by Robert Greer
Damion froze in front of his computer screen, dumbfounded.
“You hear a ruckus up there, be prepared to use this.” Mario extracted a .38 police special from a nearby gunnysack and tossed it to Damion. “You do know how to use it, don’t you?”
“S-sure,” Damion stammered. Years earlier he’d been taught by Billy DeLong, a legendary black cowboy and friend of CJ’s, to handle everything from a .30-06 to a 9-mm. “But I’ve never shot at anything but antelope, game birds, and aluminum cans.”
Mario frowned and shook his head. “Problem there is, they don’t shoot back. Just stay put. If I’m not back down here in forty-five seconds, call CJ.” He nodded toward a wall-mounted phone across the room.
“Okay.”
Mario tapped the butt of the .44 with his right palm. “And Damion, what’s down here in this basement is for my protection. We don’t talk about it.” Mario started up the basement steps. “Anybody up there? I said …” A gunshot rang out from the suddenly opened door above before Mario could finish the question. Startled, Mario tumbled back down the steps, still clutching his .44 as the bullet that had missed him ricocheted off the basement floor. His head grazed the edge of the bottom step, opening a three-inch-long gash in his forehead. A second shot sent a bullet thwacking into one of the stairwell’s wooden support beams a half foot from his head.
The sound of the shots and the sight of Mario lying dazed and bleeding triggered something primal in Damion. Something that was as much a game on the line, fed by the ball competitive instinct, as it was one of survival. Clutching the .38 tightly with both hands, he raised the barrel, sighted on the open doorway, and squeezed off three quick shots. The sound of footsteps racing across the wooden floorboards above him, melded with the knowledge that someone had just tried to kill Mario, turned Damion suddenly fearless. Gun at the ready, he headed toward the stairs.
Dazed and bleeding, Mario screamed, “Damion, no! Call CJ.”
“But they may come back.”
“Let ’em,” said Mario, shaking his head, his speech noticeably slurred. “See that trunk over there next to the gunnysack?”
“Yeah.”
“It ain’t locked. Open it up.” Gulping air, Mario sat up, pressed his palm to his bleeding forehead, and leaned against the support beam.
Damion rushed over to the steamer-sized wooden trunk, threw back the top, and found himself staring down at two sawed-off, double-barreled shotguns. Beneath the shotguns he could see the muzzle of an M-16, a weapon he recognized as being identical to the one CJ had carried in Vietnam and now kept stowed in a navy footlocker in his garage.
“Pick your poison,” Mario said, watching Damion’s startled reaction.
Damion hefted one of the shotguns.
“Be careful—they’re loaded.” His eyes locked on the doorway above, Mario said, “Now hand me that Vietcong sprayer and call CJ.”
Clutching the weapons tightly under each arm, Damion walked across the room and handed the M-16 to Mario. Mario grabbed the gun one-handed. Leaning against the side of the stairs for support, he raised the muzzle and aimed it at the doorway. Smiling, and with his forehead a bloody mess, he said, “Now if our friend comes back, he’ll at least know he’s been in a war. Make that call to CJ, son.”
Randall Maxie hadn’t been prepared for the response he’d gotten after firing off his first round at Mario. Instead of a decrepit old man begging for his life, as Rollie Ornasetti had promised, Maxie had listened to three bullets whiz within inches of his head. Now, as he sped south on Federal Boulevard toward Ornasetti’s Lower Downtown law offices, cell phone in hand, with Ornasetti talking to him calmly on the other end of the line, Maxie was fuming. “It was like the dried-up old cocksucker had somebody down there waiting on me,” Maxie bellowed.
“Could be Floyd was there with him.”
“Maybe—who knows? I didn’t get a good look at the shooter. All I know is that whoever was down there with Satoni almost took my head off.”
“Could be it was a she,” said Ornasetti.
“Whatever. He, she, it. Doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the old geezer has turned this into something personal. The first time out of the chute, all I planned to do was scare him. Now I’ll very assuredly have to kill him.”
“Cool your jets, would you?” Ornasetti said, smiling at how surprisingly proper Maxie tended to sound even under stress. “I’ve got someone else who can handle my uncle.”
“Don’t bother with anyone else. Like I said, this has become personal.”
