by Robert Greer
“Anything else I should know?”
“As a matter of fact, yeah. Sort of strange, even for the knife-and-gun-club operation we run down here. A cop showed up at the post.”
“Let me guess. Tall, red-headed, yellow teeth, skinny?”
“That’s him. Rare to get a cop down here eyeballin’ a post. Usually all they want are the autopsy results.”
“Was he pretty closed-mouthed?”
“Pretty much. Just watched for the most part. But he seemed real interested in the entry and exit wounds in the kid’s skull. I’m bettin’ he pegged it as a professional job too. He did drop one little surprise though, right after Dr. Woodley finished examinin’ the kid’s brain. I was sewin’ the skullcap back on when your cop said the kid had seventeen hundred bucks on him when they found him that wasn’t even touched. Made the remark out of the blue, like he was lookin’ to get some kinda response outta either me or the doc, like we could’ve been suspects. Real strange cop if you ask me.”
“Damn! He still had the cash.”
“Hell, CJ, you’re makin’ noise like the money was yours.”
“It was.”
“You’re bullshittin’.”
“I wish. Your dead man sold me a couple of stolen books. That was my seventeen hundred.”
“Well, it ain’t no more. The city and county ain’t reimbursin’, and neither’s the kid.”
“I know,” CJ said with a sigh.
“One last thing. May not mean anything, though.”
“Shoot.”
“The kid was packin’ a real high-rent address on his driver’s license—top of the line. One of them rich white folks’ addresses in Cherry Hills.”
“Mighty top-drawer for a twenty-year-old immigrant on a student visa,” said CJ.
“Maybe he had upper-crust kin.”
“Could be.” CJ stroked his chin thoughtfully. “These days you never know. Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“You’re the man, V.”
“All the women tell me that,” Vernon said with a smile that was deadly serious.
“You get anything else, clue me in,” CJ said.
“Will do, and remember, you never heard nothin’ from me.”
“I’ve been hard of hearing for years—you know that,” said CJ, offering Vernon his standard sign-off.
“Later.” Vernon smiled and cradled the phone.
Denver’s five-thirty p.m. rush-hour traffic had kicked into high gear on South Broadway. Once a quaint two-lane road that made its way from downtown to the suburb of Littleton, Broadway had never been meant to accommodate the urban jailbreak of traffic it was now forced to handle, and CJ had the feeling as he stood at the front door of Ike’s, ready to drop the door shade on business for the day, that the Denver city fathers would be happy to see the street turned into an interstate if they thought it might add money to their coffers.
With his attention focused on a conga line of traffic, CJ didn’t notice a small raven-haired woman approaching the store until she was framed in the front door’s beveled glass. “I’m closed,” he mouthed, waving her off.
“Please,” the sad-eyed, defeated-looking woman called out unmistakably through the glass. Acquiescing, CJ swung the door open, suspecting that the gloomy-faced woman wanted either work or directions. Without a mask of beveled glass between them, he recognized the expression on the woman’s face: it was the unmistakable look of grief. The same grief-stricken look he’d worn for months after Ike had died. “What can I help you with?” he asked, his tone suddenly a whisper.
“Are you Mr. Floyd?”
“Yes.”
The woman, dressed in a black, Spanish-territorial, ankle-length cotton skirt, a loose-fitting turquoise blouse, and Western boots, extracted a wallet-sized leather coin purse from a slit at the side of her skirt, unzipped the purse, and pulled out a yellow sheet of paper. As she unfolded the paper, CJ realized that it had been torn from the yellow pages. Circled in Magic Marker, his boxed ad for Ike’s Spot occupied the lower right-hand corner. Holding the ad open for CJ to see, the woman said, “I found this page from the phone book in my son’s room beneath a stack of auto-racing magazines. I am Theresa Del Mora, and I have been told that you were probably the last person to see my son, Luis, alive.” Theresa’s eyes glazed over and her lower lip began to quiver, but there was a sternness in her face that hadn’t been there during the first hysterical hours after she’d learned that her son had been murdered.
