by Robert Greer
“Looks to me like he wasn’t on top of his game.”
Commons shook his head, exasperated. “You’re a tough nut, Floyd. Hope it doesn’t end up getting you killed.” He turned abruptly, announced, “Tour’s over,” and headed for the garage-door-sized window of daylight streaking through the back wall. CJ followed, stepping gingerly as if sleepwalking his way through a dream.
Moments later they stood outside, where a twenty-foot-square perimeter of crime-scene tape surrounded them. Commons eyed his watch. “McCabe’s due to meet me here in a few minutes. When I talked to him earlier, he wasn’t making much sense.”
CJ eyed what was left of Lenny McCabe’s half of the duplex. “Would you have been?”
Commons ignored the question. “This place is off limits until further notice, Floyd. You just had your last tour.” He looked around to see a late model Ford pickup headed up the alley toward them. The bright-red truck, with door logos that read, “McCabe’s Matchless Gems,” pulled parallel to the property’s garage and stopped. Ashen-faced, Lenny McCabe stepped out and walked toward CJ and Commons, eyes to the sky as if he were either pleading or praying. “Bad day at Black Rock?” he asked, stopping a few steps from CJ.
“Worse,” CJ countered.
“Who’d we piss off?” McCabe asked.
Before CJ could respond, Commons said, “My money’s on a very determined and vengeful lady,” stopping McCabe in his tracks.
CHAPTER 15
Rosie’s garage was a long-established Five Points gathering place and more. The garage’s massive back storage room, referred to as “the den” by locals, offered Five Points denizens the opportunity to gamble, play the numbers, buy liquor on Sundays—still against Colorado law—or, if they had a mind to, just hang out all day and shoot the breeze. Rosie didn’t mind customers loitering, since that usually meant money in his pocket, but if he caught them cursing in front of a woman, or if one of their poker games turned sour and ended in a fight, he sent everyone packing. Local politicians knew full well what went on in Rosie’s back room, but few ever made mention of it, and law enforcement largely ignored it.
Rosie stood inventorying the den’s liquor cabinet, making certain he had enough whiskey and beer for the weekend, when CJ walked in, Lenny McCabe in his wake. Both men had the look of haggard ghosts as they closed in on the liquor cabinet.
Rosie didn’t know much about McCabe—he’d met him only once, the day CJ had celebrated signing the lease on Ike’s Spot—but as he moved around the bar to greet the two men, the foggy-eyed, trance-like look in CJ’s eyes told his lifelong friend that CJ was in deep trouble.
“How you doing, CJ?” Rosie said, draping an arm over CJ’s shoulders.
“Not that great, Red,” said CJ, calling Rosie by the nickname that only CJ, Rosie’s wife, Etta Lee, and Mavis were privileged to use. “The store’s a wreck, and like you said on the phone, I’ve got a hell of a reclamation project on my hands. Lenny’s place is worse.”
McCabe’s head bobbed up and down, punctuating the point.
“Sorry to hear that,” said Rosie, patting McCabe on the shoulder. Turning back to CJ, he added, “How can I help?”
CJ’s words came reluctantly. “Thanks. I haven’t really had time to think things through, but there are a couple things you could do.” CJ eyed the floor, embarrassed.
“Shoot,” said Rosie, surprised by CJ’s reticence.
“Let Morgan and Dittier stay here for a night or so until I can fix up a place for them in my garage. I’ve got Mavis working on it.”
“Easy enough. How’d Mavis take the news?”
“Not good. But it’s not like she hasn’t been through rough times with me before. I’ve only talked to her once since I got back from Wyoming, but I’m headed to see her as soon as I leave here.”
“What else do you need?” Rosie asked.
CJ eyed McCabe. “Lenny here’s in bad shape. He’s pretty much lost everything. I owe him a couple of months’ back rent. I was hoping you might be able to help me out.”
“I’ll do what I can,” said Rosie, recalling that the last time CJ had asked him for money was when they’d been in the tenth grade and CJ had left his book-deposit money at home. “That it?”
“Yeah.” CJ’s response was barely a whisper. He looked at McCabe, who tried his best to mount a smile.
“What about all them antiques of yours that are still in the store? Think they’re safe?” Rosie asked.
