by Robert Greer
“Like what?”
“Like, were you after that Sha character for some reason other than him skipping his bond? And did you have some kind of relationship with his wife? And finally, did you have somebody kill him?”
“That high-yellow, half-witted dipshit’s crazy!”
When the waitress who’d served them earlier looked up from clearing a nearby table, Mavis motioned for CJ to keep it down. “Maybe so, but people around here appreciate what he stands for. You might have missed it, CJ, but Wendall’s carved out a respectable professional niche for himself. And, like it or not, he is Denver’s highest-ranking black homicide detective.”
“And I’m just a backwater bail bondsman.”
“I didn’t say that.”
CJ stared down at the tabletop in silence before looking sadly at Mavis. “Sorry, Mavis, but it’s what I do.”
“I know what you do, CJ. I also know you’re good at it. And believe it or not, I understand it’s part of what makes you tick. But someday you’re going to have to make a choice.” Reaching across the table, she clasped CJ’s hand tightly in hers. “I love you and care about you, baby. But over the years I’ve grown to hate what you do. Hate wondering if you’re all right or dead in some alleyway.” Rising from her seat, she slipped her hand out of CJ’s and flashed him a hauntingly strange, hollow look. He’d seen the look before. It was a look that Mavis reserved for people she disconnected from her life.
“I’ll work at doing better, babe.”
“You’ve said that before, CJ.”
“I mean it this time, Mavis.”
“Hope so,” said Mavis, heading toward the kitchen, the look on her face unchanged. “Because time’s not on your side.”
Chapter 7
It was 4 o’clock and breezy when CJ pulled his immaculately restored ’57 drop-top Bel Air into the driveway of the sagging old garage that flanked his Delaware Street office. Storm clouds were building to the west over the Rockies, and a hint of much-needed moisture was in the air.
Still off balance from Mavis’s demand that he clean up his act, he’d stopped for gas at Rosie’s Garage, the vintage Five Points 1950s-style gas station and auto repair shop owned by Roosevelt Weeks, to soothe his nerves. After an avalanche of prodding, he’d told his tale to Rosie, Morgan Williams, and Dittier Atkins, two down-on-their-luck former rodeo cowboys who did odd jobs for him and occasionally helped him with bond-skipping cases, ending with the fact that Sha had more than likely taken a bullet meant for him. Sipping beer and chasing it with salted pork rinds, the four of them had run through a list of thugs, drifters, muggers, con men, and murderers CJ had either crossed or brought to justice over the course of his twenty-nine-year bail-bonding and bounty-hunting career. The final culled list included a woman and three men.
Calvin Leigh, the son of a prominent black Denver doctor, who three years earlier had changed his name to Mohammad Rashaan and became a black Muslim, topped their list. CJ had helped put Rashaan behind bars for being the brains behind a Five Points chop shop and the point man for an “I’ll blow up your building if you don’t cooperate” shakedown scheme that had had Five Points and lower downtown businesses forking over seven grand a month.
Maurice “Pancho” Madrid, the abusive ex-husband of CJ’s former secretary, Julie Madrid, made the number-two spot. CJ had once beaten him to within millimeters of his life for stalking and threatening Julie. He’d lived in Arizona for the three years Julie had attended law school, and word on the street was that now that she was a lawyer he was back in Denver looking to patch things up.
Bobby Two Shirts Deepstream and his twin sister, Celeste, who were both thought to still be in prison, or at least far away in parts unknown, rounded out the list. The four cracked jewels, as Rosie called them, had one thing in common: they had all threatened more than once to kill CJ.
CJ wasn’t putting his money on any of them being Newab Sha’s killer until he found out more about where they all were, but Rosie had his money on one of the Deepstreams, while Morgan and Dittier favored Rashaan.
CJ stepped from his driveway across the grass toward his office, spotting a couple of wooden slats missing from the fence that rimmed the yard and three large brown dead spots in the lawn. Reminding himself to get in touch with Morgan and Dittier about replanting the grass and repairing the fence, he bounded up the steps to his office and through the front door to find Flora Jean at her desk in her tiny converted entryway alcove of an office, hard at work.
