The Fourth Perspective

by Robert Greer

  He’d sent his secretary an e-mail saying he had to go back to Boston because of a family emergency and that he’d probably be gone five to seven days. He was too afraid for his life to leave a message that said much more.

  Pinkie Niedemeyer slipped into bed wearing one of the half-dozen pairs of identical silk pajamas he’d had made in Hong Kong six months earlier. Now that the debt he’d owed Mario Satoni had been paid, his head was as clear as it had been in years. He and Mario were now square, and in Pinkie Niedemeyer’s world, when you really came right down to it, being square was all that really mattered.

  CHAPTER 31

  After keeping Mavis awake half the night, and a fitful night’s sleep, CJ sat alone at Flora Jean’s desk sipping black coffee, deep in thought. He glanced across the desk until his gaze stopped on one of two pressed-back chairs that sat in front of the desk. Forty years earlier Ike had sawed two inches off the legs of both chairs, claiming that squat-legged chairs made for better business negotiations, giving the person behind the desk an intimidating height advantage.

  He took a long sip of coffee as he considered the investigative advantages he had over Luis Del Mora’s killer and Sergeant Fritz Commons. Commons almost certainly didn’t know about Amanda Hunter or she would’ve told Billy so by now, which meant that he and Flora Jean possessed a little nugget of investigative gold. Commons assuredly had to know about Counts and Vannick, but CJ reasoned that the pesky homicide cop probably knew nothing about the convoluted game of stolen-book musical chairs that Counts, Vannick, and Stafford had been playing. More than likely only the killer or killers knew about that.

  CJ thought about one very distinct additional advantage. He and Flora Jean had a distraught mother on their side, a mother who was far more suspicious of law enforcement than supportive of it; in his world well-placed distrust of cops was always a plus. Now all he had to do was outrun Commons and find Luis Del Mora’s murderer.

  He set his coffee aside, fished a cheroot out of his vest pocket, and hesitated, holding the cheroot in midair and eyeing it as if he’d just drawn a bad hand. He set the cheroot down on the desk and choked back a sigh, knowing that when all was said and done with the Del Mora murder, he still had Celeste Deepstream to contend with.

  The entire three hours that Morgan and Dittier hauled antiques, collectibles, and just plain junk out of what was left of Lenny McCabe’s store, McCabe hovered over them like a nervous drama coach. Two hours into the move, CJ had arrived. For the past half hour, he’d been standing inside Ike’s Spot alone. Morgan and Dittier had loaded most of McCabe’s valuable pieces into a trailer hitched to the back of a one-ton dually that McCabe had pulled up next to the garage at the rear of the store. Items meant for the trash had been tossed into a small roll-off Dumpster that sat a few feet from the front of the dually.

  Walking away from the Dumpster, dusting off his hands, and glancing at Morgan, McCabe said, “Like I said, anything in that Dumpster you’re more than welcome to.”

  Morgan forced back a frown, thinking, Yeah, we got our choice of sticky Coke bottles, mildewed old newspapers, busted-up picture frames, and worthless coffee makers. But since he and Dittier were each being paid $15 an hour and they were already into McCabe for almost three hours of work, Morgan decided to pass on voicing how he felt about McCabe’s generosity, especially since Dittier had taken McCabe up on his Dumpster-diving offer and already had a shoebox full of discards. Morgan watched McCabe head for Ike’s Spot and trotted over to check on Dittier and his shoebox of treasures.

  CJ stood in Ike’s Spot, glancing around the surprisingly intact empty room. He had never appreciated how narrow the store was until now. As he gazed at the walls, the empty shelves, the pockmarked wooden floors, and the slit-like windows, he realized that he’d been working in a smaller version of the same kind of New Orleans-style shotgun house as Mae’s Louisiana Kitchen. He wondered if Mavis had ever noticed the similarity or if she’d noticed that the walls of his store really weren’t square, or that the floors were caked with years of unstripped wax, or that the artificial interior lighting failed to mask the fact that night or day the store was always dark. He hadn’t seen any of those things when he’d leased the space. He’d been too busy chasing a dream. Shaking his head, CJ stepped over a pile of broken ceiling tiles, walked to the front of the store, and raised the shade on the front door’s window. He eyed the empty sidewalk, convinced that he’d made the mistake of his life eight months earlier when he’d made the decision to sell his bail-bonding business to Flora Jean.

