by Robert Greer
Ike Floyd had been a trailblazer in the Denver bail bonding game, the first black bail bondsman on the city’s notorious Bail Bondsman’s Row. It had taken him years filled with harassment by cops, threats from criminals, and a decade of being blackballed by the other bail bondsmen on the Row to establish himself as the city’s premier bail bondsman.
During CJ’s teenage years, Ike had given CJ the run of the building’s unused second floor, which now housed CJ’s apartment. Ever the loner, CJ had turned the then largely open space into his own separate world. The cherrywood-floored and vaulted-ceilinged getaway afforded him the chance to escape the sometimes harsh realities of the first floor. He’d tacked old cowboy-movie posters and a dozen or so Rio Grande & Santa Fe Railroad posters to just about every second-floor wall and covered the floors with threadbare Indian rugs that he’d picked up at garage sales for pennies on the dollar, using his Rocky Mountain News paper-route money or occasionally simply begged old ladies out of. However, none of those past comforts or the newer comfort of the apartment Ike had refurbished just before CJ’s return home were a match for the ghosts of Vietnam.
Sleep-deprived, cottonmouthed, and busy watching two city workers inspect a curbside storm drain several doors down from GI Joe’s, CJ didn’t see Wiley Ames remove the crayon-colored, dog-eared, yellow-and-green cardboard CLOSED sign from the front door of GI Joe’s and replace it with one that read OPEN. When Ames, raspy-voiced from a night of mouth-breathing and snoring, swung that door open, stepped outside, and said, “See you’re back,” CJ spun around and offered a startled “Yes.”
Ames, wearing a faded yoke-backed black-on-white cowboy shirt with two full sleeves, his armless left one flapping in the breeze, simply nodded, slipped the business end of the broom he was holding in his right hand down onto the sidewalk, and began sweeping. “First job of the day, every day—sweeping,” said Ames, moving briskly down the sidewalk in front of the store. Suddenly stopping his sweeping, he stared at CJ and said, “By the way, I’m Wiley Ames.”
“CJ Floyd,” came CJ’s clipped response.
“Initials stand for anything, Mr. Floyd?”
“Calvin Jefferson.”
“Well, it’s a pleasure, Calvin Jefferson. You back to have another gander at my wall?”
“Nope. Looking for something more specific this visit.”
“And that would be?”
“A license plate.”
Ames cocked a suspicious eyebrow and continued sweeping. “We’ve got quite a few sittin’ around.”
“The one I’m looking for would be porcelain.”
“Got a few of those rascals, too. You a collector?”
“Since I was a kid. But the hobby sorta got interrupted by a war.”
Ames stopped sweeping and tucked the broom handle under his stump. The look on his face said, Knew it. “War tends to do things like that.” He eyed his armless shirtsleeve. “Come on in the store. I’ll show you what we’ve got in the way of plates, and you can decide if they’re up to your standards. How long you been home from ’Nam?” he asked, pushing open the pawnshop’s front door.
“A couple of weeks,” said CJ, wondering how Ames had been able to peg him as a Vietnam vet so easily until he remembered that he’d been wearing his navy peacoat during his previous visit. “Did my peacoat give me away?”
“Nope.” Ames twisted the broomstick around beneath his armpit. “Wouldn’t say it was the peacoat at all.”
“What, then?”
Turning and staring directly into CJ’s eyes, Ames said, “The look on your face. It was the kinda look you see on the faces of folk who’ve been through hell. Yep, I’d say that look pretty much told me your tale.” He nodded and set the broom aside. “Enough about that though. Come on and let me take you through the shop.”
During the hour they walked the store together, and, uncertain exactly why he was doing so, CJ opened up to Ames. Told him about growing up on Bail Bondsman’s Row, about his passion for collecting antiques, even shared a few bits and pieces about his two gunboat tours of Vietnam with the antique-savvy amputee. Occasionally reflective and seemingly all ears, Ames said very little about himself.
In workman-like fashion, sometimes sounding like a docent at a museum, Ames walked CJ through the pawnshop’s eight hundred square feet of floor space, space often filled to the rafters with unclaimed possessions and the collateral of people’s lives. As they talked softly and undisturbed, CJ felt more and more at home, relaxed and amazingly in sync with a man who quite obviously shared his passion for collecting.
