The Fourth Perspective

by Robert Greer

  “There!” said Morgan. “Think that’ll do it.” He glanced across the room at Dittier and signed, “Did you bring your bedroll from your shopping cart?”

  Dittier nodded.

  “Then we’re set for the night.” Morgan took a seat, slipped a crumpled Western Bits and Spur magazine out of his own bedroll, and flipped the magazine open. “Saw a pair of Canyon City spurs advertised in here that I need to tell CJ about. Price seemed mighty appealin’,” he signed to Dittier.

  “They might be fakes,” Dittier quickly signed back.

  “Yeah, I was thinking that, but …”

  Suddenly keen-eyed, Dittier stood and glanced toward the alley. Motioning for Morgan to stay put, he raised a finger to his lips and walked toward the back door.

  “You feelin’ somethin’?” Morgan signed rapidly, aware that although the sounds of the world had been lost to Dittier forever, Dittier still had the eyes of an eagle and could damn near feel the vibrations caused by a pebble hitting sand.

  “Something’s out there,” Dittier signed, opening the door and moving into the doorway, unaware that Alexie Borg and Moradi-Nik were making their way toward a nearby Dumpster and safety.

  “Could be a stray animal,” said Morgan.

  Dittier shook his head and emphatically mouthed, No.

  “What, then?” Morgan asked, now standing directly behind Dittier.

  “People!” mouthed Dittier. “People!” he reiterated, signing.

  Morgan’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the darkened alley, aware that Dittier was rarely wrong when it came to such matters, “I’ll take a look. Let me get a flashlight.” He walked back to his bedroll, extracted a battered World War II–vintage army-issue flashlight, and followed Dittier outside. Always protective of the man who’d saved him from being stomped by one-ton bulls more times than he could remember, Morgan stamped his right foot and yelled, “Hold up, Dittier.” The shout sent Alexie and Moradi-Nik scrambling for new cover into a shed across the alley.

  Reacting to the stamp, Dittier held up until Morgan joined him. Morgan swung the flashlight in a wide arch along the fence line. “Don’t see anything.” He moved to the far end of the garage, looping the flashlight to and fro. “Nothin’ out here.” Shaking his head, he turned to look back for Dittier to find him kneeling next to where the backyard picket fence intersected Lenny McCabe’s sagging excuse for a garage. Agitated, Dittier motioned for Morgan to shine his light toward the ground.

  Morgan homed in his light on a spot that Dittier was patting. Fresh-looking footprints remained in the loose dirt and gravel.

  “Somebody was out here,” Dittier signed up into the light.

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think they were up to?” Dittier signed.

  “Don’t know,” said Morgan, glancing up and down the dark empty alley and rolling his tongue back and forth along his lower lip, the way he used to do before mounting an angry bull. “Don’t know,” he repeated, motioning for Dittier to follow him back to the porch. “But we sure as hell better tell CJ.”

  “I don’t care what it costs,” Howard Stafford shouted from the middle of his library. “I just want it fixed,” he added just as loudly to the two men standing directly in front of him.

  The shorter of the two, a muscular white man with crooked teeth and pockmarked skin, shook his head and said authoritatively, “I told you not to install divided-light glass in those display-case doors in the first place,” as the other man, tall, stately, and black with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, nodded in agreement.

  “It’s a library for Christ’s sake. Not Fort Knox. I thought all your space-age security gadgetry was supposed to do the trick,” said Stafford, dressing down the acne-scarred Arthur Vannick.

  “Well, it didn’t because your burglar had a key,” Vannick said defensively.

  “We’re not certain about that,” countered the other man.

  Vannick shot the black man a look of contempt. “Stick to what you know, Counts.”

  Theodore Counts bit his tongue reluctantly. He and Vannick, a flamboyant, self-professed onetime Secret Service agent turned security specialist, had butted heads over the entire five months that Counts, a onetime Denver Public Schools chief librarian, had served as lead consultant on the down-to-the-studs remodeling of Howard Stafford’s library a year and a half earlier.

