by Robert Greer
“Where’d you hear that?” CJ asked, giving Rosie a quick high five before pulling up a nearby stool.
“Coletta Newby. She stopped in ’bout an hour ago and filled up that little MG of hers. Said you kept Leander Moultry from gettin’ brained by her half-brother, Billy, over at Nobby’s last night.”
“I did,” said CJ, looking chagrined. “But Billy got himself killed a few hours later.”
“Heard that, too. Terrible thing.”
“Any rumors floating around about who out there might’ve punched Billy’s ticket?” asked CJ with what seemed to Rosie to be a strangely deep-seated earnestness.
“Leander, of course. Only name I’ve heard. You know, CJ, if I didn’t know better, I’d peg you as some inquisitive cop.”
“And you’d be wrong. Unc just asked me to nose around a little, you know, on account of his connection to Billy’s mamma, Marguerite.”
“Oh.” Rosie nodded understandingly. “Ain’t really heard much, but I can pretty much tell you why Billy bought the farm.”
CJ snapped a bag of corn nuts off a half-empty display rack, opened the bag, and popped a handful of the salty nuts into his mouth. “Go ahead,” he mumbled, munching.
“The stupid blockhead has been flashin’ the money he won at Policy around the Points left and right. Even gave me a little taste of it. Paid me fifty-five bucks the other day to wash, wax, and tune up that junker Plymouth of his.”
“Sounds like Billy was itching for a visit from Bonnie and Clyde.”
“Better than takin’ another hit from that leech of a half-sister, Coletta. The girl was into him for ten grand, easy. I know for a fact Billy’s the one who put up a good slice of the money it took to set her up in that bullshit dance studio of hers that went south while you were in ’Nam. The place stayed afloat for about a year. Folded four or five months before you come home. Billy was mad as shit about losin’ his money. Lots of folks say he was thinkin’ about takin’ Coletta to court. Wouldn’ta made no difference if he did. No way in the world she coulda ever paid him back. Close to every dime she makes sales-clerkin’ at the May D&F goes to keepin’ that connivin’, saxophone-playin’ live-in of hers in whiskey and silks.”
“Lannie Watkins?”
“Yeah.” Rosie nodded and frowned.
“That’s the second time this morning his name’s come up.”
“Here’s a third. When Coletta stopped in here for gas, most of the front seat of her car was jam-packed fulla Billy’s clothes. Recognized ’em right off. All iridescent and showy, you know how he was. She even had a couple of them Panama straw hats he was so fond of wearin’. I think she was takin’ the stuff to Lannie. You ask me, it’s sorta sick. The man ain’t even cold yet and she’s givin’ away his clothes. How the hell’d she get Billy’s clothes, anyway?”
Shrugging and storing the information away for later retrieval, CJ asked, “Anybody else who might’ve had it in for Billy?”
“Nobody I can think of ’sides Leander. Nobody’s seen him around since he and Billy locked horns. Word on the street is the cops are dyin’ to hear his story.”
CJ stroked his chin and popped another handful of corn nuts into his mouth. “Leander’s wired a little strange, I’ll give you that, but I’m not sure about him being a killer.”
Rosie flashed CJ an insightful look. “Things around here have changed a lot since you went to Vietnam, CJ. Ain’t no way of tellin’ what folks are capable of no more. People been at each other’s throats over that war. Choosin’ up sides and pointin’ fingers, if you know what I mean. And not just white folks—black folks, too. There’s a bucketful of tension over Vietnam, CJ. The kind that can turn somebody with a few loose wires into a killer.”
“What’s all that got to do with Leander?” CJ asked, eyeing the foot-long scar running down the back of his left forearm, a souvenir from mortar-shell shrapnel.
Surveying the room as if to make certain no one was listening and lowering his voice, Rosie said, “Leander’s got connections downtown, CJ. The high-rankin’ political kind. Word makin’ the rounds is he’s an informant for the cops and that his job is to finger everybody from war protesters to dope dealers down here on the Points.”
CJ laughed. “There’s no way in hell that little weasel would’ve been authorized by anybody to go after information worth killing for.”
