by Robert Greer
CJ responded with a nod.
“Last question, Floyd. What’s your c-c-connection to Sheila Lucerne? Carl Watson says you knew her.”
“Yeah,” said CJ, hoping the look on his face didn’t telegraph the fact he was lying.
“Old girlfriend?”
“Nope. Just a friend,” said CJ, keeping a straight face.
“Well, try not to end up like her. You just m-m-might if you keep nosing around people’s houses late at night uninvited.”
“Yeah,” said CJ, aware that a new first priority would be to find out all he could about a woman named Sheila Lucerne.
“Gonna let you go, Floyd. You’ve got your instructions. Don’t come within twenty blocks of this place. Get on up, and I’ll uncuff you.”
Cavalaris unlocked the handcuffs, slipped them into the pocket of his sport coat, took two steps backward into the mushy grass, and looked down the street. “Vehicle down the street yours?” he asked, eyeing CJ’s showroom-mint drop-top 1957 Chevy Bel Air.
“Sure is.”
Cavalaris whistled. “I guess you really do deal in antiques—at least on some le-le-level. Makes me wonder what else you’re into. Best get outta here, Floyd, before I do some more dig-dig-digging.”
Massaging his wrists, CJ pivoted and, without a word, walked down the street to the Bel Air and slipped behind the wheel. Eyes glued to the road, he cranked the engine and slowly drove away. When he reached the end of the block, he glanced back over his shoulder. Cavalaris had disappeared into the darkness. As he made a quick left turn onto Exposition Avenue, and what was now going to be a very late dinner date with Mavis, he couldn’t get the mystery woman, Sheila Lucerne, out of his mind.
Thirty minutes after he’d watched the taillights of CJ Floyd’s Bel Air disappear into the night, Gus Cavalaris, seated in his newly appointed office in Denver’s recently constructed, surprisingly non-institutional-looking District 3 police station, called his longtime friend Otis Billups, a Five Points–based black cop whom he knew from their days together at the Denver Police Academy. When Billups, who he knew would be at home studying for the police lieutenant’s test, answered, Cavalaris said, “Gus here, man. How’s the cr-cr-cramming going?”
Billups, sweating bullets over a set of sample tests, said, “Fuckin’ peachy, Gus. How ’bout you?”
“Just fine, j-j-just fine. I know you’re doing the lieutenant drill, so I’ll be brief. You can make my day peachy too if you’ll give me the lowdown on a guy named CJ Floyd. I had a run-in with him tonight. Operates out of your p-p-part of town, from what I’ve been able to gather. What’s his story?”
Billups laughed and picked up a spoon to stir the half-eaten contents of a bowl of chili that was sitting on the kitchen countertop where he was studying. “Surprised Floyd would be over in your highbrow neck of the woods, Gus, unless maybe he’s workin’ a case.”
“I think he is,” said Cavalaris.
“Um,” said Billups. “Well, here’s the lowdown. Floyd’s your basic tough-ass old-school brother with plenty of street smarts. He was born and bred down here on the Points. He’s a bail bondsman, and he does a little bounty huntin’ on the side. Did two tours of Vietnam and brought himself home a Navy Cross. He has an office down on Bondsman’s Row that he runs with a great big sista who’s an ex-marine. Girl’s got tits that won’t quit. Name’s Flora Jean Benson. Hear tell Floyd spends a lot of time these days dealin’ antiques. What’s he done?”
“Nothing I can prove. And that’s the problem. I got a call from a couple whose front yard played host to a drive-by shooting over in Bonnie Brae the other night. They said a big black man, who turned out to be Floyd, was st-st-standin’ at their front door asking questions. Turns out the guy who bought it in the drive-by is the same guy who found a bunch of body parts that our earthquake coughed up out of the Eisenhower Tunnel last week.”
“Yeah, I heard all about that tunnel thing, and your drive-by too,” said Billups. “How do you think Floyd’s involved?”
“Don’t know,” said Cavalaris. “But you can damn sure bet he is. I was ho-ho-hopin’ you could walk me into some kinda Floyd connection.”
Billups shrugged. “Can you give me anything else to go on?”
Cavalaris stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Ever heard of a woman named Sheila Lucerne?”
“Nope.”
