by Robert Greer
“Oh yeah.” Mario took a sip of water. “Here’s the bottom line on that paper. I shoulda known. It’s the same kinda stuff we use to do newspaper ad inserts and weekend flyers for the furniture store. My source is golden on it.”
CJ nodded.
“That particular kind ain’t been around since the 1970s. Here’s more. It’s got some kinda seal on it that keeps the ink from runnin’. My source says it was made for use in high-humidity climates like Seattle or Miami.”
Deep in thought, CJ’s eyes narrowed. “Or Vietnam,” he said, aware that only three people involved in the Margolin murder would potentially have that kind of knowledge about the paper—Kearnes, Brashears, and Cole. “Tell your friend I owe him,” said CJ.
“Already did.”
Drinking in the look of concentration on CJ’s face, Mario said, “Think my info’ll help you find your killer?”
“If I play my cards right.”
Mario looked relieved. “Then I did the right thing.” Glancing at his watch, he added, “Gotta get movin’; got a funeral to attend.”
Realizing finally why Mario was dressed so exquisitely, CJ said, “Sorry.”
“Thanks. You can’t ever look too proper when you’re payin’ your respects.”
“Who’d you lose?”
“You wouldn’t know him. He’s real old school.”
“I might. Try me.”
“Coco Pasquali. Died of a heart attack a few days back. Same age as me.”
Recognizing the name of one of Colorado’s most notorious 1950s crime bosses, CJ nodded, then shook his head. “I didn’t know him, but I knew who he was. He used to do a little gambling with my Uncle Ike.”
Mario looked puzzled. “Ike Floyd?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ll be damned! Never knew you was related to Ike. Ike Floyd—your uncle. Ain’t that a gas?” Mario turned to leave. As he crossed the threshold, he turned back and smiled. “Ike Floyd,” he said and shook his head. “Guess you’re a little more connected than I ever thought.”
CJ spent the next half hour trying to piece together all the parts of a murder trail and unsuccessfully attempting to reach Ginny Kearnes, hoping for an update on the newspaper clippings they’d found. He was certain that he had most of the story he needed to peg Margolin’s killer, but he needed Kearnes’s information to seal the deal. By the time he had filled Flora Jean in on what he had found out from Satoni, tried to reach Kearnes several more times, leaving a final urgent message, and talked to Julie and Carmen about how Blue was holding up, it was 5:30.
Flora Jean was looking through the yellow pages trying to find a phone number when CJ, looking frustrated, interrupted her. “I can’t get Kearnes. Makes me think she may have found a link between what happened at Song Ve, Jimmy Moc, or his mother, and our killer. Looks like one of us is gonna have to tag along after Moc.”
“And I just got picked,” said Flora Jean, looking up from the phone book.
“It’s that, revisit Quan and that daughter of his, or follow Cole.”
“I’ll stick with Moc.” Flora Jean smiled. “We know one another.”
“Fine. I’ll start with Cole and work my way down the list from there.”
The look on Flora Jean’s face turned pensive. “Whatta ya think Margolin’s murder really hinges on?”
“Money. What else? Somebody got paid to kill off a bunch of Amerasians at Song Ve—lost souls, half-breeds the North Vietnamese didn’t want on their postwar plate. And I’m guessing it was someone high enough up on the North Vietnamese provincial government totem pole to be able to dole out cash. The way I see it, Le Quan probably got a bundle to wrap his arms around the problem. He works out a plan to assemble his group of throwaway half-breeds in a school, negotiates a price for eliminating them, and lines up Margolin. Margolin and his Star 1 team end up being the cure.”
Flora Jean shook her head. “The money I understand. But how in the hell would the North Vietnamese government know about Margolin or his Star 1 team?”
“Le Quan again, would be my guess. He had to know that Margolin was susceptible to a little money under the table. And Quan was probably working both sides of the street,” said CJ.
“Well, if he was, he sure did one hell of a job avoidin’ tickin’ off Uncle Sam. He orchestrates a genocide hit, then gets to set up housekeepin’ right here. Shit!”