  “You look lost in space,” Lenny McCabe called out from the back of the store breaking CJ’s concentration. “Nothing’s ever that bad.” McCabe walked the length of the store, smiling, his flip-flops slapping against his heels, his ponytail looping from side to side. “I’m pretty much loaded up outside and headed for a new day.” McCabe eyed CJ pensively. “You need to take the same attitude if you expect to land back on your feet, my man. I moped and meandered for a little while too until I remembered that nobody really gives a damn about old Lenny McCabe but Lenny. You need to start traveling that same highway if you expect to survive.”

  “I’ll work at it,” CJ said softly.

  “Well, you’d better start now.” McCabe looked around the empty store. “Because I’ve got some people coming by here tomorrow to give me the scoop on how to restore this calamity. I need you on board and talking positive when they show up. Heard anything about your insurance settlement yet?”

  “Yeah, and I’m afraid I can’t pool my money with yours, Lenny. I’ve got people I owe. Construction people and folks who lost items they’d consigned to the store. Not to mention friends I’m into for loans. After I settle up, I’ll barely be able to make my rent.”

  “Then let it all ride till you’re back on your feet.”

  “I don’t do business that way, Lenny, and I’m not interested in cutting corners and greasing a bunch of bureaucratic palms in order to resurrect a business that doesn’t need resurrecting.”

  McCabe looked disappointed. “Don’t waffle on me, CJ. I need you here in the trenches with me.”

  “You can always get another tenant.”

  McCabe looked incensed. “Hey, man, in case you’ve forgotten, the people who blew up my building weren’t after me. I need you in the boat with me or we don’t stand a chance of leaving shore. Besides, I’ve got a minor problem of my own. I more or less told my insurance company that the lease-hold improvements you made on your space were, well … uh … pretty much done on my dime.”

  “You what?”

  “I told them that I paid for your lease-hold improvements and that I expected reimbursement.”

  “Are you nuts? They’ll find out the truth.”

  “Not if you don’t tell them, they won’t. The whole thing’s simple. You get paid by your insurance people, I get paid a little extra by mine, and everything comes out clean in the wash.”

  CJ shook his head. “So the real reason you need me to stay is so you can keep an insurance scam rolling.”

  “Partially.”

  “You’re out of luck, Lenny. I’m not interested in doing time for insurance fraud.”

  McCabe shrugged. “Suit yourself, but one way or another, you’re gonna have to ante up. I’ve got legal remedies, you know. Especially if you withheld information from me about some mad bomber being after you when I leased the premises to you in good faith.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said CJ, realizing why McCabe had, other than the day it had happened, taken the bombing of his building pretty much in stride. He’d had a plan to reinvent the place all along—a plan that would allow him to give the plain-Jane duplex a total makeover and a plan that required CJ’s compliance. “Call things however you want, Lenny, but as far as your rebuilding plans are concerned, count me out.”

  “Don’t be so hasty to run for cover,” said McCabe, sensing that he’d pushed CJ into an unintended corner. “Give yourself some time to think things through.”

/>   CJ gritted his teeth and eyed McCabe from head to toe. “Thinking cuts both ways, Lenny. I’d do a little of my own if I were you.”

  McCabe shrugged, chagrined that he’d given CJ inside knowledge of his insurance-scamming plans. “So we think—and talk again real soon.”

  “We’ll talk,” said a stern-faced CJ, but he already knew that he and Lenny McCabe had parted company forever.

  “I’ll go out and settle up with Morgan and Dittier. They should be done loading everything up by now,” said McCabe, recognizing from CJ’s expression that it was time to leave. He pivoted and walked away without waiting for a response, leaving CJ staring out the front door.

  “Why you lookin’ so glum?” Morgan asked CJ as he sat in the front seat of CJ’s Jeep, recounting the nine $5 bills that Lenny McCabe had paid him. The Jeep, its shocks badly in need of replacement, bumped along Broadway toward downtown.

  Before CJ could respond, Morgan glanced over the seat back at Dittier and signed, “You put your money away, champ?”

  Dittier nodded and patted a shirt pocket full of bills before leaning forward to hand Morgan a stack of postcards.

