Resurrecting Langston Blue

by Robert Greer

  Billy shrugged. His face slowly took on the look of someone bearing bad tidings. “She’ll be back, CJ. Trust me. Sure you don’t want me to stay?”

  CJ glanced over his shoulder toward Mavis and continued walking Billy to the door. “I’ll call you if I need you. Right now I have Mavis to worry about, and Flora Jean and I have another situation on our hands.”

  “You’re dealin’ with a madwoman, CJ,” said Billy as they walked across Mavis’s soggy, freshly watered front lawn toward Billy’s pickup and horse trailer.

  “I know that. I’ll handle it,” said CJ, looking frustrated.

  Maggie let out a whinny and nudged one side of the horse trailer with her hindquarters as Billy opened the driver’s door. He eyed CJ sternly. “Take my advice, CJ. Can everything else for right now and concentrate on Mavis.”

  “I hear you.”

  Chomping on his gum, Billy slipped into the cab. “I know you do, but I can tell I ain’t comin’ through clear enough. Mavis needs all of what you got right now. A lesser woman would probably need a padded room and a shrink. Better tend to her. That’s all I’m gonna say to you. Take it for what it’s worth.” Billy started the pickup, slammed the door, and clutched the steering wheel one-handed. “Like I said, call me if you need me.”

  CJ waved as Billy backed his rig onto the quiet street. Billy nodded, waved back, and was gone in what seemed like the blink of an eye.

  CJ took a series of deep breaths, pulled a cheroot out of his vest pocket, and lit up. He smoked the cheroot down to a nub, perplexed at how to handle everything that was swirling around him, before heading back to the house. Stubbing out the cheroot on the heel of his boot, he slowly climbed the front steps and disappeared inside.

  On the strength of CJ’s insistence that he didn’t want Mavis to end up being a target again because of him, Flora Jean agreed to spend alternate nights at Mavis’s and assured him that she’d stay as long as Mavis wanted her to. She headed back to the office to wrap up things for the day, indicating that she’d return with enough clothes to stay a week, her tunes, and a 9-mm pistol. She deliberately said nothing to CJ about their Langston Blue problem, deciding to save the high points for a better time.

  Mavis and CJ were finally left alone together. As a late-afternoon breeze picked up out of the west and the massive fifty-year-old cottonwoods that lined Mavis’s backyard rustled in cadence with the rush of the wind, CJ sat back in the chaise, holding Mavis as he had just before Billy had left. They hadn’t said a word for several minutes when Mavis finally said, “I don’t see why you can’t stay here, CJ.”

  “I’ve told you, Mavis. Because I’m her target. Celeste wants me, and I don’t want her coming near you again, ever.” CJ ran a finger in a wide circle over Mavis’s stomach.

  Anchored in CJ’s grasp and feeling safe, Mavis said, “Maybe we should call the police.”

  “I did.”

  Startled by his response, Mavis looked up at him. She’d never known CJ to ask for help from anyone except Flora Jean, Rosie Weeks, or Billy, and of course Ike when he was alive. Julie Madrid helped him work the legal side of the street, and his two broken-down rodeo cowboy friends, Morgan Williams and Dittier Atkins, sometimes did odd jobs for him. But she’d never known him to ask for help from the cops.

  Reading her surprised expression, CJ said, “This is about you, Mavis. Not me. I told the whole story to a District 3 cop during the first few hours you were sleeping after we got back.”

  “What will they do?”

  “What cops do most of the time—nothing. They respond to crime, Mavis. They don’t prevent it.”

  Mavis’s face turned expressionless. She hurt physically and mentally, and it was all she could do just to cope. She didn’t want to believe that she’d been kidnapped, beaten, and caged without any recourse. She wanted to tell CJ to fix it, to make the pain disappear and erase the memories, no matter what the cost. But she knew that if she did, she’d unleash a piece of him that she never again wanted to see. The angry, confused, hostile side of the man she loved. That dark side he had struggled with after coming home from Vietnam. If she gave him the green light she knew he’d hunt Celeste down and possibly kill her, and in the process he’d destroy his life and hers.