“Get off your high horse, Maxie. You know my policies. No petty side wars when it comes to business. Personal vendettas end up causin’ too many ancillary problems.”
Gritting his teeth, Maxie squeaked out an “Okay.”
“Good, because we’re flyin’ low and easy right now. I haven’t had a visit from either the cops or the feds, and you’ve given Mario a nice little shit-stain-inducin’ scare. Our only problem is, he could’ve made you. And if he did, I’d sure as hell have to put someone else on his case.”
“So what’s my job going to be? Sit around and feel offended?”
“Your job, my good friend, is to stay put until I make certain America’s sterling law enforcement community starts lookin’ to drop as many murder raps as they can on my beloved uncle’s doorstep. No more scare tactics for the moment. I want the boys in blue smellin’ Mario’s blood, not ours.”
“Is that it?”
“Yeah,” Ornasetti said coldly. “You got a problem with where I’m goin’ with this?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll be in touch. And remember, Maxie, no side wars. Later.” Ornasetti cradled the phone and sat back in his chair.
Maxie continued on to Lower Downtown and breezed past Ornasetti’s law offices without so much as a glance. The fact that someone had come close to killing him had his insides aching. He couldn’t stop thinking that the shooting incident at Satoni’s could turn out to be bad for business. Whoever had fired the three shots at him might’ve known who he was. They could’ve seen the rental car he’d parked a mile away from Satoni’s. That very moment, in fact, the shooter could’ve been laughing his head off, swapping stories about almost offing a big-time hit man, telling friends about how he’d outfoxed Randall Maxie. Those kinds of stories could harm his reputation, hurt his business, devalue stock that had been very hard-earned.
There were, however, a few things working to his advantage. Ornasetti had pulled him back for the moment, and that meant that, regardless of Ornasetti’s stance on the issue of personal wars, he had a window of opportunity to settle his score. Whoever had been in Satoni’s basement had no way of knowing that he could peg who they were by virtue of the fact that their vehicle had been parked in Satoni’s driveway, nuzzled up to the rear of Mario’s 1953 Buick Road-master classic. There was little chance, he told himself, that the SUV he’d seen belonged to anyone other than his shooter. He’d memorized the car’s Colorado license plate number, VXB4570, as he’d fled from Satoni’s, angrily reciting it to himself over and over until he’d called Ornasetti. Smiling and repeating the number almost gleefully, he made a U-turn and headed back for Satoni’s for a reassessment, hoping that the vehicle and its owner were still there, knowing that if they were, he’d have the opportunity to find out exactly who it was that he was going to have to kill.
Chapter 14
The Clear Creek County sheriff’s office reeked of mold and must, the consequence of a recent faulty low-bid overhead sprinkler system and the resulting flood after the sprinklers had showered most of the building for nearly an hour. As a result, all but one of Sheriff Gunther Tolls’s four Montana-blocked Stetsons had been damaged beyond salvage. The rescued hat now rested, along with a host of other items that had been drenched, as the centerpiece on a ten-foot-long “airing-out” picnic table that occupied the sheriff’s department’s lone conference room.
Tolls, out of uniform and dressed in street clothes; Lieutenant Gus Ca
valaris, outfitted in expensive designer-label jogging attire; and a pensive-looking Franklin Watts were seated in metal folding chairs arranged in a semicircle near the far corner of the room. All three men’s eyes were fixed on a burly FBI agent who stood a few feet away, gyrating and talking rapid-fire in front of a classroom-style demonstration easel.
The hazel-eyed agent’s face was badly pockmarked; his closely cropped salt-and-pepper crew cut was a lot more salt than pepper. Staring intently at the easel in front of him, he scratched his head thoughtfully before running his left index finger down the paper to where the third of six words was boldly printed in green. “So, here’s my point, gentlemen.” Ron Else came close to bellowing, wagging the Magic Marker in his right hand at the word. “Validation. The word is validation. And so far, gentlemen, I don’t see any.” Eyeing Watts, Else boomed, “All we’ve got, Mr. Watts, is your very reluctant word that the remains found in the Eisenhower Tunnel belonged to a man named Antoine Ducane.” Else frowned and shook his head. “Oh, I almost forgot. And, of course, the word of your friend, Cornelius McPherson, who as it turns out just happens to be dead. Two dead men who can’t talk to us ever again, gentlemen.” Else fixed a raised-eyebrow stare on Cavalaris and Tolls. “And one of your dead men once claimed that he could’ve told the world who really killed JFK.” Else forced back a chuckle. “No matter how you size it up, Sheriff, Lieutenant, that’s not much validation as far as I’m concerned.”
