by Robert Greer
“Point’s this, old man. Rollie’s had some recent problems with things from the past popping up. We need to make certain that should any of Denver’s boys in blue decide to open old wounds, we don’t see you pointing any fingers.”
“What makes you think I’d do somethin’ like that?”
“Your weakened state of mind, old man, and the fact that you’ve been away from Rollie’s end of the business for a long, long time.”
Choking back his anger, Mario said, “Don’t question my loyalty, Maxie. I’ve got more of it in my little toe than you have in your whole damn body.”
“Don’t get cutesy, old man. Just listen up. Any chance you’ve read about some guy finding a bunch of loose body parts up at the Eisenhower Tunnel after our recent earthquake?”
“Yeah. And I also heard that the man who found those parts bought it over in Bonnie Brae earlier tonight.”
“Good. Real good. You’ve been listening. So here’s the bottom line. Rollie doesn’t want you having intestinal distress over, or spewing your guts about, what you might know about the guy they found in the tunnel. Or worse, maybe even running to the cops or even the FBI with a sudden case of diarrhea of the mouth. If you do, it’s gonna cost.”
“Cost me what, you fuckin’ nitwit?”
“Talk to the wrong people when you shouldn’t and you’ll find out quick enough. Push your luck and you could end up finding out from yet another source. You don’t think Rollie set up the framework for what went down in Dallas all those years ago all by his lonesome.”
“What the hell are you gettin’ at, Maxie?”
Maxie laughed. It was a laugh that quickly escalated to an all-out bellow. “Just this, old man. If you talk to the cops or the feds about what you suspect went down in Dallas, you’ll be the goat. Say anything to anyone about that dead man they found up at the Eisenhower Tunnel, even if you’re just guessing at what happened, and you’ll be a lot more than sorry. Bottom line’s this, my friend. Roll over on Rollie and you’ll end up lost to the world.” Maxie offered Mario a final warning before cradling the phone and leaving Mario staring into space: “Think before you leap, old man.”
Left with a dial tone ringing in his ear and aware that he wouldn’t get another wink of sleep that night, Mario sat on the edge of his bed, looked skyward, and whispered, “Angie.”
Chapter 12
The phone call telling Ron Else that he needed to be on the first nonstop out of LAX the next morning and bound for Denver came in just before 3 a.m. The call, pretty much identical to the scores of similar calls that had interrupted Else’s sleep, dinner, poker playing, or lovemaking during his twenty-five years as an FBI agent, had been routine. But before he’d picked up the phone or said hello, he’d known the call would have him once again traipsing after some lead in the John F. Kennedy assassination.
This time he’d been told that he’d be doing follow-up on a possible JFK assassination link initiated by a call from a Denver cop. A cop with a dead man at his door and less than a scintilla of evidence tying the corpse to the Kennedy killing. But in Ron Else’s world, a scintilla of evidence was all that was needed to ensure that he’d be bound for Denver.
He’d come to realize that he was no more than a regional public relations man assigned to listen to the stories and hold the hands of hapless JFK conspiracy nuts and fame-seeking lawmen. Not once in the scores of times that he’d caught a Phoenix-or Salt Lake City–or Albuquerque-bound red-eye, driven a rental car across the Mojave Desert, or ridden a train from his home base in LA to Mayberry or Podunk to engage in his specialty, investigating new murders that might possibly be tied to the JFK assassination, had he run across a single case that could be linked to the killing.
More often than not, the excitable cop or sheriff or trembling village constable with the dead man at his doorstep was either misinformed, looking for publicity, kissing the ass of some DA with a political agenda, or just plain stupid. In one instance, it had even turned out that the cop calling for what was known in Else’s trade as a “Kennedy linkage investigation” had actually shot the victim, an insurance agent who’d been humping the cop’s estranged wife. A year from now it wouldn’t matter, Else told himself as he packed his well-traveled carry-on for a 5:30 a.m. flight to Denver. He’d be playing golf in the Caymans.
