Blackbird, Farewell

by Robert Greer

  “I doubt it. He would've mentioned it to me for sure. But I'll ask. Why?”

  “Got a couple of real good reasons for wanting to get a better picture of those two. First off, I'm convinced that CSU basketball team is key to what happened here tonight, and so's last year's NCAA championship game. And second, if we are dealing with a professional triggerman here, the Madrid kid seemed stubborn enough to end up doing something stupid enough to get him killed. Maybe your boy has some campus-life insights about Madrid that'll help.”

  “How's that?”

  Townsend smiled and stared out into the blackness. “Can't really put my finger on the pulse of it, Willis, but I've got the strangest feeling that somehow, way down deep, Madrid might just be cocky enough to think he can do our job.”

  The one-bedroom apartment in Denver's Montclair neighborhood that Damion had leased two months earlier, after he and Shandell had moved out of the apartment they'd shared in Fort Collins, was pin-drop quiet. Except for two streams of light arcing down from a partially activated bank of track lights in the small alcove just off the living room that Damion had set up to be his study center, the apartment was dark. Emotionally spent, Damion sat in the alcove's semidarkness.

  Slumped in an oversized wingback leather chair that Mavis and CJ had given him as a college graduation gift, he'd been trying for the past half hour to make sense of what had happened. Six hours earlier he'd been on the cusp of living his dream. Now he wondered if four years of sacrifice, endless nights without sleep, and a career in medicine would be worth it. That same kind of long-term sacrifice hadn't benefited Shandell, who'd spent most of his life honing athletic skills that would never be used. It seemed as if they'd both sacrificed a large part of their youth for absolutely nothing. Glancing toward two largely empty bookcases, Damion rose from his chair. Staring at the empty shelves and thinking, Why the hell should I even fill them? he walked over to a half-open window, stared out into the darkness, and shouted, “Shit!”

  He had planned to spend the night at his mother's, secluded in the Washington Park home where he'd spent his late teens growing up. He'd wanted to be there with Aretha Bird, Connie, and his mother. But after an hour of pacing the rambling Tudor's echoing hardwood floors, watching Connie cry and Aretha continue to simply stare into space while his mother tried her best to comfort them, he'd decided to come back to his apartment. Aware of Damion's penchant for dealing only too privately with things that troubled him, Julie had tried unsuccessfully to get him to stay, but she knew arguing with him would be pointless, so she'd finally let him go home.

  It wasn't until he was halfway home, driving north on Downing Street at ten miles under the speed limit, that he'd finally broken down and cried. For hours he'd held off crying, maintaining his composure in front of cops, coroner's assistants, Connie, Aretha, and his mother, but when he'd stopped at a red light at the corner of Alameda and Downing, motionless under the glare of a corner streetlight, he'd broken down and cried like a baby. Cried so hard he'd finally had to pull into a nearby gas station and shut down his engine until he could regain his composure.

  When he'd finally reached home, he'd realized that his whole rib cage hurt. After taking two aspirin to curb a throbbing headache and calling his girlfriend to tell her the whole story, he'd plopped down in the leather chair and barely moved until this moment.

  Turning away from the window, he found himself softly reciting, “Blackbird and Blood! Blackbird and Blood!” It was a chant that hungry basketball fans across the Rocky Mountain region had coined just months earlier during March Madness.

  Walking slowly back to the center of the alcove, he stood in the faint glare from the two lights, hurting and feeling hollow inside. As he stood there looking lost and confused, the courtside play-by-play call of the final moments of Colorado State's NCAA championship game against UCLA began to weave its way through his head, working its way slowly along the roots of his subconscious as it had scores of times before.

  Fifteen seconds left until we crown a new NCAA champion, folks. Woodson brings the ball upcourt on a high dribble into double-team back-court pressure. But he's a smooth one. He's out of trouble and across the center stripe. No question, Woodson's looking for Bird. Bird's caught in heavy traffic in the right corner. Wait a second—Woodson got the ball to Madrid. How'd he do that? Eleven seconds left. Madrid dribbles out to just beyond the right key. He's double-teamed! He's tied up! Nope. Can you believe it? Somehow Madrid got the ball out to Bird in the corner. It's been Bird's favorite spot all tourney. Six seconds left. Bird's in the air with that corner jumper. This is the ball game, folks! The ball's off the rim. Blackbird missed! UCLA wins! UCLA wins!

