Resurrecting Langston Blue

by Robert Greer

  “I told you we’d move quick to have an answer for you,” said Morris, his expression now a broad, shit-eating grin.

  “I’m certain my friend will appreciate that, and the fact that you’ll of course put an end to any further harassment.”

  Morris looked at Newburn, hoping that since the Margolin case was his, he’d offer Marx a plum that would make them both look good. On most days Newburn would’ve kept his investigative moves and methods close to the vest, especially when it came to sharing them with an outsider and an obvious up-bucking weasel like Marx, but most days didn’t afford him the chance to stick it to CJ Floyd or his insolent partner. Smiling at the thought of having the opportunity to make CJ and Flora Jean squirm, Newburn said, “I’ll move the Benson woman and Floyd to the top of my docket. You and your friend can count on it.”

  Robert Quan and Alex Holden walked slowly west along the sunny south-facing portal of Santa Fe’s historical Palace of the Governors, eyeing blanket after blanket of Indian pottery, jewelry, trinkets, and assorted tourist come-ons spread casually on the uneven brick walkway at their feet, all within a quick stretch of the doleful-looking Native American people selling them.

  “This place has been standing since 1610,” said Quan, taking a step back from the historic building and sweeping his right hand boldly in a semicircle.

  “But clearly after the Jamestown settlement,” countered Holden, smugly.

  “And way before America discovered Vietnam,” said Quan, fed up with Holden’s incessant one-upmanship, his unending references to his days as a fighter pilot and champion motocross rider, his constant griping about his nosebleeds, and his disparaging comments about Indians, the West, and Mexican food.

  “You got what you came for,” said Quan, eyeing the large manila envelope Holden had tucked under his right arm. “Everything on everyone involved at Song Ve, including Sergeant Blue, Margolin, and my father.” It was all he could do to keep from laughing at Holden’s retro crew cut, horn-rimmed glasses, rubber-soled wingtips, and all-black clothing. Instead he said, “Time’s a-wastin’.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, Quan. You came calling.”

  “I know, but it’s hard to break a dependency,” said Quan, his tone meant to be biting. “It’s like drugs.”

  Holden smiled. “Then you shouldn’t start one.”

  “You’re right.”

  Holden bent to look at a turquoise squash-blossom necklace. Frowning at the stoic-looking Indian vendor, he picked it up and dangled it in front of Quan. “What do you think?”

  “I’d pass and head back to Washington. It’s definitely not you.”

  Holden put the necklace down. “You’re right. Too flashy.”

  “And too Western,” said Quan, aware that Holden, an operative who had the authority to use any means necessary to set “Company” matters straight, spent nearly every minute of his life working at that unending project. Unless the dirtiest of the “Company’s” laundry was about to be aired in public, he’d never chance sticking out. Overjoyed that Holden would be gone in less than an hour, Quan said, moving away from the portal, “The Wild West Show’s over. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 19

  Mavis had never felt anything quite like it. The endless thumping behind her eyes, the pounding in her forehead, the stabbing achiness in her knees. Although she knew better, she couldn’t help but think that she had dropped through a hole in the universe directly into the bottomless pit of hell.

  She knew she’d been unconscious, but she had no idea for how long. She knew she’d been assaulted and slammed against the hood of her car and the side rail of a truck bed, that she’d been caged and driven somewhere in the blackness of night. And she’d grown to know the pain.

  What she didn’t know was where she was or who had taken her to a place that smelled of mildew and pine trees, creosote and rotting logs. Above all, she didn’t know why. She could move most of her body and everything seemed to be intact, and she could think, turn her head, even cough. But she was forced to do all those things while lying flat on her back, her head resting on some sort of cushion, supported by a metal tray, her eyes staring skyward toward two massive hand-hewn wooden beams that spanned a ceiling of rough-cut logs high above her.

  She had tried to roll onto her right side, but she couldn’t, and when she tried to raise her head off the pillow support she couldn’t move it more than a few inches. Frustrated, she fought the pain and forced back tears. She thought about CJ and her father, about the restaurant and getting to work on time. She knew she was confined inside some kind of cylindrical contraption, because she’d been able, after a while, to feel around its rounded walls. And she realized that her head was poking through some sort of porthole made of plastic or rubber. There were several pressure gauges and valves jutting to the right and left of her head, but she had no idea what they were for.

