by Robert Greer
“I understand that. I’m not talking about that kind of closeness. I’m talking about the kind that says I know everything there is to know about this man. How bad he snores, how many pairs of his drawers have holes in them, what brand of gum he chews when he’s out of his favorite, how much money he makes, where he keeps his most prized possessions, who he owes money to, the names of every one of his former girlfriends, his sister’s day of the month …”
“Stop!” said Kearnes, visibly offended. “Peter wore boxers, never briefs. His underclothes never had holes, and he didn’t chew gum, ever. He made $158,100 a year, not counting speaking engagements that netted him another ten, and he kept all the most important things in his life, including letters we’d written to one another over the years, in a strongbox in the unfinished second-floor attic of his home.”
It wasn’t until CJ began smiling that she realized she’d been baited. Trying her best to maintain her composure, she said, “Oh, you’re smart, Mr. Floyd. And your question tells me you’ve been in love. Who would’ve ever guessed it!”
“Which one?” said CJ. “That I’m smart or that I’ve been in love?”
“Both,” said Kearnes, her tone meant to be biting. “What is it that you want, besides trying to prove that I didn’t really know Peter?”
CJ looked at her intently. “Have you got the key to his house?”
“Of course,” said Kearnes, as it dawned on her what CJ was really after. “But the police have been there a half-dozen times. They’ve probably already found what you’re looking for.”
“I’m betting they haven’t.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s simple. Because they weren’t in love with Peter Margolin.”
Ginny shook her head. “You’re a complex man, Mr. Floyd.”
“And you’re a loyal woman.”
“Then you’ve run into my kind before.”
“Once,” said CJ, finishing off his taco. “Just once.”
“She got a name?”
“Mavis,” said CJ, looking Kearnes squarely in the eye.
CJ followed Kearnes to Peter Margolin’s Washington Park home, a brick two-story Tudor directly across the street from Denver’s second-largest public park, and pulled up behind her in the driveway.
Ginny Kearnes glanced back nostalgically at the scores of joggers, walkers, and rollerbladers moving around the walkway that circled the park as she and CJ mounted Margolin’s front steps. “Peter and I used to sit on this front porch for hours and watch the people traffic,” said Kearnes wistfully. “Seems like so long ago.” Looking at CJ, she said, “Have you ever had to grieve, Mr. Floyd?”
CJ thought about his Uncle Ike, looked skyward, and said, “Yes.”
“Then you know it’s a place you don’t want to be for too long.” She swung the front door open and they stepped inside a musty-smelling foyer. “That’s if you want to keep your sanity,” she added. “Let’s get some light.” She flipped a wall switch and the entryway was awash in light. “These old Tudors. There’s never enough light. I never understood why Peter loved them so much.” She glanced back at the mail slot in the door and down at the entryway’s Spanish-tiled floor. “No mail. Looks like Peter’s lawyer’s been by. He’s handling the estate.”
“Did Margolin have any relatives?”
“A great-uncle in a nursing home in Montana. That’s it. Why? Are you looking for an heir or a murder motive?”
“Just don’t want to overlook anything.”
“I’ve done some thinking myself, and some overlooking and underlooking, too,” she said. “I’ve thought long and hard about who might have wanted to see Peter dead. And the surviving men from his Star 1 team always end up topping the list. There’s nothing to connect either Blue or Cortez directly to the murder. No physical evidence, no phone calls, no threats. But there’s still Peter’s day planner note. The one where he reminds himself to ask someone named Cortez about Langston Blue. Since the police are, at least for the moment, saying Blue isn’t Peter’s murderer, I’d put my money on Cortez.”
“Logical reasoning,” said CJ, following Kearnes up a circular stairway that led to the second floor. “Except that no one has seen Cortez since Blue claims Cortez torched his cabin back in West Virginia.”
“Cortez burned down the man’s home? I’d say that’s even more telling.” She flipped on the lights as they walked down a short center hall. “The master bedroom’s at the back of the house.” She hesitated before entering the bedroom. “Coming here hurts,” she said, opening the door.