  Vannick had pushed for a friend of his own who was a high-profile architect to design and manage the construction, to which Stafford had agreed, but he’d given Counts the nod as a consultant because a Denver Post article had touted Counts as a bibliophile’s messiah when it came to library design, and Counts had been the fuse and gunpowder behind a 1980s refurbishing and revitalization of Denver’s high school libraries.

  Stafford, a risk taker, had chosen Counts over Vannick’s protests, and Counts, in concert with the project’s architects, had modified the design of the University of Southern California’s prestigious Doheny Memorial Library to render by project’s end, at least as far as Stafford was concerned, an absolute masterpiece.

  “I did stick with what I knew,” Counts said defensively. “Take a look around. All of Howard’s books are here but two. You’re the one who screwed up. Security was the problem.”

  “Would you two stop? You’re here now for one reason only: to get together and correct any visible shelving and display-design flaws and install a security system that works.” Stafford scanned the library thoughtfully. “Maybe what I really need is a bunch of safes.”

  “That defeats your purpose,” said Counts. “You’ve always said you want your books to be out so you can enjoy them.”

  “Maybe it’s time I modify my thinking, Ted.”

  “I’d say so,” Vannick snapped.

  “The bottom line is this,” Stafford said. “You’ve got two weeks to come back to me with a library and security reconfiguration that allows me to enjoy my books visually. Do you read me?”

  Both men nodded.

  “Good. Now that we’re all on the same page, maybe we can finally get around to those drinks.” Stafford pushed a call button that was set into a nearby countertop.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to pass,” said Counts.

  “Nonsense. The drinks are on their way.”

  “Not like the old days, huh, Counts?” said Vannick, aware that a problem with alcohol had been one of the things that had nudged Counts out of the Denver Public Schools system and into early retirement.

  “Better than being a con,” Counts shot back.

  “Can it or I’ll use someone else,” said Stafford, aware that, far more than the satisfaction of being right, what both men craved was money. “I took the liberty of ordering for you,” Stafford added as a young woman walked into the room carrying a tray of drinks that had been prepared by Theresa only moments earlier. The woman placed the tray on a nearby table and left immediately.

  “Scotch on the rocks.” Stafford smiled and handed a tumbler to Vannick. “And a Tom Collins for you,” he said, handing a second drink to Counts.

  Unwilling to offend Stafford, Counts accepted the drink.

  “To fixing a problem,” said Stafford, hoisting his glass in a toast.

  “To the fix,” Vannick chimed in. Watching Counts barely bring his glass to his lips and smiling, Vannick decided he would do some additional checking on the man who’d been such a nemesis. It was the prudent thing to do, he told himself, especially since he knew Counts had already spoken to a police sergeant named Fritz Commons about him.

  Counts and Vannick had disappeared into the crisp April evening when Howard Stafford wrapped up his evaluation of their meeting. Entering a neatly printed note into a leather-bound journal, he enumerated five reasons for putting Counts and Vannick at the top of his very personal list of robbery suspects.

  CHAPTER 8

  Pen in hand, Flora Jean Benson sat in CJ’s former office, hunched over a legal pad, taking notes and listening to Theresa Del Mora’s story. Mahogany-skinned with deep
-set dark-brown eyes and unabashedly African American, Flora Jean had the build and carriage of a Las Vegas showgirl, and she still spoke, after living for nearly twenty years in Denver, with a Midwestern East St. Louis heart-of-the-hood twang. Even seated, she seemed to dwarf the much shorter, light-complected, cherubic-looking Theresa.

  Noticeably nervous, Theresa had arrived at eight a.m. sharp. After introducing herself, she’d asked Flora Jean why the sign over the door still read, “Floyd & Benson’s Bail Bonds,” since CJ claimed to be retired. Flora Jean had chuckled and said, “Floyd’s a brand name in the bail-bondin’ business here in Denver—still brings me in a good seventy percent of my clients. You don’t change thoroughbreds in the middle of the derby, sugar; it’s bad business.”

  Theresa had liked Flora Jean’s no-nonsense demeanor right off, and as she watched Flora Jean flip the page on her legal pad, she had the sense that she’d struck investigative gold.

  Flora Jean paused from her note taking and looked up at Theresa. “Now, tell me a little more about why you think your son might’ve been plannin’ to lift more than the two books he stole from Howard Stafford’s library.”

