by Robert Greer
The ATV was close enough now for him to see that the hatless, jacket-clad rider was a man with his own pair of binoculars looped around his neck. Damion’s mouth went dry when he realized that a rifle case was strapped to the rear carriage of the ATV. He kicked himself for leaving Denver without his cell phone, something he hadn’t discovered until he’d reached Fort Collins. Moistening his lips, he tried not to panic. There was still no guarantee that the man on the ATV was after him. Rifle case or not, the man could’ve been a Bureau of Land Management worker on a mission to thin out coyotes or thwart a growing rattlesnake population, or perhaps he was simply out there to check on one of the Cold War underground missile silos that were rumored to dot the Pawnee.
Damion’s theories evaporated the instant the man brought the ATV to a halt, jumped off the vehicle, and trained his binoculars directly on the cedar break. Dropping to one knee, Damion muttered, “Shit!” as he scanned the cedar break for better protection. The largest of the trees in the entire cluster was twenty yards behind him. His back to the morning sun, he brought his binoculars up one last time to take a good look at the man on the ATV, aware that once he moved back toward the taller cedars for protection, his view would be obscured.
The man who now stood behind the ATV looked around slowly before slipping a rifle out of his gun case. Damion’s eyes widened, and within seconds he was duck-walking his way toward the tallest protective stand of red cedars. Halfway to his destination, he stopped, scooped up several baseball-sized rocks, and tossed them toward the base of the largest of the cedar trees. He looked around for something else that he could use as a weapon and briefly thought about making a run for it. Realizing that there was no way he could possibly outrun an ATV across miles of wide-open terrain, he decided that his best option was to stay put and hope that someone, anyone, might come walking down the only trail that led to the buttes and scare off the ATV driver.
Scooting over to a pile of fallen trees, he rummaged through an assortment of tree limbs and extracted two branches. One was the size of a baseball bat. It was a club he could defend himself with. The other was an eight-foot-long, more willowy limb that could be used as a whip. Dragging the tree limbs behind him, he headed for the big red cedar.
He scooped up the rocks he’d tossed at the foot of the tall cedars into a pile and counted off each one: “Seven, eight, nine.”
Aware that there was nothing to shield him from rifle fire except the trees themselves, he grabbed three rocks, wiggled his body up against the largest tree in the cluster, grabbed his baseball-bat-sized branch, and peeped out between the cedar’s limbs.
Glancing down at the ground, he gauged how quickly he could grab additional rocks if he needed them. Convinced that he could retrieve the rocks within seconds, he muttered, “Good,” and gritted his teeth, knowing that he had two things in his favor. Years of dribbling a basketball with equal facility with either hand meant that he could launch his rocks with equal accuracy using his right hand or his left. And he had the element of surprise on his side. He simply had to be letter-perfect with his aim. Breathing so hard now that it scared him and sweating like he’d just run a dozen wind sprints, he felt a sudden urge to run until he remembered what CJ had once told him about the element of surprise. When someone comes up at you from the bottom of a sampan with nothing more than a pea shooter in their hand, don’t matter that you’re carrying an M-16. By the time you turn to fire, you’re already dead. Unfortunately, he was about to find out if that old war adage was true.
Randall Maxie had no idea what the Madrid kid would be up to at 5 a.m., but, unable to sleep after his chat with Cassias, he’d driven to Damion’s house and staked it out, hoping to get a jump on the killing that was sure to come. When Damion’s SUV had rolled out of the garage just before daybreak, Maxie had licked his chops and followed it. Everything else that had fallen his way had the stamp of good luck and serendipity on it.