  Damion had heard that play-by-play so many times that he knew the announcer's inflections by heart. But for some reason right then, at three in the morning, with his best friend dead and his grief all consuming, the announcer's game-ending call seemed to resonate more than ever. Suddenly the call became entangled with Theo Wilhite's unmistakable voice: The ball's off the rim—tell that to my ten grand—Blackbird missed—maybe you had some incentive to screw up? UCLA wins! UCLA wins!

  Feeling as if he'd just had the wind knocked out of him, Damion dropped back into his seat. Adjusting himself in the chair, he looked across the room and fixed his gaze on a twelve-by-twelve-inch engraved marble plaque on the wall above his desk. That plaque, the only decoration besides his CSU diploma, was slightly cockeyed. Rising from the chair, he walked over to the desk, slipped the plaque off the wall, and stared at it pensively. The words Denver Police Junior Activities League Basketball Champions, 1998, Rosie's Garage were engraved on the face of the plaque. A faded gold ribbon was taped to the bottom edge. A single line of type in the middle of the ribbon read, Shandell Bird, MVP.

  The year they had started high school, Shandell had given the MVP ribbon to Damion, saying he was the one who had really deserved it all those years before. The next year Damion had given it back to him, only to end up with the ribbon the next year. Over the years the issue of who was most deserving of the ribbon had become a standing joke among the two lifelong friends, both of whom had long ago realized that their on-court successes came not from any single effort but from a joint one. The cops, as it were, had simply made a mistake by giving the ribbon to Shandell. “But this time there will be no mistake,” Damion told himself, readjusting the plaque on the wall and straightening the ribbon. He'd find out who killed his best friend, and he'd find out why.

  “I'll settle up,” he muttered, using the same three words he and Shandell had never failed to say to one another whenever one of them made a miscue on the court. “I'll settle up,” he whispered, making a final adjustment to the plaque before turning out the alcove lights and heading for bed.

  Chapter 5

  Connie Eastland wasn't certain if Damion had picked up on the fact that she'd been a lot more nervous than distraught during their interrogation by Sergeant Townsend three and a half hours earlier, and she wasn't sure, given the gravity of the situation, whether she'd given off the proper vibes. She was, however, certain about one thing. She never should have let Shandell Bird become her little black lapdog. They had, after all, been from two vastly different worlds—worlds as different from one another as night from day. Shandell had been an inner-city poor black kid, and in her estimation an amazingly insecure one for a man who was a world-class athlete. She, on the other hand, was a five-foot-four, blue-eyed, blonde-haired beauty with pixieish features and flawless skin from a background that was, although a long way from wealthy, unadulterated middle-class suburban Phoenix cheerleading white bread. She'd rarely seen black people, much less interacted with them, before coming to CSU. But she'd adapted to college diversity quickly, and, after a series of dalliances with other athletes, Shandell had become her ticket to ride.

  She and Shandell had been oddly dissimilar in scores of other ways. He'd been her intellectual inferior, and even at twenty, with the benefit of two and a half years of college under his b
elt when they'd met, he'd remained rough around the edges, morbidly introspective, and far too dependent. In contrast, she had always been an assertive self-starter. In spite of their differences, they'd latched on to one another for reasons known only to them, and for the fourteen months before Shandell's death they'd been campus social darlings.

  Now all that Shandell had promised her was gone. There would be no trips around the world or Bentleys or California mansions in her future. But just as certainly, there'd be no more arguments or second-guessing herself—no more behind-the-back snickers or go-for-it-girl pats on the back from acquaintances and friends. Shandell was dead. All she had now was a sociology degree and the life of a social worker staring her in the face. But at least she could go her own way now without having to worry about appearances or pleasing people who couldn't be pleased, including her unaccepting parents. Most of all, she no longer had to be an insecure black man's sounding board.

