by Robert Greer
“Narcissistic bugger.”
“Absolutely. And he’s proud of it.”
“Did your story do what he expected?”
“I’m not sure. He never complained about it, though.”
“Ever talk to him again?”
“Just once. At a Rockies game, a couple of years after that sorry excuse for a baseball franchise landed here in Colorado. He was seated alone in the next-to-last row of one of the Coors Field upper decks. I guess he sticks to the cheap seats to preserve his anonymity in public. I remembered from the interview that he was a baseball nut. He recognized me and said hi. The Rockies were behind by a couple of runs. When I asked him if he thought they’d ever win a pennant, he smiled and said, ‘Nope,’ adding pointedly, like someone with inside knowledge, that top to bottom, the whole damn organization lacked guts.”
“He was right on that point,” said CJ, a hapless Rockies fan himself. CJ eyed Grimes’s article one last time before folding it slowly. “Mine to keep?”
“Sure is.”
“I’ll make it my bedtime story.”
“Good reading,” said Grimes. “But you won’t find any more gold nuggets in there than what I just handed you.” He eyed CJ quizzically. “Why are you dogging Stafford anyway?”
When CJ didn’t answer, Grimes said, “I mine swamp gas for a living, Floyd, or have you forgotten? You can tell me now or I’ll find out later.”
Aware that Grimes was telling the truth, CJ said, “The son of one of Stafford’s employees turned up dead a few days back.”
“And you think Stafford’s involved?”
“Don’t know. Right now, as you’d say, I’m just mining for nuggets.”
Grimes thoughtfully fingered the cleft in his chin. “Why’d the kid buy it?”
“The best I can figure, he stole a photograph of Stafford’s that was worth a lot of money, and somebody either wanted it or wanted it back.”
“How much money?”
“A million at least.”
“Chump change for Stafford,” said Grimes, shaking his head. “Don’t think he’d get involved in anything as squirrelly as a murder for that kind of money.”
“Maybe he hired out the job.”
“Nope,” Grimes said with a grin. “Read my article. He’s not the kind that uses middlemen. Got any other suspects?”
“Damn, Grimes. You sound like a cop.”
“Just trying to offer you a free point of view.”
CJ shrugged. “I’ve got a few maybes and a couple of Stafford contacts I want to take a hard look at. A onetime librarian named Counts and a security-systems specialist, Arthur Vannick.”
Grimes’s head arched back. “You’re shittin’ me!”
“No reason to do that.”
“Then you’ve stumbled onto one hell of a gigantic nugget today, my friend. Counts I’ve never heard of. But Vannick, now, he’s a whole different story. He’s a self-promoting loudmouth with a boatload full of bullshit. He says he was in the Secret Service. He wasn’t. Claims to be a Vietnam vet. He’s not. Boasts that he has underworld connections. I doubt it. And he’s got a record. Did four years in our state’s delightful penal institution for men in Canon City. Should’ve gotten life.”
CJ whistled. “And your connection to Vannick is?”
“I did a Denver Post exposé on him back when he was running a commodities scheme based out of Miami. He was milking wads of money out of a couple of leaders of half-baked juntas down Central America way and squeezing shekels out of a dozen or so Miami businessmen and politicians dumb enough to listen to his song and dance.”
CJ’s eyes widened. “Did he do any business in Nicaragua?”
“Couldn’t prove he did. Why? You got anybody from Central America on your suspects list?”
CJ slipped a pack of cheroots out of his vest pocket and tapped one out. “My, my, my. Nope. But the kid who was killed was from Nicaragua.”
“Well, if he screwed with Vannick, he screwed with the wrong man,” Grimes said knowingly.
“Why’s that?”
“Those four years Vannick did in Canon City weren’t because of his Ponzi deals and white-collar stuff. The time he did was for manslaughter.”
“Who’d he kill?”
“A business partner. Accidentally, of course.”
CJ lit his cheroot, glanced out one of the press club’s windows toward a line of slow-moving traffic, and said, “How much time have you got, Grimes? I’d like to hear more about Mr. Vannick.”
Grimes looked over toward the bar and smiled. “All evening if need be.”
“Why so giving?”