He’d stumbled across the ATV only minutes after driving past the Crow Valley campground just as Damion had pulled in. It had been there for the taking, parked on private land next to a sagging barbed-wire fence. A set of shiny new barbed-wire stretchers rested on the four-wheeler’s seat, and the keys had been left in the ignition. Country folks didn’t think about having things stolen, he’d told himself, looking back to see Damion strike out on the lone trail that led to the Pawnee Buttes. He’d thought about going back to the campground and quickly dispensing with the kid, but he wasn’t certain whether other people were there. Forced to design a plan for killing the kid on the fly, he’d run an end around Damion, cutting across private land on the ATV and snipping his way through barbed wire to arrive on the far west side of Lips Bluff well before Damion reached the cedar break. When he saw Damion disappear into the cedars, he brought the ATV to a stop thirty yards from the leaning edge of the trees, stepped off, retrieved his .30-06, checked the chamber to make certain he had the firepower he needed to complete his task, and walked slowly toward the line of trees, rifle in hand, knowing that Madrid had to be in the cluster of trees somewhere.
Slipping his right index finger onto the trigger of the .30-06, he eased his way around a large tree and worked his way south toward a clump of three smaller trees. It would be pretty much like getting pheasants to flush, he told himself, moving in for the kill—sooner or later the pressure always became too much. Moving methodically from tree to tree, the barest hint of a smile crossed Maxie’s face. It was the incipient knowing smile that always came to him when he was about to enjoy a kill.
From the time Maxie slipped around the first lone red-cedar tree, Damion had had his eyes locked on him. He was surprised to see that his rotund would-be assassin was dressed not in a jacket but in a sport coat and expensive-looking slacks. The barrel of the man’s rifle gleamed in the early-morning sun as Damion took a deep breath and felt a rivulet of sweat work its way down his neck. He watched as the huge man moved from tree to tree, huffing and puffing his way ever closer, beating back tree limbs and kicking at the underbrush.
Clutching two rocks tightly in his left hand and a third in his right, and eyeing the branch he’d grabbed earlier, which was now lying at his feet, Damion cocked his right arm and waited. The man was fifteen feet away and still blind to Damion’s presence when, moist from sweat, the larger of the rocks in Damion’s left hand slipped out of his grasp and thumped to the ground.
Startled, Maxie swung the barrel of his .30-06 in the direction of the thud and Damion’s protective tree and fired off two rounds, splintering two branches.
Recocking his right arm, Damion let the first rock fly.
Maxie let out a howl as the rock slammed into the sweet spot above his right eyebrow and below his hairline. Blood gushed from his forehead as he raced toward where Damion, still partly camouflaged by tree branches, stood ready to let a second rock fly.
The second Damion cocked his arm, Maxie saw him and dropped his rifle. Their eyes met briefly as Maxie slipped a 9-mm Glock out of the right pocket of his sport coat. As he moved in for the kill, Damion let his rock fly and turned to run. He’d barely taken a step when a shot rang out and a screaming Randall Maxie dropped to his knees, clutching his right shoulder.
Uncertain what had happened, Damion turned to see another man racing toward them. The tall, slender man stopped short and then walked slowly toward Damion’s shooter, all the while keeping a stainless steel P94 Ruger 9-mm aimed at the larger man’s head. When the man with the Ruger yelled, “Run for cover, Damion—run!” Damion took off running, confused and uncertain who the man who’d saved his life was. He stopped to look back over his shoulder and saw that the shoulder of the downed shooter’s sport coat was soaked with blood. When the skinny gunman looked up and realized that Damion had stopped, he screamed, “Head for cover, Damion, goddamn it! Mario sent me. Now run!”
Damion raced for two cedar trees thirty yards away. He was too frightened to look back and too pumped with adrenaline to realize that the two men, who were now staring
each other down, knew one another. He was gasping for air and well out of earshot when Pinkie Niedemeyer walked up to Randall Maxie, aimed his 9-mm at Maxie’s head, and said, “A penny for your thoughts, Maxie. And that’s a penny more than they’re worth.”
Since 6 a.m. Ron Else had been talking on the phone and intermittently pacing back and forth across the badly stained cigarette-damaged carpet of his stale-smelling motel room that overlooked I-25. He had talked to informants in three cities, and superiors in Los Angeles and New Orleans. The conversations had been punctuated with innuendoes, threats, thoughtful pauses, laughter, and in some cases clear disbelief. Disbelief that Else had stumbled onto a viable new lead in the Kennedy assassination.