Flora Jean had moved up from a job that had started six years earlier as a secretarial temp to become a licensed bail bondsman, and although CJ sometimes hated to admit it, she had become his right hand. Her move up the ladder meant that she performed fewer and fewer secretarial duties, so now they shared the responsibility for maintaining records, jockeying with computers, paying bills, and answering the phones, all tasks that CJ loathed. So he was happy to see Flora Jean busy at her computer. It meant that he’d likely have one less disagreeable thing to do.
Flora Jean continued typing, tapping her right foot and bouncing in her seat to the sounds of B. B. King belting out a blues tune from the gigantic boom box on a shelf above her desk. Over the years CJ had been able to expand her taste in music from a single focus on hardcore rap to his own musical passion, the blues. As B. B. sank into a bluesy lament, Flora Jean looked up at CJ and shook her head. “The brother needs to learn to stay at home a little more if he wants to keep his woman happy.”
“It’s the blues, Flora Jean. No one’s ever happy with the blues.”
Flora Jean shrugged, reached up, and turned off the music. “Whatever. We got work?” she added, aware that CJ had been at Mae’s to discuss a job prospect.
CJ pulled Carmen Nguyen’s $1,750 check out of his shirt pocket, smiled, and handed it to Flora Jean. “A week’s worth. Delivered and signed.”
Flora Jean beamed. For the past two months, business had been slow. Her car note and rent were a week past due. “In the nick of time, like the white folks say.” She slipped a bank deposit slip from her top desk drawer, hastily filled it out, paper-clipped it to the check, and set the check face down on her desk. When she looked back up, CJ had taken a seat in one of the two small pressed-back wooden chairs that hugged the alcove’s street-side wall. At six foot three and 240 pounds, CJ dwarfed the chair. He removed his sweat-stained Stetson, set it aside, and fumbled in his vest pocket for a cheroot, looking pensively at Flora Jean before lighting up. “Mavis is at her breaking point. I think the Newab Sha thing pushed her to the brink. She wants me to cut back.”
Flora Jean shook her head. “Sugar, sugar, sugar. And you claim to be a man who knows about the blues? What Mavis wants ain’t really got nothin’ to do with the work comin’ outta this office. Or any kinda cuttin’ back. All the girl really wants is you. Look at you, CJ. Hate to say it, sugar, but you’re a mess. Still the same street cowboy you were twenty years ago. And a black one at that. Shit, it’s a wonder after all these years some white cop anglin’ for a promotion or some thug lookin’ for a way to build his rep ain’t busted a cap in your butt. Mavis is right. You need to slow down your pace. Enjoy a few sunsets. Do somethin’ other than bring Mavis the blues. That’s all Mavis is after, a little bit of good times for the two of you before you’re both too old to know what they mean.”
“And just what would I do if I quit?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Take a trip around the world. Write your memoirs, sell some of them antiques you got stashed in the basement, part with some of that Western memorabilia you been collectin’ all these years. Then, if you gotta, buy yourself some more. Turn your collectin’ jones into a business, the way white folks always seem to be able to do. Shit, if you can’t do it, can’t nobody in the world. You know the Western Americana game inside and out.”
CJ looked around the alcove, eyeing every nook and cranny, and thought about how his uncle, the man who’d raised him and started him in the bail-bonding business, would sum up the last thir
ty years if he were still alive. His eyes drifted toward his upstairs apartment, where there were four rooms crammed with coffee cans full of cat’s-eye marbles, jumbos in mint condition and eighty-year-old steelies worth their weight in gold. In the basement of the building he had stacks of mint-condition 45-rpm records—jazz, big band, and R&B—stored in tomato crates gathering dust, and plastic bins full of tobacco tins and inkwells from all around the world. He had spent a lonely childhood and all the years since Vietnam collecting old maps and movie posters, cattle-brand books—only the rarest of the rare—Tiffany lamps, saddle blankets, cowboy hats, spurs, bits, shaving mugs, and thousands of other folksy artifacts, folk art pieces, antiques, and even Western wear.