  “It was the way he acted—moping, secretive, more and more distant the longer he was here. That and the fact that a week before Luis was killed, I found five one-hundred-dollar bills taped to the bottom of one of his dresser drawers. Do you need to see them?”

  “Nope,” said Flora Jean, amazed at Theresa’s near flawless English. Jotting down a note about the money, she asked, “How long you been here in the States, sugar?”

  “Six years.”

  “You sound like you been here all your life.”

  Theresa forced a smile. “I guess I should thank your American-made circuit-riding Catholic nuns.”

  Flora Jean nodded. “And Luis, how long had he been here?”

  “Five months,” said Theresa, blinking back tears.

  “Plenty of time to get the lay of the land at Stafford’s.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he do besides hang out at the Stafford compound?”

  “He was studying history and political science at Metro State. He had classes two days a week.”

  “Good school,” said Flora Jean, who, at the insistence of the other rock of strength in her life besides CJ, retired marine two-star general Alden Grace, had enrolled in night classes in criminology at Metro State. With life experience credits that included a tour in the Persian Gulf War, where she and the general had fallen in love, and two semesters of course work behind her, Flora Jean was halfway toward earning a criminology degree. “Question is, did he go to class?” Flora Jean tapped the business end of her pen on the legal pad and eyed Theresa quizzically.

  “I’m sure he did. I found grade slips and a note from one of his professors in his room.” Failing to mention that she’d also found a jewelry box full of her son’s most personal possessions in the back of a closet, she bent down and began rummaging through a canvas shopping bag at her feet. She sat up and handed Flora Jean several Metropolitan State Collage grade slips and an eight-by-eleven-inch black binder.

  Flora Jean examined the grade slips and nodded approvingly. “He seemed to be doing pretty good. As and Bs.” She set the grade slips aside and flipped the binder open. “The Role of the Transcontinental Railroad in the Opening of the West” was typed halfway down the title page. An “A,” circled in red, sat like a bull’s-eye just below the obvious term paper’s title. A note below that read, “Keep up the good work and I’ll teach you more.” The comment, which struck Flora Jean as somehow strangely out of place, was one that Flora Jean decided she’d best remember if she took on the case.

  Flora Jean flipped through the term paper’s twenty-four pages of text, scrutinizing them carefully, including the final two pages of references. At the end of the references a boxed note read, “Submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for History of the American West, MSCH 201, Course Director Professor Oliver Lyman, Ph.D.”

  “Looks like your son had a nose for history,” said Flora Jean, setting down the binder.

  “He did, and in Nicaragua as well.” Theresa sighed. “Luis was mesmerized by history’s untold stories. But he was too unseasoned to understand that the stories of the past are usually told by those who are the winners—never the losers. In too many ways he was so much like his father.” Theresa’s voice trailed off to a whisper.

  “And his father was?”

  “A loser, not as a man but as a revolutionary, like his brother and the sons of his brother, Luis’s cousins.”

  “And you think Luis saw himself as a revolutionary?”

  “Not once he was here. But I’m afraid he brought that kind of mind-set with him from Nicaragua.”

  “I see. Did he have friends, enemies, heroes, mentors?”

  “No.”

  “Any axes to grind?”

  Theresa shook her head.

  “What about places he hung out? Did he have a favorite restaurant or chat room? Any special coffee house or bars?”

  “None that I know of.” Theresa turned teary-eyed. “I should have been more of a mother.”

  “I’m bettin’ you did all you could, sugar.” Flora Jean reached over and patted Theresa’s hand. “Your son was twenty years old. Don’t know much about Nicaragua, but that’s pretty much a grown man here.”

  Theresa frowned, recalling her own youthful years spent in the midst of revolution, where the sight of nine-year-olds carrying machine guns was commonplace. “Age is relative,” she said insightfully.

  “Ain’t that the truth?” Flora Jean smiled and thought about the sixteen-year age difference between Alden Grace and her. “You sure you don’t wanta rely on the cops?” she asked, eyeing Theresa thoughtfully.

