The Fourth Perspective

by Robert Greer

  Her timing would have to be impeccable. There was no room for error. She ran the plan through her head one last time, rose on her knees, raised her crossbow, and sighted in on Floyd’s car to get a feel for what her shot would look like. Steadying herself and mimicking a shot, she relaxed, suddenly drawn to Floyd’s presence by the slam of a door and the hint of smoke rising from one of his cheroots. As she watched him move around his car from the passenger’s side to the driver’s side, she was struck by his slow, purposeful gait, a gait not unlike that of a big animal in the wild. He reached the front of the vehicle and stopped to check the car’s antenna. As he fumbled with it, she gulped a breath of air, cocked her crossbow, and readied it. She had the perfect view of Floyd, who was now less than twenty yards away, and she could see his entire torso. His riverboat gambler’s vest, his dusky-gray Stetson, the faded ever-present chambray shirt. She had no idea why he’d stopped to fidget with the antenna, but it would be his undoing. Adjusting her sight and her scope’s twilight sidelight, she double-checked her arrow to make sure it was secure for what would be a steep-angled shot, steadied her finger on the lethal weapon’s trigger, and squared up on her target, knowing that Floyd would briefly have to turn to face her as he opened the car door to get in.

  Thinking, Patience, Celeste, she took a slow, deep breath. She felt her rib cage move and imagined the film of moisture that would serve as a lightning rod between the crossbow’s trigger and her finger. For a split second she thought about Bobby; then, almost as if he’d been cued, she watched Floyd pivot to face her. His left hand, the one he’d used to adjust the antenna, dropped to his side as his right hand reached for the door handle. She squeezed the crossbow’s trigger, a blush of wind kissed her cheek, and she heard someone shout, “Floyd!” Before she could determine where the shout had come from, her wind-aided, slightly off-course death bolt pierced the left-hand corner of the Bel Air’s windshield, shattering it.

  “Wind!” Only after the word exploded from her mouth did she realize she’d screamed it.

  Floyd was on the ground, spread-eagled, a gun aimed menacingly in her direction. She heard the retort of a pistol and the sound of a pop just above her head; a second pop followed closely on the heels of the first.

  Someone was shooting at her, and it clearly wasn’t Floyd. As she raced for the catwalk’s ladder, she dropped her crossbow and it plummeted toward the ground. The escape she’d planned so carefully spiraled through her head as she started down the ladder.

  CJ was up on one knee, sweeping Arthur Vannick’s 9-millimeter back and forth in front of him, searching for a target, when Pinkie Niedemeyer rushed from his hiding place behind CJ’s garage, screaming, “The billboard! The billboard! It came from the billboard!”

  Celeste jumped from the ladder’s third step and onto parking-lot asphalt while both men still had their eyes locked on the unlit catwalk. She bolted for Alexie’s Range Rover in an all-out sprint. She was several yards from the vehicle when CJ finally saw her. He squeezed off an erratic shot and charged after her, leaving Pinkie Niedemeyer standing beside the Bel Air.

  The Range Rover roared to life as CJ charged across 13th Avenue and raced into the nearly empty parking lot. Tires squealing, the Range Rover streaked away as CJ, steadying his arm on a billboard support strut, squeezed off two final shots. But the vehicle was out of range, and within seconds it had disappeared into the night.

  Floating on an adrenaline rush, CJ turned back to join Niedemeyer, nearly stumbling over the crossbow at his feet. He picked up the crossbow, looked up toward the catwalk, and looped the bow over his shoulder. As he crossed 13th Avenue, the wind kicked up. The warm upslope wind kissed his cheek briefly, but it was gone in the push of a second.

  It was close to eight-thirty by the time the two cops who’d taken CJ’s statement left. He told them everything he knew about anyone who might have wanted to kill him, but most of all he told them about Celeste Deepstream, about the bombing of his store and Moradi-Nik and Alexie Borg and the Russian mob. What he didn’t tell them was that a hit man named Pinkie Niedemeyer, working off a debt to a onetime Denver mobster, had probably saved his life. He also didn’t mention to them that he and the hit man had taken five shots at his assailant.

