by Robert Greer
Maxie took a long sip of water, looked up at Damion, and said with a smirk, “Your friend needs the three of us to leave here together for a very good reason, son. If I croak, he’s going to need somebody to say he didn’t pop me. You’re his insurance policy, kid.”
Ignoring Maxie and wondering why he was on his knees tending to someone who’d just tried to kill him, Damion looked up at Pinkie for guidance.
Pinkie flashed Maxie a glance that said, I’ll leave you here, damn it. “You wanna be trucked outta here, asshole, you best shut up. The only words I wanna hear outta your fat ass from now on are words tellin’ me all about that dead man, Ducane.” Turning to Damion, he said, “Okay, kid, time for you to help me lift him up.” Maxie let out a howl as they each slipped an arm under his. “No pain, no gain,” said Pinkie as the burly hit man grimaced in pain. “Let’s move it,” he added as they wobbled their way toward the ATV.
Realizing he was about to make it out of the grasslands alive, Maxie said, “You must owe Satoni one hell of a debt, Pink. Out here on a mission like this.”
Pinkie grinned knowingly. “And with your Ducane story to pass along, I’d say I’ve pretty much chipped away at most everything I owe.”
Now barely able to stand, Maxie remained silent, but Damion, struggling to make sense out of all that had happened to him in the past hour, eyed Pinkie inquisitively and asked, “How do you know Mario?”
“It’s a long story, kid,” said Pinkie, as they struggled to prop Maxie up on the front seat of the ATV. “As long a story as the one Mr. Maxie here is about to tell us, I suspect.” Pinkie climbed behind the wheel of the ATV. “And since he’s our special guest, I’m gonna let him go first. You’re on, Maxie.” Pinkie tapped Maxie in the stomach with the barrel of his 9-mm and nosed the ATV in the direction of the trailhead. “And this better be good for all our sakes. ’Cause if it ain’t, I just might decide to cruise right on past Poudre Valley Hospital on the way home.”
When Pinkie and Damion walked through the door of CJ’s office a few minutes before noon, dressed in bloodstained clothes and looking for all the world like transients in need of a meal, CJ knew he was in for trouble. After waving them to sit down and offering them coffee, which Pinkie refused in favor of a shot of vodka, CJ listened intently to Damion’s version of what had happened at the Pawnee, capping off his tale with a description of how they’d literally rolled Randall Maxie out of Pinkie’s SUV onto the emergency-room driveway of Poudre Valley Hospital near Fort Collins, leaving the barely coherent Maxie to fend for himself. After Pinkie offered a few final embellishments, CJ let out a sigh, shoved the telephone on his desk toward Damion, and said, “Call your mother. She’s worried to death. She’s called here four times.”
As Damion picked up the receiver, Pinkie whispered to CJ, “I need to make a call too.” CJ nodded toward Flora Jean’s vacant office. Pinkie stepped across the room and quickly disappeared into the adjoining office, prepared to bring Mario up to speed on what Maxie had told him.
“What should I tell her?” Damion asked as CJ turned back to face him.
“Tell her where you are and that you’re all right.”
“Should I tell her what happened?”
“That’s up to you.”
Damion glanced toward the open doorway to Flora Jean’s office, where Pinkie, who’d heard CJ’s directive, was dialing Mario’s number. As he dialed his home number, Damion asked Pinkie, “Should I tell her?”
Pinkie shrugged. “Don’t ask me, kid. I never had a mother.”
At a loss what to do, Damion swallowed hard as Julie answered with an expectant “Hello” on the second ring.
Trying his best to sound normal, Damion said, “It’s me, Mom.”
“Damion! Where are you? I’ve been frightened to death. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m down at CJ’s office.”
“Where’ve you been?”
“Up at the Pawnee, thinking.” He glanced at CJ, and then at Pinkie, aware that his words were the foundation for the half-truth. “After what happened last night I went up there to think. I’m sorry I blurted out what I did about Grandpa.”
“That’s okay, Damion. I’ve had some time to think too.” For the first time in hours, her heart seemed to have stopped racing. “It’s probably best that it came out now. How soon will you be home?”
“In an hour or so. I need to finish up some things here with CJ. Talk to him about whether or not I should continue working for him and Mario.”
“It’s okay—to work for them, I mean.”
In a tone meant to let her know that he was capable of making that decision on his own, Damion said, “I know it is, Mom. I’ll be home in a little bit.”
“Fine.” Overjoyed that Damion was all right, Julie decided not to press the issue.