“Sure did.” CJ stroked his chin thoughtfully. “So, here’s what we end up with the way I see it. Le Quan who’s for sure some kind of operative, or Margolin’s battalion commander, Elliott Cole, set up the killing mission. That gives us the who, the what, and the why—even tells us who probably got paid for the job. Problem is, it doesn’t tell us who set the whole thing up, who started the ball rolling, who came up with the idea.” CJ found himself staring at the wall.
“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” asked Flora Jean. “That somehow ‘the Company’ was involved?”
“Sure am. This whole thing has a CIA smell all over it. Who else besides those assholes, who don’t give a shit about who the hell gets killed as long as the game’s afoot, would okay a genocide mission?”
“Could be. Most of ‘the Company’ types I’ve known have been flat-out nuts.”
CJ nodded knowingly. “And nuts make mistakes. Big ones!” His face suddenly lit up.
“Like?”
“Like getting their asses played like a fiddle by the North Vietnamese. Happens a lot when you’re an arrogant SOB. Damn! I should’ve thought about this long before now.”
“Mind lettin’ me in on the news flash, sugar?”
“I didn’t think about it until you started taking about nuts. I should’ve paid more attention to what you first told me about what Le Quan’s job was with the Vietcong.”
“You mean about Quan trainin’ communist youth?”
“Yeah. And that’s why Margolin could go on a mission to line his pocket and call it legit. If the men in his team thought they were really going after a bunch of youthful communist guerrillas instead of being used by the North Vietnamese to eliminate their growing cesspool of youthful my den, nobody would think twice about it.”
“Damn, sugar! I think you might be right.”
CJ reached in his vest pocket for a cheroot. “Now we’ve only got one thing left to pin down. Who’s ‘the Company’ man that set everything up? And why did he finally have to eliminate Margolin?”
“Or woman?” said Flora Jean.
CJ struck a match against the back of his boot, eyed Flora Jean thoughtfully, and said, “Or offspring—and you’re right!”
Chapter 35
After following Jimmy moc from his apartment building to a Wal-Mart, Le Quan’s Shoe Tree, and finally the China Bay club, where he’d spent almost half an hour, Flora Jean now watched Moc at his latest stop, Riverfront Park, from the backseat of her SUV. She had slipped into the construction maze on Little Raven Street in the wake of flatbed tractor-trailers loaded down with thirty-six-inch sewer conduit. Now parked in the shadow of an eighteen-wheeler, she had a perfect view of the Riverfront Tower courtyard.
Moments earlier, Moc, dressed in drab gray repairman’s coveralls complete with a nametag and sporting a matching gray cap, had slipped back behind the wheel of a white Econoline van parked near the rear entrance to Elliott Cole’s Riverfront Tower building. Unaware of Flora Jean, Moc had gotten in and out of the van a couple of times. This trip, he’d made a point of rolling up the van’s windows before getting on his cell phone.
Deciding it was time to apprise CJ of Moc’s movements, Flora Jean made a cell-phone call of her own. Unable to reach CJ on his cell or at the office, she placed a call to Mavis.
Mavis answered, sounding as close to her old self as she had since being kidnapped.
“How ya doin’, sugar? It’s Flora Jean.”
Mavis smiled. There was no way on earth she could possibly mistake Flora Jean’s voice for anyone else’s. “Pretty good. And you?”
“Fine for a
broken-down marine.”
Mavis chuckled, aware that Flora Jean, who still worked out three nights a week, was as fit as she’d been during her days in the corps.
“Any chance that street cowboy you’re strung out over might be there?”
“He’s sitting right here next to me.” Handing CJ the phone, Mavis said, “Flora Jean.”
Gripping a Negra Modelo and a taco chip pregnant with guacamole in one hand, CJ pressed the phone to the opposite ear. “What’s up?”
“I’m workin’, remember? Glommin’ Jimmy Moc.”
“Anything interesting?”
“The little worm likes to burn gas. He zigzagged his way across most of Little Vietnam. Stopped at Quan’s place, and that China Bay club, before headin’ downtown. Right now he’s sittin’ in a van just off the back entrance of one of them high-priced Riverfront Park buildings, talkin’ on his cell phone.”
Eyebrows arching, CJ set his beer down. “Is there a bunch of construction going on?”
“You bet. Eighteen-wheelers and sewer pipe everywhere.”