The room inside was exquisitely furnished, filled with dark oak campaign-style furniture and antique accents. Seascape art adorned the stark white walls. The king-sized bed with its massive brass headboard had been stripped to the mattress cover.
Looking surprised, Kearnes said, “I wonder who stripped the bed? It wasn’t stripped two days ago.”
CJ shrugged, still drinking in the room. “Anything else look out of place?”
Kearnes slowly scanned the room. “No.” She faced the wall to her left and said, very businesslike as if she wanted to get what they had come for and quickly leave, “The attic entry is behind that armoire.” As she stared at the armoire, her eyes filled with tears. “It’s still full of Peter’s clothes.”
CJ eyed her sympathetically. “Looks heavy.”
“It is, but two people can move it. Peter and I have moved it lots of times.”
CJ looked down at the carpet for signs that the armoire had been moved recently. There were no carpet tracks and no indentations. “Okay, whenever you’re ready.”
“Can I ask you something first? It’s tied to my question about grieving.”
CJ looked at the sad-faced, teary-eyed woman. “Fine.”
“Was the person you were grieving for a woman?”
“No. My uncle.”
“Then maybe it’s not the same.”
“Oh, it’s the same.”
“Does it ever go away? The pain, I mean?”
“In time it fades.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Inching one side of the armoire away from the wall, CJ thought of those ice-clear days of winter when his office was drenched in sunlight and the ninety-year-old wooden floors suddenly began to expand and creak, when memories of Ike never failed to find him. “No,” he said finally.
“At least you’re honest,” said Kearnes, easing her end of the armoire away from the wall.
They had moved the bulky piece of furniture three feet into the room before Kearnes said, “That’s enough,” and CJ spotted the three-by-four-foot door it had been hiding. “It lifts up like a garage door,” she said. “The strongbox is somewhere about mid-attic, resting on a sheet of plywood. You’ll have to tightrope the headers. It’s tricky, so watch yourself. If you make a misstep there’s nothing beneath you but insulation and the first-floor ceiling.”
CJ shook his head. “You watched Margolin do this?”
“Several times. There’s a light switch on the inside wall, on your left.”
“Here goes.” CJ raised the door, climbed into the attic, fumbled for the light switch, and flipped it. The attic was larger and seemed more forbidding than he’d expected. The toaster-oven-sized lockbox rested on a four-by-six-foot piece of plywood supported by headers. He tightroped his way down a header, dusty with insulation, steadying himself by grasping a rafter. He reached the box easily enough, hefted it, turned around, and started back. He was halfway to the door when he lost his balance. The lockbox dropped safely onto a three-foot cushion of insulation, but CJ’s right leg punched through the clingy foam; his foot and a quarter of his leg slammed through the first-floor ceiling. “Shit!”
“What happened?” screamed Ginny.
“Lost my balance.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, but there’s a hole in the ceiling below.” Embarrassed, he wiggled his foot and leg back through the drywall hole and insulation, retrieved the strongbox
, tucking it under his left arm, and followed the header back to the wall opening.
He handed the lockbox to Kearnes and crawled through the opening, insulation clinging to his clothes. “Won’t try that again,” he said, brushing himself off. “Hope the trip was worth it.”
“You’re gonna itch,” she said, setting the lockbox down.
CJ brushed a prickly piece of the insulation off his neck. “Already do. Let’s see what we’ve got,” he said, nodding at the strongbox.
“Might as well.” There was a hint of trepidation in her voice as Kearnes reached beneath one of the armoire’s chunky legs and retrieved a key. She tossed it to CJ. “You open it.”
CJ slipped the key into the lock and raised the lid. “It’s full of papers.” He pulled a two-inch-thick stack of rubber-banded 8.5-by-11-inch papers out of the lockbox and placed them on the bed. “And bigger papers,” he said, thumbing through several legal-sized sheets. “Property deeds, one to this house.” He placed one deed on the bed next to the first pile and read through a second deed quickly. “One to the high-rise. Your name’s on the second one along with Cole’s. And cash,” said CJ, thumbing through three stacks of banded twenty-dollar bills. “Three or four thousand here at least.” He set the bills aside.
