Resurrecting Langston Blue

by Robert Greer

  When she spotted a man who fitted the description Alden Grace had given her for Jimmy Moc, she thought, Short-term stakeout—lucky in love, lucky in love. The man looked pretty much as Alden had described him: late thirties, early forties, short, with a mop of wiry black hair, a round, cherubic face, a broad no-question-about-it-brother-man’s classic nose, skin the shade of dried tobacco, and unquestionably Amerasian.

  He smiled at the cashier, who flashed him a look that said, Jimmy, you’ve got a problem, before nodding in Flora Jean’s direction.

  Jimmy glanced at Flora Jean, dropped the McDonald’s bag he was holding, grabbed a wad of keys out of his pocket, and took off, Air Jordans screaming across Colfax.

  “Damn,” said Flora Jean, bursting from the bench in pursuit.

  A customer waiting for his car said, “Wow!” Another simply pointed at Flora Jean. Most stared and kept quiet.

  Jimmy was fast, but Flora Jean had a stride advantage. After being kissed on the shoulder by a passing RTD bus and temporarily losing her balance, Flora Jean charged north on Yosemite, noticeably winded. Jimmy maintained their half-block separation until he made the mistake of heading for his car. He jumped in the unlocked driver’s door, jammed the key into the ignition, and cranked the engine. With tires squealing and his door still ajar, he was ten feet from the curb when Flora Jean reached inside, grabbed the collar of his blaze-orange Denver Broncos sweatshirt, and slammed all 140 pounds of Jimmy into the freshly paved Yosemite Street asphalt. His car, a lime-green Neon, jumped the curb on the opposite side of the street, slammed nose first into a thirty-foot-high cottonwood tree, and stopped.

  “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” Jimmy screamed at a near machine-gun clip.

  “And your mother,” said Flora Jean, gasping for air as she dropped to the asphalt and slammed her right knee across Jimmy’s neck.

  “I—can’t—breathe.” Jimmy’s words were now muffled and slow. As he gasped for air, every part of his body but his head flapped around, gyrating as if he were a pithed frog.

  Asserting control, Flora Jean demanded, “Why’d you run, Jimmy?”

  “’Cause—I—didn’t—want—nobody—repo’in’ my car.”

  “I’m not the repo man.” She eased the pressure on Jimmy’s neck.

  “Hell if you ain’t—you’re wearin’ silver and black.”

  “So do the Oakland Raiders,” said Flora Jean.

  “You were waitin’ for me at my job.”

  Flora Jean shook her head. “Maybe I’m from Publishers Clearing House.”

  “Ain’t funny, bitch.”

  Flora Jean laid every ounce of her weight back into Jimmy’s neck. “That’s Ms. Benson to you, you little worm.”

  “Ahhhh—you’re killin’ me.”

  “Bullshit. But I might if you call me a bitch again.”

  “Whatta ya want?”

  “Real simple. An address.” Flora Jean glanced up and down the street to see if anyone was taking in the show. The last thing she needed was some overeager cop or Good Samaritan dropping by to pay their respects. She saw a woman walking her dog moving toward them and figured she had less than a minute to get what she’d come for.

  “Whose address you want?”

  “Le Quan’s.”

  “No way.”

  “Wanna keep breathing, sugar?” Flora Jean ratcheted up the pressure on Jimmy’s neck.

  “He’ll kill me.”

  Flora Jean increased the pressure.

  “Aww—I.”

  “The address.”

  “He …”

  “Go on, sugar, finish.”

  “He has a shoe store over on Federal Boulevard in Little Vietnam. I don’t know the address.”

  “Does the store have a name?”

  “The Shoe Tree.” Jimmy gasped for air.

  “You’re a dear,” Flora Jean said loudly, helping Jimmy to his feet just as the woman with the dog walked by.

  “You don’t want no part of Quan,” said Jimmy, shaking his arm out of Flora Jean’s grasp. The dog, a chow-husky mix, growled, but the owner, eyes straight ahead, kept walking.

  “He’s that tough? Well, I’ll be sure to mind my p’s and q’s when I tell Quan you sent me to see him.”

