by Robert Greer
“Yes, but count on it, we’ll be in touch.”
Still shaking as she had been for the past twenty minutes, Kearnes turned and walked away.
“I’m going back down to take a look at where Brashears met his maker,” Newburn announced to Levine as Kearnes headed for Little Raven Street and disappeared into the near darkness.
Newburn took the stairs down to street level, where Owen Brashears’s body lay covered by a tarp. The light-rail car that had hit him, its headlights dimmed, sat looking forlorn a few feet away. A few yards away from Newburn, the plainclothes officer who’d been talking to the train’s visibly shaken engineer knelt to take a look at Brashears’s mutilated body, which was jack-knifed into an awkward “V.” Brashears’s spine had been severed, his neck broken, and the skin on his forehead sheared to the bone.
“Tough way to buy it,” said Newburn.
The other officer nodded without answering.
Newburn stood and eyed the light-rail tracks as they curved their way north and into Union Station. He and the plainclothes man followed the tracks east as they paralleled the pedestrian mall to the spot where the teenaged skateboarder had said the man on the motorcycle had dismounted. After shoving Brashears into the path of the train, the killer would have had a tenyard sprint back to the bike, an easy enough task if he had known the train was coming, tougher if he had been leaving things to chance.
Newburn turned, stared back toward the light-rail car, its headlights aimed straight at him, and said to the silent plainclothesman, “Looks like the killer got lucky. He was probably planning on a little target practice from his bike but saw the train coming and decided to send Brashears to his reward another way.”
“Worked,” said the plainclothesman.
“Like a charm,” said Newburn, his eyes focused once again on the headlight of the train’s lead car. “Like a charm.”
Chapter 37
Epilogue
The sweet aroma of late-August Colorado Western Slope tree-ripe peaches filled the afternoon air as CJ, Mavis, and Flora Jean made their way across the grassy half-acre stretch of land that separated Ket Tran’s Palisade, Colorado, farmhouse from the twenty-acre Colorado River Valley peach orchard that spread out behind it.
Wearing two-inch heels and a dark tailored pantsuit, Flora Jean stood nearly as tall as CJ. With the hint of a limp, and buttered to the nines in a black linen suit, CJ was locked arm in arm with Mavis, who was having far less trouble negotiating the soft grass than Flora Jean. “You’re lookin’ mighty fine, Ms. Sundee,” he said, eyeing Mavis, who was dressed in a figure-flattering silk dress that seemed to float with each stride.
“The same to you, Mr. Floyd,” she said, laughing.
In front of them, ten rows of white lacquered chairs flanked a red carpeted aisle that led to the flower-draped altar where Carmen Nguyen and Walker Rios would be married. Half of the seventy-five guests who’d been invited to the outdoor wedding were already seated. The baby-faced man greeting guests smiled at Flora Jean, who towered over him by a head. “Friends of the bride or groom?”
“Both, sugar.”
“Guess you can sit anywhere, then,” he said, looking startled.
For CJ, Mavis, and Flora Jean, the last of July and most of August had been a blur. After spending two days in the hospital with a gunshot wound and a nicked popliteal artery, CJ had spiked a fever and had spent another week in the hospital in bad spirits, battling an infection and jousting daily with Wendall Newburn. Newburn had finally backed off, satisfied that Owen Brashears had killed Peter Margolin and assured by both Flora Jean and Alden Grace that the CIA had probably eliminated Brashears as a potential high-risk problem, but CJ still wasn’t sure. What he did know was that, as his Uncle Ike used to say, “The truth behind a story ain’t whether it’s factual but whether anybody listenin’ is buyin’ what you say.” And there weren’t many people buying the idea that the U.S. intelligence community hadn’t somehow been involved in the murder of Owen Brashears. The idea of a disgruntled motorcycle gang member, gang-bangers, or a transient, floated by Beltway intelligence control early on in the Owen Brashears murder investigation, had gone the way of the dodo bird after the news media had picked the suppositions apart and public opinion had weighed in with a verdict that the government explanations were bullshit. Even Wendall Newburn now discounted those stories.
As they walked to their seats, a half-dozen heads turned to greet them. Thanks to Paul Grimes’s four-part Vietnam War investigative series in the Rocky Mountain News, “Buried Secrets: A Story of American and North Vietnamese Assisted Genocide During Vietnam,” the story of Carmen, Ket, and Langston Blue had been on the front pages of every major newspaper in the country, along with their photographs and sidebars on CJ, Flora Jean, Owen Brashears, Peter Margolin, Le Quan, and the entire Star 1 team.