Watts, looking every bit the fish out of water, looked to the sheriff for support. Tolls responded with a thoughtful silence.
“Hey, I’m just the messenger here, sir,” Watts said finally. “I don’t know shit about no assassination or any killing you say took place down in Denver. I’m only here because the sheriff insisted on it, and all I know is that those body parts I was asked to identify along with Cornelius over in the morgue earlier, if somebody didn’t doctor ’em, sure enough belonged to Antoine Ducane.”
Restless and tired of being lectured by Else, Cavalaris spoke up. “Ducane’s not the i-i-issue here, Mr. Watts. My interest is in who killed Cornelius McPherson. If there’s a Kennedy assassination link, it’s a secondary one a-a-as far as I’m concerned.”
Ron Else flashed the other two men a knowing smile before locking eyes with Cavalaris. “Let me fill you in on something, Lieutenant. I’ve been involved in assassination linkage and follow-up for more than twenty-five years. Some people even call me a JFK assassination expert.” He paused to let his words gather steam. “Can you guess the number of Kennedy assassination tie-ins to local killings I’ve been called on to investigate in that time?” Else rolled his eyes and silently counted off numbers on the fingers of both hands. He held both hands up near his head surrender-style and said, “This many times ten. I’ve been called out in the blinding rain to listen to a lady peg her son-in-law as the killer because he had a rifle like Lee Harvey Oswald’s and the SOB had been abusing her daughter. I’ve had to listen to white supremacists from Cicero point their fingers at Black Muslims from Detroit, and Black Muslims point their fingers and even their guns right back. I’ve had to listen to defrocked mobsters, gangland stool pigeons, communists, atheists, born-again Christians, and skin-and-bones once-robust men on their deathbeds with HIV all claim to know who killed JFK. Not to mention my share of political leftists and right-wing nutcases, all with an agenda and JFK assassination information for sale.” Else frowned and pursed his lips as if trying to rid himself of a bad taste. “And you know what’s pulled me into the thick of things in almost every instance I’ve alluded to, gentleman? A so-called assassination-associated murder—or what I like to think of as a minor killing on top of a major killing, years after the fact. And you know what? Time after time, investigation after investigation, case after case, I end up wading my way through some time-consuming snipe hunt that in the end more often than not ends up pointing the fickle finger of fate right back at the person who initiated a bureau look-see in the first place.”
“Well, at least this time your finger won’t end up pointing at poor old Cornelius McPherson,” said the sheriff, whose response was punctuated by a vigorous nod from Franklin Watts. “He’s dead.” The sheriff eyed Watts’s bobbing head. “Franklin, think it’s time you leave. Everything’s gonna be police business from here.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Watts, quickly rising from his chair. Before turning to leave, he cast a look at Else that asked, Can I go? When Else gave him a quick nod, Watts eyed the sheriff apologetically, grabbed his hat, and slipped out the door.
Else waited for the better part of a minute after the door had slammed before he resumed talking. Tapping the easel with a ballpoint pen he’d taken out of his shirt pocket, he said, “You’re right, Sheriff. McPherson is dead, which brings us back to point five on my list: Other Connections. Could be McPherson and Ducane had their own sets of enemies.”
“Come on,” protested Cavalaris. “S-s-some old-time, lost-in-the-shuffle Colorado miner on the eve of retirement suddenly garners the kind of enemies who ride around in h-h-hitmobiles with blacked-out windows, and he just happens to get blown away in the front yard of a house that I later find out once belonged to a woman named Sheila Lucerne, who was originally from Louisiana—Antoine Ducane’s home turf? I’m not b-b-buying it.”
Ron Else shook his head. “All that’s according to your eyewitness. A very nervous eyewitness with total ass pucker. A central casting cookie cutter of a man with an idyllic little wife, a matching little idyllic white house, and an idyllic little pigtailed, rosy-cheeked grandchild. No, you come on, Lieutenant. Your almost too-perfect-to-be-true Mr. Watson has already admitted he knew our mystery woman, Sheila Lucerne. Could be she’s the reason Watson wanted McPherson silenced.”
