by Robert Greer
Frustrated, he sat down on the lumpy couch, pushed the Post’s sports sections aside, and picked up a half sheet of paper from the top of the cedar chest. One side of the paper was filled with six columns of penciled numbers. The barely legible words good bet, possible winner, and lucky set had been printed near the bottom right-hand corner of the paper. Lay down $50.00 had been printed with a noticeable back slant to the letters just beneath the other words, and the two zeros after 50 were boldly double-underlined. CJ picked up a second half sheet of paper with a different set of much more legible columns, numbers, and notes from one of the couch cushions. Pretty certain that the two half sheets listed the numbers Billy had used to come up with a winning combination for his eighteen-thousand-dollar Policy hit, CJ was about to stuff the two sheets in his pocket for Ike to look at later when he decided instead to examine the printing on both more closely. Concluding in the end that two different people had done the printing, he found himself staring at the more neatly printed of the two sheets. There was something about the boldness of the printing that he thought he recognized. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he had the feeling he’d seen the same printing style before.
Satisfied that he’d gleaned as much as he could from his search, he folded the two pieces of paper in half, slipped them into his pocket, and checked his watch. It was eleven-thirty. He hadn’t eaten all day, and, suddenly lamenting not having shared in Ike’s chicken-wing feast, he listened to his stomach growl. At least he’d made a dent in things, he told himself. In the morning, he’d go over what he’d found out at Coletta’s and at Billy’s with Ike, try once again to track down Leander Moultry, and set up a face-to-face meeting with Billy’s girlfriend, Ray Lynn. Luckily he still had an hour and a half before Nobby’s place closed. With his stomach rumbling, he walked boldly out of Billy’s apartment, down the hallway, back down the staircase, and out into the night.
Halfway into the eight-block drive to Nobby’s, the driver of the car that had been tailing CJ ever since he’d left Coletta’s turned on that car’s headlights.
Nobby’s was busy, jumping with the pulse of late-night black life in Denver. People were lined up two deep at the bar, ordering drinks as if the evening had just started, and the old See-burg jukebox was blaring “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” a Four Tops tune, the words of which CJ knew by heart.
Working his way across the crowded barroom, stopping briefly to shake hands and acknowledge friends, and past the pool-table area toward what Nobby called a restaurant, CJ felt unusually closed in. Nobby’s seemed smaller and a bit grimmer than it had before Vietnam. An apartment-sized, closed-in kitchen, five tables, and twenty rickety chairs provided the total preparation and seating space for the restaurant. An order window poked through one of the kitchen’s grease-stained walls. Behind it one of Nobby’s part-time cooks was busy preparing food.
Lusting for one of Nobby’s juicy, three-quarter-pound cheeseburgers and steaming-hot fries, stateside delicacies that he’d been deprived of for the better part of two years, CJ looked around for someone to take his order.
Sweating from nothing more than being trapped inside the cramped juke joint and wiping his brow, Nobby walked up, grabbed CJ’s right hand, and began pumping his arm. “Must be a full moon. Been swamped all night.”
“Money, money, money,” said CJ, shouting to be heard above the noise.
Nobby smiled. “Too bad it ain’t like this every night. Then maybe I’d be able to afford a set of new shocks for my ride. What can I get for ya, CJ?”
“Cheeseburger, medium rare, fries, and a Molson Golden.”
“Got ya!” Nobby jotted down the order, turned, and walked over to the order window, where his skinny, long-faced, nylon-stocking-cap-wearing cook took the order ticket. “Ten minutes and you’ll be singin’ my praises,” Nobby said, stepping back over to CJ. “Just like when you was a kid. Now, aside from my cookin’, what brings you out tonight?”
“Been looking into what happened to Billy Larkin.”
Nobby’s eyes widened.
“As a favor to Unc and Marguerite,” CJ said almost apologetically, aware that Nobby, a man who disliked PIs and hated cops and who’d been a bag man, petty thief, and serious drug user in an earlier life, remained suspicious of any activity designed to accommodate what he liked to call the white man’s law.
“Guess that’s a valid reason. For a second there, though, you were soundin’ like some damn flatfoot.”
“Not in this lifetime,” said CJ, happy to have Nobby’s blessing. “Got any ideas on who might’ve wanted Billy dead?”
