The Fourth Perspective

by Robert Greer

  “Okay. Talk to you later.” Billy hung up. The photography news left him suddenly deflated.

  CJ closed his cell phone, slipped it into his vest pocket, and turned to Flora Jean. “Somebody broke into Amanda Hunter’s storage shed this evening. Billy’s on his way there.”

  “Think it could’ve been the Del Mora kid’s killer?”

  “Maybe, or even Lyman’s. Billy’ll keep us posted.” CJ turned and surveyed the room. “Too much noise in here for me,” he said, looking at Flora Jean. “Think I’m gonna call it an evening.” He checked his watch. “Got one final meeting to make before I call it quits.”

  “With who?”

  “Pinkie Niedemeyer.”

  “The hit man!”

  “Purported hit man, Flora Jean. There’s a difference.”

  “Only if you’re the damn press. I’d watch my back if I were you, CJ.”

  “Always do. You staying?”

  “For a while. But I won’t stay long. I need to have enough early-morning energy to worm my way into ol’ Professor Lyman’s office.”

  “Be careful, Flora Jean. Amanda Hunter already let whoever broke into her place tonight have a taste of buckshot. Wouldn’t want you to get caught rooting around Lyman’s office and getting more of the same, or worse.”

  “No worries,” Flora Jean said, patting her buns. “I’m buckshot-proof.”

  “Hope so,” said CJ, smiling and heading for the exit that he’d been working his way toward ever since he’d entered the den.

  CJ was a half block from the Bel Air when Fritz Commons angled across Welton Street to intercept him.

  “Knew you’d have to come back for your chariot, Floyd. Admire your taste in cars.”

  “You’re a genius, Sergeant. Smart enough to realize, I hope, that it’s Saturday night in Five Points and we need to get our asses out of the middle of Welton Street.”

  They stepped around the front of the Bel Air and up onto the sidewalk. “Win any money?” asked Commons, turning to face CJ, his breath reeking of green chili.

  “I try not to gamble, Sergeant.”

  “Same here.” Commons smiled. “Strange how an illegal joint like the den keeps chugging along after all these years. Guess Weeks has some kind of fairy godmother.”

  “Could be.”

  “Better hope you have one too. I talked to your friend Ms. Benson earlier today. Expect you already know that. I found her name on the most unusual insole I’ve ever seen, inside a dead man’s sock, and that took me north to Cheyenne and a woman named Sheets, who had the strangest story about a missing million-dollar photograph. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that photo or its whereabouts, would you, Floyd?”

  “I can’t help you, Sergeant.”

  “I figured your answer would be something like that, so I told myself I needed a response that would let you see things from my perspective. Here it is: disappear into the woodwork, Floyd. You’re still a suspect in a murder, and so is your friend Ms. Benson. You’re out of your league in this one. We’re not talking petty bond skippers here.”

  “Any more advice, Sergeant?”

  Commons looked CJ up and down as he tried to put his finger on exactly how the recalcitrant former bail bondsman fitted into his murder case. “Yes. You’re sucking up my investigative air, Floyd. If I find out you’re breathing in information that’s pertinent to a murder investigation and not exhaling it, you’ll regret it.”

  “Appreciate the warning, Sergeant. Are we done?”

  “For now,” said Commons. “And Floyd, don’t get too high-hatted. I’ve checked, and unlike your friend, Weeks, you don’t have friends in high places, much less a fairy godmother. Drive defensively,” he added with a smile.

  CJ stepped off the curb and moved to get into the Bel Air.

  It was just past midnight and pitch black at the Triangle Bar Ranch. Amanda Hunter and Billy DeLong stood in the middle of the poorly lit storage shed that had suffered the break-in, rehashing the night’s events. The dirt-floored shed was filled with odds and ends that included spare tractor parts, salvaged furniture, and outdated equipment. A couple of boxes that had contained Amanda’s grandfather’s things, including his tally books, cattle-auction receipts, and brand books, were overturned on the floor in front of Billy. Most things in the shed looked undisturbed except for several boxes that had been rifled and an overturned riding mower that Amanda used to cut grass around the house. The mower’s gas tank had leaked fuel onto the dirt floor in a perfect circle.

