by Robert Greer
“So what’s your point, asshole? That you were too stupid to get more money? That was then and this is now. Print whatever the hell you want about me or Song Ve. History doesn’t mean one goddamn thing to anybody but the people who lived it, and most of today’s voters don’t give a shit about Vietnam. Run your fucking editorials. We’ll still win.”
“You myopic fool. I don’t care what happened at Song Ve, or what the hell happens with this election. I want my share of what I should’ve gotten three decades ago. I ran those pieces in the Camera to try and get your attention. Looks like they grabbed the wrong side of your brain.”
Cole burst into laughter. “So sue me, but if you think you’re gonna strong-arm me, you’re crazy.”
“You better start seeing things my way, Mr. Party Chairman. That Stars and Stripes piece I did wasn’t an accident.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you’re in over your head, friend. That piece I did was part of mop-up duty.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
The hint of a smile formed at the corner of Brashears’s lips. “You really don’t get it, do you, Colonel? Guess I’ll draw it for you in the sand. Who do you think set the whole Song Ve thing up? Negotiated with Le Quan, came up with the money, designed the mission? It certainly wasn’t the U.S. Army, and God knows it wasn’t you.”
Looking puzzled, Cole said, “Get to the point.”
“‘The Company,’ as in CIA, you idiot. And their conduit was me.”
Cole shook his head. “You were CIA? Bullshit.”
“Funny, about a year ago I got the same response from Peter. Just after I learned from a local informant I’d known for years that Le Quan was involved in a seventy-five-million-dollar building project in the Golden Triangle. In fact, during the war the informant’s mother was my North Vietnamese intermediary to Quan. You and Peter knew Quan, of course, and I’m guessing the two of you had to let him in on your Golden Triangle deal or else no Senate seat. In fact, I bet that’s why Peter was so opposed to the Vietnamese boat people resettlement in the 1980s. Nobody with something to hide wants a bad penny like Quan showing up on their doorstep.”
“So what the shit do you want?”
“I want to be cut in. Paid what I should’ve gotten thirty-five years ago.”
Cole laughed and pulled his pants pockets inside out. “Sounds to me like you got took.”
Brashears nodded. “Back then, I was dumb enough to believe Peter when he told me that the payday for everyone involved was a flat ten thousand. Nobody plays the fool better than a friend. I was twenty-one, straight out of college, fluent in Chinese, Vietnamese, and French, and naive. ‘The Company’ gave me a glamour job. I got to mug in front of the camera, write fictitious stories, and spend weeks in Saigon on R&R. And I was stupid enough to believe in just causes, God, and country.”
“But you took the ten thousand,” said Cole, his tone unsympathetic.
Brashears’s response was incisive. “I don’t know what Quan’s share in that building is, but one equal to his seems fair enough.”
“Can’t help you there. Afraid you’ll have to take that up with the people handling Margolin’s estate.”
“I think you can. Carve it out of your percentage, or you can give me cash.”
“And what if I refuse?”
Steely-eyed, Brashears stared Cole down. “I’m no longer twenty-one, stupid, or naive. And for what it’s worth, the CIA likes to see a return on every investment. After Vietnam ‘the Company’ spent a lot of time honing my skills. Try squeezing me out again and you’ll end up taking the same one-way trip that I helped Peter and his worthless flunky Lincoln Cortez take.”
“You’re nuts.”
“No. Just trained to eliminate problems and out to get what’s rightfully mine.”
“Try the office of Social Services. Now get the hell outta here, you double-dealing fucker.”
Brashears smiled. “I’d think the offer over, Colonel. It’s the best one you’ll get. The price goes up from here. Consider yourself lucky that tonight I had a change of heart. I decided it would be unfair of me to make demands of you without giving you time for consideration. I called that informant I mentioned, a man who does freelance work for me, and told him there’d be no need to kill you tonight, that I was giving you time to think my offer over.” Brashears stood, hefted the heavily weighted briefcase, and headed toward the door, leaving Cole looking mystified. As he stepped out into the hallway, he looked back and smiled. “I’ll give you a couple of days to make your decision. I’m sure it’ll be one that’s in both our best interests,” he said, turning and heading down the hall.