Blue’s story hadn’t been lost on the tiny peach-growing village of Palisade or its larger neighbor ten miles to the west, Grand Junction. A week earlier the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel had run a three-page story featuring peach orchard owner Ket Tran, her brother-in-law, Langston Blue, and her niece, local St. Mary’s Hospital oncologist Carmen Nguyen. A barrage of local and regional TV coverage had made the three of them, people who had prided themselves on enjoying a low-profile life, stand out like swollen appendages.
After a few whispers and nods, the curious returned to their conversations.
“Heels are death in grass,” Flora Jean complained, slipping off her shoes as she, CJ, and Mavis took their seats.
They had just gotten comfortable when a balding man in front of Mavis turned and said, “I’m Wally Fears. Grow peaches just down the road here. Aren’t you the lawyer that represented Carmen’s father?”
“No,” said Mavis. “That would be Julie Madrid.”
“Sorry, but you sure look like her to me. Anyway, she must be one heck of a lawyer gettin’ Blue off so quick like that.”
“She sure is.” Mavis winked at CJ, aware that desertion charges against Blue had been dropped partly on the strength of Julie’s legal skills, but they’d also evaporated because of potential highlevel political fallout. The Pentagon brass were so interested in quelling a groundswell of charges from Congress and the media that centered on the army’s involvement in a massacre-for-pay scheme at Song Ve that they couldn’t move fast enough to exonerate the only man who’d been there who was still alive. A man who was not only one of their own, and a decorated sergeant who’d refused to obey an unlawful order, but also a man who could point his finger at a bona fide bogeyman: the CIA.
CJ shook his head and smiled, thinking that after a month and a half of front-page coverage, Mavis was nearly as adept at fielding a question about Langston Blue as he and Flora Jean.
CJ adjusted himself in a seat that was sinking rapidly into the soft grass. “What’s the problem?” asked Flora Jean, smiling. “Weddings make you nervous?” She glanced at the engagement ring CJ had given Mavis six days earlier and broke into a snicker. “If I was you, sugar, I’d be watchin’ this show for pointers.” Flora Jean winked at Mavis.
Ket Tran moved up the row to greet them. Dressed in traditional Vietnamese marriage-ceremony red and yellow, she looked younger than CJ remembered, and her eyes were just as penetrating.
“See about everyone’s made it.” She hugged them one by one.
“Except Julie and Alden.” Flora Jean looked disappointed that only she was missing her man. “They’re both back east.”
Ket slipped into the chair next to CJ. “I saw you walk in. It looks like you’re moving pretty good.”
“Better than I was five weeks ago. Body’s on the mend, but my mind’s pretty much mush from all the media hype. Hear you’ve had the same thing over here.”
“Pretty much,” Ket said hesitantly. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Ask away.”
“What do you think will happen to Jimmy Moc?”
“It won’t be good. From what I hear, Newburn, the
cop who initially wanted Blue’s hide, found Moc’s fingerprints on a cane inside the oil drum Lincoln Cortez’s body was found in. They found the same kind of drum in the back of his van the night I got shot. The cops think he and Brashears were planning on supplying Elliott Cole with a new home inside the drum, the same way they had for Cortez. Moc hasn’t admitted to anything, but Julie says that in the end he will. Claims that in the long run he’ll be glad to exchange the death penalty for fifty or sixty years.”
There was sadness in Ket’s eyes. “All those unfortunate children at Song Ve. Moc or Carmen could’ve been one of them. Vietnamese is such a beautiful language and my den is such an ugly word. It’s hard to believe what people are capable of during war.”
“Money and politics, they twist things backward inside us human beings,” said CJ.
“Ain’t no question about it,” Flora Jean chimed in. “Cost Margolin and Brashears their lives—Moc the rest of what would’ve been his. Outed Cole and Quan, and nearly got Cole killed. It’ll cost him an election and damn sure end his career. Seems to me like the only folks left standin’ are that motorcyde-ridin’ ‘Company’ man who tried to take you out—and Blue.”
“And Ginny Kearnes,” said CJ, sympathetically. “It must be hell to pay knowing that Margolin’s best friend killed him.”
Ket nodded, looking worried. “Any chance they’ll come after Blue?”
