A Deadly Shade of Rose

by Douglas Hirt

  Sherri looked at us, startled at Marcie’s words.

  “What are you looking at, bitch,” Marcie spat, and then to Alexander, “You going to make me stay here in the same room with this SOB?”

  “Deal with it. I’ve got problems of my own,” Alexander shot back.

  Marcie put on a pretty good show. No way of knowing if Alexander had bought into her faux anger. Maybe she'd been an actress in a former career? I’m pretty sure if she wanted me to believe so, she could fabricate a convincing enough story to back it up. I only hoped I could come up with something convincing too. Fixed them? Fixed them how? What was she about to tell me? Several possibilities occurred to me at once, but I was only guessing. He fixed them not to detonate? To detonate prematurely? Maybe some kind of tracking implant? He had managed to plant one of those on my truck.

  Like I said, I was guessing. Marcie had said some of the devices were shipped to Rocky Flats Arsenal for testing. If Cockran had fixed them, how could he slip a fix past the military inspectors and testers?

  Footsteps sounded on the tile floor, pulling me from my speculations. Cockran came up, exhaled hard and wiped his sweaty brow with a handkerchief. “They give you any trouble?” He asked Alexander, removing a gold cigarette case from his pocket and sticking a smoke between his lips. Marcie eyed the cigarette with something like a hungry desperation in her eyes.

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

  Cockran lit the cigarette and slipped the lighter into a pocket. “He wants them downstairs. Louis will give you a hand. You can have Raymond if you think you’ll need him; we can’t afford to lose them again.” He’d made a point of emphasizing that last jab.

  Alexander’s knuckles whitened around the pistol grip. “Stow it, Cockran.”

  A smile thinned out around the cigarette between his lips. Why, I wondered, was he making a point of needling Alexander? He turned to the giant. “Go with them.”

  Louis nodded his bony head.

  Alexander scowled but didn’t push back against Cockran. It was plain who was the alpha dog in this pack, but I was pretty sure those dynamics would change quickly if whomever it was in that side room were to join the pack. Alexander jerked the barrel of the pistol, anger in his eyes, looking for someone to take his frustration out on. None of us were going to give him the opportunity. We stood at his command. Marcie pushed ahead of me casting a burning stare as she strode past me.

  Sherri said, “What is that all about?”

  I shrugged. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  She looked a little startled. “No thank you, darling. I wish to keep my head attached to my shoulders.”

  Landerfelt lumbered past us and in a single glance managed to accuse me of every foul and evil deed committed in the history of the world. What was he mad about? If I recall, it was he who stuck his nose into my business, not the other way around. If jealousy hadn’t got the better of him, he be safe in his wealthy world with all his expensive toys undamaged.

  I winced when the pistol punched my spine. “Get moving, Granger.” Alexander was being careless. Maybe he’d watched too many cowboy and cop movies? It probably didn’t occur to him that getting close enough to a man to prod him with a pistol was a good way to lose the pistol. I supposed with my hands still tied, he felt safe. I figured that was worth a poke in the back and tightened my lips against a smirk; feeling safe was a quick way to end up dead—bound hands or not.

  I’d been poked a lot the last several hours and it was getting wearisome. I’d gotten a certain amount of satisfaction working the kid over—call it animal gratification—and I was feeling the urge again. Maybe it was just possible I was beginning to enjoy the sensation, although I wouldn’t admit to it in polite company. Sometimes life gets a little stale doing the same things day in and out. For some curious reason that I’m sure psychologists would have a field day investigating, I felt more alive than I had for a good many years. The constant trickle of adrenaline probably had something to do with the feeling, and as soon as that let up, I’d come back to a sound mind and appreciate the humdrum existence as a college biology teacher. Just the same, it had felt good taking Pretty Boy down even if I did end up paying painfully for the pleasure.

  Now the animal inside me wanted to turn on the man in the plaid shirt and go for the throat, but good, common sense won out. Even if I could disarm him, Alexander would be a big, brawny wildcat, and probably more than I could handle with bound hands and a head still pounding.