“Damn! That little sucker’s down at Elliott Cole’s place—Margolin’s CO. He lives in the brick thirteen-story just off Little Raven Street. Wonder what Moc’s doing there?”
“Beats me. But that’s sure as hell the buildin’ Moc’s parked behind.” Flora Jean inched down in her seat and eased the business end of her Bausch and Lomb field binocs just above the ledge of the window. “He’s still in the van yappin’ on the phone. Damn van looks like it’s been in a war. One headlight’s taped in with duct tape, the thing’s missin’ a grill, and one of the front fenders looks like somebody took a hammer to it.”
“What color is it?” CJ asked excitedly.
“White.”
“Fucker,” said CJ, startling Mavis. “That little rodent tried to run me down the other night.” CJ shot Mavis a reassuring glance. “Any sign of Cole?”
“Couldn’t tell ya. Don’t know what he looks like.”
“Forgot. Hold on a second.” There was a hint of guilt on his face. Cupping the phone’s mouthpiece with one hand, CJ eyed Mavis. “Flora Jean’s got a problem—I’m probably gonna have to run.”
Recalling what Flora Jean and Carmen had said to her about relationships requiring give and take, Mavis squeezed CJ’s hand, trying her best not to look judgmental. “Then you better go help her with it.”
Caught off guard by the response, CJ said, “Yeah,” before responding to Flora Jean. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“I’ll stay put, but you better hurry. I don’t know where our worm will turn next.”
Still holding his hand, Mavis squeezed as close to CJ as she could. “You didn’t tell me somebody tried to run you down the other night.”
“I didn’t want you to worry. I thought it might have been Celeste.”
“Please don’t keep things like that from me, CJ. I’m doing okay.”
CJ rose, pulled Mavis to him, and planted a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll do better.”
Returning the kiss, she ran a finger down CJ’s cheek. “Flora Jean’s waiting. You’d better go.”
Hoping to avoid a construction-site parking nightmare, CJ parked the Bel Air at Union Station, deciding that the fastest way to Riverfront Park was to walk the last two blocks of the 16th Street pedestrian mall and cross the Millennium Bridge. He’d just gotten out of the Bel Air when his cell phone went off. “Flora Jean?”
“No, it’s Ginny Kearnes. Thought maybe we needed to share some information.”
“Make it fast. I’m in the middle of something.” He locked the Bel Air and headed toward the pedestrian mall walkway.
“I found out who did those stories on Jimmy Moc and his mother.”
“Who?” said CJ, picking up his pace.
“It was Owen. Owen Brashears. That AP story from the Denver Post, the one we found in Peter’s lockbox, is almost word for word from pieces he originally bylined in the Fort Collins Coloradoan. That means Owen has to know Jimmy Moc and his mother. Strange. Why would Peter save Owen’s stories?”
“I don’t know, but Brashears is in this thing up to his earlobes. Either he or Cole had Langston Blue’s phony deserter citation printed up, and since Brashears had the easiest access to printing facilities, I’m putting my money on him.”
“What are you talking about?”
Realizing suddenly that Kearnes knew only about the paper they’d found at Margolin’s and not about the Langston Blue citation, he said, “I’ll tell you later.”
“Okay. Where are you?”
“I’m heading up the stairs on the downtown side of the Millennium Bridge.”
“I’m five minutes away at the central library. Can you stay put?”
Realizing that in his rush to back up Flora Jean, he’d just told Kearnes something he shouldn’t have, CJ said, “Hey, don’t.” But before he could finish, Kearnes hung up.
“Shit!” CJ pocketed his cell phone and gritted his teeth, hoping that Kearnes wasn’t on her way to try and find him. Easing his right hand into the pocket of his windbreaker, he patted the Beretta 9-mm he’d slipped there, prepared for the worst. He wasn’t sure whether Brashears or Cole had killed Peter Margolin, but everything was weighing heavily in favor of Brashears. What didn’t make sense was why Margolin had kept the paper and the clippings all these years.
