Vivian climbed out of the Buick and moved stiffly to the front bumper. She was still wearing slacks and a sweater. But her hair was in disarray, as if she hadn’t checked herself in the mirror for a few hours. She stood there, waiting for Manny, not trying to run.
Manny got out slowly, warily, looking around as if he expected an ambush. He wore gray slacks and a black silk shirt, and carried a blue-and-white flight bag in one hand. By the way he swung it, I could tell it wasn’t empty. He joined Vivian at the front of the car, grabbed her arm just above the elbow, and led her away.
I went after them.
But when I reached the edge of the parking area, they were gone.
The entrance to the theater was at least a hundred yards away; they couldn’t have made it there already. I counted a dozen or so park visitors—four teenagers, a young couple with a child, and a group of six that included the grandparents.
Where the hell were Vivian and Manny?
Then I spotted them to my right, just off the parking area. Vivian sat on a bench with her back to me, facing a void. A thousand feet down-slope from her lay a gravel parking lot the size of three football fields. In the distance the front range marched away to the south.
Manny was crouched before the bench. I saw him peel away a sheet of paper that must have been taped underneath. A message from Blyleven? Manny scanned it, then impatiently crumpled it up and tossed it aside. He took Vivian by the arm and walked her toward the amphitheater’s entrance. He glanced this way and that, sharp little head movements, like a hawk on the lookout for mice. It was too risky to take him now.
And where was Blyleven?
I kept my eye on them, hustled over to the bench, and retrieved the wadded paper.
The sheet had been torn from a spiral notebook. The message was printed in pencil, block letters, all caps:
SIT IN FRONT ROW CENTER
WATCH THE STAGE
I jogged across the parking area to an asphalt pathway. It led around the end of a towering red rock wall to the amphitheater’s entrance. A hundred feet overhead swallows soared and darted about the rock face.
I hustled down the gently sloping, curving path, meeting tourists coming up. Manny and Vivian had already reached the end of the path. They disappeared behind a concession stand built from native rock.
When I got there, I was standing at the top of the theater.
There were twenty or so people scattered about. There was room for eight thousand more. The seats were wide, backless benches, curving in a semicircle, a few hundred feet from end to end, and seventy steep rows to the bottom. Concrete steps descended beyond the ends of the rows. And beyond the steps were sheer rock walls, bracketing the theater, keeping in the sound. Another, shorter rock wall, maybe thirty feet high and a hundred feet long, ran along the rear of the stage, far below. Miles behind the stage I could just make out the tiny towers of downtown Denver.
Manny and Vivian were going down the steps along the left side of the theater.
When they got about a third of the way down, they suddenly stopped. Manny turned, searching faces, as alert and cautious as a mountain cat.
I sat quickly near a small group of tourists and bent down as if to tie my shoe.
After a few minutes Manny seemed satisfied. He ushered Vivian down the stone steps. When they reached the bottom row, they walked to the middle, and sat. Manny held the flight bag in his lap.
On the stage before them three youngsters played hackey-sack. I was too far away to see the little leather bag, but the kids’ movements couldn’t have been for anything else. Is this what Blyleven wanted them to watch?
Thunder rumbled behind me, like oil drums tumbling down a mountain slope. A tiny raindrop hit my forehead.
Where was Blyleven?
I made a quick tally of everyone in sight. No more than two dozen people were scattered about, including my six neighbors, two of whom were from Denver, telling their friends from Iowa about the last concert they’d seen here.
Then one guy caught my eye.
He was sitting alone at the other end of my row, two hundred feet from me. He wore a dark blue ball cap, matching windbreaker, and khaki pants. He was leaning forward, hands on knees, staring intently at the stage below. Or maybe at Vivian and Manny. I was too far away to make out his features, but from photographs I’d seen, he was the same size and build as Blyleven.
Now he scanned the people in the seats, taking his time, appraising each person.
He was Blyleven, all right.