“We’ll talk some more then. Love you.” Damion cradled the phone, looked up at CJ, and said, “Decided not to tell her what happened at the Pawnee.”
“Reasonable decision—for the moment. Just remember, if what really happened ever comes up for discussion, don’t lie.”
Damion nodded and glanced toward the doorway of Flora Jean’s office. Pinkie, who’d just hung up from talking to Mario, dusted off the front of his trousers as if he expected the ground-in dirt and blood to disappear. “Did you tell her everything, kid?”
“No, but what I told her was the truth.”
“Good. ’Cause we’re both gonna have to be real truthful here in a little bit. Mario’s on his way down here, and he’s madder than shit. Wants to hear about what happened at the grasslands firsthand, especially the Antoine Ducane part. Had to convince him to get his butt down here instead of gettin’ a gun and chasin’ after Rollie himself. Shit, the man’s eighty-two.”
CJ frowned and shook his head. “Damn it, Pinkie. That’s just what I need. An eighty-two-year-old former mafia don rolling in here armed and with a bad attitude.”
The words had barely left CJ’s mouth when Flora Jean walked through the front door, returning from lunch. When she glanced across the foyer to see Pinkie standing in the doorway to her office, disheveled, haggard, and with bloodstained clothes, she said, “Uh-oh.” Fixing her gaze on an equally grungy Damion, she asked, “Where the hell the two of you been, sugar?”
“To the Pawnee grasslands,” Damion said, sheepishly, aware that the bare-bones truth that he’d told his mother would be quickly deconstructed by the former marine intelligence operative. “And we had a little trouble,” he added, deciding to tell the truth. “Some guy tried to kill me.”
Mario arrived twenty minutes later, looking as agitated as CJ had ever seen him, and for the next half hour Damion watched in amazement as the street-smart, war-hardened four-person assemblage of Mario, Pinkie, CJ, and Flora Jean dissected every facet of what they knew about the Cornelius McPherson and Antoine Ducane murders as they tried to determine how those murders might possibly be tied to the assassination of America’s thirty-fifth president.
CJ and Flora Jean were on their third cups of coffee and an impatient Pinkie Niedemeyer was gnawing at the fingernail of his remaining pinkie when CJ, who’d been pushing Mario to let Flora Jean bring her fiancé, Alden Grace, in on what was clearly a defensive investigative strategy, said, “Like it or not, Mario, you’re gonna have to let Flora Jean unleash Alden. We need info at his kind of level if you don’t wanna end up riding down to FBI headquarters once a week.”
“He’s frickin’ CIA, Calvin. No way.”
“He’s not,” Flora Jean shot back.
“Well, he’s former military intelligence. Same damn thing in my book,” Mario countered, fingering the swollen gash in his forehead.
“And so am I.” Flora Jean slammed her fist into her right palm, causing the half-dozen silver African bracelets that encircled each of her wrists to erupt in a loud jingle.
“Would the two of you stop?” CJ walked over to Mario and rested a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “I need to know about how Antoine Ducane fit
into the JFK assassination plan, Mario, if you expect me to help you, and I don’t think we’ll find that information anywhere in the halls of Congress, the National Archives, the Warren Commission report, or the Internet.” CJ forced back a chuckle. “I’m gonna need somebody with a little bit of cred inside the intelligence community if I wanna get a leg up. Alden’s all we got.”
“Why? I’ve already told you there’s no question Rollie was in on the JFK hit. And didn’t Pinkie say just a few minutes ago that Maxie told him and Damion pretty much the same damn thing? Ain’t that enough?”
“That’s plenty. But it still doesn’t tell us what we need to know about Ducane. Why and how he got killed, or what his connection to the Kennedy assassination plot actually was. All we’ve got is Maxie claiming—while he’s bleeding to death on the way to the hospital, mind you—that Ducane showed up on Ornasetti’s doorstep right after the JFK assassination, and that for at least five years after that Ducane milked Rollie for lots of coin.”
“Hell, Calvin. What the shit do I care that Ducane was squeezing my dumb-ass nephew?” Mario eyed CJ sternly. “Damn. You’re startin’ to sound like you’re more interested in solvin’ the JFK killin’ than in helpin’ me.”
“Come on, Mario. Get real. And you should the hell care, especially if you expect to be kept out of the assassination mix. Who’s to say that you weren’t the one giving Ducane orders to milk Ornasetti dry, or that maybe you even called some of the shots on the JFK assassination yourself?”