“For what?”
“Maybe that house that you said Watson came by so easily after the Lucerne woman died in that car wreck you mentioned presented Watson with a problem. Could be the house was really Ducane’s. Maybe somebody didn’t like the idea that Watson ended up with it.”
Cavalaris shook his head. “So more than three decades after the fact, that person decides to shoot McPherson? H-h-horseshit! Why not shoot Watson?” Cavalaris eyed the smug-looking FBI agent suspiciously. “I don’t like where this is headed, Else. Either you’re holding back i-i-information, you’re purposely stonewalling, you think we’re stupid, or you don’t want us involved in this investigation. What the hell’s the story here?”
Eyeing Cavalaris and the sheriff as if they were recalcitrant school-children, Else said, “The story’s this, Lieutenant. I’ve outlined the same six things—I like to call them imperatives—that I always outline when I’m pulled back into the Kennedy assassination muck.” He aimed an index finger at the easel. “One, Historical Timelines; two, Motive; three, Validation; four, Witnesses; five, Other Connections; and six, Coincidence. And so far I can’t link either the Ducane or the McPherson murder to the Kennedy assassination in any way, shape, or form, other than coincidence. Bottom line’s this: Ducane was alive and well as late as the early 1970s, as far as I’ve been able to tell. That’s years after the Kennedy assassination.” Else slammed a fist into his right palm for effect. “And as far as I can tell, at first blush at least, Ducane had no reason to kill the president that we know of. This whole Ducane-McPherson thing has the smell of coincidence, coincidence nudged to the surface by a once-in-a-century earthquake and a trigger-happy press. Aside from Franklin Watts, I don’t have a single person alive who ever knew Antoine Ducane.” Else tapped the easel with his other index finger. “We’ve already discussed Validation and Other Connections, so I’d say we’ve come full circle, gentlemen.” Else cocked an insipid half smile.
Cavalaris slapped his forehead, flashed Else an acquiescent grin, and sarcastically said, “I get it now. Shit, am I slow? What you w-w-want is for us bumpkins to mosey on off the case and head back into our holes, just in case this time around you hit yourself a home run. Dumb-ass me. And I t-t-thought we were all just a bunch of
two-fisted good ol’ boys looking for a killer.”
“Watch what you say, Lieutenant. You’ve already said more than you should have in front of Watts.”
“No, you wait. I don’t c-c-care what you do with your Kennedy assassination investigation. And I don’t give one shit if you were sent here from LA to cover up, cuddle up, c-c-cogitate, or copulate. Whether you’re here to shore up the idea that Oswald killed Kennedy or to close the book on some assassination loose ends that the FBI, the White House, or the CIA are w-w-worried sick about doesn’t mean a whole lot to me. What I care about, Agent Else, is that back down in Denver, I have a murder investigation on my hands. And I sure as hell d-d-don’t need your permission or anybody else’s to pursue it.”
Else crossed his arms defiantly. “I’d mind my tongue if I were you, Lieutenant. You could find yourself stepping into extra-heavy muck here.”
“Thanks for the advice. I’ll t-t-take it to heart.” Cavalaris rose, pushed his chair back, and dusted off the seat of his pants.
“And Sheriff Tolls, just so I have a proper head count, what’s your position?” asked Else, clearly agitated.
“Afraid I have to stick with Lieutenant Cavalaris. After all, the two dead folks we’ve got on our hands turned up in our jurisdictions.”
Unfolding his arms, Else ran an index finger around the inside of his shirt collar before adjusting his tie. “Guess this really is still the Wild, Wild West. Have it your way, gentlemen. Just remember, the door swings both ways. We’ll talk some more. Count on it.”
When Sheriff Tolls stood and pivoted to leave, Else stepped over to the sheriff’s Stetson, scooped it up, and handed the hat to him. “’Til we meet again.”
Tolls slipped on his hat and adjusted it to his liking as all three men headed for the door. A few steps from the exit, Else stopped and offered the easel a final parting glance. Wrinkling up his nose in protest, he said, “Nice place you’ve got here, sheriff, except for the smell.”