When he looked my way, I leaned over and asked the Denver guy where Pike’s Peak was. The guy pointed south, in the general direction of Blyleven.
“It’s over that way,” he said, “but you can’t see it from here.”
Blyleven continued to study each person in the amphitheater. Then, suddenly, he lurched to his feet and began walking quickly down the steps. The bill of his cap was pointed directly at the middle of the front row.
I went after him. I planned to grab him before he confronted Manny, maybe even trade him to Manny for Vivian.
But by the time I’d sprinted along the two-hundred-foot row to the steps, Blyleven was already near the bottom. I ran down the steps, then turned into the seats about twenty rows up from the bottom, so I could approach them all from directly behind.
As I clambered down the seats, Blyleven came up behind Vivian and Manny, a gun in his hand. I saw Manny turn around. He stood and offered the bag. Blyleven reached for it. Quick as a snake, Manny grabbed Blyleven’s gun hand and swung the bag overhand, hitting Blyleven in the face, knocking him backward. The gun clattered to the concrete. Blyleven took off running.
I yelled, “Hold it!”
Manny either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. He ran after Blyleven. He still had the flight bag. As he ran, he jerked it open, pulled out a chunky black automatic weapon, and tossed the bag aside.
I shouted at Vivian, “Call the police!” But she looked too stunned to move.
I ran after Manny and Blyleven.
They were already past the end of the stage, sprinting out the right side of the amphitheater, Blyleven a few dozen yards in the lead.
I scrambled down a flight of steps that ended at a sloping asphalt ramp. It curved down and around the huge wall of rock. Blyleven was already out of sight. I watched Manny disappear around the curve. Then I heard a metallic clatter as he fired his weapon.
I rounded the curve, yanking the .357 from my shoulder holster.
Manny had just reached the bottom of the ramp, fifty feet from me. Blyleven was in the open, sprinting into a vast gravel parking area toward a lone car. He could run, but he couldn’t hide. Manny stopped and held the weapon at arm’s length.
I shouted at him.
Manny fired a burst. It cut Blyleven down.
Now Manny swung around toward me, firing, spraying bullets off the rock face.
I was braced, arms extended, gun in both hands, sights aligned between his elbows and his shoulders. Before he got all the way around, I shot him once, the magnum bucking angrily in my hands. Manny’s shoulders slumped, and he stumbled toward me, trying to keep from falling. He struggled to raise the weapon. I shot him again. He let go of the gun and fell to his knees. Then he crumpled facedown on the ramp.
I moved toward him cautiously, keeping my piece pointed at his head. It didn’t matter. He was dead.
I picked up the chunky black TEC-9 by the trigger guard and carried it down to where Blyleven lay in the gravel. He was on his back, his cap gone and blood oozing out of him.
At least he wasn’t dead.
Then again, he wasn’t Blyleven.
An old burn scar covered his neck and chin. Stan Lessing.
33
STAN LESSING LAY STILL, staring up at me. I knelt beside him in the gravel.
“I can’t move,” he said.
His voice was a harsh whisper—weak, but surprisingly calm, considering. Probably going into shock. I peeled off my jacket, laid it over his c
hest, and pulled it up to his chin. His khaki pants were black with blood from the crotch to the belt. I put my hand under his head for a little comfort. Gravel bit into my skin.
“Don’t worry, Stan, we’ll get an ambulance.”
“How… how do you know my name?”
I saw Vivian rushing down the ramp. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Manny’s body, thirty yards from me and Stan. I figured she’d either faint, throw up, or go back the way she came. Instead, she hurried forward and knelt beside Manny. Then she started going through the dead man’s pockets, like a ghoul.
“Vivian, go call the police. Tell them we need an ambulance.”
She pulled a set of keys from Manny’s pants pocket. Then she stood, trembling. Her face was bone white. “Is Martin… here?”
“No. Go call the police.”
“Chelsea and Roger,” she said. “They’re locked in the trunk of the car.” She turned her back on me and Stan and hurried up the ramp to free her family.