“Everyone knows that’s bullshit!”
“Yeah. Everybody here. But what about the cops and the feds? If I’m gonna keep your butt out of their meat grinder, I’ll need to find out why Ducane was blackmailing Rollie. Seems as though on his life-saving ride out of the Pawnee grasslands, sweet old Randall Maxie forgot to mention anything to Pinkie or Damion about that.” CJ flashed Damion a wink.
“Well, you’re gonna have to ask Rollie that.”
“I plan to.” CJ glanced across the room at Pinkie. “Your turn, Pinkie. Why would Ornasetti let someone like Ducane, your basic small-time Louisiana thug, from all I’ve been able to gather, hold him up for money on a regular basis when he easily could’ve eliminated the problem?”
Pinkie stroked his chin thoughtfully, looked at Damion, who was drinking in every word as if he expected to be quizzed on the conversation later, and said, “Can’t be certain, but my guess would be that Rollie was takin’ orders from somebody else.”
“Mine too,” said CJ, watching every head in the room, including Damion’s, nod in agreement. “Question is, who?”
“Carlos Marcello would be my guess. You’ve got a Louisiana connection drippin’ all over the place,” Mario said sternly. “Or maybe Handsome Johnny Rosselli outta Chicago. He hated Kennedy.”
“What about Santo Trafficante?” Pinkie added.
“Maybe,” Mario said with a shrug. “None of ’em loved our boy from Boston. But they’re all dead.” Mario suddenly sounded nervous.
“And you’re just about the last man standing,” CJ said, relieved that Mario seemed to have finally grasped the point. “But fortunately the beat, as they say, goes on. The same way Rollie stepped into your seat here in Denver, somebody sure as hell took over Marcello’s and Rosselli’s and Trafficante’s seats too. Could be that with the right incentives, those people might want to help us out.”
Mario snickered. “Are you crazy, Calvin? If anybody inside the organization had a hint that I was sittin’ here tellin’ tales outta school, I’d pay one hefty and very permanent price. So don’t expect to go diggin’ into the lives of people or places or things that don’t concern us. ’Cause if you do, trust me, everyone in this room’ll end up payin’.”
Pinkie offered an affirmative nod before asking, “But just for the record, Mario, who do you think carries the most power of persuasion these days?”
“Depends on the kind of persuasion you’re talkin’ about.”
“The kind that could get a president killed,” CJ said.
Eyeing the ceiling thoughtfully, Mario said, “My guess would be that nowadays that kinda heat could only come outta Jersey, Vegas, Miami, or New Orleans.”
“New Orleans? Even after Katrina?” CJ asked, looking surprised.
“You bet. It’s not where the seat of power happens to be but who’s sittin’ in it. I’d sure as hell put money on New Orleans bein’ in the mix ’cause of Carmine Cassias. He took over from Marcello, and unlike my fuckin’ blockhead of a nephew, Cassias knows what he’s doin’.”
“Bad mother, I take it.”
“Badder,” Mario countered.
“And Jersey, Vegas, and Miami? What about them?”
“Don’t know much about who’s sittin’ in those seats right now. Been outta the loop too long. Cassias I know ’cause of some off-track bettin’ deals he set up with kin of Angie’s.”
Feeling a bit more satisfied than he thought he had a right to be, CJ said, “Then that takes us full circle back to Antoine Ducane, a dead little Louisiana damsel named Sheila Lucerne, and an authentic slice of American white bread, Carl Watson.”
“Who the hell’s Watson?” asked Pinkie.
“Watson and Lucerne are a couple of people who I think can put us on track to who killed Ducane,” CJ said thoughtfully, massaging his chin.
“But didn’t you just say that the Lucerne woman was dead?” asked Mario.
“Yep, but sometimes dead folk have a lot to say. You just have to listen. There’s a reason that McPherson guy—the one who initially discovered Ducane, or what was left of him, up at the Eisenhower Tunnel—turned up dead in Bonnie Brae the other night, and I’m betting the reason’s somehow tied to our mystery lady, Sheila Lucerne. Let me ask you something, Pinkie. When you came charging down into Mario’s basement the other day, how’d you know Mario was in trouble?”
“Word on the street,” Pinkie said softly.
“Come off it, Pinkie. I’m not buying it.” Pivoting to face Mario, CJ said, “It’s your ass in the sling, Mario. I need Pinkie to tell me the truth.”