  “Don’t. Don’t do that.” Jimmy’s face was a snapshot of fear. “You ain’t never seen me, lady. I don’t exist.” Jimmy brushed himself off, eyed Flora Jean disdainfully, and headed for his car. Before stepping into the idling vehicle, he turned and said, “You’re cruisin’ for a cut block, bitch.”

  Flora Jean took a quick step toward Jimmy as he slammed the door, backed away from the tree trunk, and sped off.

  As she headed back to the Rinse and Shine for her car, she couldn’t help but wonder what the link between Le Quan, a former Vietcong communist youth organizer, and an obviously U.S.-bred Amerasian loudmouth like Jimmy Moc might be.

  She’d almost reached Colfax when the woman with the dog, now coming back the other way, looked up and smiled at her. “Have a nice day,” said the woman.

  “You too,” said Flora Jean.

  Clad in a terry cloth bathrobe and matching slippers he’d stolen from a Four Seasons in Boston, Lincoln Cortez belched out a laugh as he sat down on the edge of the bed in the South Santa Fe Drive motel room he’d rented and reread Peter Margolin’s obituary. He couldn’t help but think that Margolin had probably written the glowing piece himself. “Always did love himself,” Cortez muttered. “Guess he just never learned to fly.” Smiling, he tossed the paper aside, checked his watch, and sat back on the bed, suddenly wondering why he hadn’t heard from his contact in two days.

  Chapter 17

  Lombardi and associates, the Rocky Mountain region’s top polling analysts, had a sterling reputation, penthouse offices in the Republic Plaza in Denver’s downtown high-rise 17th Street power-broker canyon, and an unblemished record of never having called the wrong side in a Colorado senatorial election in seventy-five years.

  Benjamin Lombardi, Benji to his closest friends, had taken the company’s reins from his father ten years earlier and had moved the staid and proper old firm into the twentieth century, outfitting it with the finest hardware and software money could buy and hiring a gaggle of highly paid analysts who’d cut their teeth inside the Washington Beltway.

  Alfred Reed, Peter Margolin’s Republican opponent, and Elliott Cole, the state Republican Party chairman, were seated with Benji at one end of a long oval teakwood conference table in the Lombardi and Associates offices, engaged in conversation amid uncleared plates and glasses, remnants of their earlier power lunch.

  Lombardi paused, took a sip of tepid coffee, and eyed Cole. “From all accounts, Elliott, Margolin’s death gave you a two-point blip. A week or two from now you may slip a little because of a sympathy reaction. It’s common. But you’re gaining. I’m certain you can carry it into November.” Lombardi reached for a stack of computer printouts, slipped two five-page documents off the top of the stack, and dealt them across the table. “Our latest poll results. Take one with you. They’ll go out to the rest of your people tomorrow.”

  Cole picked up his printout, looked at it briefly, and placed it face down on the table. “You know how I feel about these things, Benji. They’re too rough to wipe your ass with and too slick for catching snot. It’s people who tell you what you want to know when it comes to an election, not a bunch of hotshot Harvard-trained analysts.”

  Used to Cole’s objections and unfazed by them, Lombardi said, “It’s what you’re paying for, Elliott.”

  “And a damn pretty penny. Now that we’ve settled that and you’ve pawned off your latest data sheets on me, here’s what I really need. I want somebody walking Five Points, going door to door, making sure we get our proper share of the nigger vote. And people canvassing every tamale and taco joint in Denver so I know the Mexicans are with me, too. I want to know that every yuppie kissing the boss’s ass and every unhappy housewife, hooker, and soccer mom gives Alfred their vote. I don’t w
ant to know what they think. I want to know how they’ll vote. And if necessary, we’ll grease a few palms.”

  Looking incredulous, Lombardi said, “We don’t do that, Elliott, and you know it.”

  Cole picked up his printout and waved it in the air. “If you don’t, you should. As far as I’m concerned, your exit-poll, pie-chart, bar-graph, sample-size bullshit just gets in the way. You’ve always said your margin of error is 4 to 5 percent. Shit, if that’s the case, Alfred and whoever in the shit the Democrats end up picking to take Margolin’s place are pretty much in a dead heat.” Cole pounded his fist on the table for effect.

  “Trust me, Elliott. There’s no way. They’re scrambling. They’re two weeks away from even having a candidate.”

  “Then what you’re saying is that we are pretty much dead even with a dead man!”