  “Smells like the inside of a gas tank in here. Let’s get this thing back on its feet,” said Billy, turning the mower upright and dusting off his hands.

  “The burglar probably broke in sometime around eight o’clock,” said Amanda. “That’s about the time I usually start reading or painting.” Amanda eyed the shed’s double-hung Douglas fir door. “What drew my attention and Russet’s was the sound of that door over there banging into the outside of the shed. After a lifetime of living out here, I’d know that sound in my sleep.”

  Billy nodded and watched Russet, not one bit gun-shy after her encounter with a .22, sniff her way around the shed. “What do you think they were after?”

  “My uncle’s daguerreotypes, I suspect. Unfortunately, as you know, they picked the wrong place.”

  Billy nodded and looked around the shed. “Ain’t too much in here outta place,” he said, picking up a displaced saddle yoke he’d overlooked and examining it.

  “That yoke was hooked to the wall over here,” said Amanda, pointing to a jutting treble hook.

  Billy walked over to where the yoke had been hanging, eyed the treble hook, and said, “Five foot high, wouldn’t you think?”

  “Closer to five and a half.”

  Billy eyed the hook, the wall, and finally the floor. “Think we’ve got somethin’.” Billy fingered the edge of the treble hook. “There’s a fragment of what looks like a piece of plastic caught here.” He teased the object off the hook and handed it to Amanda. “What do you make of it?”

  “Beats me,” said Amanda, scrutinizing the one-and-a-half-inch-long mud-brown fragment, “but you’re right; it’s plastic.”

  “I think we should keep it. Got somethin’ I can put it in?”

  “I’ve got a Baggie in the house.”

  “Good enough.” Billy slipped a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wrapped the plastic fragment in it. “Small bugger,” he said, slipping the handkerchief back into his pocket. “Whattaya think it broke off of?”

  “Glasses frames maybe, or perhaps a comb.”

  “That would be my guess too.” Billy looked around the room. “Did you find anything missing?”

  “No. But I’m thinking our thief may have left behind something else.”

  “What?”

  “Fingerprints, unless of course he was wearing gloves. Come take a look.”

  “Or she,” Billy countered, following Amanda to a far corner of the shed.

  Amanda stopped next to a box and picked up a postcard that she’d set on top of it before Billy’s arrival. “This postcard didn’t jump out of this box on its own,” she said, handing a colorful postcard hawking the 1936 Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo to Billy. “The box isn’t even overturned.”

  “Your thief would have had to have been pretty stupid to handle somethin’ like this without gloves,” said Billy, holding the card by the edges.

  “Maybe he was.”

  “We’ll bag it,” said Billy. “Might lead us somewhere; who knows? I’ve got a friend in Denver whose boyfriend used to be a top-level intelligence guy in the marines. He’s helped me and CJ with prints before.” Billy scanned the room one last time, drinking in every nook and cranny. “That about it?”

  “I think so.” Amanda checked her watch. “It’s almost one o’clock. I can put you up for the night if you’d like.”

  “Thanks. But I better warn you, I’ve got some questions I’m gonna need answered about a missing daguerreotype that you didn’t
mention the last time I was here. One that I’ve been told is worth a million bucks, maybe more. More than likely that’s what your burglar was looking for this evenin’.”

  “The Golden Spike photo, I’d bet,” said Amanda, turning to leave the shed.

  “Yeah.”

  “I figured you’d find out about it from Loretta Sheets.”

  “I did. So why didn’t you tell CJ and me about it the first time we were here?”

  Amanda’s eyes welled with tears. “Because that so-called missing photograph pretty much killed my father. He spent his whole life looking for it, never knowing whether it really existed. His search almost cost us this ranch.” Amanda turned off the shed’s lights and closed the door as she and Billy stepped out into the driveway lights. “The first time you were here, I wasn’t ready for you to pull the scab off that wound. To tell you the truth, I’m still not.”

  As they walked up the driveway toward the house, Russet took the lead, happy to be headed home. “Afraid the wound’s open now,” said Billy.