“And the letters I told you about,” said Kearnes, retrieving a stack of letters from the bottom of the lockbox.
“Not so fast. There’re a few more things in here,” he said, extracting four blank sheets of 11.5-by-13-inch paper from the strongbox. “Know what this stuff is?”
“First time I’ve ever seen it.”
“Got something else. A bunch of faded newspaper clippings.” He placed the blank sheets in a pile and began reading one of the newspaper clippings aloud. Before he’d finished the first paragraph his eyes were half-dollar sized.
Vietnamese Amerasians, the children of US citizens, primarily GIs and Vietnamese women who are uniformly viewed with disdain by their Vietnamese countryman, are the living unpopular legacy of America’s longest war. Afflicted by poverty, lack of education, and unemployment and often abandoned, these children, referred to by their countryman as the dust of life, an expression used in Vietnam to define the poorest of the poor, are being resettled in cluster sites throughout the United States.
He placed the clipping face down on the bed, pressed out the folds, and opened a second one. “This one’s about Amerasians, too.”
He handed a couple of clippings to Kearnes, who quickly read them. “These too.”
“Any dates on them?” asked CJ.
“No,” said Kearnes, her eyes darting from one clipping to the other. “And no bylines, either. I’m guessing they’re wire service stories. Wait a minute.” She picked up one of the clippings and reread the last two paragraphs. “This one’s about a family who resettled here in Denver. A woman and her son.”
“Any names?” asked CJ.
“The mother’s. Nam Kim Moc, age forty-one.”
“I’ll be damned.” CJ’s eyebrows arched skyward.
“You know her?”
“No, but I know a little about the man who’s probably her son.”
“Could he be Peter’s killer?”
“Possibly.”
“Why?”
“That I don’t know,” said CJ, teasing another legal-sized sheet of paper out of the lockbox. “Well, I’ll be double damned,” he said, reading down the page.
“What now?”
“Looks like you’ve got yourself a silent partner in that high-rise.”
“What?”
He handed the document to Kearnes. The heading at the top of the page read, Quit Claim Deed: Commercial. Kearnes slowly read the deed’s authoritative simple language.
THIS DEED, Made this day of June 12, 2005, between Grantor Peter S. Margolin and Grantee Le Thi Quan, for the consideration of ***TEN DOLLARS AND OTHER GOOD AND VALUABLE CONSIDERATION*** IN HAND PAID, hereby sells and quitclaims to LE THI QUAN, Grantee, whose street address is 1388 South Federal Boulevard, City of Denver, County of Denver, State of Colorado, the following real property in Denver, County of Denver, and State of Colorado, to wit: ownership in the amount of 3% of the AIA appraised value in the below listed property. See attached legal description. Exhibit A. Also known as street and number 931 Cherry Creek Drive, South, TOGETHER with all its appurtenances. The singular number shall include the plural, the plural the singular, and the use of any gender shall be applicable to all genders. Signed as of the day and year first above written.
“Damn’s the right word,” said Kearnes.
CJ turned over the lockbox and shook it. “This thing’s a regular horn o’ plenty. Don’t wanna miss anything else. Guess maybe you didn’t know your man as well as you thought.”
Looking as if she’d just been kicked in the belly, Kearnes frowned and said, “Guess not.”
Two white helmeted army MPs out of Fort Carson, each one the size of an NFL nose guard, showed up at Denver’s overcrowded concrete bunker of a jail to take Langston Blue into custody at precisely 4 p.m. It was clear but windy, and two tractor-trailers and a half-dozen RVs had been blown off I-25 at the exit just north of Monument Hill and the Palmer Divide twenty miles from Colorado Springs. The MPs, who didn’t want to suffer the same fate in a soft-topped Humvee, were in a hurry to get back to Colorado Springs, but paperwork had slowed them down.
Julie Madrid and Carmen waited with Blue in a prisoner counseling holding area as Julie laid out her strategy for dealing with Blue’s case, informing both father and daughter that there were precedents for his release.