  With Sherri grasping my arm, and a hand on the railing to steady myself, I hammed up my weak condition as we made our way down a long flight of steps to the lower level. Sherri bore my extra weight without complaint.

  In the mountains you can’t simply dig a hole for a basement like you can on flat land. Here you have to engineer a hole using heavy equipment and lots of dynamite. Reaching the lower level and looking around, I decided this hole had cost the owner almost as much as the whole upper portion had and it occurred to me it might have been designed with a secondary purpose in mind. Add an air filtering system, a stash of food, and a deep, protected well for water, and one could hide out down here for a long time—long enough for a cloud of radiation to dissipate?

  The place had definitely been decorated by a man. Thinking about it, I hadn’t noted anything about the house that would suggest a woman had lent a hand in the decor. The floor was paved in the same tile as the story above, except for a big, red rectangle of carpeting in the center where a pool table resided. A large television was built into one wall. An even larger aquarium, stocked with eating-size fish gliding along a gravel bottom, in and out of big chunks of coral, was built into another wall. A fireplace faced an arrangement of chairs and a sofa, upholstered in saddle leather and polished oak, lending a western flair to the big room. Two wagon wheel chandeliers reinforced the cowboy theme. The wet bar resembled something out of a movie saloon scene, and judging from the bottles behind it, had been stocked by someone who took his drinking seriously.

  “Keep on prancing,” Alexander said when I paused to run my fingers along the gleaming wood of the pool table. It was a high-class item with six woven leather pockets instead of ramps that roll all the balls to one end of the table. I suspected that if I could peek beneath the sheet of green felt I’d find a slab of real slate, not the cheap particle board you mostly find today. A rack of cues stood at the corner of the red carpeted island. “The table is strictly off limits to you. The amenities are for a different sort of guest than yourself. Don’t get your lips set on any libations, either.”

  “Someone knows how to wine and dine their guests—someone with money and influence?” I didn’t expect the question to bring me anything, and it didn’t. Alexander’s expression remained unreadable and he motioned toward a door.

  I said, “I’m not real familiar with this part of Colorado. Was that the town of Breckenridge we flew over just before landing?” Marcie was trying to get my attention, but we couldn’t talk here. Maybe I was probing too close to the truth and she was warning me to keep my mouth shut.

  “I wouldn’t know,” he lied.

  I shrugged and started moving again. “Good skiing, I hear, Breckenridge.” Louis unlocked a door, pushed it open, and ducked inside. A light came on and a moment later the giant stooped out the door and moved to one side as Alexander herded the four of us inside.

  Hurried footsteps sounded on the stairs. Raymond came across the room in a quick, long strides and said to Alexander, “Cockran wants to talk to him.” He pointed at me.

  For some reason that seemed to irritate Alexander, and I wondered again what kind of troubled brewed between him and Cockran. “All right,” he said sharply. “You see that they get locked in. I’ll take Granger.” His scowl shifted toward me. “Come on.”

  Marcie was still trying to get my attention. I wished she’d settle down before someone noticed. I’d already made the brilliant deduction myself and it really wasn’t all that startling.

  Chapter Sixteen />
  Wearing frowning lips and brooding eyes, Alexander indicated that I go ahead of him up the stairs. I took my time using the railing to pull myself along just to demonstrate how weak I was.

  In the Great Hall he said briefly, “Straight ahead.” We crossed the floor to a hallway on the far side. The big door to the outside was unguarded, but he knew I wouldn't attempt to make a dash for it. A .45 caliber pistol pointing at your thoracic vertebrae tends to make you obedient.

  The hallway, unlike the Great Room, was carpeted not tiled, and ended a dozen feet or so at a wall with a huge painting that looked as if a drunken monkey had been turned loose in a paint factory. Someone had to be equally drunk to have spent good money buying it, and the jet-black frame, but that's just me who prefers his artwork to represent something recognizable. At least it was somewhat hidden back here. We didn’t go as far as the crazy splashes of color but turned into the first door on the left. A second door a few steps farther on was closed.