They spent several minutes at the Wall of the West, where Ames explained the history behind every photograph and painting. The artist who’d painted the branding scene, titled simply Property Tag, had enjoyed some degree of artistic success, according to Ames. Rights to the use of the image had been bought by a New York advertising agency that had for a time marketed the custom-made cowboy boots of a bookmaker client using the image. Problem was, Ames said dolefully, “the young man who painted the thing was pretty much a hippie strung totally out on weed. Died over on Arapahoe Street in the middle of winter a few years back from hypothermia. Shame. A god-awful shame.”
When CJ asked, “Who took the tank photo?” hoping to find out a little more about Ames, a mournful sounding Ames answered, “A friend of mine. He’s dead. So are the other two fellows up there on that turret. All of ’em killed just a couple of days after that picture was taken.” Ames eyed his shirtsleeve and shook his head. “Least all I lost was a partial piece of redundant equipment.”
CJ nodded understandingly. “Ever wonder why you got to come home and your buddies didn’t?”
“For a good long while I did. Don’t much matter now, though. Life’s ups and downs tend to make a man forget about the past.”
“Ever have night sweats and problems sleeping after you came home?”
“I had ’em, sure. Flashbacks, nightmares, and whatever else I suspect a man’s mind is capable of conjurin’ up. They lessen with time. Yours will, too,” he said, patting CJ reassuringly on the shoulder.
“What did you do about the flashbacks before they calmed down?”
“Drank myself silly, for the most part. Don’t advise doin’ that.”
CJ swallowed hard and eyed the floor. “You ever go to the VA for, ahhh …”
“Professional help?” said Ames. “Nope, but I probably should’ve. What I did mostly was drink. Drank enough to float a boat to China, I’d guess. And I would’ve gone on drinkin’ if I hadn’t met the man who owns this place. Turns out he was a World War II vet, just like me. Never turned himself inside out the way I had, though, thank God. Name’s Harry Steed. He got me hooked up with the Salvation Army. Started me to dryin’ out, servin’ folks in a lot worse shape than me meals, and hangin’ out in, of all places, a damn soup kitchen. More important than all those things, though, he gave me a job. Let me know that he trusted me and that he cared.” Ames eyed CJ thoughtfully. “Hope you got people around you like that, too.”
“I’ve got an uncle and a bunch of friends.”
“Then stick with ’em, the way I’ve stuck with Harry Steed. Set some goals for yourself, and maybe even dream.”
Thinking, Easier said than done, CJ simply nodded.
Sensing from the look on CJ’s face that he’d made his point, Ames shifted gears. “Whatta you collect besides license plates?”
“Just about anything to do with the West,” CJ said, glancing up toward a dust-covered skylight. “Spurs, bits, cattle-brand books, chaps.”
“Got a favorite among any of those that you’d never part with?”
“My 1906 Colorado brand book, I suppose,” CJ said, continuing to eye the skylight.
“Good,” said Ames, aware that turn-of-the-century brand books from just about any Western state were not only collectible but quite valuable. Smiling and nodding to himself as if he’d discovered a much-needed piece of a puzzle, he said, “Then you’ve got yourself a cornerstone for
one of your passions. Somethin’ to help move you ahead. You tuck that brand book away in the safest place you can, then go out and find yourself another brand book. One that’s older and rarer. There’re rarer ones out there, aren’t there?”
“Sure. The first one issued in Colorado was in 1883.”
“Then look for that book and every one in between it and your 1906 cornerstone. Make it your life’s quest if you have to, but keep on lookin’ ’til you find every book out there from A to fuckin’ Z. It’s a little mind-occupyin’ trick that Harry Steed taught me.”
“That could take years.”
“That’s my point. More than anything else, a man needs a mission in life. No different from the missions the navy assigned to you durin’ Vietnam, except this time around there’s no killin’ involved.” Noting the quizzical look on CJ’s face, Ames said, “I know what you’re thinkin’—Old Wiley’s a little touched. But look at it this way. I’m twenty-five years or so down the road from where you’re standin’. Give my methods a shot. Won’t hurt one bit to try.”