The only words CJ could muster as he watched the dour-looking, round-faced woman try to control her emotions were, “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, Mr. Floyd. Unfortunately, at one time or another sorrow reaches the pulse of us all. It was simply my time.” There was a tone of inevitability in Theresa Del Mora’s voice, and her words, spoken with a barely noticeable Spanish accent, sounded practiced and pondered. She watched as CJ wrestled for a response. “I can see that you are searching for words of comfort, Mr. Floyd, and that is good. It tells me you have been in my shoes before. Like circumstances always breed compassion.”
CJ responded with a nod.
“Then you understand how important it is for me to find out who killed my son. May I come in?”
“Please.” CJ ushered Theresa in, led her the length of the store to his unfinished back office, and nodded for her to take a seat in one of the chairs that faced his desk. “Can I offer you a glass of water?” he asked, sitting and adjusting himself in his chair as he pondered why the chubby-cheeked woman sitting in front of him with her eyes cast skyward was there.
Declining the water, Theresa shook her head.
“I’m not sure how I can help you.”
“You can help by first assuring me that you had nothing to do with my son’s death.”
“All I did was buy a couple of books from him.”
“The books were stolen.”
“I was unaware of that when I bought them.”
“I understand, and the detective who is working to find Luis’s killer agrees. Nonetheless, you used bad judgment when you purchased those books, Mr. Floyd.”
Unprepared for the grief-stricken woman’s directness, CJ said, “I didn’t kill your son, Mrs. Del Mora, and you still haven’t told me how I can help.”
Having made her point, Theresa asked, “Did Luis seem at all nervous or agitated when he sold you the books?”
“Not particularly. In fact, he negotiated the sale like he’d done it lots of times before.”
“He was accustomed to bartering in our native Nicaragua.”
“It showed. How long had he been here in Denver?”
“Five months. He was a student at Metro State. He wanted to be a history teacher.” Theresa’s eyes glazed over, and she swallowed hard. “His dreams will never be met.”
CJ paused momentarily before asking the next question. “Where did he get the books?” he said, careful not to use the word steal.
“From my employer, Howard Stafford.”
“Is he a rare-book collector?”
“Books and much more.”
CJ nodded, trying to place the name. “Do you know why your son chose the books he sold to me?”
Teary-eyed and suddenly aware that CJ had taken over the questioning, Theresa said, “I don’t know.”
“What does Stafford have to say about what happened?”
Embarrassed, Theresa said, “We haven’t discussed it. But I spoke for a long while with that detective. He’s been to see me twice. Once with the news of Luis’s death, when I was largely incoherent, and a second time when he filled the air with questions.”
“Is his last name Commons?”
“Yes.”
“What kinds of questions did he ask?”
“Did Luis have any enemies—and what about friends? Had he been in trouble with the law either in Nicaragua or here? Did he have a girlfriend? Had he been acting strange lately? Was Luis doing drugs? Did he and Howard Stafford get along? What was Luis
studying at Metro State?”
“And your answers were?”
“Luis was a loner, Mr. Floyd, and he had neither enemies nor a close group of friends. He behaved no differently from the day he arrived in this country until his death as far as I could tell. He certainly didn’t do drugs. And as for Mr. Stafford, Luis was like most other people for him. No more than background noise. For him Luis probably never existed.”
“Stafford’s that far out?”
“He’s different.” Theresa Del Mora’s eyes narrowed to an insightful squint.
“Different enough to kill someone to get his books back?”
“Unlikely. He can certainly purchase more.”
“Then with me scratched off his list of suspects and Stafford pretty much a scratch too, I’d say Sergeant Commons has his work cut out for him,” said CJ, hoping that Theresa Del Mora’s response would tell him exactly where he and Howard Stafford stood on Sergeant Commons’s list of murder suspects.
“I don’t think either of you has been removed, Mr. Floyd. And that’s partially why I’m here. I’m hoping to find a route that will take me to the truth about my son’s death. You Americans call it justice. Too often in Nicaragua there is no such thing. You’ve heard of the Sandinista revolution, I am sure, Mr. Floyd?”
