by Robert Greer
The physician’s assistant on duty eyed them as if they were a cross between gypsies and war refugees when they walked in, seeing a woman who looked like she’d been battered, a disheveled, one-eyed West Indian-looking cowboy, and a big black man wobbling as they supported him, as if he were drunk. Finally recognizing that CJ wasn’t drunk but in serious trouble, the physician’s assistant, a petite Spanish woman with bulging green eyes, called for a nurse who was busy filling out charts to help her. By the time they reached CJ, he had collapsed.
Earlier, as the sun had risen, CJ had helped Mavis from the iron lung. With a towel wrapped tightly around his own arm, his wound continuing to ooze blood, CJ had draped her in a towel and attended as best he could to her head trauma and knee injuries. He’d finally helped her into a pair of sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt he’d found stuffed into a shopping bag next to an old army cot near the back door of the line shack.
Billy, in the meantime, had followed the snaking outline of the creek bed that Celeste had raced away in and had come back to the line shack shaking his head, announcing in confused amazement that he had followed Celeste’s tire tracks for at least a mile before they had skipped out of the arroyo up a hillside and disappeared. He announced that during the trek he’d found a shortcut back to their horses and truck as well as several pieces of blood-stained shattered glass, suggesting that Celeste had more than likely been hit.
Waving off Billy’s offers of help, CJ had walked a near-catatonic Mavis over to the army cot and laid her down so she could rest while Billy attended to his wounded arm. Once he’d stopped the bleeding and rewrapped the wound, Billy had gone back to where they’d hobbled the horses, ridden back over the ridge, and followed the arroyo to within fifty yards of where they’d left their pickup. He’d come back, horses in tow, to pick up CJ and Mavis, wondering how in the hell they’d ever missed Celeste’s shortcut to the line shack but glad they had, because that was the way she’d obviously expected them to come in.
The seventeen-mile ride to Questa had been harder on CJ than Mavis. The fact that the physical part of her ordeal was over seemed to provide Mavis with a strange temporary sense of solace. The bright New Mexico sunshine had given her hope, and having two men she cared about squeezed next to her, asking her in between every mile marker if she were okay, gave her strength. But CJ was dealing with a two-pint blood loss, and by the time they reached the health center he was barely able to stand.
Thanks to a liter of lactated Ringer’s solution and two units of blood, CJ sat still light-headed but stabilized, on the edge of a gurney, squeezing Mavis’s hand while Billy sat nearby flipping through a battered year-old copy of Field and Stream.
Looking up from the medical chart she’d been writing in, the physician’s assistant paused, glanced at CJ’s bandaged arm and the fresh white dressing that encircled Mavis’s head, and said, “Now, tell me again how the two of you were injured.”
“A couple of propane tanks we was usin’ to heat up branding irons exploded out at the ranch, just like my friend told you,” Billy said before CJ or Mavis could respond.
The woman shook her head. “That arm wound sure looks like a projectile wound to me,” she said, eyebrows raised.
“Caught a piece of flying metal from one of the tanks,” said CJ, rubbing a bandage that extended from his elbow to just above his wrist.
“And the lady?” asked the PA, returning to her notes. “What about her injuries? They look old.”
CJ squeezed Mavis’s hand. “Same thing. Propane.”
“Let her answer for herself if you would. Ma’am?”
Mavis nodded without answering.
Aware that if she probed any further she’d likely have paperwork to fill out from then until sunset, the woman asked, “Did you give the clerk at the front desk your insurance information?”
“Yes,” said CJ, easing off the gurney, smiling at Mavis.
“Then I guess we’re done,” said the PA. Looking first at CJ and then at Mavis, she added, “Keep the wounds dry; don’t scratch at them. And have the bandages changed and looked at by a professional once you are back in Denver.”
“We can go, then?” asked CJ.
“Unless you want to answer more questions about that explosion.”
CJ draped his arm around Mavis’s shoulder, nodded for Billy to drop the Field and Stream, and headed for the room’s exit. They were nearly out of the room when Mavis turned back to address the PA. “It’s not what you’re thinking, miss. No lovers’ spat. I didn’t shoot him, and he didn’t beat me up.”
