by Robert Greer
The fact that someone had tried to kill CJ had thrown Mavis off stride, and after an in-office lunch of fried catfish and butter beans, she’d hovered over him protectively for the rest of the afternoon. He tried to downplay the threat by telling her, “I’ll worry about somebody trying to off me the next time I’m in a war,” which had only added fuel to the fire.
Flora Jean had calmed the waters, reassuring Mavis that they would peg who the shooter was soon enough and that, as always, she had CJ’s back. When Mavis went upstairs to CJ’s apartment for a bag of coffee, Flora Jean stepped in to tone down CJ’s bravado. “Are you crazy, CJ? Or just turnin’ old-age stupid? You think Mavis wants to hear your half-baked macho bluster? She’s worried to death about you. You blind?”
“What do you want me to say? That I’m scared of some halfwit with a back-to-Africa agenda or some woman who’s doing time?”
“No, I want you to quit spoutin’ off like a black-folks version of Rambo and take the time to see things through Mavis’s eyes. How’d you feel if the shoe was on the other foot and it was Mavis bein’ dogged by some shooter?”
Caught off guard by the question, CJ turned pensive.
“Cat got your tongue?” asked Flora Jean, aware that since the time of CJ’s late Uncle Ike she was the only one who could get away with such a question.
“No,” said CJ, still pondering the original question.
“Makes you think, don’t it? It’s a little different when you the one gotta do the lion’s share of the worryin’. You don’t never wanna lose somebody who loves you like Mavis, CJ. She ain’t replaceable. So quit pushin’ her buttons. Try a little tenderness. Might do wonders.”
CJ stared past Flora Jean without answering, through the hand-blown divided glass panes of the old Victorian building’s bay window into the twilight.
“Sure is quiet down here,” said Mavis, returning with a pound of freshly ground coffee. Her trip upstairs had given her time to calm down. Walking around in the place where CJ slept, a space where they’d quarreled, shared the best and worst of times, and made love, seemed to have somehow suppressed her overwrought feelings. It was almost as if it had enabled her to get closer to him than he sometimes allowed.
“We’re thinkin’,” said Flora Jean watching CJ nod in agreement.
“Well, don’t think too much,” said Mavis, walking over and squeezing CJ’s right hand. “It might hurt your brain.”
CJ squeezed back and eyed Flora Jean. “Don’t worry,” CJ said, smiling. It was a broad, easy smile, the kind that let everyone know the earlier tension was behind them.
“Everyone up for coffee?” asked Mavis, heading for a battered coffee maker that was well past its prime.
The front doorbell rang as CJ and Flora Jean nodded in unison. “I’ve got it,” said Flora Jean, heading for the door. “And Mavis, don’t make the coffee too weak. Ain’t got no use for weak-ass coffee or spineless men.”
The woman standing face-to-face with Flora Jean was dressed in $150 Nikes and designer sweats. Her hair was perfectly styled. Her face expressionless, except for her eyes, which were puffy and red.
“I’d like to speak with Mr. Floyd,” said the woman in a husky, gentrified voice.
“He expectin’ you?”
“No,” the woman said authoritatively.
“Come on in,” Flora Jean said guardedly, leading the woman through her own cramped office. She squinted at the confining walls and thought once again about asking CJ to remodel the place. The thought had passed by the time they reached the dining room. “CJ, you got a visitor.”
CJ looked up from the coffee creamer he was holding directly into the eyes of Ginny Kearnes. Ginny eyed CJ squarely and smiled at Mavis. “Virginia Kearnes. Everyone calls me Ginny.”
She’d barely gotten the words out when CJ added, “The late Congressman Margolin’s press secretary.” Nodding toward Mavis, he said, “The java specialist over there is Mavis Sundee.”
“And I’m Flora Jean Benson.”
“My pleasure.”
“Care for coffee?” asked Mavis. “Just freshly brewed.”
“Yes. Black,” said Ginny.
“Surprised you decided to look me up after our encounter this morning,” said CJ.
“I was still reeling from the press conference. You threw me for a loop. I needed time to think.”
“Fair enough. What can I do for you?”