“Have you talked to that girlfriend of his? The one who was in here screamin’ her lungs out last night?”
“I tried to get her on the phone, but all I got was a hang-up in my ear.”
“You ask me, she’s the one who put it to Billy. Prissy-assed high-society bitch. Been down here on the Points stickin’ her nose in where it don’t belong for a good little bit now. Maybe you need to try and contact Ms. Suggs a little harder. Or maybe you just ask Ike to.”
Bristling at the idea that Nobby thought he needed Ike’s help, CJ said, “I can handle Suggs.”
Aware that he’d touched a nerve, Nobby said, “Didn’t mean no harm by the comment, CJ.”
“No problem,” CJ said with a shrug, thinking that given Coletta’s and now Nobby’s testimonials about Ray Lynn, she needed to be right up there at the top of his suspect list. He was about to ask Nobby exactly how long Billy had known the Suggses when the bartender walked up and interrupted.
“The high-rollers boat must’ve sailed in today, boss,” the bartender said, sounding breathless. “Need change for a couple’a hundreds.” He shoved two hundred-dollar bills at Nobby and nodded a greeting to CJ.
Patting down his pockets and realizing he didn’t have that much change, Nobby said, “I’ll have to go get it from the back.”
“No rush,” said the bartender. “The way the two fish who gave me them hundreds are drinkin’, I won’t owe ’em nothin’ more than a ten-spot by the time you get back.”
Nobby looked at CJ and shrugged. “Gotta run,” he said, winking insightfully. “Don’t wolf down your food when it comes. You ain’t a kid no more, CJ. Oh, and here’s one last piece of advice. Check out that damn freeloader, Lannie Watkins. He didn’t have no love in his heart for the man who derailed that dance studio of Coletta’s. It was gonna be his gravy train.”
CJ sat back in his chair and watched Nobby disappear into the next room, which was filled from floor to ceiling with a smoky haze. When his piping-hot burger and fries and ice-cold beer arrived a few moments later, courtesy of Nobby’s harried-looking cook, he found himself once again thinking, Home.
The burger’s salty sweetness was exactly the way he remembered. He purposely let the burger’s flavorful juices run down from both corners of his mouth before he dabbed the grease away with a napkin. As he listened to the din of the crowd and the backbeat of the music from the jukebox, he had the sense that perhaps, after losing two years of his life to some lost-world Asian hellhole, he might in fact be able to reconnect with the world again. That if the emotional-stability gods saw fit, he might be able to make it through a full week without having nightmares—and then a month—and finally a year.
Relaxing back in his chair, cheeseburger in hand, he watched Nobby return from his back office with a wad of cash in his right hand. Telling himself that if a onetime heroin addict like Nobby Pittman, who’d done hard time for beating the owner of a house he’d burgled nearly to death, could find business success, he could certainly rise from the ashes of what with time would be just another forgotten war.
For the next thirty minutes, he simply sat back and enjoyed the food, the libations, and the music while absorbing the home-again Five Points atmosphere. Finally rising to leave, he stopped Nobby on his way out. “Just as great a burger as I remembered,” he said, rubbing his belly.
“Could’ve told you that when you set foot inside t
he door,” said Nobby, grinning broadly, knowing the difficulty CJ was having readjusting. “Sometimes what a man needs more than anything to get him back in the flow is what he’s always known. Be sure and give Ike a shout-out for me when you get home.”
“Sure will,” said CJ, adjusting his Stetson before stepping out into the chilly October air. For the first time in a long time, he felt good about his chances of making it through the night without his war demons grabbing him by the throat.
Surprised at how cold it had turned, he raised the top on the Bel Air when he reached it, latched it down, and slipped behind the wheel. He fumbled in the dark along the front seat for a jacket he’d always kept there before leaving for Vietnam, then realized the jacket wasn’t there. Muttering, “Damn,” and thinking that no matter how well the night had turned out, nothing was ever exactly the same, he cranked the car’s engine.
Easing away from the curb and heading for Bail Bondsman’s Row and home, he leaned forward and turned on the radio. Dr. Daddy-O, Denver’s premier black DJ, was talking his usual trash as a prelude to cuing up a tune. “And here for you boys and girls, ladies and gents, givers and takers, movers and shakers, is a heart-stopper, tree-topper, mood-builder, and love-filter to titillate your inner senses. Got ya Mr. Bill ‘Smokey’ Robinson caught in that reflective, lost-love kinda mood we all know too well, singing about what he no longer has in that sorrowful kinda way that only Smokey can.” A split second later, Smokey Robinson broke into his classic Motown rendition of “Ooh Baby Baby.” Swaying to the song’s slow, mournful beat and listening to Smokey’s lament, CJ nosed the Bel Air down Welton Street toward home.