  Morgan took the postcards and turned his attention back to CJ. “Still waitin’ for an answer, CJ.”

  “Problems,” CJ said. He eased to a stop at a stoplight and glanced toward Morgan, who was casually flipping through the dog-eared stack of grease-stained postcards in his hand.

  Morgan reached the next-to-last card in the stack, a Magic Marker–streaked postcard with three of its four corners missing, as the light turned green. The defaced remnant of past Cheyenne Frontier Days glory sported the Triangle Bar brand in the lower left-hand corner. CJ’s gaze remained fixed on the postcard as car horns blared behind him. “Where’d that postcard come from?” he asked, his tone suddenly hushed.

  “Trash pickin’s from McCabe’s,” said Morgan.

  “Mind if I have a look?” CJ pulled over to the curb as Morgan handed him the postcard.

  CJ looked the postcard over, turned in his seat, and squared up to Dittier. “Where’d you find this?” he asked, holding up the card, watching Dittier read his lips.

  Looking puzzled, Dittier rapidly signed an answer back to Morgan.

  “Dittier says the cards were in a rusty bucket filled with broken lightbulbs, wadded-up newspapers, and a bunch of old sheet-metal screws. Worthless stuff,” Morgan said defensively.

  “Can I keep it for a while?” CJ asked.

  Dittier flashed him a thumbs-up and a smile.

  CJ slipped the postcard into his vest pocket, swung his door open, and stepped into the street.

  Startled, Morgan exclaimed, “What the hell’s with you, CJ? You try in’ to get yourself killed?”

  “No. Just in a hurry to get someplace. You and Dittier head on down to LoDo and relieve Billy like we planned. I need to get back to Ike’s Spot, now!”

  “It’s eight full blocks back to the store,” Morgan protested.

  Already on the sidewalk in an all-out sprint, CJ never heard him. Nor did he notice the vehicle two cars behind the Jeep make a U-turn or realize that the woman behind the wheel had been following him ever since they’d left Ike’s Spot.

  Gasping for air, CJ ended his run at the intersection of Arkansas Avenue and the alley that led to the rear of the store. Relieved to see McCabe’s trailer still there, he gazed across the backyards of the two duplexes that were north of McCabe’s building and spotted McCabe loading boxes into the trailer. Slipping his cell phone off his belt, he punched in Billy DeLong’s number. “Billy, CJ,” he panted into the phone, taking a knee behind a privet hedge that had just begun to bud.

  “What’s up? You sound out of breath, CJ.”

  “I need an answer to something real quick. Call Loretta Sheets and ask her if she ever peddled anything to an antiques dealer named Lenny McCabe back when she was stealing stuff for Oliver Lyman. Call me right back. I think I may have pieced the whole Del Mora murder puzzle together.”

  “Hope she’s at her museum.”

  “Me too. If not, I’m gonna have to wing it.” Watching McCabe continue to load up, CJ hung up and switched his cell phone’s answer tone from ring to vibrate.

  McCabe loaded two large cardboard boxes into the trailer. Leaving a lone box sitting on the ground, he walked back to his half of the bombed-out duplex and disappeared inside. CJ rose to a squat, peered over the hedges to make sure McCabe was alone, and quickly took a knee again.

  Billy’s return call came seconds later. “Got that poop you wanted,” Billy said excitedly. “Sheets admitted that she did sell a bunch of stuff to McCabe for Oliver Lyman. She only owned up to it when I told her that you needed the information to peg Lyman’s killer. She told me somethin’ else interestin’ too. Said that the whole time Lyman was lookin’ to find that missin’ daguerreotype, McCabe was lookin’ for it too.”

  “Why the hell didn’t she tell you that before?”

  “I’m guessin’ that after hearin’ about Lyman buyin’ it she was just plain scared. That and the fact that I didn’t have no reason to ask her about McCabe. I only asked her if she sold stolen goods for Lyman. Never really asked her who she sold ’em to.”

  “Yeah,” said CJ, thinking that he should’ve gone along on one of Billy’s trips to talk to Loretta Sheets.

  “Hey, Morgan and Dittier just drove up,” Billy said, sounding relieved. “Need me to do anything else down here?”

  “No, everything’s just about worked itself to a head.”

