by Robert Greer
He rolled down a front window, inhaled crisp night air, and slumped down in his seat in order to take in the full view of Borg’s condo. He tried to imagine what Borg and Celeste, if she was there, might be doing inside. Were they asleep, making love, planning a new assault? Were they even there? He wondered if maybe he hadn’t jumped the gun, uniting them in a bombing scheme simply because they’d both been Olympians. Pinkie Niedemeyer could have been wrong about Borg being the brains and support behind the now dead Arab bomber, and there was always the off chance that the bombing was indeed tied to the Luis Del Mora murder. Nonetheless, he was still betting on Celeste. He had to. If he didn’t, he had the feeling that given another chance, Celeste would succeed in killing him. He slipped the navy-issue field binoculars he’d carried through two tours of Vietnam out of the glove compartment and trained them on Borg’s penthouse. The binoculars seemed only to magnify his dilemma, offering him no more than a close-up view of an old brick building and a lengthy expanse of window.
Momentarily frustrated, he placed the binoculars back in the glove compartment, slipped his cell phone off his belt, and punched in the number that rang in the back workshop area of his garage.
Four rings later a groggy Morgan Williams answered, “Yeah?”
“Morgan, it’s CJ.”
“Where are you, man?”
“On a stakeout in LoDo. One that I need you and Dittier to take over.”
“Now?”
“No, in the morning.”
“Shit, CJ. Couldn’t it have waited?”
CJ thought for a moment, imagining the look of consternation plastered on the face of the sleepy, shaved-headed rodeo Hall of Famer. “No.”
“You comin’ home?”
“No. I’m headed for Mavis’s.”
“Then I’ll talk to you in the mornin’,” said Morgan, looking over at Dittier, who was stretched out on an old army cot a few feet away, dead to the world.
“First thing,” said CJ.
“First thing,” echoed Morgan, hanging up.
CJ cleared the line and called Mavis.
Sounding breathless, Mavis answered on the first ring.
“It’s CJ. I’m on my way there.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
Mavis glanced at the alarm clock on her nightstand. “It’s two-thirty, CJ; you’re scaring me. You’re slipping back into your old ways.”
“I’m just clearing up a problem.”
“You can talk to me about that later. Just get here, and soon.”
“I’m on my way,” CJ said, flipping the cell phone closed. He eyed Borg’s penthouse one last time, started the Bel Air, and thought about the warmth of Mavis next to him, the smell of her, the softness of her skin. The next instant that thought was gone, replaced by the image of a 125-foot navy patrol boat navigating the murky night waters of the Mekong River and the cold, hard feel and oily smell of a .50-caliber machine gun.
The day broke cold and overcast, and as Flora Jean made her way up the stairs to Oliver Lyman’s fifth-floor office, she had the sense that it would stay that way. It had been easy as she’d worked her way across the Auraria Campus to dodge the campus rent-a-cops; easier still to access the King Center as, dressed as a hairnetted cafeteria worker, she’d followed a wedge of five-thirty a.m. food-service and maintenance workers into the building.
What hadn’t been easy was breaking into Lyman’s office. She jimmied the door using an orthopedic surgeon’s mallet and a bone chisel she’d gotten as a Christmas present from an Amerasian doctor friend of hers who’d signed the accompanying Christmas card, “Here’s some tools of the trade—use them skillfully. Always your sista, Carmen.”
Perspiring and hoping that the office didn’t have an alarm, she let out a sigh of relief when the door, its locking hardware now history, popped open in silence. Flashlight in hand, she quickly searched through Lyman’s things, hoping Denver’s finest hadn’t gotten there first.
She moved to Lyman’s desk and a stack of books, maps, and miniature Western photographs resting on top of it. She suspected that most of what was in the stack represented the treasures of a collector. The only thing she found that seemed out of place, piquing her interest as gloved, she sorted through the pile, was a miniature cigar box. She thought of CJ and his cheroots as she opened the box. Inside she found a cache of pawnbroker’s receipts. She flipped through them hastily. The majority were made out in Lyman’s name, but two of the receipts were filled out with the name Loretta Sheets. Flora Jean pocketed the receipts, thinking as she did that the connection between Sheets and Lyman had to be more than the professor-to-student link Billy DeLong had mentioned.