  The room was small, painted flat white, starkly furnished, and carpeted in a coppery colored shag. A large mirror filled one wall behind a gray metal office desk with and a gray metal chair. The desk held an ashtray. The only other furnishings were a burnt orange La-z-Boy chair parked next to a small, round table with a pole lamp sprouting from its middle. There was a small, round grille in the ceiling that might have even played music if the right switch were turned.

  Cockran stood next to the desk puffing a cigarette. He’d ditched the suit jacket. Although the temperature here was not warm, perspiration streamed from his forehead and soaked gray crescents into the shirt, under his arms. “Sit down, Granger.”

  “I’d prefer to stand, if that’s okay?”

  “As you wish.” He crushed the cigarette into the ashtray and lit up another one. “You can leave us,” he said to Alexander, flagging a hand toward the door.

  I stood there waiting as Alexander left, closing the door behind him. My hands felt as if they had begun to swell a bit from being tied up for a couple hours now. The large mirror, I noted, had been built into the wall, not simply hung on it.

  Cockran offered me a cigarette.

  “No thank you,” I said politely. At this point, a meek demeanor and bowing to his authority was the safest way to proceed.

  “Don’t smoke?”

  “Never developed the habit.”

  “You’re smart,” he said in a voice that suggested he’d tried to quit and failed, maybe so many times he'd resigned himself to the addiction.

  I said, “You didn’t bring me here to discuss my personal habits.”

  “That observation extends beyond your personal habits, I hope.”

  His point was clear. I said, “I’d like to think so.” I didn’t mind the small talk. I was in no hurry for the serious questions to begin.

  He studied the coppery carpet for a long, introspective moment and then asked, “What is it you do, Granger?”

  “You mean for a living?” I asked just to make sure.

  He nodded.

  “I teach biology at a small southwestern university.

  “A college professor?” That seemed to surprise him. “Okay, college professor, what’s in this for you?” He'd begun pacing and puffing, and I felt a little like a specimen on display in front of that mirror, a wee beastie under Leeuwenhoek’s primitive microscope. Who was in the next room observing us? The answer to that question would have answered a lot of other questions too.

  I lifted my bound hands. “Any chance we can get rid of these?”

  He stared at them, thinking.

  I said, “I’m not going to try anything here, and even if I was foolish enough to think I could overpower you; the cavalry would come riding over the hill in about five seconds.” I nodded toward the mirror. “I’d likely be a lot more talkative if I wasn’t worrying about my fingers falling off.”

  Cockran grinned and gave a short laugh. “Funny guy, huh? I won’t need the cavalry to handle a dizzy head like you.” He fished a diminutive Swiss Army Knife from his pocket and cut the ropes. “That better?”

  I massaged my hands and wrists, blood burning into my fingers. “Thank you. Nothing in the usual sense.”

  Cockran gave a blank look. “Huh?”

  “You asked what was in it for me.”

  His view narrowed. “Go on.”

  “You might call it a mild sense of patriotism, or you might call it a way to earn a few extra bucks.” The lie came too easily, and it occurred to me that I may have hung around Marcie too long.

  “Patriotism!” His harsh retort carried a disgusted note. “Patriotism is for naive young men who believe the propaganda those thugs in Washington tell them. Patriotism is a mental illness that turns good, moral, innocent children into killers. I was in drafted into that war the thugs called a police action to end run Congress. Patriotism? Huh. When the Gooks had me in chains, I made a deal.”

  “You collaborated with the enemy?” I guess that sounded pretty naive.

  His eyes narrowed slightly as he circled me like a wolf on the prowl. “Enemy? Were they my enemy? I didn’t know them; they didn’t know me. They never harmed me or my family. Why should I want to kill them? It was me who had invaded their country with a gun, they hadn’t invaded mine. Hell yes, I collaborated, and I wasn’t the only one. I could name names, and one or two of them you’d know. You might call us the Tokyo Roses of Vietnam.”

  “I guess it’s all a matter of point of view. You chose one side and I the other.”