  She hoped Damion hadn't been able to see through her during their interrogation by Sergeant Townsend. Damion had been so distraught, so flat-out dumbstruck and racked with pain, that he couldn't see the fact that the man the world had called Blackbird had been little more than a booster rocket to the good life for her.

  It was a quarter past midnight and a completely new day, she reminded herself, eyeing her watch. A day that would unfortunately require her to play a part and follow through on being the person everyone thought she was. She had a feeling that the next seventy-two hours would tell her what she was made of. She'd have to walk the walk and talk the talk—never step out of character for even one second. She'd have to let Aretha Bird lean on her and to be the Rock of Gibraltar for a bevy of college classmates, hangers-on, and most of all friends. She'd have to contend with Damion, pretend to him that she was hurting deeply, encourage the man who'd been closest to Shandell to believe that her sense of loss was equal to his.

  She'd dug herself a hole, and she knew it. But even at the unsoured age of twenty-one, she'd faced similar situations before, and like an enterprising rabbit she had more than one hole to escape from. Feeling suddenly philosophical, she rose from her chair and walked from the cluttered living room of her Fort Collins condo that sat at the still largely rural northern edge of the city, down a hallway, and into an oversized bedroom that was filled with exercise equipment. The condo, or at least the down payment on it, had been a college graduation gift from her parents, intended as an incentive to get her into the job market and away from Shandell.

  Dressed in running shorts and the loose-fitting T-shirt of a pre-Shandell boyfriend, she glanced out the room's only window before mounting a stationary bicycle for what she hoped would be a stress-reducing workout. She found herself quickly pedaling at an eighteen-miles-per-hour clip as she tried her best not to think about Shandell or the cops, Damion Madrid, or murder. She'd settled into a twenty-miles-per-hour pace when a cell phone clipped to the bike's handlebars rang. When a number she immediately recognized flashed on the caller ID screen, she frowned, stopped pedaling, flipped the phone open, and said bitterly, “Yes.”

  “You sound out of breath.”

  “I'm working out.”

  “At this time of night? Now, that's dedication.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Wanta know if you had anything to do with that killin’ took place over in Glendale tonight. It's all over the news, you know.”

  “I should be asking you the same question, don't you think?”

  “Maybe, but I wouldn't even think for one second ’bout answerin’ you.” The caller snickered. “Looks like I'm gonna come into some money.”

  “Blood money.”

  “Don't bother me. As long as it spends. Think I better let things calm down a little before I cash in, though.”

  “You know, you're sickening, Leon.”

  “And you're a money-grabbing little bitch. A manipulative little white wench who's got no conscience. But like the Good Book says, let us forgive each other our shortcomings. Have to, or you and me wouldn't be talkin’.”

  “We're talking because you stuck your nose in where it didn't belong, Leon.”

  “Oh, believe me, little girl, it belonged. And for the record, I prefer being called ‘Mr. Bird’ when it comes to conversations with little white sluts. So get this, missy. My nose is gonna stay stuck right up your tight little ass for as long as it has to. Don't think that with Shandell outta the way you're gonna be free of me for one minute. I'm here to stay, your little sweetness. You know where to find me. Even better, I know where to find you.”

  Connie felt the muscles in her throat tighten. A second later, a corkscrew of pain shot through her left shoulder. Feeling that if the conversation continued, she might actually end up suffocating, she said, “Go climb into your drainage pipe, Leon, with the rest of the vermin.” Turning pink, she snapped her cell phone shut and let out a long sigh of relief. A rivulet of spittle clung to the corner of her mouth, wedged there in apparent defiance, as if to remind her that her problems were far from solved. Leon would call back. She knew that. But for the moment she was free of him. Free of his threats and intrusion and intimidation, and free of his lecherous surveillance and campy 1960s-style slang.

  Staring out the window and into the darkness, she tossed her cell phone onto a nearby floor cushion and once again began pedaling. Soon she was back in rhythm, cruising along at a twenty-miles-per-hour clip and thinking to herself as she settled into her ride that her caller and Shandell's father, Leon Bird, was probably far more deserving of a toe tag and cold morgue slab than his son.