The woman looked relieved. “What happened, then?”
Mavis smiled. “Like he told you—a problem with propane.”
Chapter 21
Wendall newburn returned to his office just before noon, disappointed that after putting in almost half a day’s work, he had nothing to show for it.
He had gotten little information out of Le Quan and his daughter, and nothing to help him with the Margolin murder investigation. When he had asked Quan if he wanted to file a harassment charge against Flora Jean, Quan had said no, his response knee-jerk, as if he’d been coached. When he’d asked Quan if he had known Peter Margolin, the little man had looked at his daughter, sidestepped the question, and answered, “I know the congressman was murdered.”
Disappointed at getting next to nowhere on such a high-profile crime, Newburn sighed, turned on the shirt-pocket-sized radio that sat on his desk, and tuned in KUVO, for a much needed jazz respite. He had to suffer through an NPR news rap and a book review before John Coltrane hit full stride in his indelible 1959 “Giant Steps” cut, a cut that reminded Newburn so much of the brief time he’d had Mavis Sundee’s attention that he turned the radio off in frustration and went to lunch.
He was back at his desk at 1 o’clock, busily running his finger down a list of names in a notebook, stopping near the bottom of the page on a line that read, Floyd and Friends. Rising from his chair, he walked out of his office and down the hall to an area filled with cubicles. He stopped at a cubicle bordering the hallway, tapped a man busy at a computer on the shoulder, and said, “Joey, I need you to drop a little heat on some folks.”
Not at all startled, in fact looking disappointed at having to once more pay the penalty for sitting right next to a hallway, the man looked up, flashed Newburn a look that said, Again? and continued typing.
“This is about the Margolin case.”
When the man kept typing, Newburn said, “There’s pennies from heaven in it for you.”
“Shit, Wendall, my people are spread thinner than the hairs on a monkey’s nuts.”
“Heaven, Joey. The kind they reserve for sergeants.”
Joey Greene turned his back on his computer, shrugged, and said, “What?”
“I want you to sic one of your patrol units on the associates of a bail bondsman I’m tracking. Nothing big. Drive by their jobs, their residences, maybe do a few stop-and-checks.”
Greene shook his head. “I can buy trouble, Wendall, movin’ my units around where they don’t belong.”
“Hell, Joey, I’m not talking about checking on the White House here. I just want you to move your boys past a place in Five Points, a gas station, and the digs of a couple of street bums.”
“Five Points is fine. How far do I have to move my unit to check on your street people?”
“A little bit farther, but nothing serious. Just west of LoDo.”
“Hell, Wendall, that’s downtown. I don’t want my people runnin’ all the way down there.”
“Come on, Joey. Who’s to know? You’re down there five minutes at the most. Something comes up, you say you got a disturbance call. Trust me, it’ll be worth it in the end.”
Greene sighed. “What am I lookin’ for?”
“Not much. At the gas station, all I really want your people to do is make sure the owner’s there. I don’t want him out doing something on the side for my bail bondsman. As for the two street people, they’re pretty much F
rick and Frack—never see one without the other. And they don’t let anybody else inside their little world. Pretty much keep to themselves. They’ve got an abandoned building in LoDo they call home.”
“How long?” asked Greene.
“Two, three days at the most.”
“I’ll do what I can. Try and work it in. A couple of outta-bounds plays a day. That’s it.”
“You’re the man, Joey.”
“Yeah. I’ve heard that song.” Greene turned his back on Newburn, eyes locked on his computer screen.
Newburn pivoted and headed back for his office. Back at his desk, he eyed the open spiral-bound notebook, and put check marks next to the names Dittier Atkins, Morgan Williams, and Roosevelt Weeks. Flora Jean Benson and CJ Floyd had earned their check marks long ago. They were both up to their eyeballs in the Margolin case. He knew it. He just hadn’t figured out how or why. Keeping tabs on the two of them was always a chore, but over the years he’d learned that whether you were a cop, a preacher, a lawyer, or a politician, it was more often than not the people around you who caused you to sink or swim. Keeping tabs on two broken-down former rodeo cowboys and a jock turned grease monkey wouldn’t be so difficult.
