled twenty pages, each
one numbered at the bottom, several of them with intricate
explicatory drawings.
    I took his confession and the pen. I placed the pad on the
desk, kept one eye on him as I flipped the pages with the tip
of the pen. He'd been busy. Though he'd moved on beyond
Indian kids, his tastes were still for the young, the weak, those
powerless enough to not be missed or mourned by the powers
that be. Not like the Lindbergh baby whose abduction and
death had made world news this past spring. No children
of the famous or even the moderately well off. Just those no
one writes about. Indians, migrant workers, Negro children,
immigrants ...
    He tried not to smirk as I looked up from the words that
made me sick to my stomach.
    Ready to take me in now?
    I knew what he was thinking. A confession like this, forced
at the point of a knife by a ... person ... who was nothing
more than an insane, ignorant Indian. Him a man of money
and standing, afraid for his life, ready to write anything no
matter how ridiculous. When we went to any police station,
all he had to do was shout for help and I'd be the one who'd
end up in custody.
    One more thing, I said.
    You have the knife. His voice rational, agreeable.
    I handed him back the pad and pen.

    On the last page, print I'm sorry in big letters and then
sign it.
    Of course he wasn't and of course he did.
    Thank you, I said, taking the pad. I glanced over his shoulder out the window at the empty sidewalk far below.
    There, I said, pointing into the darkness.
    He turned his head to look. Then I pushed him.
    I didn't lie, I said, even though I doubt he could hear me
with the wind whistling past his face as he hurtled down past
floor after floor. I didn't kill you. The ground did.
    And I'd delivered him to the police, who would be scraping him up off the sidewalk.
    Cap back on my head, brush and paint can in hand, I descended all the way to the basement, then walked up the back
stairs to leave the building from the side away from where the
first police cars would soon arrive.
    I slept that night in the park and caught the first trolley north in the morning. It was mid-afternoon by the time I
reached the top of the trail.
    Only one rock and its human companion stood at the edge
of the cliff. Luth had stayed hard, I guessed. Too hard to have
the common sense to sit still. But not as hard as those rocks
he'd gotten acquainted with two hundred feet below. I'd decide
in the morning whether to climb down there, so far off any trail,
and bury him. Or just leave the remains for the crows.
    I rested my hand on the rock to which the fat man's inert body was still fastened. I let my gaze wander out over the
forested slope below, the open fields, the meandering S of the
river, the town where the few streetlights would soon be coming on. There was a cloud floating in the western sky, almost
the shape of an arrowhead. The setting sun was turning its
lower edge crimson. I took a deep breath.

    Then I untied Braddie. Even though he was limp and
smelled bad, he was still breathing. Spilled some water on his
cracked lips. Then let him drink a little.
    Don't kill me, he croaked. Please. I didn't want to. I never
hurt no one. Never. Luth made me help him. I hated him.
    I saw how young he was then.
    Okay, I said. We're going back downhill. Your truck is
there. You get in it. Far as I know it's yours to keep. You just
drive south and don't look back.
    I will. I won't never look back. I swear to God.
    I took him at his word.