  She glanced around the brightly lit sun room. It was a cozy, cluttered room filled with inviting overstuffed furniture. The walls were filled with family photos, including pictures of her as a Denver Owl Club debutante and Boston University debate team captain. There was a photo of Ike embracing CJ the day CJ had come back from Vietnam, with her brother, Carl, her father, and Rosie Weeks standing in front of Mae’s grinning at the scene. And on an end table, along with a lamp base and shade covered with etchings of black rodeo cowboys, was a photograph of CJ and Mavis hugging sweetheart-style in the Bel Air. That photograph had always been her favorite.

  Forcing back tears, she said, “She intended to kill us, CJ.”

  CJ brushed her hair back from her bandaged forehead. In an attempt to soothe his psyche as much as Mavis’s, he said, “But she didn’t.”

  “And we have no recourse?” Mavis asked.

  “Not much. Besides, the cops’ll want to hear your side of the story before they even consider getting one hair out of place looking for Celeste. If we’re lucky, maybe her parole officer will do something to help, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “That’s ludicrous. Did they see your arm?”

  “They took my statement, Mavis. It’s the way the system works.”

  Mavis rested her head back against CJ’s chest. She’d always thought she understood the origins of his passions. His rage at watching the system succumb to never-ending manipulation, his frustration and anger at having to struggle so hard to earn a living at what she until that very moment and society as a whole viewed with disdain. The cops couldn’t restore what had been stolen from her, and now, for the first time in her life, she understood why people came to CJ for help. Why Newab Sha’s wife had asked CJ to hunt down the man who had beaten her, stolen who she was, and laughed while he’d done it. Letting out a barely perceptible sigh, she turned until she could see his face and asked, “Can we do anything?”

  CJ lowered his eyes to the floor. It was a telltale look she knew too well. Having navigated CJ through mountaintop highs and rock-bottom lows, she knew that when he wouldn’t look her in the eye it was usually because he was debating whether to tell her the truth.

  “CJ! We can’t just wait for her to come back.”

  CJ squeezed her hand. “Mavis, we’re on our own.”

  The noise of the refrigerator compressor clicking on in the kitchen caused Mavis to jerk an arm across her face. She suddenly began to shiver. CJ wrapped his arms around her tightly and rocked her slowly from side to side, realizing that it would be a long time before the woman he loved overcame her psychological pain. Continuing to rock her, he said, “Remember when I first met you and you rang me out on that old cash register that used to sit next to the pulpit at Mae’s?”

  “Yes,” said Mavis.

  “Remember what I bought?”

  “What else? A whole sweet-potato pie.”

  “Remember how I made you wrap it in tinfoil and put it in a box inside a box?”

  “Yes.”

  “Know why?”

  “Not really.”

  “Because that pie was special. My reward for days of gathering soda-pop bottles and collecting two- and three-cent store return deposits for my efforts. Guess I’m still a little paranoid about protecting things of mine that are special. Like my woman, for instance. I don’t have a special box to put you in to protect you, and I don’t have a magic wand to make your pain go away. But I can spend more time with you, quit thinking that no matter what, you’ll always be there, and stop surfing for dollars from the bottom-feeders and lowlifes of the world who don’t really count.”

  Mavis looked CJ squarely in the eye. “Do you think you’re really up to changing the way you live?”

  “I can t
ry.” He kissed her on her bandaged forehead.

  “Then try. See what happens.”

  “I will. But with two small catches. Flora Jean stays here with you like I said. And if necessary, she stays until all the noises fade into the background where they’ve always been.”

  “Okay. What’s the other catch?”

  “I have to wrap up the thing with Carmen Nguyen’s father. I can’t leave it hanging.”

  “I see,” Mavis said hesitantly. “And after that you’ll call it a day? Cut back? Turn over things to Flora Jean?”

  This time it was CJ who hesitated before finally saying, “Yes.”

  “It’ll work, CJ. I know it.” Mavis smiled for the first time since she’d been liberated from the iron lung. As she turned to kiss him she brushed his bandaged arm and banged her left knee against his. They both let out pained groans as she hugged him tightly.

  “You’ll hurt your knees,” said CJ as Mavis tried to squeeze closer.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said, wrapping both hands around his neck and pulling him toward her until their lips met. “Doesn’t really matter at all,” she said, kissing him over and over again.