“Okay,” CJ said with a shrug.
Sensing that he needed to gain the young black man’s full trust if he expected to move him ahead, and uncertain why he was about to take someone he’d met only twice into his confidence, although he’d realized the first time they’d met that they had something strangely in common, Ames said, “Why don’t we have a gander at some license plates and a few other things I think are worth your seein’?” Moving to lock the front door and placing the CLOSED sign back in place, he waved for CJ to follow him toward the rear of the pawnshop. “I think you’ll like what you see.”
When they reached the back of the store, CJ noticed a doorway he hadn’t seen the previous day. Framed in white and just barely set back into the wall, the five-foot-high, three-foot-wide door had a security lock and a large wood screw in place of a doorknob.
When Ames pulled out a key, slipped it into the lock, turned the key, and pushed the door inward, motioning for CJ to follow him, CJ had the sense that he might be stepping into some kind of lost world.
Grunting as he stooped, Ames flipped on a forty-watt light-bulb and stepped down into a catacomb-like space no more than three feet high. “You gotta squat a bit at first, but it opens up,” he said, moving deeper into what CJ suspected might once have been a crawl space. A few seconds later Ames stood erect in a twelve-by-twelve-foot room framed by cinder-block walls. Realizing as he also stood up in the dimly lit, confined space and stared at Ames that the World War II vet’s head seemed far too large for the rest of his noticeably slender body and that his broken-veined drinker’s nose seemed even more bulbous than it had earlier, CJ found himself thinking he’d stumbled into the land of Oz.
When he caught sight of three four-foot-long display cases similar to those in the main store hugging the walls, each stocked to the gills with antiques, he whispered, “Damn.” A padlocked, drab green wooden army footlocker with the name Ames stenciled in orange on its face hugged the fourth wall.
As their eyes adjusted to the light, Ames pointed at the footlocker. “Dragged that government-issued piece of kindling across most of Germany and half of France back in ’44.” He knelt and ran a hand across the footlocker’s badly splintered, dusty top.
A look of amazement crossed CJ’s face as he tried to imagine how something so fragile-looking could have been transported across half a continent during a war and survived intact.
Ames dusted off his hands. “Never really brought anyone back here before except for Harry, the electrician Harry had do the wiring and lighting, and a couple of women, of course.” He winked and smiled.
“Your inner sanctum?”
“You might say that. I come back here to think off and on, but mainly it’s just a place where I keep my important stuff.”
“I’ve got a place like that myself,” said CJ, feeling more and more convinced that he and Wiley Ames had a lot more in common than the killing fields of war.
Nodding as if he’d half expected CJ’s response, Ames slipped a key out of one of his pockets, inserted it into the footlocker’s padlock, removed the lock, and lifted the lid.
CJ was so busy looking at the contents of one of the display cases that he missed the fact that Ames had started laying antique inkwells, spurs, bits, miniature Indian pots, and even a few license plates out on the tiled floor. As he continued eyeing what was in the display case, he could hardly believe his eyes. There were rare books by the dozen, including pristine-looking hardback copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and The Postman Always Rings Twice. “Are the books in the case first editions?” he asked.
“Every one of ’em. And every one’s signed.”
“Damn,” said CJ, counting off titles on the spines of an additional twenty rare books.
“Nice collection, don’t you think?” Ames said proudly.
“Absolutely.” It was the only word CJ seemed able to dredge up right then. When he turned away from the display case to see what Ames had spread out on the floor, he asked, “How long did it take you to collect everything?”
“Most of my life,” Ames said with a wink. “Took me forty years, drunk and sober, to collect the spurs.” He pointed at several sets of rare August Buermann spurs he’d lined up on the floor. “Not another six pair like ’em in the world.”
“Hell of a stash.”
“Not many license plates here to show you, but I’ve got a few,” Ames said, handing CJ a 1958 Colorado plate, the only Colorado plate to ever feature a downhill skier.
Admiring the plate, which was in reasonably good condition but not nearly as good as the one he owned, CJ said, “Nice.”
“Got a lot more here for us to look at,” said Ames, digging back into the footlocker. Eyeing the display cases, CJ said, “Let’s do it, then.”