  “I know,” said Amanda, her tone resentful. “And believe me, it’s stinging real bad.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Pinkie Niedemeyer had lost all of his front teeth, top to bottom, eyetooth to eyetooth, and the pinkie finger of his left hand during a New Year’s Eve firefight outside the village of Song Ve three days before he was scheduled to come home from a year-long tour of duty in Vietnam. He’d received a Purple Heart for doing his duty that day, and earned a nickname.

  Now, thirty-six years later, Pinkie stood on the earthen shoulder of Denver’s High Line Canal, a sixty-six-mile-long man-made waterway that wove its way through the city. He was rocking side to side, talking in a hushed tone to a very wary CJ.

  It was one-thirty a.m. and peacefully quiet as the two men whose paths had crossed occasionally over the years, causing sparks each time, chatted.

  “Things aren’t always what they seem, CJ,” said Niedemeyer, taking a step sideways. “Like you and me, for instance. Look at us. We’re both the same age, fought the same war, and we’ve lived in Denver all of our lives. Only real difference is we got dipped in different skin-tone tanks at birth. But if you ask anybody, even people who think they’re in the know, who’s ‘handled’ more people over the years, I’d always end up getting the nod.”

  CJ, well aware of the meaning of the word handled, nodded and waited for Pinkie to continue.

  “But that ain’t reality, ’cause you and I both know those patrol-boat .50-calibers you babysat back when we were both in country took out more people during your year in ’Nam than I could possibly handle in a lifetime. So you see, CJ, things get twisted around in this crazy world, and facts sometimes end up turning into fiction.” Pinkie, suddenly defensive, smiled and cleared his throat as if trying to rid himself of a bad taste. “Whattaya think, man? I started out to do what I do? Dreamed about it when I was a kid, like wanting to grow up to be a football player or Superman?” Pinkie shook his head in protest. “No way. Shit, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a butcher and own a little neighborhood store where I could sell steaks and specialty meats, like my Uncle Ernie. Betcha didn’t know I’m part Jewish on my mother’s side. Hell, I could’ve been a butcher, or maybe even a mohel.”

  CJ neither smiled nor answered. He simply eyed the haze-covered quarter moon, slipped a cheroot out of the pocket of his vest, and took a long drag before glancing back at Pinkie through a stream of rising smoke. “You’re a hired killer, Pinkie, any way you spin it.”

  “You’re hurting me, CJ,” Pinkie countered. “Don’t forget, I’m here on a payback. I could’ve chose not to come. But you’re Mario’s boy, so I’m here.”

  The look on CJ’s face let Pinkie know he’d just turned the wrong phrase. Pinkie might as well have said, You’re Mario’s nigger, and I know it.

  “I didn’t mean it that way, CJ. You know me; I don’t play them kinda games. You know what I mean. Mario respects you, talks about you like a son. Hell, ain’t a black man in Denver who has a free pass to act out his ass any day of the week without consequences but you.”

  CJ blew a ring of smoke skyward. “You ever seen me act out my ass, Pinkie?”

  “It’s a figure of speech, man.”

  CJ tipped a bullet of ash from his cheroot, aware that if he and Niedemeyer didn’t soon get to the real reason for their meeting, things would degenerate beyond repair. “Let’s handle our business, Pinkie. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Fine. We’re on the same page,” said Pinkie, aware that as Mario Satoni’s emissary he was to do as he’d been told.

  CJ dropped his half-smoked cheroot onto the canal’s equestrian path and stubbed it out with the heel of his boot. “I need a couple of pieces of info, Pinkie, bottom line. First off, I need the lowdown on a guy named Arthur Vannick, where he comes from, where he’s been, and most of all whether or not he’s connected. Got him pegged as a murder suspect.”

  Pinkie laughed. “Vannick? Ain’t that nothin’. But it don’t surprise me. He’s from nowhere. He ain’t goin’ nowhere, and the only thing he’s gonna be connected to if he keeps dropping tales around the region about being a member of a club he ain’t never been asked to join is life support.”

  “Enough said. Here’s my second question and it might be a little harder. Who’s the top explosives jobber around the Queen City these days?”