Flora Jean’s answer was quick. “Nope. ‘The Company’s’ got too many skeletons in too many closets in this one. And one just might come clankin’ out on somebody at the top. Trust me, I been there—the CIA prefers anonymity; they don’t never wanna be the lead story on the nightly news.” She looked at CJ. “And that means you ain’t gonna find out who your shooter was or who pushed Brashears in front of that train. I worked that street, sugar. You might as well tell folks you got shot by a ghost. No question, some CIA operative wearin’ wingtips got the okay to pop your ass. If he got you, fine, if he didn’t, okay. Brashears was the real target, and as far as ‘the Company’s’ concerned the business is finished.”
CJ wanted to believe Flora Jean; after all, she knew the lay of the land. But he had the feeling that in spite of all the media hype, the Paul Grimes Rocky Mountain News exposé, endless interviews and interrogations, the army’s sudden change of heart about Blue, and the very convenient death of the man who’d killed Cortez and Margolin, he still really didn’t know which way was up when it came to Song Ve. And it haunted him. But what haunted him more was the uneasy feeling that the man on the motorcycle, the man wearing wingtips and dressed in black, didn’t care one bit about the truth. What had happened at Song Ve might have partially been the result of Margolin’s and Cole’s greed, coalescing with the agenda of a bunch of nutball racists from North Vietnam, but they weren’t the ones who were trying to make history disappear. It was the U.S. intelligence community that was at the heart of that disappearing act. And unfortunately, like cancer, in the thirty-five years since Song Ve, the ugliness of that crime had metastasized instead of becoming an endangered species.
“He won’t be getting shot at anymore,” Mavis said emphatically. “As of next week, CJ Floyd is out of the bail-bonding business.”
Ket looked surprised, aware of what it was that made men like CJ Floyd tick. “Big change.”
“I’m up for it. So’s Flora Jean. Three days from now she’s the big cheese.”
“You’ll do great,” said Ket.
“Hope so, but I’ve never run my own business before,” said Flora Jean.
“You’ll do fine,” said CJ. “Besides, I’ll be there a day a week for the first six months.”
Ket smiled. “It’ll be sort of like Langston learning how to live outside a West Virginia hollow,” she said, watching the tuxedo-garbed Langston Blue limp toward them.
Beaming as he made his way down the row of chairs, he looked every bit the proud father of the bride. “Glad you’re all here to help us pull the trigger on this thing.” He draped an arm over Ket’s shoulder. “Just wish Mimm could see it.”
“She will—through Carmen’s eyes,” said Ket.
Blue looped his other arm over CJ’s shoulder. “Got my daughter, got Ket, even got a life to live. I owe you and Flora Jean big time, CJ.”
CJ smiled. “Remember that the next time you need that special Western antique.”
“Or a bail-bonding service,” Flora Jean chimed in.
Blue grinned. “I’ll do that.”
Ket eyed her watch. “You better head back up to the house, Langston. It’s almost time to walk your daughter down the aisle.”
“See you in a few,” said Blue, barely limping as he walked away, looking as if he’d been practicing disguising the limp for one last important trip.
Realizing that nearly every seat around them had been taken, CJ asked, “Where’s Rios?”
“Up there in front.” Flora Jean pointed toward a line of peach trees. “Behind that first peach tree. See his head pokin’ out?”
CJ nodded.
“It’s a wedding, you know. The groom ain’t allowed to see the bride until she does her thing.” Flora Jean flashed her former captain the high sign. Rios responded by blowing her a kiss as the minister moved front and center to start the ceremony.
By the time the pianist was three notes into “Here Comes the Bride,” everyone was standing. CJ caught his first glimpse of Carmen before she was two steps down the aisle. She was dressed in white silk pants, a khan dong adorned in an elegant gold pattern, and an ankle-length gold silk cloak embroidered with gold chrysanthemums and red accents. She looked to CJ as if she belonged in some imperial palace.
Mavis squeezed CJ’s hand tightly as Carmen walked by.
Thinking to himself that he and Mavis would be next, he looked past Carmen toward the surrounding cliffs and into the ice-blue Colorado sky, oblivious to the fact that perched above the property on the surrounding desolate cliffs, a woman was watching the wedding ceremony unfold through binoculars. An Acoma Indian woman with a slim swimmer’s figure who was dressed in loose-fitting pants and a matching gunmetal gray blouse. A once-again youthful-looking, exquisitely beautiful woman named Celeste Deepstream who had a score to settle with Denver antique dealer CJ Floyd.