Except for a lone teenaged skateboarder who was peering into a shop window on the opposite side of the Riverfront Park plaza from CJ, it was too early for the youthful want-to-be-seen crowd that frequented the plaza’s trendy Japanese restaurant to be out. The plaza shops had closed, and the high-rise condos and lofts above them had swallowed their owners for the evening. CJ scanned the plaza thoroughly before moving beneath the protective overhang of the Riverfront Park property sales office to call Flora Jean. “I’m on the north side of the plaza in front of the property sales office,” he whispered into his cell phone. Looking west toward Little Raven Street and the construction, he added, “I can see the nose of your SUV. Whatta ya got?”
“Got movement. Moc’s out of his van. Wait. Some guy just came out of the building’s back entrance. Moc waved him to the van. He’s gettin’ in.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Plain vanilla. White, blond, forty-five plus. He’s wearin’ a blazer, dark slacks, and he’s carryin’ a briefcase.”
CJ shrugged. “Could be anybody.”
“He and Moc are still in the van. Wait a minute—they both got out.” Flora Jean paused. “Moc’s got the rear doors to the van open. The other guy’s lookin’ around inside. Shit! He’s lookin’ straight in my direction. Didn’t see me. He took somethin’ out of the van and slipped it into his jacket pocket.”
“The right or left one?” asked CJ.
“Left. He’s shakin’ Moc’s hand. He’s movin’. He’s headed your way, straight for the plaza.”
“Keep Moc there, no matter what. I’ll check out your briefcase guy.”
“Gotcha,” said Flora Jean, storing her cell phone. She flipped open the leather-bound day planner on the seat next to her, eyed the 9-mm Walther inside, flipped the planner closed, and, clutching it, got out of the SUV.
When he saw Owen Brashears round the northwest corner of the Riverfront Tower building, CJ thought he was hallucinating. He didn’t know why he had expected to see someone else, especially since he had spent the last fifteen minutes convincing himself that Brashears was Peter Margolin’s killer. Quelling the urge to second-guess himself, he intercepted the briskly walking Brashears just before he reached the Millennium Bridge’s parkside steps.
“Beautiful day, don’t you think?” asked CJ, startling Brashears as he approached from behind.
Caught off guard, all Brashears said was, “Yes.”
CJ eyed Brashears’s briefcase, “Down here in the Platte Valley on business?”
“Yes.”
“With Elliott Cole, I take it.” CJ nodded toward Cole’s building.
Brashears started up the bridge’s forty-seven west-facing steps. “Don’t think my business is any of yours, Mr. Floyd.”
Following him, CJ feigned disappointment. “But we’re Vietnam comrades. Why not? You were a Stars and Stripes reporter during the war, right?”
Brashears responded with a grunt.
“Ever do any stories about what happened at Song Ve?”
They were halfway up the bridge steps. The tapered steel mast came fully into view. “Get out of my face, Floyd.”
“You must’ve done some Pulitzer Prize–level writing in order to keep Song Ve out of the news, and of course to save everybody’s bacon: yours, Margolin’s, Cole’s.”
�
�Don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Let me connect the dots for you. The ones that go from you to Jimmy Moc, to Margolin, to Cole, and more than likely from you to the CIA.”
A quarter of a stride ahead of CJ, Brashears flinched, just barely but perceptibly as they started across the bridge deck. “Crawl back in your hole, Floyd. You’ve got your nose where it doesn’t belong.” Brashears rubbed three fingers of his left hand together as if in anticipation.
His eyes glued on Brashears, CJ slipped a hand into the pocket of his windbreaker as two kids carrying skateboards raced by. “Tell you what. Reach for what’s in the left pocket of your jacket and you’ll be the one they’ll be measuring for a hole.” CJ fingered the 9-mm’s trigger.
Brashears said, “You’re either brave as hell or flat-out stupid, Floyd,” as they reached the halfway point of the bridge. “And you just stepped in a pile of shit you’re never gonna be able to clean off.”