He didn’t yet have all the facts on the Denver fiasco. All he knew was that a Denver homicide lieutenant backed up by some yahoo of a mountaintop sheriff with possible relevant new information about the JFK assassination had requested help. The two Colorado lawmen had no way of knowing that the call would garner a look-see from not just any FBI agent but Ron Else, the West Coast king. A man who’d seen and heard so many JFK assassination stories from so many whacked-out cops, wide-eyed civilians, gullible town marshals, and unschooled sheriffs that he liked to boast that he wasn’t sure anymore whether JFK had been killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, Howdy Doody, or the Pope.
“I don’t see why Julie couldn’t make it,” Mario Satoni said, pacing back and forth in the center of the stately drawing room in the old Denver Victorian that housed CJ Floyd’s bail-bonding offices. After his Uncle Ike’s death, CJ had taken over and operated the business just west of downtown on Delaware Street that Ike Floyd had started in the 1950s. After temporarily declaring himself out of the bail-bonding business, CJ had briefly vacated Bail Bondsman’s Row with its string of old Victorian buildings affectionately known as “painted ladies” to enter his failed antique store venture. Though he was still in the antiques business with Mario, he had quickly returned to the world he knew best, linking back up with his bail-bonding partner, Flora Jean Benson. Although he rarely mentioned it to anyone, especially Mavis, the move back to Delaware Street had somehow made him feel whole again.
Fed up with Mario’s complaining, Flora Jean, who stood drinking coffee beside the seated CJ, said, “How many times we gotta tell you Julie couldn’t come, Mario? She had a court date.” Standing just over six feet tall and with the carriage of a Las Vegas showgirl, Flora Jean took guff from no one—including former mafia dons.
“So she should’ve canceled it.”
CJ shook his head. “Mario, come on.”
“In my day we would’ve got the judge to cancel or at least to move the damn thing back.”
“It’s a new day, Mario,” said CJ, surprised that Mario, characteristically tight-lipped about his days as the Colorado mafia’s top dog, would mention anything about his time at the helm. That openness, coupled with the fact that Mario had called him at 4 a.m. insisting on an 8 a.m. powwow that had to include Julie Madrid, had CJ worried that Mario was in more than, as Mario had put it earlier, a little bit of trouble.
Still pacing the floor, his voice laden with disappointment, Mario said, “Damn it, Calvin. I don’t wanna have to say everything twice.”
“Julie’s gonna be in court ’til at least two.” Flora Jean swirled what was left of her coffee around in a large black mug that was stenciled with the U.S. Marine Corps insignia. “Sometimes you just gotta hurry up and wait.”
Mario shook his head. “Eighty-two years old, finally livin’ my antique-peddlin’ dream, and my lyin’, connivin’, two-faced Napoleonic shit of a nephew starts riggin’ things to cave the world in on me.” Mario glanced skyward, “You always said he was the kind that would foul the nest, Angie. And you were right.”
Unaccustomed to Mario’s chats with his dead wife, Flora Jean eyed CJ quizzically. CJ flashed her a reassuring wink, rose from the high-backed leather chair that had once been Ike’s, walked around his desk, and draped an arm over Mario’s shoulders. “Sooner or later, you’re gonna have to explain why you called me at four in the morning sounding like the devil was at your door. Might as well start now.”
Looking beleaguered, Mario again glanced skyward and whispered, “Guess I got no choice. But I need to be sittin’ in Ike’s chair while I’m talkin’. That way I’ll be speakin’ from the position of an eye for an eye.” He eyed CJ pensively. “How
about rollin’ Ike’s chair over here to me?”
CJ rolled the massive chair, its leather stained and cracked from age, out from behind the desk and into the middle of the room. Watching Mario take a seat, CJ realized that he’d never seen the once powerful don look so vulnerable.
“You want somethin’ to drink?” Flora Jean asked, sensing the gravity of the situation.
“A shot of somethin’, maybe.”
Flora Jean left the room to return quickly with a bottle of unopened Jack Daniel’s in one hand, and a tumbler and a half-empty bottle of vodka in the other. “Pick your poison.”
“Vodka,” Mario said weakly.
Setting the Jack Daniel’s aside, Flora Jean placed the tumbler on CJ’s desk and began filling it with vodka. The tumbler was three-quarters full before Mario said, “That’s fine.” Turning to CJ, he asked, “You got that special coin I gave you anywhere handy?”