But it was his collection of antique license plates that made him the envy of antique aficionados and memorabilia enthusiasts across the United States. It was an assemblage that represented a collector’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize, and it said more about him than any other collection he had. He’d started the collection during his teenaged years, when his uncle’s drinking had reached its peak and street rods and low riders had taken the place of family in his life. He now owned more than six hundred license plates, a third of them rare early-twentieth-century gems fabricated using the long-abandoned process of overlaying porcelain onto iron. He had recently driven from Denver to Las Vegas to Minnesota, unsuccessfully chasing a rare 1917 New York City tag, laughing to himself all the way home, knowing deep down that the joy of the quest would buffer the disappointment of the failure.
“And if I don’t?” said CJ, refocusing his attention on Flora Jean.
Flora Jean hesitated before choking out an answer. “Then Mavis will more than likely move on.”
CJ swallowed hard and slipped the half-smoked cheroot out of his mouth. “And this business, the one that keeps the two of us clothed and fed, what happens to it?”
“Simple. I do more. You do less. And eventually, I buy you out.”
CJ shook his head. He couldn’t imagine selling a business that his uncle had started during the depths of the Depression, and a black-owned business at that. A business that had succeeded when you could count the number of African American families in Denver on just your fingers and toes. Blowing a smoke ring into the air, he said, “And who’ll help you?”
“You, ’til you make your first million peddlin’ antiques. After that, who knows?”
CJ leaned forward in his seat and tapped a cap of ash from the end of his cheroot into an ashtray inscribed with the insignia and colors of the First Marine Division, a reminder from Flora Jean to anyone who walked into her space that she was first and foremost always a marine. CJ took several long drags on his cheroot and watched the smoke trail up into the dust-covered wings of the room’s ancient ceiling fan. His silence let Flora Jean know that he was at least thinking about what she had said. When he finally spoke up, his tone of voice told her the issue needed more consideration. “Now that we’ve mapped out my retirement plan, let’s get back to earning our fourteen hundred bucks. For starters, we’re gonna have to take an unpleasant trip down memory lane.”
“To where?” said Flora Jean, wary of CJ’s tone.
“Vietnam.”
Flora Jean’s stomach looped into knots whenever CJ mentioned Vietnam. Unlike her own war experience in the Persian Gulf, where casualties had been light and victory swift, Vietnam had been a horror-story disaster for half a million fighting men and women. Whenever CJ talked about Vietnam, the muscles in his face tightened and his eyes turned foggy.
“Carmen Nguyen’s aunt told me something surprising today, something that I’d never heard during either of my two tours. I figured that with your marine intelligence background you might be able to shed some light on what she said.”
“Shoot,” said Flora Jean, wondering how two wars separated by almost two decades could be connected.
“Ever heard of either the army or the marines having uniformed eight-man teams designed to go behind enemy lines and, get this, fraternize with the enemy, carry out political assignments, and stomp the shit out of unsuspecting villagers?”
The muscles in Flora Jean’s face began twitching. “Where’d you hear about that?”
“From Ket Tran. Sounded strange. But after I thought about it for a while, I remembered that once during my second tour in country, we ferried a group of special forces types down the Mekong River and dropped them off two miles behind enemy lines. The whole thing seemed bizarre. Especially since the navy didn’t make a habit of slipping a slow-as-molasses hundred-and-twenty-five footer behind enemy lines without air cover or a high-speed escort. But we were blacked out communications wise, with orders to stay in the dark. Anyway, after we ran this bunch of bozos down to their drop point, I had the feeling that if the NVA or Vietcong had capped our asses, the navy woulda said they never heard of us.”
“Did Carmen’s aunt say whether the teams had a name?”
“Nope. But the number of men in the team was kinda strange. Eight, right between the numbers in a squad and a platoon. Somehow the term rogue came to mind.”
“Did she happen to mention whether the officer in charge was a lieutenant or a captain?”
“She did, as a matter of fact. The guy in charge was a captain. Turns out, in fact, that he’s that guy Carmen mentioned who’s running for the Senate. Margolin.”
“Shit!” This time the muscles in Flora Jean’s face froze.