  A surge of pain shot between her temples, exploding behind her right eye. She tried not to cry, but she was losing her stamina, and a single tear began to trickle down her right cheek.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” said someone at the foot of the cylinder. Someone she couldn’t see. “It hurts to be locked up, waiting for someone to set you free.”

  It was a woman’s voice, Mavis was certain. A cold voice with a calculating edge.

  Mavis didn’t answer. She was too startled, too afraid.

  “Don’t worry, Mavis. Your sentence won’t last long. You’re on borrowed time now, Ms. Sundee. The kind we all come to dread, sooner or later.”

  Mavis lifted her head off the pillow, struggling to see above the edge of the cylinder. Realizing for the first time that the tube had a subtle brass-like hue, she stretched her leg, bumping it against the inside of the cylinder. There was a sharp punch of laughter.

  “No need to struggle, Mavis; save your energy.” The woman’s voice resonated from the end of the tube. “I can see you quite well from where I’m standing. It’s the advantage of having an understanding of geometry. If I stood just a little bit higher, an inch, maybe two or three, the triangulation would work to your advantage and sooner or later our eyes would meet. But I won’t move, and you can’t. So the issue’s moot.” The woman snickered. The snicker lingered momentarily before trailing off to a snort.

  “May I have some water?” asked Mavis, uttering her first words since the abduction.

  “In due time, Ms. Sundee. All in due time.”

  Suddenly Mavis heard footsteps moving away from her, and then what she was certain was a door slamming, followed by what sounded like someone walking down stairs. She couldn’t tell if the woman had left the room or gone upstairs, outside, or down to a basement. All she was certain of was that the woman had moved away from the foot of the cylinder.

  The pain behind Mavis’s eyes resurfaced. Gritting her teeth and calling on her resolve, she thought about what CJ had once told her about a mission he’d been on in Vietnam when he was only nineteen. He’d said the mission had taught him the value of patience. It had been a routine predawn search and rescue, the kind that every grunt and sailor, marine and airman needed to experience early in their tour if they wanted to stand half a chance of coming home alive. His boat, the Cape Star, was taking fire from the Mekong River bank, and CJ found himself blazing away with his double-barreled .50-caliber machine gun at some faceless shoreline enemy instead of waiting to take aim at whoever was trying to take out the patrol boat. His gunnery chief, sensing his greenness, made his way to the back of the boat and said, “Slow down, son. World ain’t made up of ammunition.” He’d taken the twenty-year navy chief’s advice, and when they swung back around to take aim at the enemy position, this time it was the impatient Vietcong cherry-picker with a shoreline grenade launcher who launched one too many grenades too fast in their direction, so fast that CJ could get a bead on him, who paid the price. The mission taught CJ that when it comes to life and death, your choices are to be patient or to rush ahead. More often than not, it’s patience that ultimately e
nables you to survive.

  Mavis knew it was going to take all of her mental strength to wait out her captor and all the patience she could muster to keep from being drawn under by the pain. But patient she would be, and in the end she told herself she would somehow survive.

  The leading edge of a heat wave carrying 90-plus-degree temperatures had knifed its way into southern Colorado and northern New Mexico by the time CJ and Billy left Fort Garland, Colorado. They had spent the night there mapping out a strategy for rescuing Mavis and exploring the surrounding mountains to get a feel for the terrain. They rolled past the old fort, which had been commanded by Kit Carson from 1866 to 1867, horse trailer in tow, with CJ gunning Billy’s pickup, foot to the floor.

  “Slow the shit down, CJ,” said Billy. “‘Case you forgot, we’re towin’ a 1,500-pound trailer loaded with 2,200 pounds of horseflesh. You wanta kill us? I knew I shoulda been the one to drive.” Billy slipped his ever-present wad of Doublemint, five sticks to the wad, never less and never any other brand, from his left cheek to his right and sat up straighter in his seat.