  Tired of watching Cole and Lombardi gnaw at one another, Reed stepped in to referee. “Why don’t we wait and see who the Democrats pick before we chew off each other’s legs?”

  Cole gave Reed a look that said, You’re out of your league, boy, but instead of saying Shut the fuck up, the way he would have ten years earlier, he calmly set the printout back down on the table. “I spent ten years growing you on the vine, Alfred. Don’t blow it.”

  “And I’m the party’s candidate; take it or leave it,” Reed shot back.

  Cole shook his head, eyed Reed, and said, “So you are. So you are.”

  After a few seconds of steely silence, he turned to Lombardi. “I’ve shot my wad on this subject, Benji. You do your thing, and I’ll do mine. As long as the Democrats stay as disorganized and as dope-headed as they normally are, we’ll skate home free in November.”

  Lombardi nodded without answering and began straightening the stack of papers, which had gone cockeyed when Cole pounded the table. They were perfectly aligned when Cole asked, “Have the cops been by to see you yet?”

  Startled by the question, Lombardi asked, “Why should they?”

  “Because when it comes to the murder of a congressman, instead of some gang-banger they tend to look under a few more rocks. You’re connected to the campaign, you’re highly visible, and after all, you and Peter had your differences.”

  “So Ginny picked him over me. That’s yesterday’s news.”

  “Doesn’t matter with the cops. All they’ll see is a lovers’ triangle.”

  “Horse shit.”

  “Maybe not,” said Reed. “A homicide lieutenant named Newburn has already been by to see me.”

  “And me,” added Cole. “And he’s pretty sharp for a black man. Even dug up the fact that Peter and I didn’t always see eye to eye while we were in Vietnam. My guess is Owen Brashears sicced him on both of us. He and that Boulder rag of his are good at dishing dirt.”

  “Well, if he comes to see me, I’ll send him packing,” said Lombardi.

  Cole forced back a chuckle. “You do that. And while you’re at it, make sure not to mention anything about being a former Penn State linebacker. Peter was shoved to his death at the construction site. Newburn as much as told me so. My guess is, you’d have to be a pretty strong person to do that.”

  “Don’t bait me, Elliott.” Lombardi rose from his chair, a signal that the meeting was over. “We all had our differences with Peter.”

  Cole smiled, enjoying the fact that he’d ruffled a few feathers. “Call me tomorrow. I’ll have some data from Cherry Hills, the Stapleton district, and the Baker neighborhood that I’ll want you to crunch. I’ll need it by the first of next week.”

  “Just get it to me,” said Lombardi, thankful that not all of his clients shared Elliott Cole’s view of the polling business.

  “It’s been ducky,” said Cole, reaching out to shake Lombardi’s hand. Lombardi pumped it once and turned to Reed. “Good luck with the race.” He patted Reed on the shoulder.

  “We don’t need luck,” boomed Cole with the certainty of someone who’d been playing a game and rigging the outcome for years. “Just more black folks, Mexicans, and empty-headed vessels we can fill full of what we’re selling.”

  He smiled at Lombardi’s stunned expression and walked out the door.

  Federal Boulevard, one of Denver’s major north-south thoroughfares, parallels the Rockies as it shoots arrow-straight across the west side of the city, piercing nearly fifteen miles of ethnic neighborhoods that haven’t changed in fifty years, except for a two-mile-long stretch extending from Alameda to Florida Avenues. Over three postwar decades that stretch, now known as Little Vietnam, has burgeoned into a Far East megacenter.

  Le Quan’s shoe store, the Asian Shoe Tree, anchored a small shoppette at the corner of Federal Boulevard and Louisiana. The front of the store, at the far south end of the V-shaped shoppette, was all tempered glass. Its egg-yolk-yellow interior walls and open-beamed eighteen-foot ceilings, highlighted by basketball-arena-style lighting, could be seen from a block away, as could shoes stacked floor to ceiling from every imaginable state, republic, province, and island on the planet. Quan did a bustling business in everything from woven bamboo sandals to knockoff Nikes. And if he didn’t have what a customer wanted, he’d guarantee to find it within a week.

