by Robert Greer
Surprising herself, she’d said, “Let me think about it.” Her response had left a man who’d been a combatant in both the Vietnam and the Persian Gulf wars, a career soldier who’d slipped in and out of the shadows of espionage and marine counterintelligence for years, a man who’d provided security for kings and presidents, speechless.
They’d ended their conversation with Flora Jean finally asking Grace what new insight he might have about their Langston Blue problem. He’d lamented that the only angle he’d come up with worth pursuing was the fact that Blue’s Star 1 team’s botched mission had never hit the intelligence community’s front burner, or for that matter the front pages of any major newspaper. This fact suggested to him that someone with enough political or intelligence clout had been able to bury what sounded to him like a possible war crime or even collaboration with the enemy. Grace had ended the call with the words, “You think long; you think wrong,” sounding like a schoolboy as he hung up.
Julie called CJ just before noon, her cell phone in one hand, a hot dog in the other. Shouting to be heard above the traffic noise and the clanging of a light-rail train in the background, she said, “I’m down the street from the courthouse getting a hot dog. Gotta be back in court at 1:30, but I’ve got something for you concerning the Blue case.”
CJ laughed. Aware of Julie’s weakness for junk food, he said, “Better watch out. Too many dogs and burgers and you’ll lose that West Side Story figure.”
“But I’ll still have the looks,” Julie countered.
Smiling and thinking that no matter which way he turned he was surrounded by take-charge women, CJ said, “Okay, what’ve you got?”
“A money trail you need to follow.”
“No riddles, Julie,” said CJ. His mood was uneven because he had been dealing all day with a powerful case of seller’s remorse.
“Here’s the skinny,” she said, sensing that something was off kilter. “My law clerk snooped out Margolin’s shorts. Turns out that in the past thirty years, Colorado’s would-be senator made himself a lot of money.”
“No news there. He came from money.”
“It’s news if you started out before Vietnam plain old rich and ended up afterward flat-out blueblood wealthy. Seems like all of Margolin’s real wealth came rolling in after Vietnam.”
“Maybe he just built himself a big fat political war chest?”
“Come on, CJ. I’m talking about his personal money, not nickel-and-dime campaign contributions. That construction site he got killed at—turns out the building was a partnership deal with Margolin as the general partner. The building was worth seventy-five million.”
CJ whistled into the phone. “Now you’re talking real money.”
“It’s real money all right, but here’s the kicker. Guess who his partners were on the high-rise deal?”
“Got me.”
“How about Ginny Kearnes and Elliott Cole?”
“What?”
“Like they say. Politics makes strange bedfellows.”
“Hell, those two are at lunar opposite poles.”
“I’ll say. My law clerk’s still digging, working up Internet sources, newspaper stories, microfiche files, the whole works, to see if he can ferret out a few more of the good congressman’s financial connections. But so far, his post-Vietnam windfall and the building deal are our best angles.”
“Gives us plenty to start with,” said CJ, listening to the clang of a light-rail train in the background on Julie’s end.
“I’ll keep on it,” said Julie.
“Good,” he said, pausing to take a long breath. “I’ve got something else for you to deal with. But it’s not about the Blue case.”
“I’m listening,” said Julie, noting a hint of hesitation in CJ’s voice.
“I need you to draw up some papers for me.”
“What kind?” said Julie, pressing the cell phone tightly to her ear and putting her hot dog down.
“Partnership papers. And a lease-to-buy agreement. I’m gonna sell half the business to Flora Jean.”
Stunned, Julie looked for somewhere to sit. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
Making her way over to an unoccupied 16th Street pedestrian mall bench, Julie sat down and stared at the ground. During the time she had worked for CJ, his job had consumed his life. She had watched him almost singlehandedly rid Five Points of a late-1990s gang stench that had threatened to tear the community apart. She’d seen him track down scores of petty criminals, arsonists, and even murderers and been there with him as he butted heads with unscrupulous bail bondsmen, insipid lawyers, and out-of-control cops. Aware that except for his passion for collecting Western memorabilia and antiques, the bail-bonding business was all CJ knew, Julie was at a loss for words.