  CJ eased off the accelerator without answering, deep in thought, his mind racing over and over through their rescue plan. He had thought through a half-dozen plans before finally settling on an early-morning surprise assault. He didn’t know how many people he and Billy would have to deal with, how well armed they were, where Mavis would be, or how he’d initiate the whole thing. What he did know was that once he had worked his way into the Taos Mountains to the spot Celeste had pinpointed, he had to bring Mavis back.

  “You gonna drive fast or slow?” asked Billy, watching the truck’s speedometer needle drop below 50.

  “Oh,” said CJ, realizing he’d lost his concentration. He nudged the accelerator, a thud came from the trailer hitch, and soon they were cruising along at 65.

  Comfortable with the fact that CJ had regained his focus, Billy asked, “Know why I think that Celeste woman snatched Mavis?”

  “We’ve been through all that, Billy. She wants to even the score. She thinks I’m responsible for the death of her brother.”

  Billy shook his head. “No. I mean really,” he said, removing his boot and sock, and massaging his toes.

  CJ glanced over at the wiry little man with curly black hair and tried to figure out where Billy was heading. He watched Billy, who’d lost not only an eye but a little toe to diabetes and rum, massage the ball of his foot and thought about how Billy had once saved his life in a gun battle outside Baggs, Wyoming. A black debutante, the daughter of a federal judge, had gotten tangled up with a bunch of whacked-out ecoterrorists. Billy had ridden in on horseback to the ranch the environmental nutcases had been leasing, roped their leader, who was about to shoot CJ, and then dragged the fruitcake kicking and screaming across two acres of rocky pasture land. Aware that Billy in his folksy way was trying to make a point, CJ asked, “Why?”

  “Easy,” said Billy. “’Cause she’s crazy.”

  Before CJ could laugh, Billy beat him to it. “And crazy people, no matter how hard they plan somethin’, got vulnerabilities. Now, this Celeste woman, maybe she’s scared of the dark or the light or heights or loud noises. Who knows? Could be she don’t like lookin’ at herself in the mirror, or she hates men or goats or one-teated cows. One thing for sure, anybody who went from bein’ a world-champion swimmer and one of them Rhodes Scholars to where she’s at now got a screw loose somewhere.”

  CJ pondered Billy’s grassroots assessment of Celeste for the next few miles without responding. When he slowed down to cruise through San Luis, the oldest town in Colorado, its main street dotted with crumbling adobe homes and boarded-up cantinas, CJ said, “Billy, I think you’ve hit on our solution.”

  “How’s that?”

  “A way to get inside Celeste Deepstream’s head. Is that beat-to-crap rodeo announcer’s kit you pack around in the trailer?”

  “Sure is.” Billy looked puzzled. “I just used it at a 4-H junior jamboree outside Cheyenne last week.”

  “And did you bring the two M16s?”

  “I told you I did back in Denver. You’re thinkin’ too hard, CJ.”

  “Could be. Anyway. We’re gonna stop here in San Luis and pick up some road flares.”

  “For what?”

  “For an early-morning party. Or a late-night one. Depends on how you look at it.”

  Billy shrugged and slipped his sock back on. “Glad you decided to stop. I gotta pee and get some gum.”

  CJ shook his head in mock protest, aware that with his supply of Doublemint restocked, Billy would be smacking gum in his ear all the way to their destination.

  Ten minutes later, his stash replenished, Billy sat back in his seat, his head planted against the head rest as CJ nosed the pickup into a stiff southwesterly wind. As they closed in on a semi filled with cattle, CJ said, “We’re a half hour from our turnoff. Think we need to water Maggie and Butch before we head into the mountains?”

  Billy turned around in his seat and peered through the cab’s rear window at the swaying horse trailer. “They’ll be fine. Ain’t like this is the first time they’ve ever been on a road trip.”

  “How much ammo did you bring?” CJ’s tone turned edgy.

  “Enough for two M16s.”

  “And the rifles?”

  “Got plenty for them, too. Why all the questions, CJ? You all right?”