Flipping the page, he added a check mark next to a name just beneath the heading Friends of Margolin. Nodding, stroking his chin, and looking satisfied, he picked up the phone and dialed information. “Can I have the number for the office of the state Republican Committee?” he said to the pleasant-sounding operator on the other end.
“Here’s your number,” she responded.
Newburn jotted the number down next to the name Elliott Cole, closed his notebook, and smiled, thinking, Every dog has his day, and the second half of this day will be mine.
The moldy, wet-dog-smelling converted sixteen-unit Denver motel on South Santa Fe Drive where Lincoln Cortez was staying had once been a cardboard box manufacturing plant. Now painted bright kelly green and trimmed in chartreuse, every unit still reeking of damp cardboard and machine oil, the building had become a haven for transients and illegal aliens moving up from Mexico on what they hoped would be their first step toward the good life.
Cortez had settled into a first-floor unit at the far southeast corner of the building, away from everyone else, close to the always overflowing dumpsters and hopefully, to his way of thinking, out of sight and out of mind.
He hadn’t heard from his contact in two days. He hadn’t been paid for all the extra legwork, planning, and time he’d put into the Margolin affair, and his atrophic right leg was hurting like hell. Chalking up the pain to the dry air a mile above sea level, he’d been popping Motrin and watching rented porno flicks. To keep from being totally overwhelmed, he had taken to midday walks, cane in hand, along the banks of the South Platte River, his .44 Magnum strapped to his good leg.
If it weren’t for Langston Blue, he’d be fishing off the Maryland coast, with a couple of women he knew from D.C. there to stroke his balls and feed him grapes. If it weren’t for Blue, he’d also have two good legs. He was carrying a lot of baggage because of Blue, and usually he had no problem dealing with it. But today was different. The sky was crystal blue, and the temperature had dropped from the blistering 90s to a comfortable 78. The air was mountain fresh, and noonday joggers were running past him on their way to cardiac health. He could see kids playing Frisbee in a nearby park that hugged the river. Blue’s run at Song Ve had caused Margolin to flinch and drop Cortez’s cover. Blue had cost him the use of his leg. Blue had taken something from him that day in the schoolyard in Vietnam, and sometimes the thought of it made his head hurt.
He’d miscalculated in West Virginia on his first assignment, but he wouldn’t make that mistake again. Once he finished his business in Denver, he’d head back east and this time, without orders coming down from Margolin, or anyone else, he’d settle up with Blue himself.
His cane made a light thump against the asphalt path with each new step, a sound that was perceptible only to him. He watched a boy in baggy shorts and a grease-stained muscle shirt race his dog to the river’s edge, stop, and burst into laughter as the eighty-pound Lab went sailing out into the water. For half an hour he stood and watched a single cloud work its way over the Front Range and move toward him. He thought about the money he’d had to dole out to Blue over the years, money that Margolin had paid to someone so simple-minded he’d probably have kept his mouth shut about Song Ve forever anyway. But Margolin had never listened to him, and he’d been forced to play bagman to a slow-thinking recluse whom nobody in the world gave one shit about. Now there’d be no more bowing or scraping, no yes-sir-boss-man to Margolin. Now it would be tea time at the Ritz, and fishing, and having women from D.C. stroke his balls.
A young boy chasing a friend rushed past Cortez, shouted, “’Cuse me, mister,” and continued running. The boy was nearly out of sight when Cortez began his slow trek back to the motel. Feeling momentarily refreshed, he stopped a few feet from the ugly structure, wondering why anyone would paint a building chartreuse and kelly green. Deciding it was the mark of someone trying to save money on paint rather than an artistic statement, he opened the door to his room, shaking his head. He’d taken two steps inside when the door slammed behind him and the blow from a ballpeen hammer crushed the back of his skull. He was dead before he hit the floor, well before the second blow severed his middle cerebral artery and sent blood streaming from his nostrils onto the black-and-white checkerboard tile.