Blue, seeming stupefied, sat handcuffed and shackled, eyes to the floor, in the drafty, cinderblock-walled room, a bunker that reeked of sweat, stale smoke, and urine.
Carmen, with an arm draped over her father’s shoulders, forced back tears as, addressing Blue, Julie continued. “There’ll be a court-martial, and you’ll have to have an army-appointed lawyer, but I’ll prepare the case and run all the traps.”
“What about your fee?” Carmen asked.
“We’ll deal with that later. Besides, a cheroot-smoking street cowboy I owe said I had to make my services affordable. Right now we need to look through those papers you brought.”
Carmen hugged Blue, who barely responded. “The papers were right where you said. In a jewel case inside a lockbox under the front seat of your pickup. The case was beautiful. Was it my mother’s?”
Blue nodded without answering.
Carmen handed Julie several sheets of paper. “The important one’s on the bottom.”
Julie thumbed through Blue’s promotion papers to sergeant, two Bronze Star citations, and his marriage certificate before hitting paydirt, an official-looking citation that in three lengthy paragraphs exonerated Blue of desertion. “Never seen anything like this before,” said Julie. “How did you get it? In fact, how did you get any of these things after Song Ve?”
“Wasn’t easy,” Blue said in a soft monotone. “Two months after Song Ve I gave a half-blind South Vietnamese army tunnel runner who’d deserted a couple of months before me the last five hundred dollars I had in the world, along with my weddin’ band, watch, and dog tags, to take back to Mimm to show her I was still alive. The tunnel runner was gonna help us hook back up. He brought me the jewel box as proof that he’d met with Mimm. Two weeks later he told me Mimm was dead. It was a lie. I stayed on the run until those guys I told you about dropped out of the sky and picked me up.”
“And this?” Julie held up the citation exonerating Blue.
“I got it after they parked me back in the West Virginia hills.”
The strain of years of running and hiding was apparent in Langston Blue’s eyes. He had the confused look of an animal who’d finally been trapped and overwhelmed. It was the same lost-soul look Julie so often saw in the eyes of the violent offenders she represented, three-quarters of whom had been abused as children. Blue was slower than normal, no question, but thankfully he was a world apart from those damaged souls,
and he at least had Carmen. “They who?” she asked finally.
“Cortez and Margolin, I guess. I never saw Margolin after Song Ve, but Cortez gave me the citation, and for the first five years after I was back, he brought me the money I lived on—delivered it himself, once a year. After that, I picked the money up every six months at a post office box outside Baltimore.”
“Why did you stay back in those hills?”
“Afraid, I guess. Afraid of showin’ my face. Afraid of lettin’ folks know I was a deserter. Afraid of goin’ to prison.”
“And afraid of Cortez and Margolin?”
For the first time since the conversation had started, Blue looked Julie square in the eye. “No. Them two never scared me.” The look on his face reflected the fact that he meant exactly what he said.
“Who do you think killed Margolin?”
“Cortez, probably.”
“What about Le Quan, that man you mentioned during our pre-arraignment conference, the one with the silver streak in his hair?”
Blue thought for a moment. “Don’t know nothin’ about him except he was at Song Ve. He could’ve killed the captain, I guess.” Looking exhausted, Blue eyed Carmen. “You takin’ care of my truck, baby?”
Caught off guard by the question, Carmen said, “It’s safe in the garage below my condo.”
“And you and Ket? How you two doin’?”
“Ket went home to Palisade this morning.” Carmen squeezed her father’s hand. “I’m fine.”
The simple straightforwardness of Blue’s questions and his concern for what in his mind mattered most gave Carmen new insight into a man she’d known for barely a week. It comforted her to know that the uncomplicated rule book in his head favored desertion, dishonor, and a life of exile over the commission of an atrocity and that concern for a dilapidated truck and a sister-in-law who’d cursed his memory for more than three decades outweighed self-concern. She was about to ask Blue if there was anything he needed when the sour-faced cop standing outside the room cracked the door, poked his head in, and said to Julie, “Time’s up. Your boy’s army escorts are here.”
Blue, dressed in a baggy orange jumpsuit, followed Julie’s lead and stood.