  The shoe business, from all outward appearances, had made him financially comfortable, although detractors both inside and outside the Vietnamese community claimed that his success had more to do with peddling illegal contraband, including tobacco products sans tax stamps, stolen French and Italian wines, and brand-name footwear knockoffs. However, Quan had managed to fend off critics, bankruptcy, and the law and had flourished since his arrival in Denver from the war-torn Vietnamese province of Quang Ngai twenty-five years earlier.

  Flora Jean called the Shoe Tree on a pretense of trying to locate a pair of size 11 Gore-Tex-lined, U.S. Army-issued, World War II-style field boots. It was a shoe she was pretty certain Quan wouldn’t have because all the knockoffs, popular among bikers, hunters, college kids, and Goths, came without a Gore-Tex lining. She had talked to Quan himself, who had lamented that he wasn’t certain whether he had the shoe in stock, but she could come by the store to take a look. It was Quan’s version of a bait and switch, since he knew he didn’t have the shoe. When she’d asked how long he would be in, he said, “’Til 9,” and cheerfully added, “Just ask for Le.”

  On the way to Quan’s, Flora Jean called Julie Madrid, to find out the arraignment status of a client. She filled Julie in on the Langston Blue saga but skirted the issue of Mavis’s kidnapping, knowing that Julie would call the cops. When she parked in front of the Shoe Tree it was just past 6 o’clock.

  The ten-foot-high double door to the Shoe Tree was dwarfed by the store’s front wall of glass. The interior lighting, a notch below blinding, assaulted Flora Jean as she walked in.

  “Help you?” asked a young Asian woman who looked to be in her mid- to late twenties. She was pretty, long-boned, and pale.

  “Lookin’ for a boot,” said Flora Jean. “I called earlier and spoke to Le.”

  “I can help you.”

  “Thanks, but Le said to ask for him.”

  The woman eyed Flora Jean with a hint of suspicion. “I’ll get him.” She headed toward the back of the store, working her way between boxes stacked high with shoes, shelves overflowing with stock, and an array of uncomfortable-looking benches. Near the back, she glanced over her shoulder at Flora Jean and flashed the kind of smile one displays when running interference.

  Moments later a thin wisp of a man appeared from behind a six-foot-high stack of shoeboxes. A foot shorter than the boxes, he was dressed in droopy khaki pants, a bold-colored Hawaiian shirt that featured violet flowers, and penny loafers. The woman who had retrieved him followed close on his heels as he walked toward Flora Jean.

  “Hi,” he said, stopping a few paces short of Flora Jean. “You the lady lookin’ for field boot? I’m Le.”

  “Yes,” said Flora Jean, realizing that the little man standing before her, his gaze locked on her chest, had a two-inch-wide si
lver streak that started at his forehead and ran Mohawk-style right through the middle of his jet black hair.

  “I got plenty. But don’t know if they what you want.” Quan glanced toward the front of the store, turned to the woman who had summoned him, said something to her in Vietnamese, and waved her toward a group of teenagers who had just walked into the store.

  “Boots in other aisle,” he said, eyeing the teenagers suspiciously. “Follow me.” He watched the teenagers until a stack of shoeboxes blocked his view.

  “Got every style,” he said when they reached a series of nine-foot-high shelves overflowing with trail boots, hiking shoes, military boots, and work shoes. “What you want boot for?”

  Suspicious that Quan’s question was intended to determine her true reason for the visit, she said, “Backpackin’.”

  “Got a better boot for that than one you asked about.” Quan extracted a pair of size 11 hiking boots tied together at the laces from a shelf just in front of him and handed them to Flora Jean.

  Flora Jean took a seat on one of the rock-hard benches and began untying the laces. “How long have you been in business here?” she asked, slipping her right foot into one of the boots.

  “Twenty-four year this winter.”

  Flora Jean nodded, slipped on the other boot, and gazed around the store. There were only a few customers milling around a Nike display in addition to the teenagers, now busy with the woman who’d been Quan’s escort. Flora Jean eased off one boot and rubbed her foot. Responding finally to Quan’s statement, she asked, “Since you came here from Vietnam?”

  Unfazed by a question he’d been asked hundreds of times, Quan simply nodded as he stared down at the rows of intricately carved African bracelets that encircled Flora Jean’s arms.

  “Fit?” asked Quan, looking Flora Jean squarely in the eye.

  “Seems a little narrow.”

  “We can stretch.”