“It’s upstairs in my apartment,” CJ said, surprised that Mario would ask for a coin that Angie Satoni had given Ike almost sixty years earlier.
“Need you to go get it.”
“It’s that important?”
“Yeah.”
CJ left the room in a rush and hustled up the stairs that led to his second-floor apartment. Moments later he returned clutching the twenty-dollar gold piece that Angie Satoni had given Ike the night Ike had brought Mario home with a bullet in him. CJ knew the story only too well.
It was 1948, and, seated at the bar in Denver’s famous Rossonian jazz club, the two men had met for the first time as they both enjoyed a night of jazz. They’d left the club together when the show ended and headed up Welton Street for their cars. Two blocks from the Rossonian, Mario had been ambushed. Ike had subdued the shooter, but hadn’t called the cops, at Mario’s request—a request Ike thought might be a dying one. Ike had driven Mario across town to his home in North Denver, where he’d been treated by Angie’s uncle, a prominent mob physician and Denver socialite. To show her family’s gratitude, Angie had given Ike the twenty-dollar gold piece that CJ was now holding. Its fluted edges had been rubbed perfectly smooth, and a tiny boxed “S” had been stamped on the coin’s reverse side near the bottom. Angie had given Ike the coin with the following instructions: This coin represents a lifetime pass out of harm’s way from my family to you, Ike Floyd. Use it wisely.
CJ handed the gold piece to Mario. Clutching it tightly, Mario looked skyward. “I’m breakin’ an oath here, Ike, Angie.” He mumbled something in Latin that neither CJ nor Flora Jean understood, then stared stoically at CJ. “Back in 1963, when you were still wet behind the ears, my nephew Rollie was involved in the Kennedy assassination,” he said in a whisper, handing the coin back to CJ.
When neither CJ nor Flora Jean responded, Mario said, “Did you hear me? Rollie was hooked in to the JFK killin’.”
“Come on, Mario.” CJ stared at Mario in wide-eyed disbelief.
“There’s no ‘come on’ to it. It’s the truth,” Mario shot back. “Rollie hooked up with some people, real powerful people, who hatched the plan to eliminate Kennedy.”
CJ stroked his chin thoughtfully, uncertain why Mario would share such information. Looking concerned, he said, “Maybe you shouldn’t take this any further, Mario. Perhaps we should wait for Julie.”
Mario smiled. It was the accommodating smile of a man who realized that he was near the end of a very long race. “I appreciate your concern for my health, Calvin. I know the risks. Bottom line is, Pinkie Niedemeyer set me straight the other day when you and I were doin’ inventory. That’s why I sent you scootin’. Me and Pinkie’s little powwow needed to be in private.” Mario turned to face Flora Jean. “Either of you hear about them findin’ the remains of some guy in the Eisenhower Tunnel in the aftermath of that earthquake we had up in the high country the other day?”
“Yeah,” said Flora Jean, taking a seat.
“What about you, Calvin?”
“I heard about it.”
Mario took in the astonished looks on CJ’s and Flora Jean’s faces before continuing. “Well, and I know this for a fact, that guy whose remains they found was tied in to the hit on Kennedy in a real big way. And …”
CJ cut Mario off midsentence. “You weren’t involved, were you?”
Mario swallowed hard, took a long sip of his drink, and glanced skyward. “In a roundabout way, by refusin’ to get involved in the assassination plot, I expect I was. And you can bet your last nickel that when the cops and the feds get to diggin’ deep enough, my name’ll pop up.”
Aware now why Mario had been so insistent on Julie being there, CJ asked, “What makes you think that anybody’ll start digging that deep?”
“Another murder. One that took place last night over in Bonnie Brae.” Mario reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the Rocky Mountain News account of Cornelius McPherson’s death that he’d clipped from the paper’s early edition. He handed the clipping to CJ. “The story’s gonna get bigger, Calvin. Trust me.”
CJ read the three paragraphs describing the previous night’s drive-by shooting of McPherson, handed the clipping to Flora Jean, and turned back to Mario. “So the bottom line in all this is Mr. McPherson found something that he shouldn’t have?”
“Sure did.”
