by Robert Greer
By the time he reached ground level, he was breathing heavily. In the thirty years since his military stint, he’d added twenty pounds to what had once been a lean, 185-pound frame. Closets full of tailor-made suits, custom-made shirts, and handcrafted silk ties managed to camouflage the extra weight, and with just the right touch of silver at his temples and a pair of European-style glasses that he diplomatically inched up on his nose when the situation called for it, he had become the media’s incarnation of a U.S. senator. As he walked along the narrow graveled pathway that led to his car, he paused to glance toward a newly excavated thirty-foot dropoff and the recently poured concrete stem wall that was the base for what would eventually be the northwest wall of the building’s underground garage. The stem wall hadn’t been there during his last visit, and something about it struck him as strangely out of place. He stopped momentarily, hoping to put his finger on what was so unusual. Unable to identify it, he turned away from the twenty-foot-long row of perfectly aligned rebar that spiked a foot above the top of the concrete and continued walking along the edge of the excavation. After a few yards he realized what had struck him about the wall. The plastic safety caps that should have topped off the rebar were missing.
Before he had a chance to ponder why such an important safety item was missing, he felt a shove from behind. Shouting, “What the fuck?” he turned to catch a glimpse of someone dressed in black from head to toe, wielding the hod carrier that was shoving him toward the thirty-foot dropoff. A second powerful shove sent him spiraling off balance over the edge of the pathway. He screamed, “Goddamn it!” as he grabbed the hod carrier’s weathered four-foot-long handle, filling both palms with splinters. Then he slipped away, dropping toward the lethal bed of rebar below. Falling spread-eagled, he thought, Top of the world, Mom, top of the world! But the only word that escaped his mouth before his body slammed into the unprotected rebar was “Shit!”
Chapter 8
The Adams county motel on the outskirts of Denver just off I-70 looked as if it had been purposely constructed to look run down. Langston Blue had pulled into the dilapidated gem about 11:30 the night before, exhausted from driving halfway across the country in a truck with a bad cylinder and a front end badly in need of realignment. He had checked into a first-floor room that reeked of Lysol, plopped down across the room’s sagging bed, and dropped off to sleep fully clothed.
The early-morning shower he jumped into turned cold after less than a minute, but he felt a hundred percent better than when he’d crashed nine hours earlier. After rereading Carmen’s letter, he laid it aside on a rickety card table, the room’s only other furnishing besides the bed and a wall-mounted black-and-white TV. He slipped on a pair of threadbare boxer shorts and flipped on the TV to see a pixieish, owl-eyed lady with a pageboy hairdo repeating the 8 a.m. news story lead. “Again, recapping our top story. Fifty-seven-year-old Congressman Peter Margolin was found dead at a Denver construction site late last night. Details surrounding his death are incomplete at this time, and the Denver police have not released a statement. A press conference has been scheduled at the State Capitol at 10:30. Be sure to stay tuned to Channel 9 for up-to-the-minute details.”
Langston Blue found himself holding his breath as an inset photo of Peter Margolin that had flashed on the screen to the right of the news commentator finally disappeared. Margolin’s hair was gray, he wore glasses, and he was jowlier, but other than that, he looked pretty much the same as he had thirty-five years earlier. Blue took a breath, stood, and turned down the sound on the television. He was nervous, and he didn’t function well when he was nervous. When he was nervous he always reverted to the slow kind of thinking that had marked his youth. A jumble of disjointed thoughts raced through his mind. Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he tried to assess his situation. Someone had tried to kill him—that was a fact. And now someone had probably killed Margolin. He felt trapped, squeezed somehow between light and darkness. Maybe he should have stayed in West Virginia, started over from scratch, tried to make a go of it, the same way he had thirty-five years earlier.
Grabbing his pants from the bed, he shook them out for bugs, just as he had since early childhood. One more blow to his regimented normality and he knew he’d lose it. The way he had when Rufus Hawkes had died. The way he always did when he couldn’t bear the pressure. The way he had thirty-five years earlier in the Vietnam jungle at Song Ve. What he needed was a plan, something he could think through and follow. A plan that would put him in touch with his daughter and keep them both out of harm’s way if whoever had tried to kill him resurfaced.