  “Everything but that Deepstream woman bobbin’ up to the surface. She’s still out there somewhere, CJ.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.” CJ watched McCabe emerge from the duplex and return to the backyard. “Sooner or later that’ll come to a head too. Gotta go, Billy,” he whispered.

  McCabe walked up to the fully loaded trailer, peered inside, eyed the box on the ground, and smiled approvingly. Moments later CJ stepped around the corner of McCabe’s dilapidated garage, stopped a few feet from the trailer, and said, “See you’re about done, Lenny.”

  “Sure am,” said a startled McCabe. “I thought you were gone.”

  “Had to come back. Needed to finish up some business.”

  McCabe smiled. “So you’ve decided to take me up on my rebuilding offer?”

  “Nope. Decided to see if I couldn’t put a cap on how Luis Del Mora met his fate.”

  “What?” asked McCabe, eyeing the box at his feet.

  CJ shook his head. “No, why’s a better question. Like why on earth would some kid from Nicaragua end up getting killed over a couple of not-so-rare books? Even if he was a thief.”

  “Beats me. Maybe the person he stole the books from wanted them back, a lot more than the kid expected.”

  “Makes sense. Except that, as we both know, the books aren’t actually missing. They’re safe and sound in some police evidence locker downtown, and their owner knows that. Nope, Luis Del Mora died for other reasons.”

  “Like?”

  “Like the fact that he fitted a profile. A profile that called for a college student who was willing to steal, sell, and barter stolen goods. Antiques and collectibles for the most part, and maybe some other things I haven’t drawn a bead on yet.”

  “Sounds reasonable. But why run all this by me?”

  “Because in a sense, Del Mora worked for you. Not in an up-front way like Dittier and Morgan did this morning. You didn’t hire him; Oliver Lyman did that. You see, Del Mora was Lyman’s runner, supplying you with stolen merchandise that you sold in your store.”

  McCabe’s eyebrows arched in protest. “Have you been drinking, CJ? Or maybe you’re having one of those Vietnam flashbacks they talk about. I never saw the Del Mora kid until the day he walked into your store.”

  “I don’t think so, Lenny.” CJ slipped Dittier’s Cheyenne Frontier Days postcard out of his shirt pocket. “I think you knew him, did business with him, and more than likely killed him. Here’s what tripped you up.” He handed the po
stcard to McCabe.

  “It’s a postcard. So?”

  “And an old one. From the 1930s, I’m told.” CJ smiled. “I’m willing to bet that card came from a storage shed at the Triangle Bar Ranch up in Wyoming.”

  “Never heard of the place, and I’ve never seen the postcard before.” McCabe shoved the postcard at CJ.

  “Funny, Dittier says he got the postcard out of your trash this morning.”

  “Shit, the man’s deaf and dumb, and he’s a street bum on top of it. He’s probably lying.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s not in his character. But it’s sure as hell part of yours. You’re lying about the postcard, about not knowing Del Mora, and about the Triangle Bar Ranch. I’d even be willing to bet you know that ranch well enough to have broken into buildings out there a couple of times.”

  “And why would I do that?” McCabe’s ponytail looped from side to side as he shook his head in protest.

  CJ eyed the swinging pendulum of hair and flashed a smile of recognition. “To look for a missing photograph. A one-of-a-kind daguerreotype of the transcontinental railroad Golden Spike ceremony taken by Jacob Covington back in 1869. You didn’t find it during either one of your break-ins, but in the process you found a bunch of collectible postcards, and, pack rat that you are, Lenny, you couldn’t resist bringing the postcards back.” CJ eyed the trailer. “I’d sure like to see what other Triangle Bar goodies you’ve got stashed inside the boxes in that trailer.”

  When McCabe didn’t respond, CJ said, “And there’s one other thing that links you to those two break-ins at the Triangle Bar. A piece of plastic you left behind after your most recent visit. I spent hours trying to figure out where that little plastic fragment could’ve come from, and for the life of me I couldn’t place the source until now, when I realized that I’d been thinking too hard about broken combs and eyeglass frames and compact cases when all along I should’ve been considering one of those barrettes you use to keep that ponytail of yours in place.” CJ flashed McCabe his best gotcha smile. “Bet you if I looked hard enough, I’d find myself a toothless match around somewhere.”