by Mark Cohen
The alarm went off at five. By seven I had deposited the dogs at Troy’s house for the day and was cruising south on I-25. It was Saturday, but traffic was heavy. I could remember when there was nothing between Denver and Colorado Springs; now there’s little open range. It’s one subdivision after another, including the one my brother lives in, Highlands Ranch. I call it Little California.
I rolled down my window and listened to a tape I’d purchased from the Smithsonian, a collection of classic American country music dating all the way back to the 1920s.
I had spent Friday evening reviewing the writings of Dale Hawkins. The thesis of his most recent effort, “Weather and the Fractal Structure of Crop Markets,” was simple. The price of a crop is determined by supply and demand. Supply is largely a factor of the weather. Weather patterns are fractal in nature. Therefore, weather patterns are at least partly responsible for the fractal structure of crop markets.
That weather affects crop prices was hardly an original thought, but Hawkins’s thesis wasn’t what intrigued me. What intrigued me was that the writing in his most recent article was so much better than that displayed in his previous writings. I toyed with the implications of that as I continued south, then cranked up the volume as Elvis began “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
Arriving in Florence shortly after ten, I found the prison and parked near the visitors’ entrance. Like all modern prisons, it was a concrete fortress with narrow slits for windows, the outer perimeter marked by multiple electric fences, each topped with razor wire. Wearing khaki pants, a blue short-sleeved shirt, and cordovan loafers, I walked across the newly paved lot to the front door and pressed the red button with my thumb. A deep male voice came through the speaker, but the sound was fuzzy and I couldn’t understand a word that was said. “I’m an attorney,” I said. “I’m here to see a client.” I heard a metallic click and gave the door handle a good pull.
I walked down the concrete steps into a belowground passage leading to a waiting area. The room consisted of rows of black metal benches bolted into the concrete floor. The room was empty, meaning I’d had the good fortune to arrive outside visiting hours and had thus been spared having to view dozens of pitiful women waiting to see their respective men. A uniformed guard sat behind a counter at the far end of the room. He looked to be about fifty and was grossly overweight.
“Pepper Keane,” I said. “Here to see Delbert Gaffney.” I displayed my driver’s license and bar registration card. If he noticed my registration had expired, he didn’t say anything.
“Supposed to call in advance,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “I just got appointed by a federal magistrate to represent this turkey in some bullshit habeas corpus action and I’m not real happy to be here. If you want me to go home and tell the judge I couldn’t meet with my client, that’s fine by me.” The last thing any jailer wants is to be accused of denying an inmate access to his attorney.
“Sign here,” he said. He slid a clipboard toward me, and I completed the required information. He looked it over, then pressed an intercom button and said, “Attorney here to see Gaffney.” He instructed me to stand near a steel door at the far end of the room. When I heard the click, I opened the door and was met by another guard, this one younger and black. Denzel Washington.
“How are you doin’ today?” he asked with a smile. Friendly considering he worked in such a depressing place.
“Great, how about you?”
“I’m just fine,” he said. I followed him at a leisurely pace to a small room. Perhaps six by eight. “You can have a seat in there,” he said. “We’ll bring Gaffney right down.”
I sat down on one of two plastic chairs beside a sturdy wooden table that had seen a multitude of messages carved into it over the years. Denzel left the door slightly ajar. Like the others, it was made of steel. The walls were concrete but had been painted with semigloss buttercup. There was one window, a rectangular sheet of thick Plexiglas, but the only view was of the hallway and guard station.
Twenty minutes later another guard, white and wiry, escorted a young black man to the room. He wore a tan jumpsuit that was unbuttoned down to his navel. Shaved head. Big scar on his left biceps, like he’d been branded with an iron. Solid build. Washboard stomach. About five-nine and a hundred sixty-five pounds. “This fool ain’t my lawyer,” he said.
“Just appointed by the court,” I told the guard as I rose from my chair. “He probably hasn’t received the papers yet.” I offered Delbert my hand. He refused it, but he entered the room. We remained silent until the guard had locked the door and disappeared from view.
“The fuck are you?” Delbert asked. “Damn sure ain’t my lawyer.”
“I’m not anyone’s lawyer,” I said, “but that’s another story.” I sat down, opened my wallet, and placed a crisp hundred on the table. “I’m going to ask a few questions,” I said. “Give the right answers and that money is yours.”
“You a cop?”
“If I were a cop,” I said, “I wouldn’t lie my way in here and offer you a hundred bucks.”
“You a sherlock, I got nothin’ to say.”
“I’m a private investigator,” I said. He sat down.
“Ain’t gonna rat on my homies,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “the guy I’m looking for only kills math professors. I doubt he spends much time in the ’hood.”
“What you want?” he asked, surly.
“You bought a thirty-eight-caliber pistol at Saul’s Pawnshop a few months before the feds busted you. I want to know where that gun is.”
“The fuck you talkin’ ’bout?”