Neither of them heard the sound of the motorcycle rev to a start behind them nor saw it burst from the shadow of an eighteen-wheeler. But they both heard the roar of the Red Special AMC sport cycle as it fireballed its way up the Millennium Bridge steps toward them. Within seconds the bike was on top of them. The helmeted rider raced past, firing two shots. One bullet pierced CJ’s left calf as the bike bounded down the bridge’s city-side staircase, leaving CJ yelling and clutching his leg, 9-mm in hand. He tried to draw a bead on their assailant, but to no avail.
Brashears raced for the safety of the elevator that buttressed the towering mast at the east end of the bridge as the bike’s rider, now a half block down the 16th Street pedestrian mall, spun around and headed back toward them.
Safely inside the elevator, Brashears collected his thoughts and worked out a game plan in his head for dealing with the cycle rider. He pulled Moc’s .45 out of his briefcase and pushed the button for the ground floor. In a crouch, briefcase shielding him, gun at the ready, he watched people racing down the mall toward Union Station as the elevator doors opened. The riderless bike was lying in the middle of the pedestrian mall less than twenty feet from him. The sounds of people screaming and the high-pitched screech of a police siren masked the sound of a light-rail train approaching Union Station.
Squinting into the twilight as he duck-walked his way out of the elevator at street level, Brashears never saw the sport-cycle rider leap from behind the elevator shaft. He didn’t have time to aim the .45. All he felt as he lost his balance was the weight of someone shoving him from behind as he fell forward into the path of the oncoming commuter train. A single shot from Moc’s .45 sailed skyward. Brashears’s body slammed into the lead car and the crunch of his bones echoed up from the rails as the train’s wheels ground over him.
The braking train wheels screeched in synchrony with the roar of the sport cycle restarting. Within seconds the rider was streaming up the stairs of the bridge, zooming past CJ, who had crawled to the safety of the elevator at the mastless parkside end of the bridge. The sport cycle sliced past him at 50 mph and the three shots that CJ got off just before the rider bounded down the Millennium Bridge steps and sped into the lengthening shadows of night all missed their mark.
Chapter 36
One of two paramedics attending to CJ, a slender black man with a goatee, adjusted the IV in CJ’s left arm while his partner, a rotund, freckle-faced man wearing wrinkled scrubs, bifocals, and a Chicago Cubs baseball cap, worked on CJ’s left leg. The man in the baseball cap slipped a tissue retractor out of the crash bag at his feet and used it to elevate the bacon-strip-sized piece of loose flesh dangling from CJ’s upper calf.
“You’re lucky, buddy. A few inches higher and we’re into your popliteal artery.”
“Bad?” asked CJ, quivering, two points on the good side of turning shocky and fading.
The paramedic nodded. “Bad.” He glanced at his partner. “Whatta ya got pulse and pressure wise, Terry?”
“Ninety over fifty and thready.”
“I’ll have him plugged up good enough for the ride to Denver Health in a couple of seconds.” He looked at CJ. “You doin’ okay, buddy?”
CJ nodded without answering. His head felt swollen, his stomach woozy.
“Better pop the collapsible and get ready to ball it,” said the man in the baseball cap. “I don’t wanna risk popping a line when we do our transfer and move him down that elevator.”
The goateed paramedic stepped away briefly, returning within seconds with the collapsible stretcher he’d brought up the elevator with him earlier. “Ready to roll him.”
As the paramedic in the baseball cap rose to a squat, Wendall Newburn was suddenly at his side. He flashed his badge, eyed the east and west ends of the bridge deck, where uniformed patrolmen now blocked access to the bridge, and said, “Need to ask your injury here a couple of questions.”
The paramedic eyed the lieutenant’s bar that was pinned to the bottom of the wallet just beneath Newburn’s badge. “You’ll have to make it quick, Lieutenant. We need to roll.”
Newburn nodded and took a knee. “What happened, Floyd?”
Puzzled by Newburn’s appearance, CJ shook his head. “Some guy on a motorcycle didn’t like my looks.”
“Did you get a look at him?”
“No way; he was moving too fast. Both times. Funny thing, though. On his second pass his tires couldn’t have been more than a few feet from my nose. The only thing I’m certain is, he was haulin’ ass, he was dressed in black, and believe it or not, he was wearing wingtips. Go ask Brashears. He might’ve gotten a better look.”