“Maybe not. But I know for certain that Leander’s one of the reasons the cops have been able to pretty much wipe out the dope traffic around here. Maybe the cops and the politicians were through usin’ Leander, so they set him up for killin’ Billy to wipe the slate clean.”
“Sounds to me like you’ve been watching too many spy movies, Rosie, but I’ll be sure to ask Leander about his snitching ways when I see him.”
“Good luck findin’ him. He’s gone underground, from what I hear.”
“I’ll find him,” said CJ, surprising himself with his sudden bravado. “One last question, Red. What’s with that girlfriend of Billy’s, Ray Lynn? Never laid eyes on her before last night.”
Rosie smiled. “Girl’s just out slummin’, my man. She lives in Cherry Hills with the well-to-do right whites. The only little black stone among ’em, I’m told. Her daddy’s a judge, and I hear tell he don’t appreciate her hangin’ around with us unwashed types down here on the Points.”
“Things are changing,” said CJ with a start. “Black folks living in Cherry Hills!”
“Progress,” Rosie said with a shrug. “Think Ray Lynn mighta had a reason to pull Billy’s plug?”
“Who’s to say? Perhaps—or maybe her father the judge did Billy in.”
“Like I been sayin’, nothin’ would surprise me.”
“Yeah,” said CJ, rising from his stool. “Thanks for taking me to school on all the changes around here, Red. Knowledge is power, like they say. Right now I’ve gotta run.”
“Speakin’ of money, you owe me fifteen cents for the corn nuts.”
CJ reached into his pocket and flipped Rosie a quarter.
“Where you headed?”
“To find somebody who’s gone underground,” said CJ, heading toward the door.
“Watch yourself, man.”
Adjusting his Stetson and buttoning his vest, CJ said, “Plan to,” and lit up a cheroot as he headed for his Bel Air. By the time he’d slipped behind the wheel, he’d mapped out a preliminary strategy for finding Billy Larkin’s killer. First he’d find Leander Moultry; next he’d talk to Coletta and Ray Lynn. That evening he’d do a little snooping, maybe even slip inside Billy Larkin’s Five Points apartment. All of a sudden he was glad Ike had asked him to help find Billy’s killer. Running down the murderer just might turn out to be the jolt he needed to set his head straight—a primer lesson that could also serve as the investigative framework to help him find Wiley Ames’s killer. As he nosed the Bel Air down Speer Boulevard toward the hobo jungles of Denver’s Platte River Valley, a place he knew Leander had frequented as a teenager, he knew one thing for certain. Whatever the risk, the world of private investigation, if that was what he’d somehow stumbled into, had to be a hell of a lot safer than Vietnam.
“The cops are sayin’ the motive for Billy’s murder was robbery, no question,” said Ike. Looking up at CJ from the king-sized, half-finished, early-evening dinner basket of fried chicken wings on his desktop, he tossed a bone onto a paper plate. “Sure you don’t want nothin’ to eat? Got plenty.” When CJ didn’t answer, Ike shrugged and said, “Suit yourself. They only found forty cents in change in Billy’s pockets, you know. And would you believe it? When I pressed one of them tin-badge-wearin’ blowhards for more info, a white guy I thought I knew pretty well, and a guy Marguerite went to high school with, the SOB told me to keep my nose and crippled ass outa police business.” Realizing finally that CJ, who’d been jotting notes on a legal pad, was only, half listening, Ike tossed a chicken bone at CJ’s head.
Dodging the bone, CJ pushed the legal pad aside and adjusted his weight in one of Ike
’s uncomfortable side chairs.
“Mind tellin’ me what the hell you’re doin’?” Ike demanded.
“Trying to figure out who killed Billy.”
Ike frowned and shook his head. “You spent the whole damn afternoon, and you couldn’t find Leander. Now you’re sittin’ here actin’ like you’re studyin’ for the bar exam on the heels of tryin’ to call the daughter of the only black district court judge in the state, expectin’ her to incriminate herself in a murder. You got a hell of a lot to learn about investigation, boy.”
CJ set his pen aside and eyed his uncle sheepishly.
