The staked Goat

him.” Delton held the door as I got up from the wheelchair and entered the back seat.
    ”My pleasure,” said the driver. ”Where are you headed, Mr. Cuddy?”
    ”East Fourth Street, South Boston.”
    Delton and Bailey stopped talking and exchanged questioning looks.
    My mind was turning to mush. After the school busing controversy, South Boston was a part of the city where a black was not safe, daylight or dark, even in a car. ”I’m sorry,” I said, ”it never crossed my mind...”
    Bailey held up his hand. ”No problem. My cousin can take you there. No worries.”
    Delton stayed silent, coming around to the driver’s side. I started to protest, Bailey shushed me and closed the door. I rolled down the window jerkily with my left hand and stuck the hand through the opening.
    ”Good meeting you, Mr. Bailey,” I said.
    He took my hand, shook it sideways. ”Good luck to you, Mr. Cuddy.”
    ”If I still had a card, I’d give you one. Private investigator. Call me if you ever need—”
    Delton had started the car. Bailey mock saluted, and we pulled off.
    At the first traffic light, I rapped two knuckles on the Plexiglas shield between the driver and the passenger compartments.
    Delton turned his head.
    ”Mr. Delton,” I said loudly, ”make that police headquarters instead. Berkeley and Stuart streets, downtown. There’s someone I want to see first.”
    The light changed. Delton strained his neck to watch the road.
    ”Look, my friend, I stand by what my cousin promised.”
    ”I appreciate that, honest. But I still have to stop there first.”
    Delton smiled, bobbed his head, and turned on the radio. The station was playing some Reggae music, and both of us were able to enjoy the ride.
     
    Cross told me to wait. As she walked away, I thought about asking her whether she had heard back about her ”probationary check-up,” then decided that the way my mind was working, I would reserve the question. She beckoned to me from Murphy’s door.
    ”He’ll see you.”
    She moved back toward her desk. I entered Murphy’s office, closed the door, and sat down.
    Murphy was behind his desk, running the index finger of his right hand rapidly down the lines of some report while he sipped tentatively at probably too hot coffee in a cracked mug.
    ”Well?” he said, without looking up.
    ”What do you think Chief Kyle is going to do?”
    Murphy stopped tracing but kept sipping. ”Why ask me and not him?”
    ”Because I think you know what he’s going to do and will tell me. I think he doesn’t know what he’s going to do and wouldn’t tell me even if he did.”
    Murphy put his coffee down between the files on his blotter. ”You take a hell of a lot for granted, Cuddy,” he said, raising his head.
    I made no reply.
    ”Do you remember what I told you when I gave you a ride from the Midtown?”
    ”I think so.”
    ”I told you never to tell me another he.”
    ”You did.”
    Murphy slammed his hand flat smack on the desk, like a ref in a wrestling match. His coffee mug danced but didn’t tip over. ”Then what the fuck was that ration of shit about following the dead man into the alley and being ambushed?”
    ”Back there, in the hospital, you asked me to tell you what I said happened, not what did happen.” Murphy just stared at me, no emotion in his voice. ”You realize that if you ever pull a wordgame like that in one of my cases, in this jurisdiction, your license is gone?”
    ”I know. I’m here to apologize and level with you.” Murphy just stared, thinking.
    I continued. ”If you want me to, I mean. If you really want to know what happened.”
    Murphy stared a little longer, then reached for the coffee cup. ”The gun shop you used. The owner’s got a brother.”
    ”I know him.”
    ”Was the Button involved in this?”
    ”Unknowingly.”
    ”If all you did came out, would any of your shit stick to him?”
    I thought a moment. ”Maybe. I know what I told him. I don’t know what he guessed or should have known.”
    Murphy took a hesitant, then longer drink of coffee. ”The Button and I grew up together,” he said. ”He was older, he looked after me.”
    I just watched him. He grunted, put down his coffee cup.
    ”Chief Kyle doesn’t like your story, but his cops so fucked things up at the scene and with you that the medical examiner and lab can’t bust your version. I don’t see Kyle pressing his county’s DA for an indictment. He says self-defense and his foul-up doesn’t get