“Well … I guess the best place to start is with being honest. I was more than Peter Margolin’s press secretary, Mr. Floyd. We were in love. We were planning to get married as soon as he won his bid for the Senate.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.” Ginny accepted a steaming mug of coffee from Mavis.
“I’ll get mine,” Flora Jean said, waving Mavis off and stepping between CJ and Ginny, noting that the lean Kearnes was just a couple of inches shorter than she.
“I’ve lost everything, Mr. Floyd. I need some answers, and I need your help.”
“I’m afraid I operate in a world that might be a little outside your bounds. You might do better with a lawyer or the cops.”
“Maybe so, but I’m here because we have a connection.”
“Which is?”
“Langston Blue. The man you asked me about this morning.”
“What do you know about him?” asked Flora Jean, as her intelligence-operative instincts kicked in.
“Nothing really,” said Ginny, surprised that Flora Jean had responded. “Except that I started my day in a confessional with a homicide detective named Wendall Newburn who said that Peter had jotted Blue’s name in his day planner. Some note to ask someone named Cortez about Langston Blue.”
Flora Jean frowned. “That’s it?”
“Yes,” Ginny said.
“Not much there to sink our teeth into,” said Flora Jean.
“But it’s something,” Kearnes pointed out. “So now that I’ve told you my story about Blue, how about sharing yours?”
“Might be difficult,” said CJ, wondering how to best keep a line open to Kearnes in case she learned more, either from Margolin’s records or from the police.
Ginny’s face stiffened as she flashed CJ and Flora Jean a cold, hard stare. Her next words were measured and lacquered with authority. “That cop, Newburn, said Peter was murdered. And with or without your help, I plan to find out who killed him. I can pay you if that’s the problem.”
“I’ve already been retained,” said CJ.
“I see.” Ginny’s face turned a faint shade of pink. “Well, you said it best, Mr. Floyd. We’re more than likely from different worlds. Newburn’s probably closer to mine. Same goes for the man who was with me this morning when we met, Owen Brashears. He’s the editor of the Boulder Daily Camera. You see, Mr. Floyd, my world is filled with people like that.”
Incensed, Flora Jean said, “So’s ours.”
CJ shot Flora Jean a look that said, Pull in your reins, before responding to Kearnes. “This isn’t a pissin’ contest, Ms. Kearnes, and I’d help you if I could, but I’m already obligated.”
“We may end up at odds,” said Ginny. “Remember that when you’re out there in your world’s orbit, Mr. Floyd.”
“I will,” said CJ.
“Thanks for the coffee,” said Ginny, smiling at Mavis before placing her cup on a nearby table. “I’ll see myself out.”
Ignoring the offer, Flora Jean followed Ginny to the front door. Moments later Ginny Kearnes had slipped away as quickly and mysteriously as she had come. When Flora Jean returned, CJ and Mavis were staring at each other blankly.
“Wasn’t that heavy duty?” Flora Jean asked.
“Different,” CJ acknowledged with a nod.
“Think she really has any clout?” asked Mavis.
“A lot more than we do,” said CJ.
“No matter,” said Flora Jean. “We got ourselves a nugget or two we didn’t have before. The cops are sayin’ Margolin was definitely murdered, and we know he was set to
have a meetin’ with somebody named Cortez about Langston Blue.”
“You learned something else, too,” said Mavis, surprising CJ and Flora Jean with her uncharacteristic interest. “You’re into it with somebody from a different league.”
Winking at Mavis and then at CJ, Flora Jean said, “Can’t speak for the two of you, but I know a heavy hitter or two.”
Mavis looked befuddled, but CJ smiled, knowing exactly the kind of heavy hitters Flora Jean had in mind.
Aided by the brightness of a nearby streetlamp, Celeste Deepstream watched CJ walk Mavis down his driveway, give her a lingering good-night kiss, tuck her safely into her vehicle, and wave good-bye. A lone cottonwood blocked any view he might have had of Celeste. Her left calf muscles ached, cramped from two hours of being scrunched behind the wheel of a subcompact rental car. But the surveillance and her patience had paid off. She’d gotten what she’d come for: an unfiltered view of Floyd and the soft spot in his life.