“Just call it my early-April Christmas spirit,” said Grimes, both eyes narrowing to a hateful squint. “After my story on Vannick ran, the son of a bitch threatened me, and believe it or not, warm and loving human that I am, until now I’ve never had a chance to return the favor.”
CHAPTER 18
Celeste Deepstream had just finished inspecting her kill spot: a peeling unmaintained billboard that touted the gastronomic virtues of a long-defunct Denver restaurant. It rose thirty-five feet above a self-serve parking lot on the south side of 13th Avenue and sat a mere thirty yards from the Victorian building that housed Floyd & Benson’s Bail Bonds and CJ Floyd’s apartment. Fortunately for her, the antiquated advertising canvas lacked the stadium-style halogen lighting of its contemporary counterparts.
Now, as she sat in the half-full parking lot below looking up at the billboard, locked safely behind the tinted windows of the pickup that Alexie Borg had lent her after she’d crawled back to him and acquiescently given him the sexual ride of his life, she couldn’t help but think that after so many failures and false starts, she was about to finally enjoy success.
The night time is the right time, she told herself, humming the refrain from the Ray Charles classic. Her execution would have to be letter-perfect, and she’d have to kill Floyd in that fleeting, perfect time between the end of day and the cusp of darkness, when there was still enough light for her to see her target but insufficient light for the random bystander or passing motorist to see her. She knew she could do it.
She still needed scores of additional practice runs down at Alexie’s second home in the Black Forest outside Colorado Springs. But she’d find perfection. She’d have to learn to scale the ladder that led to the billboard’s catwalk a bit more quickly, and she now knew that she would have to crawl instead of duck-walk along the catwalk in order to take advantage of its protective twilight shadows. She knew she could do all that as well.
For now, in the light of day she would simply drink in the lay of the land and watch Floyd’s Victorian for activity. During the twenty-five minutes she’d been there, Floyd hadn’t made an appearance. But she knew he would. Sooner or later, everyone had to come back home.
Calculating distances and imagining trajectories in her head, she took in the surroundings for several more minutes before, disappointed at not seeing Floyd, she cranked the truck’s engine, aware that thirty minutes on the premises made her a parking patron; any longer stay risked transforming her into a recognizable nuisance. As she drove out of the parking lot, she watched a petite woman carrying a leather briefcase mount the front steps of Floyd’s building. The woman, dressed in a light tan trench-coat and fashionable business pumps, had the unmistakable look of a lawyer. She was probably there to meet Floyd’s partner, the Benson woman, and massage some legal angle that would wrangle a client out of jail, Celeste reasoned.
But she was wrong. What the briefcase-toting green-eyed Puerto Rican woman was delivering to Flora Jean was background information on the building of the transcontinental railroad, along with a dossier filled with information about a fugitive onetime Olympian, and former Rhodes Scholar, who had been on the run from the law for more than two years. Celeste also had no way of knowing, as Flora Jean Benson and Julie Madrid hugged each other in the building’s doorway, that the two women were as tenacious about protecting Floyd as she was determined
to kill him.
Theodore Counts’s half scowl mirrored Arthur Vannick’s angular, tight-lipped glare. For the past half hour the two men had been staring one another down and nursing mugs of bitter black coffee in the dimly lit alcove of the Boar’s Breath restaurant and bar, a seedy, out-of-the-way watering hole for ski bums and mountain men cloistered behind a string of spruce trees in the mountain town of Silverthorne, Colorado, sixty-nine miles west of Denver.
Neither man had enjoyed the trek to the mountains, but since they couldn’t risk being seen arm in arm with one another in Denver, the Boar’s Breath, a favorite weekend haunt of Vannick’s during his college days twenty years earlier, though he hadn’t set foot in it for close to two decades, had been chosen.
Counts set aside his coffee mug, scooped up a handful of pretzels from a wooden bowl in the center of their table, and pointed a finger accusingly at Vannick. “You’re the one with shit stains in his drawers, my friend, and that Benson woman was savvy enough to sniff them out.”
“Ease up on the finger pointing, Counts. She just happened to contact me more recently. The issue here isn’t her timing—the issue is, we’ve got a problem that needs resolving.”