Deciding he’d back off a bit, Ike said, “Don’t take the criticism too hard; try and learn somethin’ from it. Here’s a couple of investigatin’ tips for you to gnaw on before you spring yourself on Coletta or go breakin’ into Billy’s apartment like you been claimin’ you’re gonna. Whoever killed Billy killed him over money, just like the cops are sayin’, to get revenge, or outa spite. Eighteen grand’s a powerful incentive, but revenge and spite are equally powerful reasons to kill. So when you go talk to Coletta, keep her nervous and on the defensive. See if she sweats. People with nothin’ to hide generally don’t.”
“Anything else I should do?”
“Take these with you,” Ike said. Glancing out his office window toward the fading evening light, he took a .38 and a slimjim door jimmy out of a desk drawer and slid them across the desktop toward CJ. “Gun’s registered to me, so don’t shoot nobody ’less you have to. The slim-jim ain’t,” he said with a grin, watching CJ eye the gun tentatively. “And remember, when you jimmy the door lock, wait for a click before you push the door open.”
CJ nodded and slipped the slim-jim into his shirt pocket, still hesitant to pick up the .38. “What about the pistol? Think I’ll need it?”
“Maybe, maybe not. But let me ask you this. When you was in Vietnam, did that boat you was assigned to ever go out on patrol without that machine gun they had you tendin’?”
CJ thought for a second before slipping the .38 into the pocket of the jacket hanging from the back of the chair.
“Call me if you need me,” said Ike, grabbing the TV remote on his desk and snapping on the small black-and-white television across the room. “I’ll be watchin’ the fights.”
Wondering if he was indeed prepared for what he was about to do, CJ stood and headed for the front door, leaving Ike listening to a gravel-voiced TV announcer belt out the Friday-night fight ticket.
CJ didn’t like spying on people; it was the kind of thing that made him feel guilty. But for five minutes, he’d been peering through the window of Coletta Newby’s four-room Five Points bungalow into the first-floor living room, where Coletta and a bare-chested Lannie Watkins were kissy-face on a red velvet couch in front of a flickering color television. Running the list of questions he planned to ask Coletta through his head, he rose from behind a large, protective mugho pine, strolled up the steps to Coletta’s front doorstep, and rang the doorbell.
Twenty seconds later, as he prepared to ring the doorbell again, Lannie Watkins swung the door open. In a tone as sour as it was dismissive, Watkins, a stubby, balding, forty-year-old black man with a noticeable paunch, who seemed to be enjoying the fact that he was for once standing a full six inches above the much taller CJ, asked, “Whatta you want?”
“I’m CJ Floyd, and I’d like to speak to Coletta.”
“I know who the hell you are.” Watkins turned and yelled back into the house, “Coletta, there’s somebody here at the door wants to talk to you.”
Puffing up her hair and adjusting her clothes, Coletta shouted, “Let ’em in.”
Waving CJ in, Watkins led him toward the living room.
Looking more and more surprised as they approached, Coletta, still seated, reached up and shook CJ’s hand. “CJ, what on earth brings you from Bail Bondsman’s Row over to my neck of the woods?”
“I’m looking into what happened to Billy as a favor to my Uncle Ike and Marguerite,” CJ said, aware that Coletta, who’d shared only a father with Billy, had a relationship with her stepmother, Marguerite, that had always been a whole lot colder than even lukewarm.
Coletta suppressed a frown. “And I’ll bet that redbone of an old witch told you I had something to do with what happened to Billy.”
“No.”
Coletta glanced toward Lannie, who now stood next to the room’s soot-stained fireplace with his right hand resting on the tarnished brass head of a cast-iron poker. “Well, if it’s information you’re after, chew on this. That eighteen thousand everybody’s talking about that Billy claimed he won at Policy wasn’t all his. I know for a fact he had a partner. Somebody that worthless half-brother of mine probably welshed on.”
Uncertain why Coletta happened to know so much about her half-brother’s gambling habits, CJ asked, “Any idea who the partner might’ve been?”
“Not for sure, but I’d put my money on that new girlfriend of his, Ray Lynn Suggs. And Marguerite, of course.”
“So you’re thinking maybe one of them could have killed him over what should’ve been their share of the Policy winnings?” CJ eyed Watkins, who’d cupped his hand tightly over the head of the poker.
“Coulda and woulda. Shit, everybody knows Marguerite was once a madam. Anybody capable of sellin’ their body is sure as hell capable of sellin’ out and maybe even killin’ their own son.”