“What will you do?” she asked finally, her gaze fixed on the sea of mall pedestrians.
“Take some time off. Make sure my fly-fishing arm heals up, peddle a few antiques, and give Mavis the time she deserves.”
“Makes sense. How’s Flora Jean with it?”
“She’s ready.” CJ’s voice trailed off as if the rash of recent decisions somehow had him winded.
“I’ll need more specifics, but I can do the papers for you,” said Julie, sensing his fatigue and thinking that as a criminal defense attorney she hadn’t tackled anything as mundane as a partnership agreement in years. “I’ll come by the office after work. We can talk over things then.”
“Fine. I’ll make sure Flora Jean’s there.”
A 16th Street mall shuttle bus lumbered by. Its pedestrian warning bell clanged as Julie rose, tossed her unfinished hot dog into a nearby trash container, and headed back to the courthouse.
“And remember to bring whatever else your law clerk can dig up to help with the Blue case,” said CJ.
“Will do,” said Julie, picking up her pace, wondering as the courthouse steps came into view what she would do if she ever had to give up practicing law.
Flora Jean’s voice was churning with frustration. Looking up from her computer screen, she said, “Ever tried to dig up anything on a war crime that nobody ever heard of? I’ve Googled, Yahooed, MSNed, and AOLed everything from Auschwitz to Sherman’s march through Georgia. Ain’t nothin’ nowhere about a U.S. Army Star 1 team committin’ no atrocity during Vietnam. I knew I was gonna end up havin’ to go classified when I started lookin’.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, I’m gonna have to rely on Alden or somebody he knows to scrounge up somethin’.”
“Might as well. I’m not convinced after what Julie told me about Margolin’s finances that that’s why he was murdered anyway.”
Flora Jean gave CJ one of her this is my territory, sugar, looks. “Maybe not, but Margolin’s team was involved in a killin’; maybe it just wasn’t the kind you was gettin’ paid to do.”
CJ nodded. Still only partly convinced that Flora Jean’s take was accurate, he looked around her cramped quarters nostalgically. “Julie’s coming over after work. She wants to talk to us about the partnership agreement.”
“Works for me.”
CJ eyed the toaster-sized recess behind Flora Jean’s desk, a niche in the plaster that housed a West African figurine. Recalling that the niche had started as a plaster crack that his Uncle Ike had repaired half a dozen times with auto-body Bondo, he thought about how Julie and now Flora Jean had transformed the cramped little space into a place where each could be comfortable working every day. Staring at the hand-carved teakwood replica of an African queen that now filled the niche, CJ said, “I’m gonna run by and check on Mavis real quick before I try and locate that Republican Party chairman, Elliott Cole.” He headed for the door, trying to push a lifetime of memories to the back of his mind.
“You haven’t said anything to Willis about what happened to Mavis, have you?”
“No. Mavis told him she’s staying in because she has a cold. But she can’t hold that line much longer. Thelma’s been r
unning things at Mae’s, but she starts vacation next week.”
“I checked on Mavis at noon. She don’t look too bad for what she’s been through. Probably because you’re the one who stayed with her after that rainstorm last night instead of me. Look’s like she’s tryin’ to heal.”
“The scars are all on the inside.”
“Then you need to spend all the time you can helpin’ her get better.”
“I am,” said CJ, thinking as he walked out the door, That’s why I’m about to entrust you with the better part of what’s been my whole damn life.
CJ and Flora Jean’s 5:30 meeting with Julie was a step above the somberness of a funeral. Julie laid out preliminary plans for a partnership agreement, told each of them to give the issue at least two days of serious thought before acting, and said she’d handle things on the real estate end with Dave Johnson.