It wasn’t until he slipped on his shirt that he realized he was sweating. To hell with a plan, he told himself; after all, planning wasn’t really his thing. He was a doer, good at carrying stuff out. Planning was for thinkers, not really for him. He glanced at the TV as he buttoned his shirt, wondering whether the press conference would be televised nationally. One thing for certain: he wouldn’t be sticking around to see. He didn’t need that kind of exposure, and he didn’t need a bunch of talking heads, news commentators, prickly-faced cops, and phony sad-faced politicians to tell him what he already knew: Peter Margolin’s death was no accident. Someone had murdered his former captain. More than likely the same person who’d tried to kill him, and he didn’t need a plan to figure out that the someone was probably Lincoln Cortez.
When it came to politics, a seven-mike press conference always meant serious business. Distraught and teary-eyed, Ginny Kearnes, Peter Margolin’s press secretary and latest love interest, adjusted her skirt and told herself that she was as prepared as she possibly could be to duel with the media. It wasn’t every day that a congressman and a shoo-in for the Senate with connections all the way to the White House was murdered.
Aware that what she needed right now more than anything was to maintain her composure, Ginny watched a wiry, rat-faced little man in a mustard-colored Colorado Rockies baseball cap that had once been white as he adjusted the center mike. The man tapped the microphone with his middle finger, listened to the hollow echo, grinned up at her as if he’d just won the lottery, and said, “Everything’s kosher. Two minutes to showtime.”
Fighting back tears, she tried to ignore the statement’s irony. Everything wasn’t kosher. Her world had been shredded. Peter was dead, her promising staircase to political stardom had collapsed, and two hours earlier an insipid black cop named Newburn had peppered her with fifteen minutes’ worth of the most inane questions she’d ever heard, until she was shaking and bleary-eyed with tears. Now she had to stand tall, put on her press secretary’s face, and pretend to be in control.
The only thing that had saved her from dropping into a despondent pit was the fact that Owen Brashears, editor of the Boulder Daily Camera, Peter’s longtime adviser and one of their closest friends, had been at her side almost from the instant she had learned about Peter’s death.
Hearing the words, “You’ll do fine,” from somewhere behind her, she spun around to find Owen a few feet away. Forcing a smile, he flashed her a thumbs-up sign. “Just be calm. Let Colorado and the rest of the country know what they’ve lost.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Do better.”
Owen’s words were stern yet comforting. It was the way he worked. As tears rolled down his cheeks, he offered a warning. “Watch out for that reporter, Grimes. He’s an ass. And he had no love for Peter.”
Certain that Owen was hurting as much as she was, she considered leaving the podium to comfort the man who had helped Peter with his girlfriend problems during college and his financial upheavals during a messy divorce and walked him through a minefield of grief when he’d lost both of his parents in the space of a year. When a squeaky-voiced man walked up behind the first camera and announced, “Thirty seconds, Ms. Kearnes,” she knew that stepping away from the podium wasn’t an option. Showtime was at hand.
Ginny ran one hand through her thick blond hair, pursed her lips, sighed, and eyed the Ne
ws Link director. After her prepared statement, she’d take four questions: one from Owen, one from Rocky Mountain News investigative reporter Paul Grimes, then one each from reporters from the Westword and the Denver Post. If time allowed, she’d take a question from a national pool reporter, and then she could go to the newshound scrubs. She doubted whether viewers out in TV land understood how much any press conference was staged. She remembered watching Pentagon and White House press conferences during Operation Desert Storm. Pure fantasy, she thought as the on-air cue light atop the camera flashed green. When the assistant director said, “Cue the music,” five seconds of News Link breaking-news music blared before the director barked “Voiceover,” and in a prerecorded spot the 5 p.m. anchor announced, “This is News Link 4 coming to you live from the Colorado State Capitol with breaking news.”
“Cue the podium,” said the director.