“For once you’re right. If that Benson bitch digs deep enough into your bag of dirty laundry, she’s going to find out that we have a connection, and if she’s got a brain that’s half the size of her tits, she’ll start piecing things together. I told you to be wary of that Del Mora kid from the start.”
“Screw what you told me, Teddy,” said Vannick, aware that the effeminate Counts preferred to be called Theodore or Ted—anything but Teddy. “I went with what I thought was the best game plan.”
“And it didn’t work.”
“It scored us twenty-six grand, didn’t it?”
Counts let out a snort. “When the upside was scoring a million. There you go again, trying to add sugar to a bitter taste. I knew I never should’ve hooked up with your prevaricating ass.”
Vannick grinned. “But you did, didn’t you, Teddy?” He reached out and pinched Counts’s cheek. “Now, since you’re so sad about that twenty-six grand, maybe you should just give back your half of it.”
“Touch me again and I’ll give you more than that.”
“Can the tough stuff, Teddy. You haven’t got the balls.”
“Wanta try me?” Counts teased back the lapel of his sport coat. The butt of a .38 jutted from the inside pocket.
“Flash that thing again, you fucking halfwit, and I’ll make you eat it.”
“Sure, you will.” Counts laughed and patted his coat pocket. “Don’t try and con me, Arthur. I’ve seen your whole sorry act. What you need to be doing, Mr. Secret Service man, instead of selling me a bunch of wolf tickets you can’t back up, is covering our rear. That Benson woman’s one thing. Cops are a whole different matter.”
“Don’t tell me what to do when it comes to cops, Teddy. I’ve already had a visit from the red-headed bumbler in charge of the Del Mora case. Some junior-leaguer named Commons.”
“What?”
“Don’t blow a gasket, Teddy-boy. He’s been talking to anybody who had anything to do with the remodeling of the Stafford library, right down to the guys who stained the oak. He’ll get around to you soon enough.”
“And you haven’t said a word to me about it until now?”
“Shit, man. You’ve got a gun.” Vannick forced back a snicker. “When he gets around to your lame ass, why not just shoot him?”
“Don’t laugh, you idiot. There’s a difference between a real cop and some overeager big-titted sista.”
“Calm down, Teddy. Commons simply asked me what my role was in remodeling Stafford’s new library. I told him security. Every question after that was gravy.”
“Did he ask about me?”
“Of course. And I told him the truth. That you’re a pompous wannabe self-important asshole. Doesn’t matter what I said anyway. He’ll never figure we’re connected in a million years.”
“Did he know about the daguerreotype?”
“Shit, no. He barely knew about the Montana medicine book. Hell, I ended up getting more information out of him than he got out of me. Found out that the last guy to have the book in his possession was a South Broadway antiques dealer named Floyd. A black guy. And believe it or not, the other day somebody blew up Floyd’s store.”
Counts stroked his chin thoughtfully. “What did your cop say Floyd’s first name was?”
“Didn’t have one. Seems to like using his initials. CT, or maybe it was TG, something like that,” said Vannick.
“Damn!”
“You know him?”
“I know of him by way of my community connections. The last I heard, though, he was a bail bondsman.”
“Guess he changed careers.”
“Yeah, a big change. Most of what I know about him comes from the do-gooder father of the woman Floyd’s sweet on, a guy named Willis Sundee. The old fucker.” Counts sucked a stream of air between the gap in his front teeth. “I’ll do some checking.”
“You sound ticked, Teddy. What did the girlfriend’s daddy do you out of?”
“My job and almost my pension,” Counts said, his voice charged with anger. “Somehow I recall someone mentioning that Floyd and that Benson woman were connected.” Counts shot a quizzical glance at Vannick.
“Don’t look at me. Five Points is your territory, Teddy.”
“Appears I haven’t been doing a good enough job of mining it.”
Vannick shook his head. “So what’s new? You’re that fucking out of touch? Shit, no wonder word on the street has it you’re a damn Oreo.”
“Screw you. I’ve got a wire, and I’ve got my reasons for keeping the folks on the Points at arm’s length.”
“And I bet it has a bunch to do with that downscaled pension you’re always griping about. Folks down there got something on your ass you don’t want to talk about, Teddy?”