As she turned back to search through the pile on Lyman’s desk a final time, she heard a noise in the hallway. Checking her watch, she realized that she had been in Lyman’s office for more than half an hour. She turned off her flashlight, moved into a half squat, hoping that whoever was in the hallway wouldn’t spot the jimmied door, and arranged the stash she planned to take with her into a pile.
She heard two distinctly male voices and the tramp of feet moving toward the office. The voices were suddenly directly outside the door. She pressed her back against the wall behind the door, deciding that if someone swung it open, she’d boomerang the door back into their head, hoping to daze them, and make a run for it. She found herself sweating as one man let out a rumbling belly laugh, and she dropped to a crouch. Prepared to spring, she heard a sharp slap of hands. One of the two men said, “Catch you later,” and hurried footsteps took off in opposite directions.
She waited for the sound of footsteps to disappear. Slipping off her hairnet, she opened the door, grabbed her stash, and stepped out into the hallway. She looked left but headed right toward the stairwell. Moments later she was outside in the welcome chilly overcast grayness. As she moved toward one of the numerous bike paths that cut across campus, she heard a man let out a loud laugh, reminding her of her earlier scare as she looked up to see a couple of maintenance workers trimming a hedge. As she walked past the men, she smiled and, with her left hand deep in her pocket, fingered the pawnbroker’s stubs she’d taken from Lyman’s office. Picking up her pace, she walked briskly to the edge of campus until the laughing maintenance worker became just another man in the distance.
CHAPTER 24
O’Brien’s, a plain-vanilla box of a cafe, sat at the junction of State Route 67 and US-85. The no-nonsense eatery twenty-five miles south of Denver featured retro 1950s-style red Naugahyde chairs and Formica-topped tables, family-style seating, and hearty, commonsense meals.
Howard Stafford liked to dress in coveralls, work boots, and a baseball cap when he visited O’Brien’s in order to people-watch and absorb the cafe’s pedestrian flavor. He’d never shared his getaway with anyone until now, and under normal circumstances he would never have considered Theodore Counts for a breakfast companion, but when Counts had called him the previous evening, hysterical over the fact that Oliver Lyman was dead, and lamented that a woman named Flora Jean Benson was dogging him, Stafford had decided that it was in his best interest to talk with Counts as soon as possible. Counts had capped the near meltdown by telling Stafford that a midget with spina bifida who kept Counts schooled on what was happening in Five Points had also told him that a former bail bondsman named CJ Floyd was after him.
When they’d arrived for their seven a.m. meeting, Stafford had looked back on his decision to meet with Counts as being ill advised, but he’d nonetheless ushered Counts into the restaurant, and now as they sat at a table in the far southwest corner, wrapping up breakfast, he considered himself almost home free.
“It’s cold in this place.” Counts ran his fork through the remnants of eggs and toast on his plate, set aside his coffee cup, and said, “And my coffee’s tepid.”
Ignoring the comment, Stafford took a final bite of sausage and chewed slowly before answering. “I like the food, especially their sausage.”
“Then buy t
he sausage factory, for Christ’s sake.”
Stafford smiled. “That’s your problem, Theodore. You think everything’s about money. And it is. You just don’t have the good sense to know when, where, or how to properly use it.”
“Let’s forget about money and food and think about our problem,” said Counts.
“Your problem, Theodore. Your problem.”
“Are you crazed? Lyman’s dead. If that Benson woman or Floyd link him to me, they’ll end up linking me to you. Count on it. To say nothing about the cops making the connection.”
“Calm down, Theodore. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
Counts looked at Stafford in disbelief. “Are you out of your mind? I stole scores of rare books from libraries. Have you forgotten about that?”