Mario paused and looked around the room until his eyes met Damion’s. Suddenly lying seemed to be the wrong choice. “Okay, okay. So Pinkie and I knew that Rollie and Ducane once had a connection. But that’s it. Honest. We just didn’t want their connection to all of a sudden end up puttin’ me on the hot seat.”
“Good to know we’re all on the same page,” said CJ, turning his attention back to Pinkie. “So here’s the next question. Think Maxie was leveling with you out there at the grasslands, or do you think there’s a chance he could have been holding something back?”
“Wouldn’t put it past him,” said Pinkie. “You’d think he’d know more about Ducane’s murder than he told me and Damion, especially after wipin’ up after Rollie all these years.”
“Sure would. Problem is, we’ve got a time-sequence problem here. According to what Maxie told you and Damion, Ducane’s Ornasetti-funded gravy train derailed long before they finished constructing that Eisenhower Tunnel wall that Ducane’s body ended up trapped behind. That tells me that for a time, at least, the money to buy Ducane’s silence about the JFK killing had to be coming from somewhere other than Ornasetti. But according to McPherson’s story in the paper, Ducane didn’t disappear until 1972. Apparently Ducane’s second source of money wasn’t enough to keep him from having to keep his tunnel-mucking day job.”
“Can’t believe Ducane was that much of a miner anyway,” said Mario. “I never met him but once over at Richie’s Diner, but I heard he was more of a riverboat dandy than any kind of miner.”
“Good thing to know,” said CJ. “Especially since Maxie probably hedged on the truth in his little talk to Pinkie and Damion. I’d say Maxie needs another talking-to. In my book, at least, he’s the prime suspect in the McPherson murder. Could be Maxie had long-distance orders to shut McPherson up.”
“From Louisiana?” asked Pinkie.
“I’m not sure. Think maybe you can fi
nd out?”
Pinkie smiled. “If that fat-ass SOB is still alive, I sure can.”
“Then do it, ’cause I’m guessing we’ve got very little time before cops and feds start falling out of the sky.” Turning to Mario, CJ said, “We’re gonna need Alden Grace, Mario. I need your okay.”
Uncertain where else to turn in order to keep from being sucked into a gathering investigation that was likely to eventually place him at both the front and back ends of the JFK assassination, Mario offered a reluctant “Okay.”
“Fine. That’s two bases covered. There’s a third. Carl Watson. Since he’s the one who ended up with McPherson’s body on his front lawn, my guess is he’s gotta be in the mix somewhere. I’ll see if I can get Julie to have one of her law clerks sniff out all they can about Watson, his wife, and our mystery woman, Sheila Lucerne.”
“What about Ornasetti?” Damion called out from his seat in the far corner of the conference room.
Smiling and realizing that Damion had taken in every word, CJ said, “He’ll keep for the moment, especially since he doesn’t know that Maxie’s pretty much sold him out. Once I finish with Watson, I’ll have a talk with him.”
“Be careful, CJ,” warned Mario. “He’s a fuckin’ snake.”
“So I’ve heard,” CJ said with a smile, clearly unintimidated. He was about to tell Damion to head for home when Julie, looking annoyed and slightly guilty, walked through the open doors of the old Victorian’s drawing room. Frustrated at waiting and still worried to death about Damion, she’d been unwilling to sit at home waiting for him any longer. Two stern-faced men followed in her wake. Seeing his mother standing there looking peeved gave Damion a start, but it was the presence of Lieutenant Gus Cavalaris and the man to Julie’s left—a man with a badly pockmarked face who was holding a wallet containing an FBI shield out in front of him—that grabbed CJ’s attention.
Chapter 20
Ron Else stood in the doorway of CJ’s conference room, staring at the surprised collection of people inside, feeling as if he’d just struck Klondike gold. He’d spent a career sifting through JFK assassination investigative trash and conspiracy swill. He’d bumped across most of the western United States on assassination-related boondoggles, tracking down bullshit and wannabe bravado, all kept afloat by healthy doses of innuendo, coincidence, and flat-out nonsense. But now he told himself, he might have stumbled across the mother lode. Nudging aside the startled Julie, who hadn’t realized that she had two men on her coattails until they’d followed her up CJ’s steps and into the building, Else said, “Sorry, Miss, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask everybody here to drop what they’re doing and answer a few questions.” Glancing at Julie, assured that he was doing her a favor, he added, “I’m afraid this is official FBI business you’ve stumbled into, Miss. I’m going to have to ask you to step into the room with everyone else or leave.”