Ginny cleared her throat as she watched the director’s skinny index finger shoot point-blank at her nose. “I’m Ginny Kearnes, Congressman Peter Margolin’s press secretary. I am here under the most tragic of circumstances on behalf of the congressman and the citizens of our state to answer questions concerning what can only be termed a Colorado tragedy and to recognize Congressman Margolin’s immense contributions to our great state and the West.” After another minute of platitudes, laced liberally with the Democratic Party line, she looked out into the press corps audience and said, “First question, please.”
The questions rained down on her for what felt like an hour but in truth was less than ten minutes. She fielded the most obvious question first: “Was the congressman murdered?”
Her answer, “The matter’s in the capable hands of the Denver Police Department,” came easy.
Answering Grimes’s question: “Can you describe more specifically for us exactly how the congressman died?” was the worst.
She suppressed her anger and handled the question deftly, aware that Grimes probably already knew the gruesome details and that the question had been asked in an attempt to unnerve her and create a little television theater. Her answer was brief and to the point. “The congressman died from injuries sustained in a fall at a construction site.” The answer triggered a thumbs-up sign from Owen and stopped Grimes in his tracks. The rest of the predictable questions ranged from “Who does the Democratic Party have in mind to fill the congressman’s seat?” to “Do you think Congressman Margolin’s Republican opponent, Alfred Reed, is now a Senate shoo-in?” Have you no decency? she thought before giving the same answer to both questions. “I’m afraid you’ll have to address that question to the parties’ leadership.”
After skirting delicate questions about her own relationship with Margolin and responding to a query as to whether Margolin’s political leanings had shifted from the far right to the left over the years, she felt that she had been professional, gracious, and instructive and above all had held her own. She left the podium in a state of reflective remorse and stumbled into Owen Brashears’s comforting arms.
“You were great,” Brashears said reassuringly.
“Better than great—fantastic,” a voice erupted just behind them. They looked back to see Elliott Cole, chairman of the state Republican Party, grinning. “And pointing to the parties on those two questions about succession. First-rate. Damn sure.”
Brashears’s temples throbbed as he stared down the party chairman. “Go blow smoke somewhere else, Elliott. This isn’t the place.”
Ignoring Brashears, the still athletic-looking seventy-one-year-old Cole doffed his trademark cowboy hat, bowed graciously, and eyed Ginny Kearnes. “No disrespect, Ms. Kearnes, but in politics you have to start where you start, and unfortunately, the starting line begins right here.”
“Even vultures respect the dead,” Owen countered.
“Horse shit, Owen.” Cole flashed Ginny an apologetic smile. “Go peddle that sentiment in the left-wing newspaper you run. In case you missed it, Mr. Editor, honey drippings always fall to those who seek them. Peter’s death just afforded us Republicans and Alfred Reed front-runner’s status. My job is to make certain he stays out front.”
Ginny’s eyes welled up as she tried to think of something to say that was clever, biting, or hateful—but she couldn’t. It was Owen who found the words that sent Cole scurrying. “Hope your budding front-runner can account for his time over the last twenty-four hours. I’d hate to have to dig into his whereabouts.”
“You don’t have the balls.”
“Maybe not. But those overzealous reporters that I’m forced to overpay damn sure do. Don’t push me, Elliott. Trust me. I’d enjoy unleashing my hounds on you.”
“I’ll remember that the next time I wrap my fish guts up in your newspaper.” Nodding and smiling at Ginny, Cole repositioned his Montana-blocked, wide-brim hat on a head of thinning silver-gray hair and turned to leave. “Remember this, though, my friend. Hound-lettin’ works both ways.” Cole flashed Owen a final broad, toothy grin before walking off into the still crowded room.
“No mas,” said Ginny, puffy-eyed and no longer a match for another TV camera, politician, or reporter, or even her own bathroom mirror. “Let’s get out of here.”