“How do you know my name?” Stan asked again.
“I know a lot about you,” I said. “And about your scheming with Martin Blyleven.”
“The bastard double-crossed me.”
It was starting to rain now, a light drizzle. Thunder growled above the nearby hills. I brushed my hand across Stan’s forehead to keep moisture from running in his eyes.
“Where’s Blyleven?”
“Dead.” Stan licked his lips, and then he winced. He tried to look down at his wounds.
“Just lie still,” I said.
“Is it bad?”
“I’m no doctor.”
“Am I… going to die?”
“We’re all going to die, Stan.”
“Tell me.”
“It looks pretty goddamn bad.”
A few young guys came into sight around the curve in the ramp. They moved hesitantly toward Manny’s body, gawking, as if it had fallen from a UFO.
“Go call the police!” I shouted at them. “And an ambulance!”
One of them stepped gingerly around Manny’s body, then ran along the gravel driveway that led from the parking lot to the curio shop, out of sight beyond the rocks.
“How did you find out about us?” Stan asked.
“I talked to everyone, including your ex-girlfriend, and pieced it together. Most of it, anyway.”
Stan smiled weakly. “How is Debbie?”
“About the same,” I said. I didn’t remind him that he’d abandoned her when she was pregnant. Or tell him that he had a daughter. Debbie could do that, if he survived.
“She’s a good woman,” Stan said. “Better off without me.”
“Maybe. Tell me how Blyleven died.”
He licked his lips and winced. “It’s a long story.”
“We have some time.”
He tried to smile. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Tell me anyway.”
He did. Why not? What else did he have to do?
As he talked, tourists drifted down from the amphitheater. Most of them took one look at Manny’s body and went back up the ramp. A few made it over to me and Stan. They kept their distance, though, no doubt put off by the sight of Stan’s blood soaking into the ground.
Stan told me that Blyleven figured out how to get away with stealing the mob’s money when he first saw Stan’s scars. A body burned beyond recognition, that was the idea.
They’d met at the chess club and swapped army stories. When Blyleven learned that Stan had been in Special Forces, he knew the expertise he needed was at hand. He brought Stan in as a full partner. Supposedly. Stan taught Blyleven how to rig explosives and how to operate a parachute.
One other thing Stan taught him—how to kill a man.
It was a pretty problem. The pilot would have to be killed after the plane was airborne and the controls were put on automatic pilot. And he’d have to be killed quickly. If he struggled or thrashed around, he might hit the controls and knock the plane off course.
Also, Blyleven wanted it to look as if the pilot had died in the explosion. In other words, no gunshot wounds.
Stan’s solution was an ice pick.
“Slam it into a guy’s head,” Stan said weakly. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred he drops dead. And all it leaves is a tiny hole in the skull. Who’d notice that after the plane blew up?”
Blyleven had made arrangements for phony IDs, passports, and airline tickets from Los Angeles to Mexico City with connections to Brazil.
“For both of us,” Stan said. “I was supposed to meet him in LA.”
Blyleven had calculated where to jump—a spot about twenty miles from Holbrook, Arizona, near the Petrified Forest. The area was remote enough that Blyleven wouldn’t be seen, especially if he jumped at twilight. And the terrain wasn’t so rugged that he couldn’t hike out.
The week before the flight, they took Stan’s car to Holbrook and paid cash to some old-timer to store it in his shed.
The night before the flight, they went to the hangar at Centennial Airport to load the plane—high explosives, a parachute, and a cadaver that Blyleven supposedly had acquired from a medical school and stashed in a rubber body bag in the trunk of his car.
Of course, there was no cadaver. Stan would fill that role.
When they carried the explosives into the plane, Blyleven used the ice pick on Stan.
“It should have killed me,” Stan whispered. “But it didn’t. One side of my face was paralyzed for months, but otherwise …”
The force of the blow knocked Stan unconscious. He woke up in the plane’s storage compartment.
Then he waited.