As he reached the west end of the bridge’s broad cantilevered deck, he glanced over his shoulder toward the sparkling twilight downtown skyline before beginning the descent into Riverfront Park. He was halfway down the parkside steps when the answer to the lockbox question hit him. He smiled, recognizing that the bridge between the old and the new Denver had been the catalyst. All along his thinking had incorrectly been mired in the 1970s, when Peter Margolin had been another Johnny-comes-marching-home, lost-war nobody just like him. Now, close to thirty-five years later, Margolin had been on the threshold of becoming Colorado’s next senator. A senator who needed an insurance policy against a war crime he’d spearheaded coming back to bite him.
It made sense, CJ told himself, still smiling. Margolin had had a game plan all along. That was why he’d stashed Blue all those years, why he’d rat-holed a slightly slow-on-the-uptake, vulnerable, and malleable West Virginian country boy who would, with a little coaching, be there for him if Margolin ever needed a tincture of exoneration. And why he’d kept newspaper clippings and the paper that Blue’s phony citation had been printed on. They were all insurance policies against a compliant Owen Brashears coming back on him. It made sense all right; now he just had to prove it.
Elliott Cole handed Owen Brashears the whiskey sour he’d requested as they gazed out of Cole’s great-room window toward the downtown Denver skyline, enjoying the full breadth of the queen city’s presunset beauty.
“Got a bull by the horns here now,” said Cole, soaking up the grandeur. “Cow town one day, metropolis the next. Problem is, you never know where it’ll end. Sooner or later we’ll just be another LA.” He eyed Brashears. “But hell, I don’t need to tell a newspaperman that, do I? Take a load off.” He patted the seat cushion of a nearby chair, nodded for Brashears to be seated, and sat down facing him in the chair’s twin.
“Big city, big problems.” Brashears sat down, took a sip of his drink, and nudged the briefcase he’d come in with next to the chair. “Construction everywhere. I had to park on the downtown side of the bridge and walk over.”
Cole nodded. “Like I said, big problems, big stakes. A lot like in elections. There’s a ton involved if you expect to win—having a strategy, working the issues, or dodging them, and of course pressing the flesh.”
“And money.”
Cole smiled and took a sip of his gin and tonic. “No argument there, and that pretty much brings me full circle and back to the question I’ve been asking myself all day. Why on earth does Owen Brashears have a hard-on for us Republicans? And you do, sticking it to us with those Boulder Daily Camera pieces of yours. I know you’re carrying a
torch for your buddy Margolin, but he’s out of the race. Think you’d be better off just reporting the news.”
Sounding as if he’d saved up what he was about to say for a long time, Brashears responded, “Then I’d miss out on being an insider again, and believe me, I can’t afford that.”
“Am I missing something here?”
“Nope. Just stating fact.”
“Mind telling me what you missed out on, son?”
“Missed out on getting what was due to me more than thirty years ago at Song Ve.”
“You’re talking in circles. Song Ve doesn’t have a damn thing to do with this election.”
“Afraid it does. You’d know that if you spent more time talking to your partners.”
“Get to the point, Brashears.”
“Glad to. You and Peter earned a lot of money for your role in that little scrimmage at Song Ve. And you eventually parlayed it into the war chest he needed for a Senate run and a healthy down payment on a seventy-five-million-dollar building.”
“You’re delirious.”
“Not even close.”
Cole sat up in his chair, all pretense of stonewalling gone. “Listen, you mud-slinging piece of shit. You got your chance to look into what happened at Song Ve thirty-five years ago. Stars and Stripes sent you digging and you came up with nothing. You’re selling yesterday’s news. And ain’t nobody listening.”
Brashears laughed. “You’re a blockhead, Cole. Peter always said you had tunnel vision.”
“You’re testing my limits, and trust me, you don’t want to do that.”
“No. I was the one who got tested, or should I say screwed. Ten thousand paltry dollars and a pat on the back for running my puff it didn’t happen piece in Stars and Stripes thirty-five years ago. What did you and Peter get? Bet it was closer to a million. Had to be. You had two stupid-ass governments chipping in to the kitty. A pack of North Vietnamese racists believing they were eliminating their ethnic contamination problem, and Uncle Sam thinking he was nipping communism in the bud by paying off a Vietcong bullshitter named Le Quan to finger a school full of innocent kids. I bet all Quan got was ten thousand too.”