“Hope so. The cops have the place roped off, and they won’t let me bring in anyone to board up the hole in the back wall until the city engineer says the building’s okay structurally.” CJ glanced at McCabe. “They won’t let Lenny set foot in his place.”
“Then we gotta make an end run around their asses,” Rosie said, smiling. “And the nighttime’s the right time, if you know what I mean. We’ll use one of my trucks to load up your stuff. I’ll get Dittier and Morgan to help out.”
“Don’t get caught. That cop Commons has his teeth sunk way down deep into this,” warned McCabe.
Recognizing that McCabe might not understand the way black folks, especially black folks who stood to lose everything they had, viewed the law, Rosie said, “Don’t matter. He’s white, and he’s slow.” He flashed McCabe a no-harm-intended look, glanced back at CJ, and said, “I’ll handle it. You best head on over and see Mavis. Let’s head back up front and I’ll get to work on that money for you.”
CJ and McCabe followed the six-foot-four-inch, 260-pound, self-made Five Points businessman toward the den’s front door. There was a bit less hesitation in CJ’s gait than when he’d entered, but McCabe’s downtrodden shuffle was still painfully obvious.
Six years in the U.S. Marine Corps and a tour of duty in the Persian Gulf War had taught Flora Jean to always expect the unexpected. Now, as she waited for Arthur Vannick to exit the 24 Hour Fitness club he belonged to, she couldn’t help but wonder whether Vannick, who claimed to be a former member of the Secret Service and whose security business website touted the fact that he’d been a human shield for presidents, had during his years in that business developed the kind of sixth sense that would alert him to the fact that he was being followed.
When she’d heard from a subdued, road-weary CJ via cell phone a few hours earlier that Ike’s had been bombed but his and Billy’s Wyoming trip had been fruitful, she’d considered canceling her Vannick stakeout to meet with CJ and console him, but CJ had insisted that she go ahead with her plans.
A light southwesterly breeze kicked up as Flora Jean, outfitted in a tight-fitting Windbreaker, sweatpants, and sneakers, eyed the fitness center’s entrance waiting for her mark to appear. She hoped the photo of a smiling Vannick she’d downloaded off his website was a good match. She didn’t want to confront the wrong person.
Most of the people entering and exiting the fitness center appeared to be in their twenties or thirties, and the majority, decked out in designer sweats and sneakers, gym bags looped over their shoulders, looked as if they were headed not for a workout but for a date. Flora Jean shook her head, mumbled, “White folks on the make,” chuckled at the fact that sweating and grunting one’s way to fitness had been moved way up on the social scale, and went back to scanning the patrons for Arthur Vannick.
Two twenty-somethings who looked like actors in a beer commercial, caps on backward, $150 running shoes paving their way, gawked at her as they ambled toward the front door of the building. The no-excuses-sir marine corps stare she gave the two men caused them to pick up their pace.
Vannick swept out the front door so quickly that Flora Jean almost missed him, and she would have if he’d been wearing a hat or cap. He was three shades paler than his website’s airbrushed, suntanned photo, and his pockmarked skin stood out. He was also fifteen pounds heavier than depicted in the photo.
Vannick moved toward the elevator of the fitness center’s three-story parking structure as if he were on a mission, so rapidly that Flora Jean could barely keep pace with
him.
Rethinking the background information that Julie Madrid had e-mailed to her earlier, information that didn’t fully mesh with the propaganda on Vannick’s company website, Flora Jean picked up her pace and closed the gap between them.
As Vannick stepped into the elevator alone, she raced for a nearby stairwell. Taking the steps three at a time, she barely beat the elevator to the second floor. When Vannick didn’t exit, she bounded up a second flight of stairs. She was standing on the third-floor landing, barely winded, waiting for the elevator doors to open before Vannick even heard the third-floor arrival ding.
The brightly lit third level, a concrete floor walled in by cinder block, was empty except for a car and two expensive-looking pickups as Vannick headed across it. Surprised that anyone calling himself a former Secret Service agent would let a six-foot-one-inch woman wearing a scratchy-sounding Windbreaker close in on him so quickly, Flora Jean overtook her mark.