In college, she had once had someone besides her brother who cared about her. Back when she’d been a world-class athlete with a swimmer’s sculptured body, a book full of NCAA records, and a national reputation. But Bobby, ever dependent, hampered by poor judgment, weak, and addicted, had destroyed the relationship.
Easing from behind the cottonwood, she turned on her headlights and latched on to Mavis’s SUV. Before the night was out, she’d know where Mavis Sundee lived. In the end, she would make Floyd pay the same way she had paid when she’d lost Bobby. She’d make the Sundee woman suffer before she died, just as Bobby had. Then she’d kill them both.
Chapter 10
The only tangible thing Langston Blue had to point him toward his daughter was the return address on an envelope and a now dog-eared letter. It was as if whoever had written the letter was testing him, trying to see if he’d respond to the bait. As he crawled along in Denver’s morning rush-hour traffic after spending the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot, he was hopeful. Seeing Margolin’s face on a TV screen had thrown him for a loop, made him run, turned him into a jackrabbit. But driving around Adams County back roads for two predawn hours, through cow pastures and farm land, he’d had time to think. Following a map he’d bought in the Wal-Mart, he was now headed for the 1600 block of Wazee Street.
After threading his way down jam-packed Colorado Boulevard, he moved quickly down 17th Avenue, past City Park and the midtown hospital district into downtown. According to his map, 1664 Wazee, the address he was looking for, was on the western edge of downtown in a neighborhood called LoDo, a twenty-square-block area buttressed on its northern edge by a baseball park called Coors Field.
Gawking at the stadium’s size as he passed it, he turned onto the 1700 block of Wazee and started checking addresses on the buildings lining the even-numbered side of the street. Ranging from three to eight stories tall, most were constructed of brick, marble, or limestone, and they all looked pretty close to new. Thinking that Carmen Nguyen must be doing pretty well for herself, he cruised past 1664, a red-brick building trimmed in ivy. The building’s jutting balconies framed in hand-forged wrought iron and a solid brass front door fourteen feet high screamed high end. Right, wrong, or otherwise, this woman calling herself daughter was living in high cotton.
When he realized the horn blares behind him were meant for him, he eyed the building’s entrance one last time and eased off the brake, driving two blocks south and a couple of blocks east past two parking lots jammed with cars and sporting signs that read “Parking, $10 an hour” before he found a parking-metered street.
He considered ignoring the meter but thought better of it when he realized that a parking ticket might be all Cortez would need to trace him. He fed two quarters into the meter before realizing that fifty cents purchased only thirty minutes of time, shook his head, popped in two more quarters, and headed back toward Carmen’s building.
The concierge sitting behind the polished mahogany desk in the building’s lobby was dressed in a dark gray sport coat and light gray slacks that made him look more like a stockbroker than what he was: front-line building security and a greeter. Realizing that there was no way to reach the building’s inner sanctum without engaging the man, Blue cleared his throat and hitched up his pants. His washed-out jeans and sweat-stained T-shirt might violate the building’s dress code, for all he knew, but he’d come 1,450 miles to find a daughter he’d never known, and with the journey’s end clearly in sight, he forged ahead.
“I’d like to see Carmen Nguyen,” he said, boldly stepping up to the desk.
The concierge flashed an insipid greeter’s smile. “Is she expecting you?”
“No.”
“And your name is?”
Blue thought about giving the man a fictitious name but said, “Langston Blue” instead.
The greeter eyed him from head to toe, checked a computer printout lying on his desk, cleared his throat, and said, “I’ll ring Dr. Nguyen for you, Mr. Blue. You can have a seat if you’d like.”
Blue almost said shit in response to the news that his daughter was a doctor. He had no idea if she was a philosopher, a veterinarian, or a baby doc, but she was a doctor. Suddenly he was full of questions, and his mind was awash with images of Mimm and the lush countryside of rural Vietnam. He wondered whether Carmen looked like her, petite, olive-skinned, and soft. Or maybe she was big-boned and dark-skinned like him. How had she gotten to America and escaped the war? And what about Mimm’s sister, Ket? He knew that Mimm was dead; he’d gotten the word decades ago from another deserter—but was Ket dead, too?