“D-d-damn. I thought that might be the c-c-connection. How about the guy who bought it over in Bonnie Brae? Name was Cornelius McPherson. Any connection you know of between that name and Floyd?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Shit,” said Cavalaris, frustrated. “This is big, Otis. I know it, so I’m gonna toss you something that’s t-t-top-drawer confidential. You’re gonna have to be dead-man quiet about it. Turns out that McPherson and that dismembered guy they found up at the Eisenhower Tunnel both might have been linked to the JFK assassination. And the f-f-fuckin’ bureau’s involved. They even sent an agent out from LA to take a look. Now, does that info shed any new light on Floyd or any of his connections?”
“Sure does,” said Billups, knocking the stack of papers he’d been studying onto the floor. “Sure in the hell does.”
“Okay, okay!” Cavalaris broke into an eager smile. “So what’s the c-c-connection?”
“My guess is that your Floyd connection is Mario Satoni.”
“What? I th-th-thought he was long gone, out of the business.”
“So they say, but it really don’t matter. Satoni’s your Floyd link, trust me. Word on the street down here in Five Points has had it for years that Floyd’s uncle once saved Satoni’s life. Shit, Satoni and Floyd are pretty much blood brothers.”
“My, my, my. The th-th-things we learn when we kick over a few rocks.”
“Want me to dig up any more on Floyd?” Billups asked, leaning over and straining to retrieve his toppled papers.
“No. I’ll d-d-do the diggin’ on my own. Th-th-thanks for the info, Otis. You’re the man.”
“Always think of myself that way,” Billups said with a chuckle. “Watch yourself on this one, Greek. It has a hell of a mob smell to it, and from the way you’re stutterin’, I can see it’s got you goin’. The JFK killin’! Damn! Now, that’s somethin’!”
“You never heard me mention the initials JFK,” said Cavalaris, aware that his longtime friend’s take on the frequency of his stuttering was meant to be helpful.
“Never heard a word. Been too busy studyin’.”
“You’ll pass. Hell, they b-b-bumped a stutterer like me up to lieutenant, didn’t they?” Cavalaris said with a chuckle as he hung up.
Ron Else liked to think of his job as more than third-level mop-up, but down deep he knew that for the last twenty years that was exactly what he’d been doing—mopping up conspiracy piss. And that was exactly what he’d been doing for the past half hour—mopping up, getting a third shot at the still unsettled Carl and Janet Watson—logging in time behind a nosy black bail bondsman and a stuttering cow-town homicide lieutenant.
The Watsons, familiar now with the interrogation drill, had been cooperative and even overly cordial, impressed by the fact that an FBI agent was taking the time to talk to them. Else, however, hadn’t gotten any more out of the weary couple than he suspected Lieutenant Cavalaris had been able to dredge up. Janet Watson had been less talkative than her frank and forthcoming husband, who, despite his easygoing manner and classic blend-into-the-crowd looks, appeared to Else to be a man who had something brewing beneath his calm facade.
He left the Watsons’ home, encouraging them to call him if the black man named Floyd reappeared or if they remembered anything they’d forgotten to tell him, and made a point of walking off the front yard crime scene. Tracking back and forth across the recently watered front yard and eyeing the direction from which the shots that had cut McPherson down had come, according to Carl Watson, Else tried to judge how expert a marksman the shooter would have to have been to pull off a dead-certain kill shot in the
subdued evening light. Concluding that he was dealing with a professional, he continued toward his car, aware that there was something intriguingly eerie, even almost plausible, about the stories of everyone he’d spoken to since his arrival in Denver. The prideful, stuttering Lieutenant Cavalaris, the country load of a sheriff, Gunther Tolls, the put-upon, sad-faced former miner, Franklin Watts, and now the Watsons—they all seemed to be solid citizens. They appeared far different from the JFK conspiracy nutcases he was used to encountering.
For the first time in years, he had the sense that he’d run up against something that was more than just another piss-mopping detail. In the end, he figured he’d return to LA as he always did, reeking as usual of conspiracy piss. But for now he felt an exhilarating rush that had him assembling a list of investigative must-dos in his head. The most important one at the moment was to put an FBI face on the black man who’d beaten him to the Watsons’ doorstep that evening: CJ Floyd.
Chapter 16
CJ had put the issue of a little police haranguing behind him as he floated on a sea of alcohol-intensified calm and postcoital bliss, angled across Mavis’s bed, her warm, nude body curled against him. Suddenly his cell phone began ringing on the nightstand near his head, intruding on the lingering pleasure.