“Mind your own business, Vannick.”
“I am, and my business right now is finding out where that missing daguerreotype is. The one you claimed you had a laser lock on, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Who knows? It could be on its way to Europe or Central America by now.”
“I don’t think so. We’re talking American history here, not the history of Europe or the week-long story of some banana republic. That photo’s right here in the States; you can count on it.”
“Yeah. And so’s the Empire State Building. Bottom line is, after all my years of chasing the thing, I still don’t have it.”
“But we have that Floyd connection. Could be that whoever blew up his store has the photo.”
“Maybe.” Counts sounded unconvinced. “But my guess is that Floyd’s prior life as a bail bondsman bought him a whole suitcase full of enemies.”
“Wasn’t you who blew up his place, was it?” asked Vannick with a wink.
“No. Besides, unlike some people, I don’t profess to have underworld connections.”
Vannick cocked an eye in defiance. “My people would’ve killed Floyd if they had any hint he had that photo, trust me.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“Don’t mock me, you fucking gun toter! I can have you killed in half the time it takes to inhale. Could be you killed the Del Mora kid and you already have the damn photo.”
“Ditto, my friend.”
The two men stared each other down until Counts finally said, “Best come up with a plan, Mr. Wiseguy.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then a million bucks walks, and we come out of this clearing a paltry twenty-six thousand.”
Vannick took a sip of his tepid coffee and nodded thoughtfully. “Brings us back to Floyd.”
“And our Stafford problem. Don’t forget he gave us a timeline for coming up with a new library design and security plan.”
“Screw Stafford. We need to have somebody take a long, hard look at your former bail bondsman,” said Vannick.
“Got somebody in mind?”
“Sure do.”
“Who?”
Vannick laughed, suddenly all bravado. “You blind, Teddy? I did Secret Service detail, remember? Who do you think can zero in on Floyd better than me?”
Counts didn’t answer, wondering as he watched Vannick’s eyes light up in anticipation whether the prevaricating security-systems salesman had ever been to DC, much less served as a Secret Service agent, and whether he actually had what it took to track a man like Floyd. Even more, he wondered if Vannick possessed that essence of darkness that he knew it took to kill someone.
Everything seemed out of scale and more ominous to Celeste now that it was dusk. The billboard’s catwalk seemed that much higher, the empty parking lot looked larger and more intimidating, and the distances, especially the thirty yards between the billboard and Floyd’s office, seemed somehow to have doubled. But none of that mattered. What mattered was the pain of losing her brother and the sorrow she’d lived with for the past eight years—and, of course, killing Floyd.
She climbed the ladder and slipped through the catwalk access as the quiet of the evening enveloped the day. The air was unusually moist, and the temperature, which had been falling since late afternoon, now hovered at forty degrees.
Dressed from head to toe in black, she was wearing leather gloves with the thumb, index, and middle fingers cut back to the knuckle. A four-foot-long boomerang-shaped hard plastic case sat on the catwalk next to her. She stretched out prone twenty feet above the asphalt, looked directly at the front door of Floyd’s building, and watched a light-beige pickup pull away from the curb in front. A neon sign in Floyd’s front yard flashed alternating red and yellow messages—“Bail Bonds Anytime—24 Hours a Day.” Moments earlier a woman had rushed out of the building next door and jumped into the truck. Binoculars to her eyes, Celeste could see that the woman was crying. She wondered what the crime of the person the woman cared enough about to bring tears had been. Perhaps she was crying for her brother.
The truck moved toward Celeste, its headlights aimed directly at the billboard’s I-beam supports before it turned onto 13th Avenue and faded into the twilight. The glare was unnerving and disconcerting enough to cause Celeste to momentarily rethink her plan. Maybe she needed to kill Floyd in the blackness of night, when she could be certain that no one would be around to witness it, or perhaps she should dispense with him at first light, killing him before the city awoke. She eyed the plastic case and brought it to her as if it were a long-lost lover. No, she told herself. I’ve practiced too hard, spent too much time perfecting my timing, and logged too many hours honing an escape because of Moradi-Nik’s stupidity to change things now.