His mind still racing, Blue stepped back from the desk to calm himself as he surveyed the spacious, granite-floored lobby. Two posh leather chairs and a table occupied the wall to his left. He thought about taking a seat in order to gather his thoughts, but as he hesitated, a woman carrying a grocery bag brushed past him and plopped down in one of the chairs. He eyed the woman, who was now staring at him as if she was afraid he might any second ask her for money, and moved back toward the concierge.
Glancing down at a computer screen mounted in the desktop, the concierge reached to his left and tapped a red button. “I didn’t get an answer the first time I buzzed her. I’ll try her again.”
“Thanks,” said Blue, watching the woman with the grocery bags pack up her things. The instant she moved off, he walked over to the chair she’d vacated and sat down. The wall behind him had the look of Old World plaster. He studied its uneven texture and thought about why, after all these years, Cortez and a daughter he’d never known he had had come calling. He didn’t know if the reasons were tied to Peter Margolin’s murder, but he knew he had to be wary and not let his heart get in the way of his head the way it had with Mimm. For all he knew, the woman calling herself Carmen Nguyen could be working for Cortez or Margolin.
As his thoughts descended to a place that always made him mistake prone and nervous, the concierge called out, “Excuse me, Mr. Blue.”
“Yeah?” said Blue, startled, one eye darting.
“Dr. Nguyen doesn’t seem to be in. Would you like to leave a message for her?”
Blue paused, trying to gain control of his thoughts, uncertain whether most other people in the world, people who’d never been called slow, ever had to face the same problem. “Yeah.”
“And the message would be?” said the concierge, his tone taking on an air of impatience.
“Just tell her Langston Blue came by and that I’ll try to catch up with her later.”
“Is there a phone number where you can be reached? I can leave it for her.”
“Nope.”
Noting the look of disappointment on Blue’s face, the concierge said, “Sorry you missed her.”
“It’s okay. We’ll connect.”
“Enjoy your day,” the concierge said perfunctorily as Blue turned to leave.
“You too,” said Blue, suddenly thinking of Mimm and the amazing light of the Vietnamese landscape, the alternating bustle and serenity of the Can Tho canal d
istrict, and the vivid colors and enticing, exotic smells of the Vietnamese boat market.
The morning sunlight streaming through the big bay window of CJ’s office always caused the room to seem larger than it was. The aroma of coffee hung in the air as CJ, Flora Jean, Ket Tran, and Carmen crowded around CJ’s battle-scarred conference table, mapping out a strategy they hoped would help him locate Langston Blue.
“Sounds like the Kearnes woman might end up being a pain,” said Carmen, doodling a picture of a river-rafting boat on a notepad as she responded to CJ’s comments about Ginny Kearnes’s visit.
“We can handle her,” said CJ. “Let’s get back to Blue. Think he’s still back in West Virginia?” he asked Ket.
“That’s the only address I’ve ever had for him, and it’s more than a quarter century old. I got it from a man who brokered safe passage to the U.S. for Vietnamese war refugees.”
“Then we just might have to go lookin’,” said Flora Jean. “I called a couple of active-duty MI contacts of mine back east first thing this mornin’, hopin’ to get some info on exactly what the army’s Star 1 units did during Vietnam. Even asked them if they could pinpoint the unit Blue had been in. Hell, practically before I could get the words ‘Star 1’ outta my mouth, they both clammed up. And these are two boys that owe me big.” Flora Jean glanced at Carmen. “Trust me, sugar, whatever your daddy was mixed up in over in Vietnam must still have one heck of a smell to it.”
“And you can bet it’s linked to Peter Margolin dying at that construction site,” said CJ. “With Flora Jean’s military intelligence people running for the exits, this whole thing could waft its way all the way up to the Pentagon or the halls of Congress.”
“Another My Lai?” asked Flora Jean.
CJ pondered the question and shook his head. “Don’t think so. That would’ve been too hard to cover up. No, whatever Blue was involved in was something more clandestine, something that was planned. Not the result of a platoon of unschooled army grunts melting down and going apeshit on civilians. I’m guessing Blue never knew what he was involved in until the very last minute.”