Mavis snuggled closer and said, “Don’t answer it.”
“Have to—got some things cookin’.”
Mavis flashed her best childish pout and wagged an index finger at him. “Let it simmer.”
“I won’t be but a minute. Promise.” Flipping the phone open, he said, “Hello.”
Julie Madrid’s response was filled with tension. “I’ve been trying to reach you all evening, CJ. We need to talk.”
CJ eyed the antique school clock on the wall facing him, shook his head, and rose onto an elbow. “It’s almost 11:30, Julie. Can it wait ’til tomorrow?”
“No! We need to talk right now, CJ. Our friendship depends on it.”
CJ swallowed hard and sat up in bed; Mavis followed suit. There was no need to pretend he didn’t know why Julie was calling. “Damion?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” Julie said tersely. She wanted to say more, to ask why CJ had facilitated Damion’s friendship with a onetime mobster—but she didn’t, and she wouldn’t. Not until she and CJ, the man who had rescued her from a life of playing the victim and had once threatened to beat her physically abusive, now dead ex-husband within an inch of his life if he ever again so much as looked at her funny, stood face to face.
“I’ll be right there,” said CJ, feeling the muscles in his chest tighten.
“I’ll be waiting here with Damion,” Julie said, cradling the phone.
“What’s the matter?” asked Mavis, reaching across the bed to turn on the lamp on the opposite nightstand.
“I’ve run into a little problem with Julie and Damion.”
“Are they in trouble?” Mavis asked, taking in the tortured look on CJ’s face.
CJ paused to gather his thoughts before answering. “Not really.”
“You didn’t answer my question, CJ.”
“It’s a long story, babe. Bottom line is, somehow Damion’s gotten himself tangled up in a problem that’s linked to Mario.”
“Mario the onetime mobster, or Mario the antiques dealer?”
“A little bit of both, I’m afraid.” CJ moved to get out of bed. “I’ll handle it.”
“Don’t be so blasé, CJ. It’s not as if you’re cataloging one of your antiques or bonding some lowlife out of jail.” Mavis watched CJ walk dejectedly across the room toward the chair he’d draped his clothes over earlier. “What did Damion do?”
CJ shook his head and sighed. “This afternoon he took a couple of shots at someone who might’ve been trying to take Mario out. He just got around to mentioning it to Julie. Guess I should’ve told her myself.”
“My God, CJ! The boy just turned twenty.”
CJ slipped on his shirt and nodded, suppressing the urge to remind Mavis that when he was Damion’s age he had been in Vietnam manning a .50-caliber machine gun on the aft end of a navy gunboat. “Looks like I bought myself a problem hooking Damion up with Mario and that damn virtual store of ours.” Eyeing Mavis and buttoning his shirt, he asked, “Got any advice?”
“Tread lightly, CJ. You’re dealing with something that’s way out of bounds for you.”
“How’s that?”
Mavis shook her head knowingly. As street-savvy and well-schooled in the ways of the world as the man she loved was, he never ceased to amaze her with his lack of understanding of certain fundamental things. Choosing her words carefully, she said, “Like it or not, you’ve made yourself a lightning rod between a mother and her son.”
“But it’s Julie and Damion.”
“A mother and her son, CJ. Do I need to repeat it?”
“No.” Fully dressed, CJ walked across the room and kissed Mavis softly on the forehead.
“Want me to come?” she asked, looking up at him.
“No. This is on me.” CJ flashed her an uncertain smile and moved to leave the room. As his run-over Roper boots thumped across the bedroom’s hardwood floor and then downstairs to the first floor, Mavis’s words, a mother and her son, kept echoing in his head.
After two days of on-again, off-again rains, the humidity in New Orleans was in the energy-zapping 90s, and the murky gray sky had what Crescent City old-timers liked to call a dead man’s cast. Carmine Cassias thought that things might never get back to normal after the city’s devastating 2005 flood. He inhaled a sinusful of the sour, faintly musty odor that seemed now to be always present in the air, eyed the dozen corporate-league bowling trophies that his trucking company had won over the years, and switched the phone he’d had pressed to his right ear for the past ten minutes to his left side. Shaking his head and thinking more about what had happened to the city he loved than the conversation he was having, he said, his voice a low rumble, “She’s fuckin’ disappeared. Goddamn it, Ornasetti! That presents us with a problem. You and me and, most of all, the organization.”