  The cops had been professional and procedural, roping off the area beneath the billboard with crime-scene tape and going about their job efficiently. For all CJ knew, when and if they scratched beyond the surface of the attempt on his life, they might eventually find the two bullets that Pinkie Niedemeyer swore he’d peppered into the billboard or one or all of the slugs CJ had fired. But he suspected that it wouldn’t come down to that. No one had been killed, and there was only a damaged compound bow, a shattered car windshield, and a broken arrow to support his story. No witnesses, no getaway car, and no woman named Celeste. They would check out his claim that a Russian mobster was somehow involved in the attempt on his life. But when all was said and done, for the Denver Police Department CJ Floyd simply wasn’t front-burner material—which meant he would have to deal with his Celeste Deepstream problem himself.

  CHAPTER 26

  Celeste and Alexie Borg sped south on I-25 in silence on their way to Alexie’s Black Forest home. Surprisingly calm, Celeste had walked into Alexie’s Denver condo thirty minutes earlier and announced that she’d botched killing Floyd. Aware that Floyd, and now very likely the cops, would be dogging her, she’d offered the Russian bear the bone he’d been scratching after for nearly six months, agreeing to accompany him to Paris on a two-month-long business trip and vacation.

  She wasn’t certain how she’d be able to endure eight weeks of his clinging and pawing, but she’d decided that two months with Alexie beat a possible second prison stint. Besides, she knew Paris; she had contacts there and even a few friendships that stretched back to her days as an American exchange student at the Sorbonne.

  Accelerating into the night, Alexie finally said, “We’ll be leaving the day after tomorrow.” He dropped a meaty hand onto Celeste’s thigh and squeezed. “Pack as many things as you like. Everything will be first class, and very private.”

  Celeste forced a smile, swallowed hard, and dropped a hand onto Alexie’s. She had no interest in how they got to Paris—a tramp steamer would suffice. What mattered was distancing herself from Floyd and the law. As Alexie’s probing hand worked its way up her thigh, she removed her hand from his and set her mind adrift. She was no longer there, speeding down I-25 into uncertain darkness. Instead she was swimming, streaking for the bulkhead of an imaginary pool with the crowd cheering her on, hoping to be the first swimmer home.

  “CJ, I’ve been trying to get you for over an hour. Where’ve you been?” Morgan growled into the mouthpiece of a pay phone outside a 7–11 a few blocks from Alexie Borg’s Denver condo.

  “Been talking to the cops,” said CJ, who now stood in his driveway, cell phone in one hand, a flashlight in the other, checking out the damage to the Bel Air. He ran a finger around the jagged hole in the car’s windshield, eyed the arrowhead puncture wound in the back of the driver’s seat, and shook his head.

  “’Bout what?” asked Morgan, watching a cold and shivering Dittier rock from side to side next to him.

  “About somebody trying to take my head off with a bolt from a crossbow.”

  “Damn! Celeste?”

  “Who else?” CJ slipped into the Bel Air and began picking glass off the seat. “So what have you got for me, Morgan?”

  “Got Borg on the move. An hour or so ago he left his condo and walked six blocks south down Blake Street and another block north without even knowin’ Dittier was on his heels. Dittier saw him get into a black Range Rover. A minute or so later I watched that same vehicle drive into the garage under Borg’s building. Borg resurfaced a little while later in the Range Rover and took off like a bat outta hell up Larimer Street.”

  “Was anyone else in the vehicle with him?”

  “Couldn’t tell. The windows were all blacked out. I guess somebody cou
ld’ve been hidin’ in the back. You thinkin’ Celeste was with him?”

  “More than likely. Whoever tried to take me out with that crossbow took off in a black Range Rover.”

  “She probably called Borg from around the corner to come get her, thinking it was safer than driving up to his building.”

  “No matter. I’m headed down there to have a look.”

  “You won’t be able to get inside that buildin’ of Borg’s. They got it locked up like Fort Knox.”

  “No rush. He’ll be back. Probably not tonight; things are too hot. But he’ll resurface. It’s his home. I want you to stay put. And Morgan, I’ll be bringing you one of Julie’s cell phones. You’ll need it if things start moving real fast.”