“And you’ve been paid. Handsomely.” The expression on Stafford’s face blossomed into a look of superiority. “Those books didn’t belong where they were. They deserved better. Now they’re in their appropriate surroundings. You offered them a better life. Much as I do when I pluck some unfortunate underdog off the street, give them a job or a position on my staff, and bless them with the gift of upward mobility. Those books are now where they belong, Theodore. And you did nothing wrong by moving them from where they were to a place of infinite more significance.”
Attuned to Stafford’s oddball view of the world, Counts said, “In your book maybe.” He had lived through Stafford’s library renovation, uncertain how he’d made it through a project that took its lead from someone so off center. During the remodel, Stafford had checked every floorboard to make certain that it was a perfect match to its neighbor. He had measured the openings for every wall-mounted fixture to ensure that each and every fixture would be an exact fit. He had made certain that the side rails on the two circulating ladders were identical, and he’d checked the satin finish on the wainscoting for flaws so many times that Counts had had to plead with him to “be done with it” so the project could be brought to a close. Looking at Stafford and wondering what on earth made a man like him tick, Counts said, “Some people just aren’t as enlightened as you.”
“Don’t yank my chain, Theodore. I can toss you to the wolves.”
Counts sat up in his chair. “And you’d be right there with me.”
Stafford smiled. It was the sly smile of a nobleman flashed to a member of the proletariat. “Theodore, you’re so mistaken. But let’s not piss on one another for sport. There’s no need. You have your worries, and I have mine. You’re concerned about someone connecting you to the minor pilferage of an insignificant number of books from the shelves of a few meaningless public libraries. I, on the other hand, am concerned about having lost something priceless.”
Counts looked surprised. “I thought you had that handled.”
“Not completely. There are still a few loose ends.”
“Like Lyman?”
Stafford took a sip of coffee without answering. When he finally did respond, his face was an unemotional blank sheet. “Make certain not to become a loose end, Theodore. I have such trouble with them. Now, where did you say you were staying until you get up enough nerve to go back home?”
“Thirty miles east of here. In Kiowa, with a friend.”
“That’s as good a place as any, I guess,” said Stafford as their waitress appeared.
“More coffee?” asked the waitress, smiling.
“Decaf for me,” said Stafford, watching the waitress fill his cup. “And my friend says his coffee’s cold—can you please get him another?”
“Sure.” The waitress retreated to get a pot of regular coffee.
“They’re pleasant in here, don’t you think, Theodore? It’s like they’ve been commissioned to serve and enjoy it.”
Counts nodded as the waitress reappeared with a steaming fresh pot of coffee. He watched the steam rise from a fresh cup as she refilled it, realizing that without considering it, he’d told Stafford where he was staying. He wished he hadn’t, concerned that a man who would go to the trouble of making certain that hundreds of floorboards snuggled up in perfect harmony to one another would certainly have no trouble dispatching someone like him. He watched Stafford take a sip of coffee and glance around the room, smiling at workaday people as he caught their eye, flashing them a jovial connected look as if he were a mere commoner, just like them.
CJ was browsing a recently opened Smoker Friendly Store on a street just east of Colorado Boulevard in Denver’s Belcaro neighborhood when his cell phone went off.
“Floyd here.”
“You’re up pretty early for someone who was out so late,” Pinkie Niedemeyer said. “Thought that after our little chat last night, I should give you a heads-up.”
“I’m listening,” said CJ, eyeing the star-shaped 15 percent off sign above a Christmas tree-shaped display of his favorite brand of cheroots.
“Seems as if Vannick has a hard-on for someone besides you. Got word a few minutes ago that he wants a piece of that big-breasted ex-marine corps sista you work with. Offered the someone I talked to a reasonable sum to send her on a one-way trip.”
“Damn it! I thought you said Vannick wasn’t connected.”
“You don’t have to be to hire someone who is.”
“That son of a bitch called for a hit on Flora Jean! I’ll kill him!”
“Hold your horses, man. You’re on a cell phone. We might as well be on a recorded line. And you’re using words that I find quite frightening and offensive, do you understand?”