  “I’m fine.” CJ gripped the steering wheel tightly, clenched his teeth, and watched a blanket of steam rise from the seemingly unending asphalt. As the cattle trailer ahead of them swayed from side to side in a 30-mile-per-hour wind, CJ had the uneasy feeling he was once again on the Cape Star, cruising the Mekong River delta waiting for the enemy to rear its ugly head.

  The woman was back. Mavis could hear her moving around the cabin, or house, or lodge, whatever the rustic building with the rotting beams and sagging split-rail walls actually was. The woman stayed well out of view, shifting objects, arranging and lifting things that sounded heavy. She spent several minutes next to a source of light that had to be a window, fiddling around with something faintly aromatic. There was silence that lasted a few minutes, and then the woman was back at it, moving something made of metal. For a fraction of a second Mavis thought she smelled gas. The next instant the smell was gone.

  Mavis had had time to think, to come to grips with the pain and to consider the parameters of her confinement. She knew now that she was being held in a single large room in what she thought must be some type of diving or airlock apparatus. A full cycle of sunlight had moved across the floor and faded. When she’d summoned the courage to run her hands over her exquisitely tender knees, the palm sweat had triggered a spike of agonizing pain, and she’d realized that large pieces of the flesh covering both knees were missing.

  She wondered what time it was, what the woman had planned for her, and how long she’d been there. She was about to drift off to sleep when suddenly the woman appeared just to the right of her head, out of nowhere, like a bolus of light. She was holding a glass of water in one hand and two white nuggets the size of jawbreakers in the other. Mavis turned her head to get a better look at the woman. The first thought that came to mind after seeing a puffy-faced, cocoa-skinned woman with severely cropped black hair was that the woman had probably been very striking at one time. Then Mavis thought about how the woman could kill her.

  “Water as you requested,” said the woman, dropping the two white pellets into the glass of water. “It’s evanescence,” she added, erupting in laughter. “And briny. Like the ocean, Mavis. Like the ocean. You wouldn’t like it,” she said, pouring the water onto the floor. “Too salty.” Tossing the glass aside, the woman squatted until she was at Mavis’s eye level. “How do you like your accommodations? A bit confining, maybe? But aren’t we all? Confined, I mean.”

  When Mavis didn’t answer, the look on the woman’s face turned hateful. “Tongue-tied? I can cut it out if it’s bothering you.”

  “I’m fine,” said Mavi
s.

  “Oh, are you? And I’m Celeste. Pleased to meet you.” Again she burst into laughter. “Deepstream, that is. Perhaps you knew my brother, Bobby.”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying.” The woman rose from her crouch and slapped Mavis across the face. “You’re lying. You’re lying.”

  Mavis gasped and gritted her teeth. The room turned quiet except for Mavis’s labored breathing. Finally Celeste stepped back and said, “You know CJ Floyd, of course. Better not lie to me.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you love him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like I loved Bobby.”

  When Mavis didn’t answer, Celeste slapped her again. “Your lover’s coming for you, Mavis.” She watched Mavis’s eyes widen. “No need to doubt me. We’ve been in touch. He’s following my orders, and I’m certain he’ll be here by daybreak. That’s when he’ll find you here in your iron lung waiting for him so faithfully, alive and well. And then I’m going to kill him. And you too, Mavis. I’ve mapped it all out, planned ahead for you and dear Mr. Floyd.” Celeste’s words seemed to swirl around the room, reverberating off the walls, the beams, the flooring. As quickly as she’d appeared, she was gone. Not like an apparition or a bolt of light this time but like the ghost of a madwoman screaming.

  An iron lung, thought Mavis as the room grew darker and silent. She’d never considered that, but it made perfect sense. She turned toward the fading sunlight, knowing there was no more time for tears, or guilt, or fear. Only time for hoping, praying, and thinking—time to somehow alter the woman’s game plan and disrupt whatever it was she had in mind for CJ.

  CJ and Billy had ridden in slowly and quietly on horseback, leaving their rig at the end of a gravel road that had turned into dirt, the dirt into tire ruts in the tall native grass, and the tire ruts eventually into a cow path that nipped its way into the Taos Mountains. Their horses walked side by side with stately ease, nudging one another’s hindquarters occasionally as if to serve notice that one or the other was ahead by a nose.