The food, the music, and indeed Five Points itself had momentarily totally captured former first-class gunner’s mate CJ Floyd. So much so that he failed to notice that he was being followed by a car that stayed with him most of the way home.
Chapter 8
Looking slightly less puffy-eyed than on the previous day, Marguerite Larkin was busy in Ike’s kitchen the next morning, answering CJ’s questions and serving the two men she cared about most a breakfast of hash browns, buttermilk biscuits, pancakes, and scrambled eggs. Watching CJ pat his stomach and wave off a second stack of pancakes, she said, “Sorry I put off your call yesterday, CJ. You understand, don’t you, honey? Sorrow does these kinda things to you. But I’m here to answer the bell this mornin’, tell you everything I know about that Suggs girl. First off, I’ve got no clue why she’s at Metro State.” Marguerite walked around the kitchen table and refilled Ike’s nearly empty cup with coffee. “I’d expect a card-carryin’ silver-spoon-in-her-mouth black debutante like her to be going to Harvard or one of those high-falutin’, snobby all-girls’ schools back East. I never could understand why she was slummin’ it here at home at some city college, rubbin’ shoulders with the unwashed like my Billy.” Marguerite’s eyes welled with tears.
“Maybe she didn’t have the grades for Harvard.”
“Real likely. My take on her ever since the first day Billy introduced her to me is that she was sorta slow.” Marguerite slapped her hand down on the table to punctuate her assessment. Eyeing CJ pensively, she said, “Since you’re so intent on heading over to Metro State to check her out, give the little witch my regards, and while you’re at it, ask her if she plans on showin’ up at my baby’s funeral. Could be she don’t care to hang around with us common folk. The same way she maybe didn’t want to hang around in that alley after she killed Billy.”
“Calm down, Marguerite,” said Ike, pulling the suddenly quivering Marguerite gently to him. “That girl didn’t kill Billy.”
“Don’t be so sure, Isaac. She’s pure, high-octane evil.”
Ike shook his head, knowing that anytime Marguerite called him by his given name, there was no room for further discussion. Easing Marguerite down onto his lap, he said to CJ, “Why don’t you make that trek on over to Metro State like you’ve been talkin’ about and talk firsthand to Ray Lynn? I’ll hold down the fort here.”
Sensing that Ike and Marguerite could use some quiet time, CJ said, “Think I will. But first I’m gonna drop by Rosie’s and see if any of the gossip-mongers that hang around there can tell me where I can find Leander. He’s been putting the dodge on me pretty good.”
“He’ll turn up,” said Ike. “Weasels like him always do.”
“Hope so,” said CJ, who’d moved to the kitchen doorway. “Especially since he threatened to kill Billy.”
“Mouthin’ off about doin’ somethin’ and doin’ it are two different things, CJ.”
“Yeah,” said CJ, stepping back into the kitchen to grab a biscuit before bolting out the back door.
“That boy needs to learn to listen,” Ike said to the now much calmer Marguerite. “It’ll cost him in the end if he don’t.”
“He’s bullheaded, Ike. Just like you.”
“No. He’s more like his poor gotta-do-it-her-way-or-else mamma than me, I expect.” Ike kissed Marguerite softly on the cheek. “Just hope that trait don’t end up costin’ him his life one day like it did her.”
CJ drew the same blank at Rosie’s that he’d been drawing everywhere in his attempt to get a line on Leander Moultry’s whereabouts. Not a single one of the gaggle of bullshitters and breeze-shooters who hung out at the garage could offer him any help. He hung around until he figured he’d worn out his welcome with his questions, then headed for Metro State. Once he was on campus, he had the feeling that his attempt to connect with Ray Lynn Suggs was going to be equally unproductive. But thanks to a friendly lady in the admissions office, a busty black woman who claimed to flat out love her some law-and-order Judge Suggs, CJ had Ray Lynn’s fall academic schedule in hand less than twenty minutes after setting foot on campus. When he ran across a Metro State student he’d gone to high school with, a skinny little owl-eyed math wiz who’d helped him wade through geometry, and the whiz kid put Suggs squarely on campus that day, CJ had the sense that it just might turn out to be a red-letter day.