CJ stroked his chin thoughtfully, reached into his vest pocket for a box of cheroots, tapped one out, and lit up. Watching smoke swirl up into the paddles of the room’s vintage ceiling fan, he asked, “So, how much do you know, Mario? About the Kennedy assassination, I mean?”
“This much for sure,” Mario said haltingly. “Back when it happened, Rollie was busy tryin’ to push his way up what you might call the corporate ranks—and with my help, mind you. Hell, I didn’t know the lyin’ SOB was a snake.” Mario paused and took a sip of his drink. “Shoulda cut his head off then. Shoulda listened to Angie.” Mario shook his head in disgust. “Kennedy hadn’t been in office but about a year when he started squeezin’ folks from both ends, and when he slipped his little brother Bobby in as attorney general, believe me, tom-toms started beatin’ coast to coast. Clearances we’d had to do business like always started shuttin’ down by the minute, and hands-off agreements we had with the feds, especially the ones we had with that lyin’ square-headed sissy Hoover at the FBI, went up in smoke. Most of the pressure was bein’ put on operations in Chicago, the East Coast, and the Gulf Coast. I didn’t really feel much of a squeeze out here. And that’s how Rollie was able to worm his way into the assassination plot. Lots of times people under pressure end up makin’ bad choices, and somewhere along the way somebody had the bad sense to choose Rollie.”
“What people?”
“You know I can’t use no names here, Calvin. You’ll just have to listen.” He shot Flora Jean a look that said ditto before continuing. “I got a call one day from someone in the organization in the spring of 1963. I’m pretty sure it was March ’cause we’d had a huge snowstorm here in Denver a couple of days earlier, and things were just startin’ to melt. Anyway, I got asked if I had any interest in solvin’ the Kennedy problem. Me and the caller danced around the issue for a while, made small talk, and chatted about friends and his children until I finally came out and said pretty bluntly, as I recall, that Kennedy wasn’t causin’ me that many problems, but if he really needed help, I’d be happy to send an emissary.”
“And you sent Rollie.”
Mario nodded. “One of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made, but I trusted him back then. After all, even if he was the pampered son of Angie’s blockheaded brother, he was my nephew. Never shoulda done it, but I did. Rollie left for Chicago a few weeks later, stayed back there most of the summer. I was never back in the loop after that first call, and it was around that time that Angie started feelin’ poorly. It was a whole nine months before we knew what was really wrong with her. By then Kennedy was dead, Angie was dyin’, and I was headed for the first stages of the crap-shit life I’ve been forced to lead ever since. To tell you the truth, with Angi
e dyin’ and all, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about much of anything, especially some tight-assed meddlin’ dead president, or Rollie.”
“Did Rollie ever admit to being involved in the assassination?”
“Not to me he didn’t, but word bubbled up, and from people who woulda known, that Rollie had a hand in it.”
CJ let out a lengthy sigh, uncertain whether he should stop Mario—the man who’d extracted him pretty much single-handedly from the mess that had been his life after Ike’s Spot had been bombed by henchmen of Celeste Deepstream into oblivion—from going any further with his story. Turning to Flora Jean, he said, “I think we might end up needing Alden.”
Mario shook his head in protest. “I’m all for usin’ Julie, Calvin. Odds are, sooner or later I’m gonna need a lawyer. But hookin’ up with General Grace, no way.” He eyed Flora Jean apologetically. “I know he’s your boyfriend, Flora Jean. But he’s been involved in intelligence work most of his life, and that means, like it or not, he’s been workin’ the opposite side of the street from me, and that’s dangerous.”
Before Flora Jean could respond, CJ said, “But he probably has contacts that can help us out, Mario.”
“Don’t matter, Calvin. He could roll on me.” Mario shook his head. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t need the general’s kinda help. Besides, I’ve already got somebody lined up to do legwork, protection, and cover.”
A look of concern arched across CJ’s face. “Who?”
“Pinkie.”
CJ slapped his forehead. “What?”
“Pinkie Niedemeyer!” Flora Jean said in a near shout. “You can’t use him, Mario. He’s a hit man.”
“Flora Jean’s right, Mario. Forget about using Pinkie.”
Mario shook his head and held up a hand in protest. “There’s a little more to this than I’ve told you, Calvin.”
“Then you better spell it all out if you expect us to help.”