“You signed an ATF four-four-seven-three when you bought the gun,” I said. “One of the questions on that form is whether you’ve ever been convicted of a felony.” He broke eye contact. “You lied,” I said, “and that’s a felony.” I hadn’t seen the form, but I knew what had happened because I’d seen it so many times. “The feds don’t know about it,” I said. “So the question is, do you want to do another five years for making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm or do you want to earn a quick hundred bucks?” He looked at me and laced his fingers together on the table.
“What you want to know ’bout that gun fo’?”
“Someone used it to kill a man up in Washington,” I said. “I’m looking for the killer.”
“Don’t know nothin’ ’bout that,” he said.
“I believe you,” I said. “Just tell me about the gun.”
He looked at me for several seconds. “I sold that fuckin’ gun to my cousin,” he said. “Don’t know what he did with it.”
“What’s his name?”
“Bailey.”
“His first name?”
“That’s his first name. Bailey Green.”
“Where does he live?” I asked.
“He in jail.”
“Where?”
“Denver somewhere,” he said. “They holdin’ him for armed robbery or some shit.”
“Did he use the gun in the robbery?”
“Don’t know, I wasn’t there.”
“Did he say why he wanted the gun?”
“Protection.” Stupid question.
“When did you sell him the gun?” I asked.
“Right before I got busted,” he said. “July, I think.”
“How long has he been in jail?”
“He been in since August, man. Trial’s next month. Can’t plead because he lookin’ at a bitch.” Another conviction would qualify Delbert’s cousin as a habitual offender.
“You’re sure he’s been in since August? It couldn’t have been September or October?”
“Pretty sho,” he said. “Don’t know ’zactly ’cuz I been locked up.”
I slid the hundred across the table. “You can take it,” I said, “or I can deposit it in your account when I leave.” He picked it up, folded it in half, and tucked it into his breast pocket. I rapped my knuckles on the door a few times to l
et the guards know we were done. “You be quiet about my visit,” I said. Denzel came and unlocked the door. “He doesn’t want my help,” I told the guard, “so I guess I won’t be seeing you anymore.”
22
I CAN’T BELIEVE I’VE LIVED here this long and never been up here,” said Jayne. “This view is fantastic.” Boulder was almost directly below us and a good chunk of eastern Colorado, including Denver, was visible to the east.
“I discovered it in law school,” I said. “I used to run up here.”
“I’ll bet that was fun,” she said.
“Going up was a bear, but coming down was a natural high.” It was two o’clock on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon and we were standing on top of one of the flatirons, large formations of red rock that rise out of the mountains overlooking the city. Our hike had taken more than an hour; the vertical rise is several thousand feet. “Ready to eat?” I asked.
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said. “I’m famished.” We found a level spot and sat down on the hard rock. From my nylon knapsack I removed the hoagies I’d made, then poured white zinfandel into two clear plastic cups. I shifted my weight in an attempt to get comfortable.
“Hard rock cafe,” I said. She smiled and bit into her sandwich. French bread, lettuce, onion, tomato, thin slices of provolone, all topped with Italian dressing and a dash of salt.
“These are delicious,” she said. “Are you a vegetarian?”
“More or less,” I said.
“You don’t look like one,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she was referring to my build or my haircut.
“A few years ago,” I said as I finished chewing a bite, “I represented a meatpacking corporation that got into some trouble with the government over allegations of unsanitary conditions. In order to do my job, I needed to understand the process from start to finish, so I toured a slaughterhouse and—”
“It’s an animal rights thing?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just something I’ve been struggling with.”
“My grandparents were ranchers,” she said. “To them, there wasn’t much difference between a vegetarian and a communist.”
I laughed. “I don’t have it all figured out,” I said. “I don’t have any problem with killing an animal to survive, but I’m not sure it’s right to breed animals for the sole purpose of killing them.”
“I never thought of that,” she said.
We continued eating and enjoyed the Colorado sunshine. She looked great in olive shorts and a white sleeveless top.
“What are you thinking?” she asked. She poured more wine for each of us. I was thinking she had great legs, but couldn’t say that.
“Still thinking about the case,” I said. I’d brought her up to date during the drive from her home to the trailhead. “I want to call Gilbert tomorrow and see if he can get some information on Bailey Green.”
“What kind of information?”
“What was he arrested for? Did it involve a gun? When was he busted?” I could probably get all that myself, but Gaffney didn’t even know what agency had arrested his cousin; all he knew was that Bailey was in jail in “Denver somewhere.” It would be quicker to let Gilbert do it.
“Anything I can do?” she asked.
“Come to think of it,” I said, “there might be. Do you know anyone who teaches linguistics?”
“Sure, why?”
“I’m convinced Carolyn Chang helped Hawkins write that article, but it would be nice to have an expert compare their writing styles.”
“There’s a woman in the English department, Maggie McGuire. I’ll call her first thing in the morning.”
“That would be great,” I said. “I’ve got the articles in my truck. I’ll leave them with you tonight.”
“Oh, look,” she said. I followed her index finger and saw a brave soul piloting a hang glider several thousand feet above us. Hang gliding is popular in Boulder because of the thermals that rise from the base of the mountains and provide constant lift so a glider can remain aloft for hours.