“Her BMW’s parked in front of the Student Union, illegally, with a ticket folded in half and tucked under a wiper blade. That’s campus cop code to let her slide,” his former classmate said. “It’s noon, so she’s probably in the Student Union cafeteria eating lunch alone, like always. Too good to hang with us commoners, you know.”
CJ thanked his former schoolmate and headed for the Student Union, where for the next ten minutes he stood around twiddling his thumbs, trying his best to look inconspicuous. He was close to packing it in when Ray Lynn pushed her way through the cafeteria’s chow line, looking as if the food in front of her couldn’t possibly meet her expectations.
When CJ scooted in behind her, food tray and utensils in hand, announcing as the line moved slowly forward, “Terrible about Billy,” Ray Lynn reacted with a start.
It took her a few seconds to realize after turning to face CJ that the person behind her was the pool-cue-shattering man who’d been at Nobby’s the night Billy had been killed. Looking puzzled, she asked, “It’s Floyd, isn’t it? Why are you here?”
“I’m trying to find out who killed your boyfriend, Ms. Suggs.”
“I’d suggest you let the police do that, Mr. Floyd.”
“Aren’t you interested in finding Billy’s killer?” said CJ, watching as she selected a tomato-and-cucumber salad and a carton of orange juice and placed them on her tray.
“Of course I am. But we assuredly don’t need your help.”
Certain that the we in her high-pitched response included her father, CJ said, “Guess you don’t need a leg up when your daddy’s a judge.”
“Sometimes you don’t,” Ray Lynn said coolly, jamming her tray into the person’s in front of her without even the hint of an excuse me.
“Did Billy have any enemies you know of?”
“Leander Moultry, but you knew that already. By the way, have you told the police you were there at the center of the altercation Leander had with Billy? I understand they’re out to interview every poss
ible suspect.” There was an irritating smugness in her tone.
“I sure have,” CJ said, bending the truth. “What about you? Got a good alibi handy for them when they show up?”
Ray Lynn’s eyes narrowed in anger as she shoved her left hand at CJ. “The ring on my finger is an engagement ring, in case you’ve never seen one. It’s the kind of thing people exchange before they get married. Billy gave it to me a couple of weeks before he was killed.”
“So two weeks ago you were looking to hold on to Billy forever. Like they say, things change. Especially when there’s money on the table. You two lovebirds didn’t by any chance happen to go in together on Billy’s winning eighteen-thousand-dollar Policy ticket, did you?” CJ broke into a half smile. “A whole loaf’s so much better than half, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re scum,” said Ray Lynn, nudging her food tray forward.
Ignoring the comment, CJ asked, “What did your father think about you and Billy tying the knot?”
Ray Lynn’s anger boiled over. Pointing toward the cafeteria’s west wall and talking loudly enough that people turned to listen, she said, “See the big guy over near the corner? He’s an off-duty cop who moonlights as campus security. I can have him over here in no time if you’d like.”
CJ eyed the burly off-duty cop and stepped out of line, suspecting he’d pressed his encounter with Ray Lynn as far as he dared. “Guess I’ll just have to get your father’s take on what he thought of having Billy as a son-in-law from him.”
“You do that. Daddy so admires war veterans. And while you’re at it, be sure to keep reminding yourself that he’s a lawyer and you’re a possible murder suspect.” Fishing in her purse and flashing CJ a hateful smile, she took out a ten-dollar bill and handed it to the cashier. “Have a great day, Petty Officer Floyd.” Watching puzzlement spread across CJ’s face, she said, “I know more about you than you think,” smiled, and walked away.
CJ glanced in the cop’s direction one last time before heading the opposite way. Within minutes he was halfway across campus. When he reached the Bel Air, he was sweating in the bright one o’clock sun. He hadn’t gotten very much new information out of Ray Lynn Suggs other than the fact that she’d been engaged to Billy. But he’d learned a few valuable peacetime lessons: Just as in war, never charge into enemy territory without checking for snipers, never underestimate your enemy’s capabilities, and have the good sense to realize that your enemy might know a thing or two about you.