“Yes,” said CJ, familiar with the 1979 Nicaraguan revolt that had kept the largest nation in Central America in turmoil for the next eleven years.
“There can be no justice, Mr. Floyd, when there is no law. And during my lifetime the law and all its apostles, whether here or in Nicaragua, have largely been unavailable to me. One can never trust lawyers or the law.”
“And cops? How do you stand on trusting them?” CJ asked.
“The policía never, including your very polite Sergeant Commons!”
Looking confused, CJ asked, “Mind telling me where I fit in?”
“Your question deserves another, Mr. Floyd. Did you know that the seventeen hundred dollars you paid Luis for those two books was still in his pocket when they found him? Rolled tightly into a wad and secured with a rubber band?”
Sidestepping the question, CJ asked, “Who told you that?”
“Sergeant Commons. I think he told me to see how I’d react. I didn’t. He also told me that you were once a bail bondsman and a bounty hunter.”
“Once,” said CJ, wondering where the small, moon-faced woman was headed.
“Do you still have friends in that business?”
“Yes, but you’d probably do better with a private detective.”
“No, Mr. Floyd. I’m looking for a person who is much less official. Someone less closely linked to your American system of justice and your need to, above all else, maintain order. I suspect you probably qualify, Mr. Floyd.”
“Why trust my judgment?”
Theresa responded as if she’d pondered the question at length. “Because you didn’t rob my son, as I’m certain Sergeant Commons first expected. And because, like my employer, Howard Stafford, you collect treasures, and that means that somewhere along the line someone has treasured you. And finally because the trail to the murder of my son began and ends with you.”
Theresa Del Mora’s riddle-like response had an unnerving ring that reminded CJ of all the times he’d unsuccessfully tried to set justice right.
“This isn’t Nicaragua,” he warned. “The law works differently here, and the system, flawed as it may be, frowns on vigilantes. I’m afraid what I did in that area is in the past, which means I can’t help you.”
“But you must, however, know the kind of person I need,” Theresa said disappointedly. “Can you please provide me with the name of someone who can help?”
“I know one person,” CJ said after a thoughtful pause. “She’s a former marine. She’s no-nonsense, smart, and expensive.”
“The name, Mr. Floyd. Please.”
CJ opened the top drawer of his desk, extracted the business card of his former partner, Flora Jean Benson, and handed it to Theresa, who examined the card carefully. “How late is she open?”
“Till six-thirty, but being a bondsman means you’re always on the job. Call the cell-phone number on that card. She’ll respond.”
“I’ll call her on the way home,” said Theresa. She abruptly turned to leave. “Thanks for Ms. Benson’s name.”
“You’re welcome,” said CJ, watching Theresa Del Mora scurry from the store.
Moments later CJ stood and walked the length of the store. As he again locked up for the day, he glanced out onto the sidewalk to look for the moon-faced Nicaraguan woman, but Theresa Del Mora had already vanished.
CHAPTER 7
The link between one person and another, the how and why of a relationship, the thing that crystallizes a friendship can be difficult to pinpoint, but the connection between Nasar Moradi-Nik and Alexie Borg was easily defined. Their passion for athletics and Russia’s 1970s military intervention in Afghanistan would serve to link them forever. Both men had lost fathers in that conflict, and when, on the eve of the 1996 Olympic Summer Games, years after the Soviets had turned tail and run from Afghanistan, the two countries had an opportunity at the urging of the IOC to parade Alexie and Nasar in front of TV cameras and showcase their made-for-the-media camaraderie, the die was cast.
Alexie’s post-Olympic fame was short-lived, Moradi-Nik’s even briefer, but they’d stayed connected over the years, and as each man’s homeland drifted in and out of political and economic chaos, they managed to survive in a world beyond athletics by honing skills far removed from those of an Olympian.