“He’s up there,” I said. We watched as the pilot circled higher and higher.
“I went parasailing once,” she said. “Have you ever done anything like that?”
“My brother and I used to skydive a lot,” I said, “but his parachute malfunctioned one time and we took that as a sign it was time to find new hobbies.”
“My God, was he hurt?”
“No,” I said. “He slammed into a wet corn field at thirty-five miles an hour, but walked away without any major damage.” With that image in mind, I poured the rest of the wine into my nearly empty cup, then removed a second bottle from my knapsack. “He’s also been struck by lightning and bitten by a rattlesnake, so we figure he’s got six lives left.”
She laughed. “Is that true?” she asked.
“Swear to God,” I said. She sipped her wine.
“So what’s your new hobby?” she asked.
“Going on hikes with good-looking women and getting them drunk.”
She smiled. “Well,” she said, “you’re doing pretty well on the drunk part. This is good wine.”
“I think I’m doing pretty well on the good-looking part too.” She blushed and we settled into a comfortable silence as blue jays darted from tree to tree and chipmunks scurried about. “Ask you a question?” I finally said.
“Sure.”
“I’m curious about that poster in your office.”
“Poster?”
“‘A woman without a man is like a—’”
“I should take that down,” she said, embarrassed. “I put it up in anger. A man I thought I loved turned out to be married, and that launched my all-men-are-scum period.”
“When was that?”
“About five years ago.” She pulled her knees in and wrapped her arms around them. This had the salutary effect of revealing a good deal of thigh. “You’re sure you’re not married?” she joked.
“Never married, never engaged,” I said. “We covered that at the bookstore, remember?”
“Thought I might trip you up by asking again.” She gave me a playful pat on the arm.
“I lived with a woman once,” I said, “but she died before we ever got around to talking about marriage.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said. “She was one of my law school classmates.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes,” I said. “As much as I could at that age.”
“How did she die?”
“Car accident. She went dancing with some classmates on a night when I had to work. A few of the guys got really drunk, so she drove them home. When she stopped for a red light, one of them accidentally spilled beer in her lap. She inadvertently hit the accelerator and another car broadsided her.”
“That’s horrible,” she said. “Was anyone else killed?”
“No, everyone else walked away from it.”
“What happened to the man?”
“Nothing,” I said. “It’s not a crime to be drunk and stupid when you’re a passenger in a car.”
“I hope he’s not out there practicing law.”
“He’s not,” I said. “He’s an FBI agent.”
23
I SPENT MONDAY MORNING spraying a mixture of linseed oil and paint thinner onto my house with a high-compression sprayer. It’s a messy task, but it has to be done once a year to protect the logs from the harmful effects of moisture and ultraviolet rays. I hadn’t planned on doing it Monday, but I’d had it on my list of things to do and the weather was ideal. Temps in the high seventies, clear sky, no wind.
That kind of physical labor differs from investigative work in at least two ways. First, it allows you to see the fruits of your efforts immediately. Because it requires little brainpower, it also gives the mind a chance to wander. So there I was, standing on top of a sixteen-foot ladder, slowly moving the metal wand from side to side, and musing about Sunday’s outing with Jayne
Smyers.
She had invited me to stay for supper and we had continued talking in her kitchen while I made a salad and she put together a green bean casserole. I told her I’d disliked Polk long before Joy’s death and she asked why. “He was the most arrogant person I’d ever met,” I said. “Thought he was tougher than everyone else and saw himself as God’s gift to women.”
Her smile showed amusement. “He is arrogant,” she said, “but something tells me one reason you disliked him so was that you too thought you were tougher than everyone else.”
“I’m sure that’s part of it,” I admitted.
“Did you also see yourself as God’s gift to women?” She sprinkled almond slivers across the top of the casserole.
“No,” I said, “I never suffered from that delusion.”
“Strangely enough,” she said, “I believe you.” She placed the glass casserole dish in the oven. “You somehow project confidence without appearing egotistical.”
I guess she viewed that as a good trait in a man because our date had ended with a better-than-expected good-night kiss. Not the kind that compels people to immediately shed their clothes and go at it, but luscious enough to make me believe there was some interest on her part.
I thought about that as I continued spraying, but the phone rang and I hurried inside to get it. It was Maggie McGuire.
“You work quickly,” I said.
“Jayne said it was important.” She was all business. From the sound of her voice, I guessed she was in her late forties.
“When can we get together?” I asked.
“I have some time at three o’clock.”
“I’ll be there,” I said. After receiving precise directions to her office, I returned the cordless phone to its cradle and resumed spraying.
It took only a half hour to complete the project, but cleaning up took longer.
It was past two when I got out of the shower. I dressed casually, let the dogs out for a few minutes, then headed to Boulder. Before pulling out of the driveway, I stopped to admire my work. No longer faded, the logs appeared rich in color. The entire house projected the kind of warm glow it had possessed when I’d purchased it.