  “Stayin’ down here’s okay by me,” said Morgan. “But Dittier’s gettin’ pretty cold.”

  “Tell him I’ll bring him a thermos of hot chocolate and my old navy peacoat.”

  “He’ll like that. How long you gonna be?”

  “Fifteen minutes at the most. Just stay put.” Ending the call, CJ dusted the remaining glass off the front seat of the Bel Air and pulled the car into the garage next to his heaterless Jeep. He slipped out of the Bel Air, flipped on a light switch, and worked his way between all the inventory from Ike’s Spot to a five-foot-long workbench. Kneeling, he slipped the navy footlocker he’d brought home from Vietnam from beneath the workbench, spun the combination lock, snapped the lock open, and lifted the top.

  Things precious to him rested inside, most of them tucked beneath an old peacoat. He removed the coat, ignoring a box that contained his Navy Cross and a stash of porcelain license plates. He wanted two things, the peacoat for Dittier and the .45 that Ike had carried during the Korean War and he had secretly carried during Vietnam. He slipped Vannick’s 9-millimeter from where he’d stashed it behind a couple of oil cans before the cops had arrived, dropped it into the footlocker, shoved the bulky, always-loaded .45 into his jacket pocket, set the peacoat aside, and relocked the footlocker. He nudged the locker back under the workbench with his foot, walked over to the Jeep, tossed the peacoat onto the front seat, and got in.

  He cranked the Jeep’s engine, watched a puff of exhaust rise behind him, and backed outside. When he got out of the Jeep to close the garage door, he thought about the last time he’d fired the .45. It hadn’t been during Vietnam but nine months earlier when Celeste, having kidnapped, beaten, and tortured Mavis, had slipped away from him during a gunfight in the New Mexico mountains. She wouldn’t slip away again, he told himself, slamming the garage door closed.

  Perspiring, spent from lovemaking, and curled as tightly as her statuesque body would allow against Alden Grace, Flora Jean listened to her phone ring, finally answering it after she glanced at the flashing caller ID.

  “It’s CJ,” she said, wiggling out of Alden’s embrace. Scooping the receiver from its cradle, she said, “This better be important, CJ Floyd.”

  “Wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t,” said CJ, aware from Flora Jean’s tone that his call was ill timed. “Need to do a little jump start on the Del Mora case. Can you call Theresa Del Mora and have her get me Howard Stafford’s daily routine? What time he leaves for work, when he comes back home, things like that.”

  Flora Jean sat up and leaned back against the headboard, leaving Alden Grace looking abandoned. “Are you runnin’ on fumes, CJ? It’s ten o’clock at night. Theresa’s probably in bed; can’t this wait till tomorrow?”

  “Probably, but I’ve been gnawing on Stafford for the past half hour, trying to figure out what a rich man’s angle might be in this whole daguerreotype thing.”

  “And?” said Flora Jean, sensing a confused urgency in CJ’s tone.

  “And maybe Stafford knew the Del Mora kid stole his photo and he killed him to get it back.”

  Flora Jean shook her head, eyed Grace, and shrugged. “There’s nothin’ new there, CJ.” Moving the cell phone to her left ear, she said, “There’s somethin’ you’re not tellin’ me. Spit it out.”

  “Okay. But it doesn’t have anything to do with the Del Mora case. I had a little altercation this evening, and it got me thinking.”

  “Altercation with who?”

  “Celeste, I think. She sent me a message right outside my garage. Took the Bel Air’s windshield out with an arrow from a compound bow.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, but that whole thing got me to thinking that maybe we’ve been looking in all the wrong places for Del Mora’s killer, spending too much time chasing after bit players like Counts and Vannick and the Sheets woman when we should’ve been targeting Stafford all along.”

  “And Celeste sent you marchin’ down this new street?”

  “She sure did. She came after me herself. No middleman, no stooges, no second-string players to screw things up. Could be that Stafford did the same thing where Del Mora was concerned.”

  “Sounds plausible. But Stafford’s not some poor run-amuck Indian princess. You’re dealin’ with somebody who’s got influence, power, and a whole lotta money, sugar.”