When Lieutenant Gus Cavalaris called from his office a little after 9:30 as Else stood on the balcony of the third-floor motel room, drinking bitter coffee and watching Denver’s early-morning rush hour fade, Else smiled to himself, content that his phone conversations had finally worked themselves full circle and back to Denver. “What have you got for me, Cavalaris?” Else asked, a hint of playfulness in his voice.
Reluctant to tell the condescending FBI agent that he’d just received new information about the Ducane and McPherson murder cases but feeling duty-bound to do so, Cavalaris said, “Got a heads-up for you in the Ducane murder. Last night up at the Eisenhower Tunnel, Sh-Sh-Sheriff Tolls’s people found a twenty-dollar gold piece with an S stamped on the coin’s reverse side tucked inside a fragment of what they suspect was a pocket torn from Ducane’s shirt.”
“So?” Else said smugly.
“So that coin’s a Satoni family trademark. Their brand, more or less. The coins have been floating around Denver for years. I th-th-think it’s time we had a talk with Satoni about any connection he might have had to Ducane. But for the record, as f-f-far as the McPherson case is concerned, that’s still mine.”
“I see,” said Else, trying to maintain his composure in light of the more significant conversations he’d already had that morning. Taking a sip of coffee, he smiled and shook his head. “Suppose I told you the McPherson murder could turn out to be a whole lot bigger than some over-the-hill miner buying the farm? What would you say to that, Lieutenant?”
Cavalaris stood his ground. “The law and the courts are on my side, Else. Do whatever you want with the Ducane murder. B-b-but, like I said, the McPherson case is still mine.”
“What?” Else tossed what was left of his coffee over the balcony railing and slammed the empty cup down onto the glass top of a rickety outdoor table.
“The Mc-Mc-McPherson case is mine.”
“Mine, your ass! You listen to me, my stuttering cow-town friend. Those cases belong to whoever I say they belong to, and right now, unless you can somehow trump me on the issue—and I can assure you, there are federal laws that say you can’t—those cases belong to me.”
Cavalaris, who hadn’t been forced to suffer the indignity of another law enforcement officer making fun of his speech impediment since his police academy days, frowned and gritted his teeth. In an attempt to defuse his anger, he walked around his chair, dropped to one knee, and opened the door to the minirefrigerator that was nestled below the battle-scarred credenza behind his desk.
“You still there, Cavalaris?”
Tightening his jaw muscles and squinting back his anger, he slipped a soda out of the refrigerator and unscrewed the cap. “Yeah.”
“We’re on the same page, then?”
“Same page,” Cavalaris said robotically, taking a swig of ginger ale and standing.
“Good. Because with that twenty-dollar gold piece in hand, we’ve got a legitimate reason to go after Satoni. You wanna run him down, or do you want me to do it?”
“I’ll locate him,” said Cavalaris, sounding winded.
“Do that,” said Else. “Just remember, I want to be there when you take him.”
“I-I-I’ll let you know when I’ve pinned him down.”
“I’ll talk to you later.”
“Yeah, later.” Cavalaris cradled the phone and eyed the bulletin board that hung on the wall behind his desk. Reaching nearly to the top of the memo-laden bulletin board, he pulled a yellow-headed pushpin out of a faded three-by-five black-and-white photograph, brought the photo to within inches of his nose, and stared at it. The photograph had been pinned to the bulletin board in the same position for so long that he’d almost forgotten about it. He was glad he hadn’t because the photo represented an important trail to his past. A broad-faced, thick-necked man with a crew cut filled the whole of the photograph. As he focused on the face of the man in the photo—the last of his colleagues to overtly make light of his stuttering, an overbearing, beer-swilling, poor excuse for a human being and a Denver Police Academy classmate who’d ultimately punched out of the class—Cavalaris, who’d spent a lifetime subduing his affliction, reflected on a cold, hard fact of life. A fact that would drive him to make certain that Ron Else would eventually eat his words. A fact that he’d be forced to think about each and every day of his life. Human beings, by their nature, can be exceptionally cruel.