  CJ got back to his office a few minutes before 6 just as a conga line of commuter traffic made its daily jail break for the suburbs. Flora Jean was on the phone when he came in, looking like she had a powerful story to tell. Before he could get out a word, she said, “We need to go check on Blue. Morgan says he’s gone way past antsy over being cooped up at their place, and Dittier’s promised him he’ll take him out after dark for a transient’s view of the city. Dittier said he’d even outfit him with a shopping cart full of aluminum cans and a bedroll, just so things look kosher while they’re out cruisin’. Morgan claims that with Dittier being a deaf mute and Blue seemin’ kinda slow, they’ve sorta connected.”

  “Damn,” said CJ. “We don’t need Blue getting picked up by the cops while he’s out sightseeing.”

  “That’s what I told Morgan. Said we’d be down to their place as soon as you came in. I told Carmen to meet us there, too.”

  “Okay. Just let me get a few things out of the Bel Air. On the way over to Morgan and Dittier’s you can fill me in on what went down with that character General Grace had you dogging.”

  “Two characters.”

  “Two?”

  Flora Jean shook her head. She almost said, You need to start listening until she realized that when she’d mentioned Le Quan and Jimmy Moc to CJ earlier, he’d been road weary, still woozy from losing two pints of blood, and concerned about only one thing—Mavis.

  “Two seconds and I’m all yours,” said CJ. He headed outside for the Bel Air.

  “I’ll drive,” Flora Jean called out after him, aware that CJ was still frazzled. “I’m parked out front.”

  CJ trotted across the lawn to the Bel Air, opened the trunk, and slipped out one of the M16s Billy had left. He rushed back up the driveway, opened the garage door, and walked to the back of the garage toward the navy footlocker he’d brought back from Vietnam. The name Floyd, Calvin J. was stenciled below the edge of the lid. He ran the lock combination, flipped back the lid, and set the M16 down on top of a neatly folded pea-coat. As he stared down at the footlocker’s contents, he thought about Mavis and his promise to chart a new course. Knowing how difficult it had always been for him to sever ties to the past, he closed the footlocker, spun the combination, pivoted, and headed back toward the street. The glare from the sun hit him squarely as he came out of the dark, mildew-smelling garage, forcing him to shield his eyes as he began the first leg of his journey into a bright new day.

  Morgan Williams and Dittier Atkins lived in an abandoned Platte River Valley building just west of Denver’s lower downtown shopping, business, and sports arena district. The building, scheduled for demolition in the fall to make room for business pods and condos, had always reminded CJ of a gigantic chicken coop, and the cluttered yard behind it filled with junk, overflowing with firewood, commodes, sinks, pipes, electrical wiring, and mammoth wooden spools, triggered images of the aftermath of war.

  Morgan Williams, a cigar stump of a black man with a shaved head and skin as smooth as a carnival Nubian’s, was sitting on a World War II–vintage army cot nursing a Coke when CJ and Flora Jean arrived. Morgan had jury-rigged the place with salvaged wiring, light fixtures, and lamps that he and Dittier had scrounged from the trash of a society with too much time and money on its hands. They had furnished their six hundred square feet of living space with cots, chairs, tables, and even Oriental rugs they had picked up during their years on the street, ultimately setting up shop in the low-profile cinderblock building that had once been a warehouse. They had been in the building three years, and it was the longest they had stayed in any one place since their rodeo days. Now they were upset that the mayor, normally an advocate for the homeless, had finally sided with developers and downtown businesspeople in their efforts to have the building demolished and turned into high-rise residences for upwardly mobile all-about-me’s.

  Carmen had arrived a half hour ahead of CJ and Flora Jean, and she’d spent what was her fourth visit talking to Blue about her life, listening to him tell her about his, learning about living isolated from the world, and most of all trying to bond with her father. They’d made inroads, but she and Langston Blue were still generations, cultures, and life experiences apart. As Carmen regaled Blue with her knowledge of motorcycles, Morgan pulled a beer out of a minirefrigerator that he and Dittier had bought at a garage sale for a dollar, popped the cap with a church key hanging from the refrigerator door handle, and said, “Sure you don’t want nothin’, CJ, Flora Jean, Dr. Nguyen?”

  “It’s Carmen. And no, thanks.”