“Food for thought.” CJ shot another sideways glance at Watkins. “What’s the story on the girlfriend, Ray Lynn?”
“She’d been hugged up to Billy since the beginnin’ of the summer. Latched on to him like a magnet. I’m willin’ to bet she knew where he kept everything important, includin’ his money. Rich girl, poor girl, everybody loves havin’ a few extra Benjamins.”
Remembering Ike’s directive to keep Coletta on the defensive, CJ asked, “Any truth to the rumor that you owed Billy money or that he was planning to take you to court over the money he’d invested and lost in your dance school?”
“I didn’t owe Billy nothin’!” Coletta’s near bellow forced Lannie Watkins’s hand. He slipped the poker he’d been fingering out of its stand.
CJ pulled Ike’s .38 and aimed it squarely at Watkins’s belly without so much as a blink. “Don’t be stupid, friend. Raise that poker and trust me, you’ll never see another day.”
“Get out of here, CJ Floyd. Get out of here now!” Coletta screamed. “I’d heard that war in Vietnam turned you into an animal, but I didn’t want to believe it. Guess what they’re sayin’ out there on the street about you’s right.”
Sorry that he’d pulled the gun, looking defeated and at a loss for words, CJ slipped the .38 back into his pocket and stepped backward toward the front door as Watkins, poker at his side, tracked him step for step. Unlatching the door and pushing it open with his butt, CJ stepped outside and slammed the door in Lannie Watkins’s face. As he turned and headed down the sidewalk for the Bel Air, the ghosts of Vietnam seemed to move along with him. He expected that for the first time in two weeks, he’d get no sleep that night.
Chapter 7
Billy Larkin had lived for years in a government-rent-subsidized Five Points apartment building that looked as if it had intentionally been constructed to appear run-down. As CJ made his way up the building’s clanking center-atrium metal staircase, trying to shake off war flashbacks and what was now a sour stomach, he kept asking himself what Coletta Newby might possibly be hiding. She hadn’t seemed very upset about her half-brother’s death, and the only thing that had set her off was his mention that she’d owed Billy money. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t have had the nerve to kill Billy herself, but he wouldn’t put it past the overly protective Lannie Watkins.
On the drive from Coletta’s to Billy’s, he’d had the sense that he was being followed, but after parking the Bel Air, scouting out a two-block perimeter, and looking for any signs of a tailer, he’d turned up nothing.
The apartment building’s four-story atrium
had echoed with the sounds of crying children and blaring TVs when he’d walked in. The noises had barely subsided by the time he’d reached Billy’s fourth-floor apartment at the end of a long, dark hallway. A bit winded from taking the stairs, he slipped on a pair of gloves, approached the door to the apartment casually, looked around, slipped his slim-jim out of his pocket, and popped the door lock in a matter of seconds. Once inside, he flipped on a light to find himself in a tiny hallway that opened into a small living room that contained only a cedar chest, a rickety porch rocker, and, flanking the cedar chest, a couch marred with cigarette burns. Scraps of paper, a week’s worth of Denver Post sports pages, and a pocket-sized calculator rested on top of the cedar chest.
When he thought he heard a noise from what he could see was the kitchen, he hit the floor spread-eagled. He fumbled briefly for his gun before realizing that the sound was the weighted end of a Venetian blind banging against the frame of a half-open window. Relieved, he hopped up and quickly searched the kitchen. Finding nothing of interest there, he moved on to Billy’s bedroom. Nothing seemed out of place there, and except for a few of Billy’s flashy clothes that Coletta had evidently left behind and the .32 stashed in a top drawer of a dresser, the sparsely furnished bedroom could have been his own.
The neatness of the place told CJ that probably neither cops nor Billy’s killer—unless his killer had been Coletta—had made it to Billy’s yet. Feeling a little let down, he shook his head and surveyed the bedroom again. Billy Larkin had been dead for close to twenty-four hours, the victim of a violent street attack, and his death apparently wasn’t important enough to have warranted a simple visit to his apartment from Denver’s finest. Still shaking his head, he walked back to the living room, thinking as he did that when it came to serving and protecting the people of Five Points, some things just never changed.