  Pinkie smiled. “Come on, CJ. You know I can’t tell you that. But I know where you’re headed. Heard about that antique store of yours catching a few pounds of jelly.” Pinkie rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “My guess is, you bought yourself a problem with the Russians. They love plastic. It’s readily available, it’s cheap, and they’ve got connections to the kind of nutcases who like to use it. Mostly Arabs, like the stooge I’m told did in your place.”

  “Got a name for me?”

  “Yeah. And a warning. The name’s Alexie Borg.” Pinkie slipped a piece of paper out of the left pocket of his Windbreaker. “Figured you might ask me a question or two about bombers, so I came prepared.” He handed CJ the paper. “Everything you need to know is right there. Here’s a heads-up. The Russki has a place in LoDo, high-end to the hilt. Takes up most of the fourth floor of his building. I sketched it out for you on the paper. But before you go screwing around with one of them Russian bears, here’s some advice. They operate by a set of rules you ain’t used to, CJ. As far as they’re concerned, you really are flat-out just a nigger. Most of all, you fuck with them, you sure as hell won’t have Mario Satoni running interference. They’ll kill you, man, sure as shootin’.” He paused and eyed CJ intently. “Why the hell they have it in for you anyway?”

  “I’m not sure. But my guess is, if you’re right and it was a Russian-sponsored bombing, someone who doesn’t like me very much did the hiring. Know anything else significant about Borg?”

  “Only that once upon a time he was an Olympic athlete.”

  The muscles in CJ’s face went taut. “Son of a bitch!”

  “Strike a chord?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Think you know who hired out the job?”

  “Yep. More than likely a sweet little Indian princess.”

  Niedemeyer looked perplexed. “A woman? My, my, my. World’s gettin’ meaner and meaner every day. Any more questions before I head off?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay. I’ll leave you with this. Your Mr. Vannick’s been spoutin’ off for way too long about having certain connections. Until now he’s been left alone because his mouthing off hasn’t gotten him crossways with any ah, company rules. But havin’ Mario ask me for a favor on your behalf just pushed Mr. Vannick across the line. I’m on orders to put things back in balance. And unfortunately for Vannick, those orders supersede any call Mario can make.”

  “How bad’s the lesson gonna be?” CJ asked, aware that Arthur Vannick may have talked his way into a death warrant.

  “Don’t worry.” Pinkie smiled. “It won’t come down to much more than a se
rious talking-to. If he’s uncooperative, he’ll feel some pain; that’s about it. First time around anyway.”

  “You could be dealing with a murderer, you know.”

  “I know,” said Pinkie, laughing. “Mario filled me in on that case you’re working and the kid from Nicaragua buying it. Trust me, Vannick’s nothing more than a babe in the woods. If he killed anybody, it was probably on the humbug. I damn sure don’t think he’s used to dealing with the likes of me.” The earnestness in Pinkie Niedemeyer’s voice was chilling.

  “I know you’ve gotta handle what you’ve gotta, Pinkie, but try not to overstep your orders. I don’t want Denver’s finest trying to link one of your assignments up to me.”

  Niedemeyer looked hurt. “You’re not talking to one of them Russian bears, CJ. We still have rules.”

  “So I hear,” said CJ, suppressing an urge to remind Pinkie that there was a difference between killing during wartime and murdering someone on the street, but the urge passed quickly. After half a lifetime of often sleepless nights, CJ had come to know that in the end, killing was simply killing.

  CJ drove from his meeting with Pinkie Niedemeyer to the downtown Denver address that Niedemeyer had written on the piece of paper he was now clutching. He had lumbered slowly along the empty Denver streets, hoping that by drawing the trip out, he would somehow be able to gain the insight he needed to come up with a solution for his Celeste Deepstream problem. That strategy hadn’t worked, and as he parked the Bel Air a half block north of Alexie Borg’s building and gazed into the star-filled sky, he was not one bit closer to a solution.

  Borg’s penthouse took up half the top floor of a renovated four-story Blake Street building that had once been a warehouse. CJ placed Niedemeyer’s sketch on the front seat and locked his gaze on the northeast corner of the fourth floor. All he could make out in the darkness was that the building was brick and that Borg’s condo had a picture window that wrapped around the corner of the building, giving the transplanted Russian mobster a view of not just Blake Street but also Coors Field.