“Son of a bitch is gonna bleed out,” Jimmy Moc shouted to Cortez’s killer, who was clutching the hammer and looking momentarily surprised.
“Do everything just like we planned,” the killer said calmly.
Moc nodded. Eyeing the enlarging pool of blood, he took two steps sideways toward the room’s tiny kitchen and rolled an empty five-foot-tall, ninety-weight oil drum, its insides still tacky with remnants of crude, over to the lifeless body. Following the killer’s unspoken instructions, he turned the drum on its side, and together they stuffed 165 pounds of deadweight headfirst into the drum.
“What about his cane and his clothes?” asked Moc, stuffing two fifty-pound sandbags into the drum.
“Put them in there with him.”
Moc rushed around the room gathering Cortez’s few articles of clothing, then jammed them into the drum along with Cortez’s cane. As the latex-gloved killer mopped up the serving platter-sized pool of Cortez’s blood with several shop towels and swiped six square feet of surrounding tile with a towel soaked in a chemical reagent used by hospitals to deal with blood spills, Moc hurriedly adjusted the oil drum’s lid, capped it with a flexible plastic rimmer, and snapped the rimmer into place.
The killer nodded, slipped the bloody towels into a heavy-duty trash bag, and, after policing the room a final time, said, “Let’s move.”
Moc opened the door and peered around the motel’s nearly empty parking lot, looking for any movement before saying, “It’s clear.” He stepped back inside and helped the killer, who was struggling to roll the drum onto a hand truck. Dressed in caps and cleaning-service coveralls, complete with bib-stitched name tags, they wheeled the oil drum out of the room and loaded it onto a pickup at the rear of the building. They would head fifty-five miles southwest along the Platte to the tiny mountain outpost of Deckers and drop the drum, which they planned to weight even further, from a convenient backwoods overhang into an inaccessible, forty-foot-deep, rock-walled icy pool in the South Platte. It was there, not D.C. or the Maryland coast, that Lincoln Cortez was expected to rest forever.
Chapter 22
Mavis lived in one of the half-dozen Mission-Revival-style homes that lined the south side of Curtis Street, the boundary between Five Points and the neighborhood of Curtis Park. Most of the houses in Curtis Park were small restored Queen Annes and Victorians, and for almost twelve years a steady stream of yuppies had been moving in, driving up the prices and causing the value of everything in the neighborhood to nearly double. Ornate replicas of turn-of-
the-century gaslight streetlamps had recently been installed along Curtis and California Streets in an effort to give Curtis Park what the mayor and city council called a return to its “turn-of-the-century grace.”
CJ sat on a chaise longue in Mavis’s sun room. Mavis was resting safely between his outstretched legs with her back to him, soaking up the midafternoon sun. “I’m outta here, CJ,” said Billy DeLong, heading toward the front door. “Got a five-and-a-half-hour drive back to Wyoming, a couple of tired-as-hell horses, and a quiet life to get back to.” He winked at Mavis.
“Billy, you’re the best.” Mavis slipped out of CJ’s arms, walked stiff-legged across the room, and kissed Billy on the cheek.
Billy smiled, slightly embarrassed, and continued chomping on the wad of Doublemint in his mouth. “Keep Nat Love over there in line, and the two of you get them bandages changed like you was told. And call me if you need any more help.”
Chuckling at Billy’s reference to the West’s most famous black cowboy, CJ got up from the chaise, inspected the bandage on his arm, and said, “Count on it,” before calling out to the kitchen, “Flora Jean, Billy’s leaving.”
Flora Jean appeared from the kitchen, two fruit smoothies in hand. “Sure you don’t need nothin’ for the road, Billy?”
“Just backup for my wad,” he said, extracting an unopened pack of Doublemint from his shirt pocket.
“Okay.” Flora Jean handed one of the smoothies to Mavis as CJ draped his arm around the shoulders of the wiry old Baggs, Wyoming, cowboy.
“Plucked my ass right out of the soup as usual,” said CJ. “And Mavis’s.”