Sitting in CJ’s office in a reupholstered chair that had been Ike’s favorite, Julie pushed aside the sample legal forms she’d brought for Flora Jean and CJ to have a look at and said, “Now that that’s done, I’ve got a piece of information on Le Quan that my law clerk dug up. Seems that during the late 1970s, Quan was a broker for the hordes of Vietnamese boat people like Carmen and Ket who fled their homeland for the United States. He wasn’t a biggie; lots of people brokered deals for refugees, taking their money, property deeds, artifacts, and anything of value in return for safe passage to the United States. But it turns out that Quan was also brokering safe-passage deals for U.S. military deserters. Whether it was Quan or someone else who gave Blue a free trip home, it might explain how Blue got back to the States and ultimately to West Virginia.”
“Makes sense, but why would Quan, Margolin, or anyone else want Langston Blue back on U.S. soil? If they were trying to bury something that had happened in Vietnam, they sure wouldn’t want him stuck under their noses,” said CJ.
“No. But they might want him under their thumb,” Julie countered. “It’s always important to have a way of controlling a loose cannon. Especially if what happened at the Song Ve schoolyard had international war-crime implications. And Blue, after all, is a little slow. If whoever brought him back from Vietnam sold him on the idea that they were protecting him, keeping him out of military prison, they’d have their cake and be able to eat it too. Blue would be there if necessary to tell his story and theirs to the whole world, and they’d also have someone who was beholden to them and willing to keep his mouth shut for fear of going to prison.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“Have you got a better scenario?”
“No.”
“Then chew on that one for a while. I’ll talk to Blue about it tomorrow when Carmen and I go by to see him before his arraignment. And one last thing. It’s not about Blue, the partnership, or the building. Just food for thought.”
“Yes?” said CJ, looking perplexed.
“Sooner or later you’re going to have to let the police deal with Celeste Deepstream. You can’t keep waging your own private war with her. I talked to Mavis for twenty minutes before I came here. She’s fragile. More fragile than you think. You can’t ever let her get caught up in the middle of one of your messes again.”
“I know,” CJ said softly.
“Then talk to the police again. Who knows? It might help.”
CJ looked up to see Flora Jean nodding. Swallowing hard, he locked eyes with Julie and said in the most peaceful voice she’d ever heard come out of his mouth, “I will.”
Chapter 28
CJ took a long drag on his next-to-last cheroot, looked up at Elliott Cole’s building, and told himself that sooner or later even the most elusive politicos had to come home. He’d had no luck trying to get Cole to return his phone calls, so he’d pulled a photograph of Cole with the Republican senatorial candidate, Alfred Reed, off the state Republican Party’s website, dug up Cole’s surprisingly accessible Riverfront Park condominium address, and planted himself on a bench in front of the Japanese restaurant across the street. Morgan Williams, cell phone and color photo of Cole in hand, was staking out the building’s back garage entry with instructions for Dittier to tip over his aluminum-can-filled shopping cart in front of Cole’s car and block the entrance until CJ could get there if Cole showed at the back entry.
CJ planned to watch the building until 10 o’clock. If Cole didn’t show by then, they’d regroup in the morning. It was now five past 7. The smell of deep-fried seafood wafted from the restaurant behind him, and his thoughts turned from Cole to the signature deep-fried catfish served at Mae’s. He scanned the block-long, eighty-foot-wide courtyard square, taking in the lay of the land. The northern boundary included the restaurant and the Riverfront development showroom, with its full-scale window model of the entire planned development. Three stories of lofts rose above the showroom and restaurant. Across the courtyard from where he sat, an assortment of shops took up the first floor of Cole’s Riverfront Tower building. Little Raven Street bordered the building to the west. A dry cleaner and bank occupied the first floor of the Promenade Lofts building that sat just east of Cole’s building, and the Millennium Bridge anchored the courtyard’s eastern edge, completing the square.
During the hour that he’d been there, foot traffic in the square had been minimal. Most of the people he’d seen had been restaurant goers. As they’d leave, at least half of them would gravitate to the Millennium Bridge, where they’d climb its three tiers of steps to view the towering masthead or have their photos taken in front of it.