  He took a moment to think through what he’d just told me and then put the anger aside. He finished his cigarette, dropping the butt into the ashtray. “You do this often?”

  “Occasionally. After the war I completed my Ph.D. in biology and got a job teaching, but Washington doesn’t lose track of former employees, especially ones with my talents.” If I was going to spread BS, I might as well ladle it on thick. If Cockran and whomever was behind the mirror thought they’d hooked a big fish, they might be less cavalier about the way they reeled him in.

  He paced the small room twice, thinking it over. “You’ll find me a most intolerant man if you fail to appreciate the seriousness of the moment, Granger.”

  Muffled footsteps sounded in the hallway outside the door. Farther down the hall the other door opened and closed.

  “I do appreciate the seriousness,” I assured him.

  Impatient fingers dug another cigarette from the wrinkled pack. The lighter clicked, touched fire to it, and snapped shut. “Back on the plane you suggested making a deal.”

  I gave a short laugh and smiled. “I may have been a naive young man once, Cockran, but those days are long behind me. Soon as I tell you what you want to know...on your terms...you’ll drop me in a snowbank somewhere and I won’t be found until the spring melt. There’s nothing in it for me talking a deal with you, and you know it, but I can offer you one on my terms. Tell me what I want to know and I’ll put in a good word for you and not even mention Hanoi Rose.” I gripped the chair’s arms to keep my hands from shaking. My chest was tight and my heart pounding, but I put on a confident front just like they do in spy movies. “Face it, Cockran. You’ve blown your cover bringing me here. In a couple hours this place will be swarming with Feds. They’ll get you, and you-know-who.” I hitched my head toward the one-way mirror.

  What did I have to lose? Nothing. But I had everything to gain spinning a story for him. I had no idea what the plot was or how it was all going to end, but if nothing else it might buy me time.

  He looked guardedly amused. “A moment ago, you observed correctly that I chose one side of it while you took the other. Like you said, the powers that be don’t lose track of their own. As it turns out, your side allows its members to leave the ranks and peruse other ventures. My side does not. We balance upon a very narrow ledge between success and failure and believe me when I tell you that failure is dealt with swiftly and permanently. Should I fail and retribution does not come from your side, it will surely come fr
om mine. So, you see, I have little choice. Now, shall we resume? You can make this easy on yourself or quite difficult.”

  “I have nothing to tell you,” I said, which was one of the few honest statements I’d made to him so far.

  “Then we do it the hard way.” He hooked a finger at the mirror. Down the hallway a door opened again and then the door to the room opened and Louis ducked under the door frame. Steel fingers crushed my shoulders as the long-boned creature with double the strength of a normal man held me in place while staring at me from beneath hooded eyebrows.

  “Don’t hurt him...yet.”

  The vise grip let up slightly.

  Cockran loosened his tie, preparing for the hard work ahead. “Let’s start over, Granger.” He wasn’t so big as he was thick and overweight. I wouldn’t have had a problem taking him down if not for the giant who stood behind the chair. Louis would definitely be a problem. He had twice my strength and once again my reach. But he moved haltingly, clumsily, and that would work to my advantage if the opportunity presented itself. On the other hand, my head hurt and I was pretty sure I had a concussion. How much of one remained to be seen.

  “Tell me what you know about Carl Manquist.”

  Marcie had not mentioned Carl's last name. I could only hope Cockran was referring to the same Carl. “He learned what you were up to and you killed him to keep him quiet.” That was a long-shot answer.

  “Who was he working for? His contact?”

  I let go of a silent breath. The long shot paid off. “I don’t know who he reported to,” I said, which I figured was a reasonable enough reply.

  He glanced at Louis and gave a small nod. Iron fingers dug beneath my clavicles sending me writhing deep into the chair, fighting back a groan.

  “Negative answers will not be tolerated.”

  Louis let up. I gave a deep moan, straightening and said, “Then I’m in big trouble. We work on a need-to-know. I was brought in as a pinch hitter at the bottom of the ninth. I didn’t have a need to know too much.”