“Hold on a sec; I need to step away from where I am.” CJ rushed out of the store, slipped into the Bel Air, and shut the door. “Okay, and for the record, I do understand. Now, will you just get to the bottom line?”
“Before you fly off the handle like some green stick right out of basic, consider the source of your aggravation, my friend.”
Biting back his temper, CJ said, “I’ll do that. Maybe Vannick’s upset at Flora Jean because she’s on to the fact he killed someone.”
Niedemeyer bristled. “There you go using those awful incriminating words again. Let’s say I give you Vannick’s office address and you take the issue up directly with him.”
“Fine,” said CJ, seething.
“Try him at 707 West 32nd, in the Denver Highlands neighborhood. He drives a Porsche with vanity plates that read, WIRED. Got his description?”
“Flora Jean’s described him for me. Thick-necked with muscle. Pockmarked face. Likes to work out.”
“She’s been that up close and personal?”
“They’ve chatted.” CJ adjusted his phone to his other ear, more peeved now than angry. “One last question, Pinkie. Why so helpful?”
“Because it suits me. Why else?”
“Can the bullshit, Niedemeyer. Honesty’ll work fine.”
“Honesty, then. Fact is, I’m paying off a debt.”
“To who?”
“A friend of your uncle’s.”
Knowing not to mention Mario Satoni’s name, CJ said, “Funny, I’ve never known you to get into that kind of debt.”
“You do stupid things when you’re young. But the bill’s almost paid. I don’t expect to have to service it much longer.”
“Good luck with closing out the books. And thanks for that address.”
“Always enjoy helping my fellow man,” said Niedemeyer. “Gotta sign off.”
“Later,” said CJ, pocketing his cell phone. He thought about calling Flora Jean to tell her that Vannick had called for a hit on her but decided against it, figuring there was no need to get her upset. His anger had abated and he felt clear-headed enough to go deal with Vannick. He cranked the Bel Air’s engine as he tried to conjure up what Pinkie Niedemeyer could have done in his youth that would have him still paying off a debt to Mario Satoni. He didn’t know the exact set of rules that wiseguys lived by, but he knew enough about their code to know that Pinkie’s transgression must have been serious.
Deciding the debt he would someday pay for his lifelong affair wi
th tobacco was going to be a whopper, CJ backed the Bel Air away from the Smoker Friendly Store and pointed the vintage Chevrolet north toward Arthur Vannick’s.
The rear license plate on Arthur Vannick’s Porsche gleamed in the late-morning sun, announcing to anyone with enough cryptic insight to decipher the coded message exactly what Vannick did for a living.
CJ, who’d always had the feeling that people who required vanity plates were in need of a good shrink, strolled up to Vannick’s Porsche and peered inside. When he brushed one of the car’s rocker panels with his leg, the alarm emitted several warning beeps.
As he stepped away from the car, a voice behind him called out, “You lookin’ for somethin’, buddy?”
CJ pivoted to see a thick-bodied, lantern-jawed white man approaching. The man’s torso bulged from the confines of a tight-fitting muscle shirt, and his upper arms, bare and salmon pink, bore the signature bulges of a body builder. “Trying to locate Arthur Vannick.”
“You’ve found him. You got a delivery?” CJ and Vannick now stood face to face next to the driver’s-side door.
“A what?”
“A delivery for my office.”
The muscles in CJ’s face tightened. “Oh, a delivery. You mean the kind that delivery boys make. Afraid not, sonny.”
“Then step out of the way.”
CJ didn’t budge.
“Move it or lose it, friend.”
CJ smiled and flashed Vannick a wink. “Like Luis Del Mora and Oliver Lyman did?”
Vannick took a step back. Sizing CJ up, he said, “Who the fuck are you, asshole?”
“Somebody who’s looking into why a mother lost her only son.”
“Sad. Why don’t you tell her to try fuckin’ a little more often, make herself some more babies?”
“Don’t think that would be kosher. Just like it wouldn’t seem kosher for a thief to cough up everything he knows about a missing million-dollar daguerreotype or the ins and outs of the book-stealing business.”