“Could be he did, but he won’t be talkin’. Motorcycle man shoved him in front of a train. Got a skateboarder who saw the whole thing.”
The paramedic in the baseball cap held up his hand to stop the questioning. “We gotta roll, Lieutenant.”
“Okay.” Newburn eyed CJ suspiciously. “This got anything to do with Margolin or Langston Blue?”
CJ nodded.
“Figures.”
The paramedics were seconds from rolling CJ to the bridge’s west-end elevator when Flora Jean raced up. Rolling her eyes at Newburn, she said, “You better tell them fraternity brothers of yours down there doin’ crowd control to learn some respect. The next time one of ’em puts their hands on me, when I ain’t said shit to ’em or even looked like I wanted to move this way, I’ll deck the SOB. If it hadn’t been for me knowin’ somebody, they wouldn’t’ve let me by.” She grabbed CJ’s hand and squeezed it. “You okay, sugar?”
“Wouldn’t want to try and walk a straight line right now, but I’m hanging in.”
“You’re pushin’ it, Benson. This is a crime scene.”
Ignoring Newburn, Flora Jean said, “I’ll call Mavis.”
CJ nodded as everything around him suddenly began to spin. Finally able to recall why Flora Jean was there, he said, “What about Moc?”
She smiled. “Got him tied up with bungee cords and stashed in the back of his van.” Looking at Newburn as if he were a garden pest, she asked, “By the way, Newburn, how the hell did you get here so fast?”
Newburn looked past her without answering, toward his partner, Donny Levine, and a beefy patrolman who had pulled perimeter duty at the west end of the bridge. Ginny Kearnes stood a few feet away from them, looking dazed and confused, unaware that for the last half day she’d had a Denver plainclothes patrol unit watching her every move.
“Who the hell have you got tied up, Benson?”
Flora Jean said, stretching the truth, “A possible witness. Didn’t want him to run away.” Smiling, she added, “A citizen has to help our men in blue any way they can.”
The goateed paramedic shouted, “Hey, both of you, can it! I’ve got an injured man here.” He started rolling CJ away.
Flora Jean planted a kiss on CJ’s cheek. “See you later.”
“Later, yeah,” said CJ, feeling as if he’d been kicked in the head.
Flora Jean and Newburn watched the paramedics r
oll CJ into the elevator and come out at street level on the pedestrian mall extension. They slipped him into a waiting ambulance and, moments later, ambulance lights flashing, sirens blaring, they sped off into the fading light.
Relieved that CJ was okay, Flora Jean slipped out her cell phone to call Mavis. She had dialed half the number when Newburn said, “Time for you to move outside my crime-scene perimeter, Benson. Make your call when you’re off this bridge.”
“You’re an angel, Lieutenant,” Flora Jean said sarcastically.
Reminding her that he was in charge, Newburn asked, “Where’s your hostage?”
“He ain’t no hostage, and he’s parked behind Riverfront Tower in his van.”
“Better hope this guy shares your story, Benson. Otherwise, you’ll have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”
“Oh, he will.” She walked away, certain that Moc would say whatever it took to keep from being tied to a shooting and a murder.
Newburn watched Flora Jean start down the steps of the bridge and slip out of sight before he turned to go back to continue the conversation he had been having earlier with his partner, Donny Levine, and Ginny Kearnes. “It won’t be hard to keep tabs on Floyd,” said Newburn, walking up to them. “He’ll be pullin’ hospital duty for a while.”
“Who was the woman?” asked Levine.
“Floyd’s partner, Flora Jean Benson,” said Newburn.
“How much does she know?”
“Guaranteed, at least as much as him.”
Newburn turned his attention to Kearnes. “You were saying that Floyd knows as much about Brashears’s involvement in the Margolin murder as you?”
“More, probably.”
“I see. One thing for sure, we’ll have plenty of time to find out. And we’ll talk to Cole, of course. Guess for right now that’s about it.”
“Do you need me for anything else, Lieutenant?” asked Kearnes.
Newburn shook his head. “Nope. For the time being I need to concentrate on a man on a motorcycle.”
“Then can I go?”