“Mr. Vannick,” she called out, watching Vannick react with a start. “Finally! I’ve been tryin’ to catch up with you all day.”
Still walking and squinting over his shoulder at Flora Jean as if she were an apparition, Vannick tightened his grip on the strap of his gym bag. “Pardon me?”
“Been tryin’ to get a chance to speak with you all day. I’m Flora Jean Benson, and I’m lookin’ into the Luis Del Mora murder. We need to talk.”
“Can’t help you.” Vannick’s upper lip curled indignantly.
“I’ve been told you can.”
“By whom?” Vannick angled across the floor toward the lone car.
“Theodore Counts,” said Flora Jean, matching Vannick stride for stride.
Vannick stopped and turned to face Flora Jean. “And how does that asshole claim I can help you?”
“He says the security system you designed for Howard Stafford’s library may have been faulty.”
“That’s about what I’d expect out of a full-time piece of shit like Counts. And while he was trying to link me to a murder, did he happen to tell you why, after thirty years of working for the Denver Public Schools system, he took an early-retirement powder?”
“No.”
“Didn’t figure he would’ve. Well, here’s why: He left because he was embezzling money. No proof, of course; that’s the way things operate in a bureaucracy. The dirt gets swept under the carpet so that all the Counts in the world end up with a hall pass to their golden years.”
“You sound bitter, Mr. Vannick.”
“I sure as hell am. I don’t like my tax dollars being skimmed off by equal-opportunity cons like Counts. Now, instead of pestering me, go dog him before you end up being sorry.”
Flora Jean bristled. “I’d lighten up on the threats, sugar. Might take you somewhere you don’t wanta go.”
Vannick flashed a half-cocked smile. “Sorry, sista, didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
Flora Jean took a half step forward. “Got any more innuendos you need to get off your chest, sonny?”
Vannick stood his ground. “Don’t push your luck, lady. I’m from a different world than you.”
“So I’ve heard. Had a lawyer friend of mine check you out. She says you claim to be connected. Well, friend, believe it or not, I know a few people from that side of the universe too. Think I’ll run your name by ’em.”
“Knock yourself out, but don’t bother me again—ever.”
“You tellin’ or askin’?”
“You figure it out.” Vannick shot Flora Jean one cold final stare before walking away.
“I’ll try,” Flora Jean called after him. “But remember, I might not get it right. After all, I’m just your basic sista.”
Vannick turned and mouthed, Fuck you, bitch.
“Save it for your mother,” said Flora Jean, watching Vannick slip into a late-model Porsche and gun the engine. He zoomed by her seconds later, cutting the intimidating pass as close as he dared. As he slowed to take the ramp down to the next level, she found herself wondering whether Vannick, as Julie Madrid had suggested during their afternoon phone conversation, was simply a con man running a bluff or an organized crime wiseguy, as he liked to intimate. It would be easy enough to determine. She didn’t have the contacts to fully scope Vannick out, but CJ did. An old curmudgeon named Mario Satoni, a onetime genuine Mile High City wiseguy, though he was reluctant to admit it, had been one of CJ’s Uncle Ike’s longtime gambling buddies. Satoni would know if Arthur Vannick was lying about his purported underworld contacts. More importantly, Satoni still had the juice to make Vannick stop running his bluff.
Mavis had turned off all the lights in the house except for a hallway nightlight and a bedroom reading lamp. She was seated naked on CJ’s lap with a pair of University of Colorado running shorts at her feet. CJ, clad in a matching pair of shorts, rocked her gently back and forth, trying not to think about the bombing, his store, the overdue rent, his decision to get out of the bail-bonding business, or Celeste.
They had rehashed the day’s events to the point that there wasn’t anything left to discuss. Mavis had been the one to suggest they slip into the jogging shorts that a close friend and Vietnam comrade of CJ’s had given them eight months earlier as a lighthearted gift the day they’d announced their engagement, saying, “Now you’re really a pair.” Whenever their relationship seemed to be teetering, Mavis would retrieve the gift to help calm the waters. “When do you think they’ll let you back in the store?” she asked tentatively, one arm wrapped loosely around CJ’s neck.
“I don’t know.” CJ raised his head until their lips met.