Turn the page to continue reading from the C. J. Floyd Mysteries
CHAPTER 1
They mockingly called her “Goat Head,” or “Pretty Babe,” or, dismissively, “the Guatemalan.” She was in truth from Nicaragua, and it would have been the height of flattery to describe her even in the most generous terms as pretty. She was noticeably disfigured, her appearance the result of the childhood onset of a developmental bone disease known as cherubism, a disorder that had robbed her of potential beauty, turned her squat and pumpkin-faced, and so altered and recontoured the bones in her face and jaws that her eyes were perpetually cast skyward as if forever searching for heaven.
Most of the obstacles she had encountered during her thirty-nine years—her cherubism, the childhood taunts, the loss of her parents, her struggle to raise a fatherless child, and growing up in the midst of revolution and civil unrest—had only made her stronger, more determined, more focused on rising above her assigned lot of a Central American peasant born to faceless migrant fruit-pickers, an anomalous, disfigured burden in the eyes of the world. Schooled by circuit riding American nuns, she’d largely beaten the odds, learning to speak impeccable English by the age of seven and becoming accomplished at math and music by the age of ten. Ever charming and deferential in spite of her handicaps, she was on the road to avoiding a life of poverty and toil by her eighteenth birthday. But at nineteen, after a year of college, she fell in love with a guerrilla freedom fighter, had a child, and found herself consumed by obstacles once again.
When her husband of thirteen years was killed, a casualty of persistent revolution, she reluctantly left her child with relatives and traveled by train to the United States by way of Mexico, hidden inside the hopper of a rotary gondola car used for tra
nsporting coal. Still grieving and despondent, she rode for two days on a back corner of the coal car’s small iron sill between the gondola and the wheels of the train, knees folded, her feet against her buttocks, the lower half of her body dangling outside two feet above the rails as her muscles screamed in agony. Hanging on with her arms, she endured the train’s thundering starts and stops and dehumanizing jars as it made its way from Mexicali to Los Angeles, toward what she expected—no, demanded—to be a better life.
What she found in the City of Angels was a culture she was ill prepared for. The city’s streets teemed with tens of thousands of lost immigrant souls just like her. It was a land of desperate indentured hostages there to serve those who would use and abuse them. However, she found work and a place to live that was light years better than where she’d come from. Within two days of her arrival, Theresa Mesa Salas Del Mora was employed in the housekeeping service of a Century City hotel with a penchant for hiring and just as quickly firing a ready stream of illegal immigrants.
The job paid minimum wage, and the hours were graveyard and grueling, but Theresa stuck with her plan, enduring eight long months of physically demanding, often demeaning work, with only two days off. Always looking to better herself, she left that job for a better one, then discarded that job for another at a boutique hotel in the Wilshire district, followed by jobs at European-style hotels in Beverly Hills and Bel Air. Eventually, laden with references that trumpeted her reputation as a tireless worker, her honesty, and most of all her loyalty and humility, she left Los Angeles and ventured east to the Rockies to serve as manager of housekeeping at a posh Park City, Utah, ski resort. From there she moved on to Colorado to take charge of a similar crew at a trendy Aspen getaway.
It had taken her six years to make her way to Aspen. She’d endured those difficult, long, and lonely years without the essence of her life, her now nineteen-year-old son. Finally, with a nest egg to fall back on, the woman whose coworkers in the City of Angels had once mockingly called her “Goat Head,” “the Guatemalan,” or “Pretty Babe,” uttering the names as if calling to a pet, took her biggest chance yet. She moved to Denver after being recruited in blatant big-business fashion by Howard Stafford, a man whose wealth was said to be difficult to measure even by those in the know, to oversee a service staff of eight who ran Stafford’s lush fifteen-acre compound. The compound comprised a twenty-thousand-square-foot main house and outbuildings that included her own residence; her salary would have made any MBA envious. Before accepting the position, she’d been told by envious acquaintances who knew the old-moneyed Denver landscape that she would be working for an eccentric—a man who always sounded as if he had a high frontal cold; whose closets, TV cabinets, and kitchen pantry sported combination locks—an antisocial recluse who wore a newscaster’s ever-present painted-on smile and owned scores of identical silk shirts, alligator shoes, lizard-skin cowboy boots, and black gabardine trousers. Ignoring the possible downside and the advice of friends, she grabbed for her American dream. A month after signing on with Stafford, feeling secure and stable at last, she decided that it was time for her son, Luis, now two months shy of his twentieth birthday, to join her in America.