  Theresa’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly she was pale. “Men in uniform calling themselves policemen killed my husband and set his car on fire, with him in it, in our village square. Revolution and death are harsh teachers, Ms. Benson. You would have no reason to really understand. No! Never do I wish to interact with your so-called cops.”

  Flora Jean resisted the urge to respond to the sad-faced woman sitting across the desk from her. A woman who had no way of knowing that as a marine intelligence sergeant during the Persian Gulf War, Flora Jean had seen death, destruction, and dehumanization that surely rivaled the worst that the Nicaraguan civil war could have offered. Or that as the unwanted child of a St. Louis prostitute, she had been shuttled between her mother’s friends, abusive relatives, and juvenile hall more times than she cared to count. She understood very well what it was like to be a marginalized human being, and what mattered was that, like Theresa, she had survived.

  Realizing that now wasn’t the time for either poor-mouthing or one-upmanship, she flashed Theresa a smile. “I’ll take the job. I’ll start with a visit to your son’s history professor over at Metro State.” She picked up the term-paper binder and flipped to the back. “Oliver Lyman,” she said, reading the name aloud. “What else do I have to start with? After that I’ll move on to Howard Stafford, if that’s okay.”

  “Do what you have to, but do your best.”

  “I charge two hundred fifty dollars a day, plus expenses. My associates get one fifty.”

  “Associates?”

  “I use a couple of former rodeo cowboys to help me with loose ends, and occasionally I have to touch base with an attorney to make sure I’m inside the bounds of the law. I might even need a little insight from the man who sent you here, CJ Floyd.”

  “I thought he was retired.”

  “And so did Nellie,” said Flora Jean, grinning knowingly. “She thought she was eatin’ ice cream, but she was eatin’ jelly. Trust me, sugar, the man ain’t retired. He’s just restin’ up for the next lap.”

  Theresa nodded, understanding. “We have a similar saying in Nicaragua: It’s the road you know best that takes you home safely; be wary of the one that has just been discovered. When will you start?” she asked, slipping
a checkbook stuffed with bills out of the bag at her feet.

  “Right this second.” Flora Jean flipped through the overstuffed Rolodex on her desk, slipped out a card, picked up the phone, and punched in the number on the card. After a brief pause, she said to the person who’d answered, “Department of History, please.” Waiting to be connected, she cupped the receiver against her shoulder and reiterated to Theresa, “Right this second, sugar.”

  Metro State College, just south of downtown Denver, rose from the ashes of Denver’s skid row and an adjacent, mostly Hispanic, solidly Catholic neighborhood during urban-renewal efforts of the late 1960s and ’70s. In the four decades since the nascent educational institution had begun writing its history, the college had grown from an enrollment in the hundreds to a sprawling urban campus now called Auraria that also included the University of Colorado at Denver, the Community College of Denver, and a student body of thirty-three thousand.

  The campus, a darling of urban-based, vote-hungry politicians, had gobbled up a swath of scenic acreage along the banks of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River and was now held in check only by Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium, home of the Denver Broncos, and I-25, the lifeblood of its commuter students.

  Finding a parking space on the Auraria Campus was impossible, so Flora Jean walked the mile from her Delaware Street office on Bail Bondsman’s Row and down the Speer Boulevard bike path that curved its way along Cherry Creek to intersect the Auraria Campus. Before leaving the office, she assured a sad-eyed Theresa Del Mora that she would find her son’s killer. She’d then ushered Theresa off with an assignment to do mop-up duty on Luis’s contacts and police his room one last time. “And this time, search the place like you’re a cop,” Flora Jean had emphasized after Theresa had told her that a homicide detective named Commons had spent nearly an hour searching Luis’s room. “I’ll do the same, soon as I get a chance,” Flora Jean had added.

  Puffy banks of low-hanging clouds, a cinch to produce afternoon showers, draped the Front Range of the Rockies as Flora Jean crossed the light-rail commuter tracks that marked the eastern edge of the campus. It was a quarter past ten, and the short-notice meeting she’d set up with a very accommodating Oliver Lyman an hour earlier on the pretense of being a nontraditional minority student interested in pursuing a master’s degree in Western history was scheduled for ten-thirty.