Chapter 19
Light-headed from blood loss, and in fear for his life, Randall Maxie had moments earlier admitted to Pinkie Niedemeyer that he’d been stalking Damion on his own, not at Rollie Ornasetti’s behest. Maxie had come clean because he knew that Pinkie, a man cut from the same cloth as he, might just let him bleed to death out in the middle of the Pawnee grasslands.
He also knew that Pinkie was there on orders from Mario, and because of that, the Madrid kid would be his salvation. Pinkie wouldn’t risk blowing a hole in his head or letting him bleed to death with the kid looking on.
With Pinkie’s 9-mm still aimed squarely at his head, Maxie said, “Got a bargaining chip for you, Pink. Something you and that kid standing over there shaking like a leaf should consider.”
Niedemeyer, who detested being called “Pink,” glanced at Damion. “Better spit it out, Maxie, ’cause if it was up to me, I’d ride outta here on that four-wheeler right now and let your fuckin’ ass bleed to death.”
“But it’s not up to you, is it, Pink?” Down on his knees and gasping for air, Maxie forced a smile. “So here’s my ticket out of this dust bowl. I know all about that guy Ducane, the one whose body got coughed up out of the Eisenhower Tunnel last week. And what I know lets Mario off the hook.”
“The hook for what?”
“Don’t play coy with me, Niedemeyer. I’m bleeding to death, damn you. You know what I’m talking about. The JFK assassination.”
“So?”
“So I can tell you a story that proves Mario wasn’t involved.”
“He’s already got proof,” Pinkie protested, watching Maxie fall forward onto his belly.
“You can’t let him die! You can’t let him die!” Damion screamed, racing toward the two hit men.
Pinkie dropped to one knee and, with his gun still aimed at the base of Maxie’s skull, lifted Maxie’s head by a hank of hair. “You got enough wind left in you to sing your song if I drag your ass outta here?”
“Yeah.” Maxie’s answer was barely a wheeze.
Pinkie, who’d had more than one occasion to tie a makeshift tourniquet around the bleeding limb of a Vietnam buddy, took in the pleading look on Damion’s face. “Okay. Let me take a look at that arm.” He grabbed the seam of Maxie’s sport coat and ripped the sleeve off with one quick jerk to find a bloody shirt sleeve and a jagged through-and-through wound in the fleshy part of Maxie’s upper arm. A bloody pendulum of flesh swung from a thread of tissue just below Maxie’s armpit. “You sure as hell ain’t gonna bleed to death from this.” Turning to face Damion, he said, “Get over here, kid. Gonna need you for a bit.”
Damion approached, looking wary, as Pinkie ripped Maxie’s shirt sleeve off at the seam. Pinkie’s gun never wavered. Shoving the blood-soaked sleeve at Damion, he said, “Roll it into a rope and tie it tight around his arm just above his armpit.”
Without answering,
Damion squeezed the blood out of the shirt sleeve, knelt, and slipped it around Maxie’s arm.
“Knot it up, kid,” Pinkie ordered as Maxie let out a relieved sigh.
Damion’s hands shook as he tightened the improvised tourniquet around the 310-pound hit man’s arm. Satisfied that the tourniquet wouldn’t slip and that his knot would hold, Damion looked up at Pinkie and said, “Done.”
Admiring Damion’s handiwork and flashing him a wink of approval, Pinkie said, “Not quite. I want you to fill him up with as much water as you can. We’ve still gotta haul his lard ass outta here, and we need to keep his blood pressure up.” Glancing back toward the ATV, Pinkie shook his head. “Shit! The three of us on that fuckin’ dune buggy’s gonna be tight.”
“I can walk out.” Damion slipped his canteen strap from around his neck, knelt, lifted Maxie’s head, and forced him to take a drink of water. As he coaxed Maxie to drink, he had the strange, sudden feeling that he’d dropped through some Alice in Wonderland hole in the universe and into combat.
“The hell you will. The three of us roll outta here together, or we don’t roll at all.”