“Is all your stuff safe?”
“As safe as things that really don’t matter can be.”
“CJ, please. You’ve spent a lifetime collecting those things. Don’t act as if they don’t matter to you.”
CJ shrugged. “And look what I’ve got to show for it. Debt up to my eyeballs, a bombed-out shell of a store, and nothing left of the bail-bonding business it took Ike a lifetime to build.”
“It wasn’t all Ike’s doing. You put in your share of time, and the name over the door still reads, ‘Floyd & Benson’s.’”
“I sold the business to Flora Jean, Mavis.” CJ stopped rocking the only woman he’d ever loved and looked her squarely in the eye. “I don’t know which way to go, babe.”
“Do what you do best, CJ,” said Mavis, uttering words she’d thought she’d never say. She had no desire to see CJ step back into a world that had caused the two of them more pain and grief than she cared to remember, or to watch him immerse himself once again in a business that had nearly gotten her killed, but she knew CJ needed something to give him a sense of purpose and a lift out of the morass he was stuck in. “How badly does Flora Jean need you?”
“She can use the help.”
“Then help her,” said Mavis, hoping she sounded sincere.
CJ wrapped his arms around Mavis’s waist and sat back in his chair. “Things could end up like they were before. I could end up chasing bottom feeders all day long.”
“Things can’t get much worse than they are, CJ.”
“Guess not.” He squeezed Mavis tightly.
“What about Celeste?”
“She’s always been out there somewhere, Mavis. The bombing just proved it.”
“Have you called the police?”
“Didn’t have to. They came calling on their own.”
“Who?”
“That red-headed sergeant, Commons, the one who tracked me down at Mae’s the other day. He knows all about my problems with Ms. Deepstream.”
The look on Mavis’s face was suddenly as devoid of expression as CJ had ever seen.
“If she comes after us again, CJ …”
“She won’t,” CJ said, still taking in the look.
“She won’t because I won’t let her.” Mavis wrapped her arm around CJ’s neck. “I’ll kill her first.”
There’ll be a time and a place, Celeste told herself as she watched Mavis Sundee’s hou
se go dark. She’d been following Floyd all day, and although she hadn’t been able to get as close to him as she’d hoped, she could smell his scent and the scent of his bitch. She walked down the alley that separated Mavis’s house from a cluster of recently renovated Victorians on the next street and headed for her pickup. Now that she knew how and where she would dispense with Floyd, she would zero in on his routine, catalog the way he lived, and chart his every move before she extracted his life from him.
CHAPTER 16
Billy DeLong’s trout-filled cooler sat across from him on the seat of his pickup. After leading a morose CJ from the Holiday Inn back to I-25 the previous day and waving good-bye to him as their vehicles headed off in different directions southwest of City Center, Billy had spent the rest of the day landing fish after fish on the North Platte River.
Now as he headed for Loretta Sheets’s Equal Rights Western Heritage Museum, refreshed from a gold-medal day of fishing and a good night’s sleep, his fingers tapping out a rhythmic beat on top of his cooler, he was thinking more about the midsummer eating pleasure he’d enjoy every time he sat down to a meal of smoked Rocky Mountain trout, baked beans, coleslaw, and lemonade than about discussing century-old photographs in some drafty museum. Chewing on his wad of Doublemint, he turned onto downtown Cheyenne’s Central Avenue and slowed his pickup, eyeing the declining address numbers until he pulled to a stop in front of 966, got out, dusted off his jeans, and headed for the museum.
The previous evening, when he’d asked his Holiday Inn bartender friend about Sheets’s museum, the bartender had smiled and said, “If you go inside, be sure to tie down your wiener. The woman who runs the place ain’t got nothin’ but contempt in her heart for men. Be sure and read the little brass plaque to the right of the door before you set foot in the place. You’ll see what I mean.” He’d winked at Billy, refreshed his lemonade, and clammed up.
Following the barkeep’s advice, Billy stopped to read the five lines of raised lettering on the plaque: “Wyoming, state of vast places and first government of the world to grant women equal rights. Please enter this museum with that historical information in mind.” Billy walked through the museum’s ten-foot-high double doors at ten-fifteen, his mind historically primed and open.