“You’re starting to get that Sergeant Benson look, Flora Jean. Always means you know something I don’t. Spit it out.”
Flora Jean’s response was slow and halting. “Sounds like Carmen’s father was assigned to a unit that no one in the government, military or otherwise, likes to admit ever existed. A Star 1 team. An eight-man killer unit made up of everyday military grunts who were assigned the task of assassinating political leaders and taking out key North Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War. Army regulars who ended up doing what should have been ‘the Company’s’ job.”
“The CIA?”
“You got it.”
“You’re sure?”
“As sure as I am that I did a four-year tour in marine intelligence.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Not quite high and dry, but damn close to it. You can bet there’s an official cap on whatever happened to Langston Blue and his buddies that’s tighter than the lid on a coffin.”
After a thoughtful pause, CJ broke into a half smile. “Maybe not. Could be good ol’ Congressman Margolin can help.”
“It’s one place to start,” said Flora Jean.
“You got another?”
It was Flora Jean’s turn to smile. “I’ve still got a few contacts in the intelligence community, sugar. But it’ll cost you.”
Puzzled, CJ asked, “How much?”
“Not money, sugar.”
“Then what?”
“Let me worry about that. Give me a day or two. I’ll have some answers about Congressman Margolin, Langston Blue, and that Star 1 team of theirs. And you can count on the info bein’ straight-up solid.” Breaking into a broad gotcha kind of grin, Flora Jean reached up, turned up the volume on her boom box, and winked at a now totally befuddled CJ.
Peter Margolin loved the view from the sixth floor of the twenty-story office building he was building in the Golden Triangle just north of Cherry Creek, as much as he loved the mildly acidic smell that still wafted up from the floor’s curing concrete. Both served to arouse his senses, and for Margolin, titillation of the senses took a backseat to only two other things: power and money. He had used his political savvy, his social connections, and money he’d squirreled away for years to wangle his way into becoming managing partner in the $75 million project. After the fourth floor had been laid, with its panoramic view of the Denver skyline and the Front Range of the Rockies, he began making it a habit to visit the construction site once a week, just before sunset. As he watched the sun make its trek west and partially disappear behind Mount Evans, h
e knew that he was at the top of his game.
He’d worked his way through college doing summer construction—not that he had had to, given his family’s wealth—and he’d always loved watching a project, no matter the size, rise out of the ground. For him it was akin to tending a garden. On big projects he loved to count each and every red clay-colored I-beam, inhale the woodsy smell of banks of two-by-fours, admire the stout geometry of intersecting struts. In many ways, watching a building rise from a hole in the earth gave him a sense of power. Not the kind of manipulative power he’d become used to as a congressman but the kind of raw physical power he’d known as a soldier during Vietnam.
The polls showed him six to seven points ahead of his opponent in the Senate race, and barring something catastrophic he knew he was less than four months away from striking financial and career high notes. The only possible fly in the ointment was Langston Blue, and he could deal with Blue. Even so, a puzzling problem kept gnawing at his subconscious. Just before he’d left his office for the day, his secretary had gotten a call from a bail bondsman asking about Blue. He’d shrugged the call off, saying that he was unavailable, certain that if it came down to it, he could also handle the bail bondsman. Now as he stood gazing into the orange glow of sunset, that phone call had him thinking.
The sky turned from orange to magenta as Margolin stood there thinking about success and failure, power and money, and the generational strength of his family’s 150-year ties to Colorado. Glancing at his watch, he realized that he’d spent almost half an hour soaking in the grandeur. As he turned to head across the broad expanse of concrete and down a recently set stairwell to have dinner with his press secretary, Ginny Kearnes, the woman of the moment in his life, he had the sudden urge to shout, “Top of the world, Mom, top of the world!”
Starting his trek down the six flights of stairs, savoring the descent and enjoying the sound of his footsteps echoing off the metal, he remembered it was week’s end and time to leave a twenty-dollar bill in the tool-shed lockbox behind the construction superintendent’s trailer. The twenty dollars gave him access to the normally padlocked construction site, and the way he saw it, eighty dollars a month was a cheap price to pay for a weekly dose of pure exhilaration.