  “Got more beer if you want it, don’t we, Dittier?” Morgan signed as quickly as he spoke. Dittier nodded dolefully toward a paneless window covered in plastic and at the case of Miller Lite below.

  “Nothin’ for me,” said Flora Jean.

  “Me either,” said CJ, looking at a clearly disappointed Dittier. “So now that we’re all clear on why Langston can’t go traipsing around the city, maybe we can get back to pinning a tail on Margolin’s killer.” CJ eyed Blue. “Flora Jean has a couple of leads. Go ahead, Flora Jean, fill us in.”

  “Here’s what I got. Ain’t a lot, but at least it’s somethin’. I turned up a little Amerasian street worm named Jimmy Moc a couple days ago. He’s thirty-five or so, five-foot-four, skinny, bug-eyed, and the color of underdone toast. Ever heard of him?” she said, looking at Blue.

  Blue shook his head.

  “What about the name Le Quan? Ring a bell?”

  “Is he Amerasian, too?” asked Carmen.

  “No,” said Flora Jean. “A long way from it. He’s a hundred percent Vietnamese, drawn lookin’, thin as a rail, about fifty-five, and strange enough, he has a silver streak runnin’ down the middle of a mop of jet-black hair.”

  “What?” CJ and Carmen responded almost in unison.

  “A silver streak in his hair,” repeated Flora Jean.

  “You didn’t say that on the way over here,” said CJ. He and Carmen both eyed Blue.

  “You didn’t ask me for no description,” said Flora Jean, looking perplexed.

  “It’s gotta be him,” said Blue. “Silver streak, skinny as a beanpole. Gotta be him.”

  “Would somebody clue me the hell in?” said Flora Jean.

  “In a minute.” CJ turned his attention to Blue. “Do you remember anything else about him? Your man at the school?”

  “Not really. Been thirty-five years. He was just there. In that schoolyard, talkin’ to Margolin outta the blue.”

  “No matter,” said CJ. “Now at least, we’ve got a reason to light a fire under Quan’s butt. Here’s the scoop,” he said, turning back to Flora Jean. “The day Blue made his run, a man matching Quan’s description showed up at a school full of children that Blue’s Star 1 team boys wiped out. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Damn,”
said Flora Jean. “You mean Blue turned out to be the only human being?”

  “You pegged it,” said CJ.

  Blue spoke up, almost as if he were afraid. “About that mission. I’ve been thinkin’ about it more and more. And the thing I’ve been thinkin’ ’bout most is how our team ended up drawin’ the short straw. Now I think I know why.”

  “Might as well spit it out,” said CJ, watching Dittier, to whom Morgan had been signing the entire time, inch forward onto the edge of his chair.

  “Go ahead,” said Carmen. “It might be the key.”

  “Okay,” said Blue. “We got picked for that mission ’cause of Elliott Cole, our battalion’s buck-up light colonel and XO. He was in charge of Star 1 team mission assignments, and since Margolin had complained about not wantin’ to command no Star 1 team from the beginnin’, we was dealin’ with somebody who was already pissed off.”

  “So you think that’s why Cole stuck you with the schoolyard assignment?” said CJ, frowning, trying to place a name he knew he’d heard before.

  “Think so,” said Blue.

  CJ stroked his chin, walked over to the refrigerator, and took out a beer. “Two leads, better than none. Le Quan and his stand at the schoolhouse door and a ticked off lightweight colonel. It gives us somewhere to go.” CJ popped the beer cap. “I’ll run down Cole. Flora Jean, you’re back with your buddy Quan. Think you can handle him and that little roadrunner of his, Moc?”

  Flora Jean laughed, headed for the refrigerator, and pulled out a Miller Lite. “Do eagles have wings?”

  Chapter 23

  After three failed phone attempts to get in touch with Elliott Cole and ask him about being Peter Margolin’s Star 1 team commander, Wendall Newburn had decided to call it a day. He was having an early dinner and taking in some live jazz at the Dazzle Restaurant and Lounge on the northern edge of downtown, a weekly custom, when his pager went off in a middle of a delicious Houston Person saxophone riff. If it had been his cell phone ringing he would have ignored it and continued drinking in the melodic, tender sax sounds, but the pager was his direct link to Sergeant Joey Greene, and the intrusion meant that something serious was up.