“So go find her,” Rollie Ornasetti said, unperturbed.
Cassias, the reigning and increasingly rotund head of Louisiana’s ambiguous and profitable organized crime family, gritted his teeth. “Go find her?” he said mockingly. “Listen up, you nitwit. Get fresh with me and I’ll leave you out there swingin’ in the breeze with nothin’ but your nuts flappin’. I shoulda known when you called the other day about Ducane that somethin’ more than what you were tellin’ me was up, especially since your MO has always been to massage the dogshit outta the truth. Marcello, God rest his soul, always claimed that was how you wormed your way into the Mongoose thing in the first place—stretchin’ the truth. Too bad he didn’t have me around to warn him about your ass back then.”
Cassias paused, eyed a man with a clean-shaven head and a pencil-thin mustache who was seated across the room from him, and popped a breath mint into his mouth. Savoring the burst of flavor, he flashed the man the barest hint of a nod. “Tell you what I’m gonna do,” he said, turning his attention back to Ornasetti. “I’m gonna have one of my people, a little sharecroppin’ colored boy I know, sweep Willette Ducane’s parish one last time. I’ll have him rattle a few cages and pinch a few nipples for me. And if we don’t turn her up after that, I’m gonna push any problems I have up your way. Bottom line’s this, Ornasetti. I’ll sell your fuckin’ ass for lunch money. Got it? I don’t need anybody, especially the cops or the feds, lookin’ into your shit and screwin’ up my thing.”
“It won’t come to that,” Ornasetti shot back defensively. “There’s no way of tracin’ anything about Mongoose back to me. Besides, I’ve got a real live scapegoat waiting in the wings. I made certain of that way back when Ducane forced my hand. Now that Ducane’s remains have been discovered, sooner or later some eager beaver with a tin shield’s bound to stumble across the little nugget of evidence that places the Ducane killin’ on my sweet old uncle’s doorstep. It’s jus
t a matter of time—trust me.”
“Hope you’re right. ’Cause if you’re not, you’re the one’s gonna end up a scapegoat.”
“I’ve got it handled,” Rollie said smugly. “But if you find the Ducane woman, deal with her.”
“Plug up your own shit, Ornasetti. Where the hell do you get off shoutin’ orders at me?”
“It’s plugged,” said Ornasetti, aware that there was more than a little bit of Carlos Marcello’s fire present in his second cousin.
“Better be,” said Cassias, preparing to hang up. “Just remember what I said. It’s your nuts that’ll be swingin’.” Slamming down the phone, Cassias shook his head and flashed Ornasetti a long-distance finger. Pausing to catch his breath, he glanced again at the man across the room. “Think you better make a call to Colorado.”
The man nodded without answering.
“And tell him not to make a mess. Nice and clean. I don’t wanna chance any comebacks.”
The still-silent man rose, nodded, and turned to leave the room. He was almost to the door when Cassias mumbled, as if to assure himself that he was making the right decision, “Fuckin’ dumbshit. Does he actually think Marcello or Trafficante or even Handsome Johnny R. woulda given him a fuckin’ free lifetime pass? Shit, no. He’s a fuckin’ fool—a fuckin’ fool to the core.”
Willette Ducane had scooted herself up to the hundred-year-old walnut table with the ugly gouge just after 9 p.m., making certain as she did that she had a view out of the room’s only window. Word had filtered down to her that folks were looking for her, so she’d placed her .38 on the table along with a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s and spent the next two and a half hours sucking on sassafras jawbreakers, sipping JD on ice, and reexamining every item in the shoebox full of cards, letters, and papers that Antoine had sent between 1963 and his disappearance as well as the notes he’d jotted the day Kennedy had died. As always, she intermittently found herself eyeing the wood grain and the ugly gouge, and every once in a while she caught herself staring briefly out the kitchen window. But now, as she sifted through the last of Antoine’s correspondence, her focus was on the three pages of notes that Antoine had jotted in a spiral-bound notebook the day of the JFK assassination. Those three sheets of paper, brown with age, had curled on themselves at the bottom. She tried not to cry as she flipped through the pages and studied them. Each sheet was filled with notes or sketches or Antoine’s hastily printed queries to himself. The queries made a lot more sense to her now than they had when she’d first read them years earlier and cried like a baby.