Thirty minutes into the stakeout, a city public works crew had shown up with jackhammers, two giant air compressors, and stacks of blaze-orange construction zone cones and parked on Little Raven Street, the street that paralleled the courtyard square to the west. Several minutes later a flatbed semi loaded with ten-inch pipe and carrying an offloader pulled up and blocked the entire street. Aware that the best development planning in the world had to accommodate the occasional retrofit, CJ suspected that by the next morning the idyllic Tuscany-style setting would be a zone of clanging sewer pipe, roaring jackhammers, air compressors, and heavy machinery.
He might have missed spotting Cole walking down the Millennium Bridge steps toward him if Cole hadn’t moved briskly past his own building and walked over to several of the construction workers.
Five-foot-ten, fit-looking, and outfitted in a Stetson and cowboy boots, Cole shook hands with the crew’s white-hatted foreman. They chatted for a couple of minutes until Cole slapped the man on the back, grinning, then pivoted and headed for his building. He was halfway across the courtyard when CJ intercepted him.
“Construction’s a bitch, ain’t it?” said CJ, smiling, blocking Cole’s path.
“Sure is,” said Cole, trying his best to place CJ. “Looks like they’ll be here for a couple of months. New sewers.”
“Drag. By the way, I’m CJ Floyd. Been trying to connect with you all day, Mr. Cole.”
The look on Cole’s face turned defensive. “Can’t talk to you now.” He sidestepped CJ and headed for his building.
CJ continued with him stride for stride. “Doesn’t matter to me. Sooner or later you’re gonna have to talk to me about Star 1 teams, Langston Blue, and Peter Margolin’s murder. It’s talk to me now or talk to the cops later.”
Cole stopped and stared straight at CJ. “What do you want, Floyd?”
“Not much. Just an answer or two.”
“Like what?”
“Like what happened at Song Ve?”
“Fuck you, asshole.” Cole took off again.
“Ginny Kearnes told me you were Peter Margolin’s commander when that Star 1 team of his went berserk.”
Cole stopped again. His face had turned bright pink when he turned to face CJ, and his jaw muscles were twitching. “Captain Margolin was in command of his own fucking men. As for Kearnes, tell her to mind her own business.” There was a look of disappointment on Cole’s face, as if someone had let him down. “Now, get the shit
out of my face.” Cole brushed past CJ and pushed open the front door of his building. Turning back to CJ, he said, “You bother me again, Shine, and you’ll get a chance to find out what I did in Vietnam.”
“You call me Shine again and I’ll kick your fucking ass, old man.”
Cole drank in the defiant look on CJ’s face and hurriedly disappeared into the building.
CJ stepped away, seething. He turned, stared up at the Millennium Bridge’s mast, and tried to calm himself. Cole had surprised him by coming home from the downtown side of the bridge, more than likely arriving by light-rail. He had been even more surprised by Cole’s belligerence. Telling himself that Cole wouldn’t surprise him again, he walked away. The encounter hadn’t produced much beyond the fact that Kearnes needed a much closer look.
As he headed across the empty courtyard toward the rear of the building to hook up with Dittier and Morgan, he had the sudden feeling that someone was watching him. He stopped and did a 360-degree sweep of the courtyard, now awash in the glow of twilight, but saw nothing. He continued walking, this time a little more briskly, unable to get the sense that he was being followed or the image of Celeste Deepstream out of his head.
Trying her best to get comfortable on the back of Carmen’s 1947 Indian Chief motorcycle, Flora Jean shifted her weight to the right as Carmen turned left off Alameda Avenue onto Federal Boulevard. “Sit still, Flora Jean,” Carmen yelled, leaning into the turn and gunning the vintage machine to keep them from taking a spill.
They sped several blocks through light late-evening traffic, made a right turn on Kentucky Avenue, and followed the street west for several blocks until Carmen shut down the engine, doused the bike’s headlight, and let the Indian coast to a stop behind a towering Colorado blue spruce, several car lengths from a shabby six-unit apartment building on the corner of Kentucky and Patton Court.