The plane took off the next afternoon. Some hours later, Blyleven slammed the ice pick into Lawrence Foster’s head. This time it worked. He went to the rear of the plane to drag Stan’s body from the compartment. Stan was ready. He jumped Blyleven and killed him, breaking his neck. Then he rigged the explosives to his former partner, put on the parachute, clutched the briefcase filled with cash, and waited for the landmarks.
After he bailed out, he spent the night in the desert, wrapped in the silk parachute. Before dawn, he buried the chute and began the twenty-mile hike to Holbrook. It took him all day. He followed a road, ducking behind rocks whenever an occasional car appeared.
“I drove my car to Mexico.” Stan’s voice had grown steadily weaker. I had to lean down to hear him. “Maybe I should have stuck to Blyleven’s original plan,” he said, “because after that, everything turned to shit.”
Somewhere in central Mexico Stan was stopped by the local police. He spoke little Spanish, and he may have misunderstood what they wanted. But rather than risking arrest, he offered them a bribe.
They took it.
In fact, they took the entire briefcase filled with money. Then they beat him half to death, partially crushing his larynx, and threw him in a territorial prison. Three years later he managed to escape. It took him another year to make his way back to the States.
“Those Mexican cops were probably living the high life in Acapulco,” Stan whispered, “and I was destitute in El Paso.”
He stole money and a car, and he drove to Colorado. Blyleven had told him a lot about Vivian and Chelsea—including that he’d left them with a fat insurance policy. Stan decided to try to get it.
“I figured I deserved it.” His voice was so weak now that I could hardly hear him. There was blood in his spittle. “What do you think?”
“Maybe so, Stan.”
He died before help arrived.
By then there were a dozen or so people standing around us in the rain. Including Roger Armis. The rain was coming down steadily now, a heavy drizzle that had already soaked my clothes. I resisted the urge to put on my jacket. Instead, I pulled it up over Stan’s face.
A sheriff’s car rolled into the lot, lights flashing. Roger Armis stepped forward and started to say something to me.
I stood and said, “Everybody make room for the cops. Go on, get out of here.”
I pushed Armis in the chest and held his eyes with mine. “All of you get out of here. None of this concerns you.”
He hesitated. Then he turned and walked away. Everyone else stayed.
34
I DANCED AROUND WITH the county sheriff and the Denver cops for the next few days. I kept repeating my story:
Manny kidnapped me and locked me in the truck of my car. He said he was going to meet Blyleven at Red Rocks and kill him. Then he was going to kill me. After he parked my car, I managed to escape from the trunk. Luckily, I kept a gun in there. I chased Manny. He shot the man with the scar. When he tried to shoot me, I killed him in self-defense.
The sheriff didn’t like it.
Lieutenant Dalrymple hated it.
But the physical evidence seemed to fit the facts. And really, no one was crying over the demise of Manny Mancusso. As for the man with the scar, they could only speculate who he was— his car and ID were both stolen. I figured that eventually they’d identify him through his fingerprints and army record. But nobody would really care. Not even Debbie Ogborn.
Finally, the police let me go.
The Reverend Franklin Reed exposed World Flock in a special televised sermon. He wept openly, baring his soul before God and the camera. He asked his parishioners to forgive him. They did. The collection plates were passed without further delay.
The police more or less forgave Reed, too, granting him immunity in return for turning state’s evidence. Matthew Styles, however, was ostracized by the church council and left alone to face charges of money laundering and fraud.
In Tucson, the lawyers for Joseph Scolla had no comment.
I phoned Roger Armis to tell him the situation was over. I also wanted to know how he and his family were getting along.
Thankfully, Chelsea wasn’t experiencing any post trauma from their brief encounter with Manny. Of course, her dad had been there to comfort her—even when locked in the trunk of the family car. Vivian, though, was still shaken by the recent events. She was receiving counseling. Roger was grateful that I hadn’t brought her to the attention of the police.
Grave Doubt (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 5) Page 20