For the next hour and a half the two war veterans examined most of Wiley’s collection of prizes, with Wiley recounting in detail how he’d hunted down the rarest of them.
They also talked about war. About their close shaves with death, about friends who’d died, and about the luck involved in making it home. They spoke in hushed, almost reverent tones about burning Vietnamese villages and destroying German towns, and when it was clear to both of them that there was no more right then to talk about or tell, Ames packed everything he’d taken out of the footlocker and display cases back into its proper place. Snapping the footlocker’s lock closed and moving over to one of the display cases, he said, “You take what I’ve said to you to heart, you hear me, son?”
He didn’t wait for CJ’s response but instead slid the back door to the display case open and reached deep inside. “Got one last thing for you to look at. Ain’t really that rare, but it is one of my favorites.” He slipped a porcelain plate that had been pretty much hidden off the shelf, rubbed the dust off on his shirtsleeve, and handed the plate to CJ. “Rare but not so rare, as they say in the trade.”
He watched CJ study the plate for a good half minute before saying, “It’s a Colorado municipal plate from the town of Monte Vista. Issued around 1909.”
The plate, which clearly wasn’t mint, had several nicks in the porcelain near the top right-hand corner, but in CJ’s eyes it was absolutely flawless. The number 87 sat squarely in the middle of the plate, flanked on the right by two small letters, an M over a V.
As CJ continued to stare at the plate, Ames said, “It’s the equivalent of that brand book of yours from 1906. My cornerstone of sorts. I come look at it from time to time, generally when I feel like I’ve been runnin’ against the wind.”
Handing the Monte Vista plate back to Ames, CJ said, “I’ll remember that the next time I’m up against it.”
“You do that,” said Ames, putting the plate back in its place on the shelf. “Now, how about we go?” he said, flashing CJ a final satisfied wink. “I’m thinkin’ we’ve had ourselves enough fun for one day.”
Chapter 3
“You’re a stubborn
man, Ames. Stubborn, above it all, and when you get right down to it, just plain funny-acting. And you’re a thief.” The person talking long-distance to Wiley Ames checked the clock on the wall. “Should be just about sundown there in Denver. Sunset in the Rockies. Pretty as a postcard, I bet. So how about it, Ames? You playing ball or not?”
“I’ve told you before. The only thing I’ll be playing as far as you’re concerned will be ‘Taps,’ or maybe ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ at your funeral.”
“Funny, Ames. Real funny. Now, here’s a little something less rib-tickling for you to think about. Deliver the goods you and your Chinese buddy Chin promised, or you’ll both be too dead to be sorry you didn’t. And remember, I’m never more than a few minutes from your doorstep, old chap.”
“Go pick your nose and look for your brains in the snot, asshole.” Ames slammed down the receiver, gritted his teeth, and nervously rubbed the end of his stump. His lip quivered as he rose from the pressback wooden chair behind his desk and walked from the small study in his Congress Park condominium to his living room, where he stared out the bay window.
He loved his neighborhood, a place filled with Denver and Colorado political history, tree-lined streets, and a healthy mix of old wags like himself and energetic young people. He never could have afforded the remodeled, always shady northern half of what had once been a three-thousand-square-foot, craftsman-style home if it hadn’t been for his boss, Harry Steed, who’d lent him the money for the down payment. The only downside to the deal was that Steed, who understood more than any person he’d ever met about how to make money, had gotten to take the principal and interest stemming from the deal out of Ames’s paycheck every month.
Angry and shaking, Ames thought about having a drink, knowing full well that he couldn’t. There was no way he’d let Harry or himself down by jumping off the sobriety wagon he’d ridden on for so many years. His dealings with Chin, unfortunately, would eventually come out. There’d be no way of stopping that, and as the voice on the phone had said, he was, in fact, in a roundabout way, a thief. Even so, he’d been in worse straits before, and he expected he’d be able to weather the current storm. During his days as an alcoholic he’d slept beneath bridges, lived in taped-together cardboard refrigerator boxes, and once worn the same filthy clothes for a full winter. On top of that, he’d survived a war, and if push came to shove he expected that he’d be able to outrun allegations of being a thief.