  “I know that. But we can’t dance around him forever. All I wanta know from Theresa is what time the man leaves for work.”

  Suspecting that for CJ, Stafford had somehow become a surrogate for Celeste, Flora Jean said, “You’re bendin’ the truth, CJ, playin’ at being the lone ranger when what you need is help from the law. Keep it up and trust me, you’re gonna end up crazy just like her. You should’ve given your Celeste Deepstream problem to the cops a long time ago.”

  “I called them tonight.”

  “Hope it ain’t too late.”

  Skirting the issue, his tone insistent, CJ said, “I need to know how to get in touch with Stafford, Flora Jean.”

  “Okay, I’ll call Theresa and see if I can get a fix on Stafford’s daily routine. But remember, CJ, this is still my case. Lean on Stafford too heavy and I’m the one who comes up liable. Theresa can pull the plug on our investigation anytime she likes, and if Stafford goes screamin’ to the cops, they can do even worse.”

  “I’ll remember, and trust me, sniffing out Stafford’s a move in the right direction.”

  “I’ll call you back when I’ve got somethin’.”

  “I’ll be at Mavis’s.”

  Flora Jean smiled. “That’s where you need to be a whole lot more often, sugar. Talk to you later,” she said, leaving CJ listening to dead air as she cradled the phone and slipped back into Alden Grace’s embrace.

  Unable to sleep, CJ eyed the alarm clock on Mavis’s nightstand. He hadn’t told Mavis about Celeste trying to kill him, and he’d explained that the knot above his eye was the result of Morgan accidentally swinging a box of items from the store into him.

  He didn’t know if Mavis had bought the story; she’d had to listen to so many off-tone explanations about injuries he’d sustained over the years that he couldn’t be certain. But she hadn’t pressed the issue. They’d made small talk, discussed a trip to Santa Fe, and had a glass of cabernet before he’d failed miserably at lovemaking and Mavis had drifted off to sleep.

  Restless and wired, he glanced at Mavis, slipped out of bed, grabbed his cell phone, and headed downstairs for the kitchen.

  He didn’t turn on any lights until he was in the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator, he reached inside and took out a slice of sweet-potato pie. He’d just taken the pie out of the toaster oven when his cell phone began to vibrate. He answered the phone in a whisper, “CJ.”

  “It’s Flora Jean. I’ve got the information you wanted on Stafford.”

  “Shoot.”

  “He leaves his house for the office every morning around eight. Surprised somebody that rich ain’t got a driver.”

  “What kind of car does he drive?” asked CJ, all business.

  “A black Buick Le Sabre.”

  “Good. Tomorrow morning Mr. Stafford and I are going to have a talk.”

  “One thing more,” said Flora Jean. “Theresa said she has a box o
f Luis’s things that we might wanta go through. She says she forgot to tell me about it before.”

  “Awfully convenient.”

  “She was distraught, CJ. And she’s a mother. No way on earth the woman would’ve had anything to do with her own son’s murder. Now, are you sure you’re up to dealin’ with Stafford without gettin’ the cops involved?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, but remember what I said about not gettin’ into a tug-of-war with Stafford. It’s a war I don’t think we can win.”

  “Unless Stafford killed someone.”

  “Maybe not even then,” said Flora Jean, shaking her head in frustration. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “I’ll talk to you early.” Sensing Flora Jean’s agitation, CJ flipped his cell phone closed and eyed the still steaming slice of sweet-potato pie as he tried to decide whether Theresa Del Mora’s sudden recollection about her son’s things was truly related to her earlier despondency. He was in the midst of enjoying the rich cinnamon-sweet flavor of his favorite dessert when his face went blank as thoughts of the Del Mora case disappeared and visions of Celeste Deepstream racing away from him with an imagined crossbow in her hand resurfaced.

  CHAPTER 27

  CJ had been waiting in his Jeep on the street outside the Stafford compound since seven-thirty. He’d been surprised to find that the compound didn’t have on-site security personnel, just surveillance cameras, something he’d checked to make certain of when he had scaled the front wall of the compound to check things out just before daybreak.