  It wasn't at all like the old newspaper days for Wordell Epps. Those days were forever gone. Nor was it like more recent days, when he and Paul Grimes and John Dunning and other Denver newspaper hounds had still been given time to work up a story. Nowadays, things were decidedly different. There was no time to excavate a story's roots, examine its moorings, and determine if its legs were buried in bedrock or quicksand. Nowadays the news was instantaneous and superfluous—nothing more than some talking head's fifteen seconds of “flash and trash.”

  Wordell had gotten the call telling him that his longtime friend and Pulitzer Prize–winning partner, Paul Grimes, had been murdered from their editor at the Rocky Mountain News a little before nine in the evening. After a few words of condolence, he'd been told by the editor to find out what had happened and have a story ready for the next morning's edition. Meeting that deadline meant he would have to dump the story to his editor by midnight. Now, after a couple of hours of running the story down, the way he had in the old days, and verifying his facts and his sources, he was hunched in darkness over his keyboard, locked in the glare from the computer screen.

  As a seasoned Rocky Mountain News investigative reporter, he'd had the contacts to get at the heart of what had happened to Paul Grimes and Shandell Bird a lot more quickly than most. It was those contacts that TV media pip-squeaks and new age journalists—flashes in the pan, to his way of thinking—would always lack. He knew cops and crime-scene technicians, morgue assistants, and coroners, not to mention a few politicians who owed him their careers. He knew aging mobsters and two-bit criminals, strip-club pole dancers, and his share of flat-out whores. And although there were no longer any Linotype machines to line up each letter of his story in molten metal, the ponytail-wearing Wordell Epps, as flaky-looking and as brilliant as ever, would have his story. The framework of the piece would run a full two columns in the Rocky the next morning, but he knew that the truth of what had happened to his friend Paul Grimes and the kid known as Blackbird would keep mushrooming up for days.

  He'd rush what he had, incomplete as it was, to some wet-noodle higher-up at the Rocky for now. He'd meet his obligation to belch out a morning-edition teaser story. The story would hint that his friend Paulie and a black basketball star named Blackbird had been blinded by gambling and greed.

  Glancing down at his high-top Converse sneakers—sneakers identical to the kind preferred by his friend Paul
Grimes—Epps smiled and punched the send command on the computer, instantly forwarding his story to his editor.

  “There'll be more,” he muttered, shutting down the computer. “There'll be more,” he repeated as the light from his computer screen faded and the room he sat in went black.

  Chapter 6

  Denver's Bail Bondsman's Row is a block-long assemblage of six aging turn-of-the-century Victorian buildings affectionately known as “painted ladies.” This unlikely but enduring cluster of once proud houses lines the west side of the 1200 block of Delaware Street as it knifes its way toward downtown Denver. Darkness never descends on Bondsman's Row, where always-lit neon signs jut from the ornate fascia above weathered wraparound Victorian porches, yelling freedom to the accused before their day in court. Blue, red, yellow, and green neon tubes shaped to spell OPEN 24 HOURS, BAIL BONDS ANYTIME, and NEVER CLOSED flash gaudy promises of at least temporary liberty to those hoping for freedom as well as their families and friends.

  CJ Floyd had come home to work on the Row in 1971, freshly separated from two tours of Vietnam and three years in the navy. He'd spent his first three months on the Row working for his uncle as a runner and the next three and a half decades traveling the seamier side of Denver's streets, most of that time as a one-man band. A few years earlier he'd sold a half-interest in the bail-bonding business his uncle had left him to former marine intelligence operative, Persian Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm veteran Flora Jean Benson, who, like Julie Madrid before her, had begun her tenure in CJ's employ as a secretarial temp.

  The morning after Shandell Bird's murder, Flora Jean had arrived at the office at a few minutes past seven, as was her custom. Seated at her desk and beaming from ear to ear, she'd just wrapped up a phone call to a florist who had promised to have a bouquet of thirty-seven roses delivered to CJ and his new bride by 8 a.m. Hawaii time. There was a rose for every post–Vietnam War year Mavis had had to put up with CJ's matrimonial foot-dragging. Pleased with herself for coming up with what she considered the perfect gift, Flora Jean hung up the phone to the accompanying jingle of the eight authentic Zulu tribal bracelets that encircled her left wrist.