Weaving their way through the crowd and refusing questions, they rushed down a flight of stairs, scurried past a bank of legislative offices, and escaped onto the rolling grassy western expanse of the State Capitol grounds. They were on their way down the lengthy set of flagstone steps that led to 14th Avenue, where Ginny had disorientedly parked her car an hour and a half earlier, when a large black man, smoking a cheroot and wearing a sweat-stained Stetson, approached them.
“Excuse me, Ms. Kearnes. Can I speak with you a second?”
“Sorry, we’re in a hurry,” said Brashears, contemplating whether or not to shove his way past the man.
“I understand. Been on the move before myself.” The man tipped his hat in introduction before slipping a business card out of his shirt pocket and handing it to Ginny. “CJ Floyd.” He extended his hand. When Ginny didn’t reciprocate, he said, “Congressman Margolin’s secretary said that in order to get my questions answered I’d have to speak to you.”
Owen grabbed Ginny by the hand without responding and they both stepped around CJ.
“It’s about Langston Blue,” CJ said, taking three quick steps backward and once again blocking their path.
“Never heard of him,” said Ginny.
“You heard her. Now would you please get out of our way?” said Brashears.
“I’ll call you to follow up,” said CJ, stepping aside. “It’s important.”
Ginny glanced at the business card in her hand before tossing it aside. “No need, Mr. Floyd.” Arm in arm with Owen, she followed his lead, taking the steps two at a time, leaving CJ standing alone, taking a long, thoughtful drag on his cheroot.
They didn’t speak again until they were seatbelted securely in Ginny’s BMW. Owen spoke first. “Who in the shit was the black guy?”
“Never seen him before. His card said he’s a bail bondsman.”
“What would a bail bondsman want with Peter?”
“You heard him. Something to do with somebody named Langston Blue.”
“Strange-sounding name.”
Ginny nodded, started the car, and eased into traffic, wondering why her day had now been bookended by two large black men asking about a man named Langston Blue. Wendall Newburn, the Denver homicide cop she’d met with earlier, had claimed Peter had scribbled a note on his home office day planner that read, “Ask Cortez about Langston Blue.” She’d told Newburn the truth: she’d never heard of the man. But she had lied to the bail bondsman, Floyd. Sometimes her job required her to put a slight bend in the truth. Sometimes it called for flat-out fabrication. She had been in love with Peter Margolin, and if finding out why he had died meant being untruthful, she was prepared for that. She was savvy and well schooled in the world of politics, and painfully aware that when a political figure with as high a profile as Peter Margolin
’s had a bail bondsman sniffing up his shorts, things weren’t entirely kosher.
“You okay?” asked Owen. “You’re weaving in and out of your lane.”
“Yes. Just exhausted and tired of bending the truth.”
“It’ll be okay.” Owen patted her hand reassuringly.
Ginny didn’t answer. She was too busy thinking about the mystery man Langston Blue and trying to erase the memory that no matter how much she altered the truth in a press conference, Wendall Newburn had told her earlier that morning that the man she loved had been murdered. If Langston Blue was the secret to why he’d been killed, that was the trail she’d follow, and if the bail bondsman, Floyd, held the key, that was where she’d start.
Chapter 9
CJ spent most of the afternoon in his office trying to get a fix on who had tried to kill him and pinpoint the whereabouts of Mohammad Rashaan, but he’d come up with nothing but dead ends. A numbers runner he knew claimed that Rashaan was living outside Albuquerque, and a half-coherent retired mailman who had been a longtime drinking buddy of CJ’s late Uncle Ike said that Rashaan had moved to Colorado Springs. The fact that Rashaan was nowhere to be found bothered CJ more than if he’d been forced to turn over every rock the self-proclaimed little anarchist might be hiding under.
The only solid information he’d come up with concerning who might be out to kill him had come courtesy of phone and computer work initiated by Flora Jean, who’d dug up the fact that Bobby Two Shirts, Celeste Deepstream’s pathetic little worm of a twin, had died from a heroin overdose two years earlier. And although CJ and Flora Jean were reasonably certain that Celeste was still doing time in the Canon City Women’s Correctional Institution, CJ asked Flora Jean to follow up with a prisoner-release record search to make certain that they were right.