Moradi-Nik, quixotic, always fearful, with a personality verging on schizophrenia, had cemented his post-Olympic reputation in the underbelly of the world, operating as a high-priced torcher of buildings and an occasional bomber. An agnostic with no interest in or respect or tolerance for religion, Moradi-Nik was the antithesis of the American-conjured terrorizing demonic Middle Eastern zealot. He was, on the contrary, an ordinary-looking, dark-haired, fair-skinned, clean-shaven, Western-looking man of medium build who started fires and detonated bombs for a living—bombs and conflagrations that he liked to think were worthy of America—explosions and fires designed to take out one’s business opponents and competitors, clear space for a new high-rise, or rid one of an overly leveraged building. Nasar Moradi-Nik was, after all, as he was quick to point out to potential clients, an American businessman, a capitalist, available for the asking—at a price—to cleanse any ailing capitalist’s entrepreneurial soul.
Although Moradi-Nik had built a solid reputation for efficient, untraceable work, Alexie disliked using him on jobs, especially small jobs, for two simple reasons. He was a nervous ninny who twitched and shook and looked over his shoulder incessantly, which made the gruff, ice-water-in-his-veins Russian uncomfortable. Moreover, Moradi-Nik had a tendency to pay far too little attention to detail when he considered a job and the paycheck beneath him.
In the face of these shortcomings, Alexie, on Celeste Deepstream’s orders, found himself hunched up next to Moradi-Nik behind a Dumpster in an alley twenty yards from the back door to Ike’s Spot, watching his shaking and quivering Afghan friend begin the initial phases of a plan to blow Ike’s Spot to kingdom come.
CJ had left the antiques store two hours earlier, and his half of the Lenny McCabe–owned duplex had remained quiet until just before twilight, when Morgan Williams and Dittier Atkins, the two homeless former rodeo cowboys who most nights called the screened-in back porch of Ike’s Spot home, had arrived to hunker down for the evening.
Alexie and Moradi-Nik had watched the two street bums settle in, and for the last twenty minutes they’d been trying to decide what to do. “Floyd must know they’re there,” Alexie whispered, peering around the edge of the Dumpster and watching Morgan and Dittier move around on the porch. “The short one with the shaved head had a key.”
“Quiet,” said Moradi-Nik, every muscle in his body quivering. Borg frowned, telling himself that he just might be riski
ng too much for a mere piece of Acoma Indian pussy.
They watched Morgan and Dittier walk around in the porch’s subdued light for another five minutes until Moradi-Nik, with Alexie reluctantly in tow, moved to take a closer look at his target from behind the garage that CJ used to house his Bel Air. The garage’s wall intersected a fence that rimmed a tiny patch of backyard grass between it and the porch. Peering around the corner of the garage, Alexie estimated that the two street bums, who’d arrived at Ike’s Spot pushing shopping carts filled to the brim with aluminum cans, were less than fifteen feet away. “Why are we wasting our time?” he whispered. “Let’s come back when they’re not here.”
“Shut up,” Moradi-Nik warned, wondering why the porch lights kept cycling on and off. “I need to know if they’re going to stay or leave. There’s a difference between blowing up an empty building and blowing up one with potential eyewitnesses. I don’t care one bit about those two street bums being here when I take the place out, but when things settle I want the building and everyone inside it to be one hundred percent dead.” Moradi-Nik’s voice rose as he talked gleefully about death and destruction, and for the first time all evening he stopped shaking. “Come on, let’s move back to the alley. I’ve seen what I came to see. This will be easy pickings.” He duck-walked his way back toward the alley with Alexie nervously in tow.
Morgan Williams, a muscular cigar stump of a black man with a shaved head and skin as smooth as a carnival Nubian’s, was busy fiddling with the disagreeable light switch that controlled the back porch’s two ceiling lights. “Hell, I told CJ to get this thing fixed. It’s a fire hazard,” he complained to Dittier Atkins, his deaf-mute onetime rodeo partner.
Reading Morgan’s lips, the former rodeo clown nodded in agreement, and his face, a leathery, sun-damaged dry wash of wrinkles, lit up when Morgan hammered the light-switch cover plate with his fist and the lights brightened instantly.
