by Robert Greer
“You can’t miss it; it’s a red-brick building on the right just before you get to the downtown bypass,” Sheila said to the bearded Iowan. “There’ll be saddles and tack in the window.”
The man thanked her and headed for the door with his wife in tow.
Wiping her brow and exhaling, Sheila turned to face Willette. “Morning rush. Thank God it’s over. You’d think people wouldn’t be able to find us up in this canyon, but my, my, how they do.”
“Means you must offer somethin’ real special.”
“I’d like to think so. Sorry I couldn’t really help you when you came in,” Sheila said apologetically. “But I had my hands full. Are you all settled?”
“Yep. Your young helper took my money, signed me in, and showed me to my room.”
“Emily’s a gem.” Sheila dusted off her hands and removed the apron she was wearing. “So what’s your agenda for the day, Ms. Reed?”
Willette, who’d thought long and hard about how to broach the subject of why she was there, reached into her purse, slipped out the now badly dog-eared FedEx envelope that had contained the Denver Post press clipping about Damion’s remains being found, and, looking Sheila squarely in the eye, said, “Need to know if you sent this.” She handed the envelope to Sheila. “It’s got your FedEx account number on it.”
Caught off guard and looking every bit of it, Sheila took the envelope. “I’m not sure.”
“Well, take a good look, sweetie. Especially since you told me on the phone just yesterday that you handle every bit of the FedEx business for this place.”
Sheila scanned the address label. “New Iberia, Louisiana—that’s a long way from here. There’s a chance Emily could’ve sent it.”
“Eleven hundred air miles and one hellacious drive up a canyon,” Willette said, nodding and moving a half step closer to Sheila. “That envelope you’re holdin’ contains a newspaper story about an earthquake you had here in Colorado just recently. A highway maintenance worker found the remains of a man up at your Eisenhower Tunnel in the quake’s aftermath. Now, I’m gonna ask you again. Did you send the envelope?”
“No.” Sheila’s response was emphatic.
“I see. Well, at least you’re givin’ the same answer.” There was a moment’s hesitation before Willette reached into her purse, extracted the .38, and aimed the barrel squarely at Sheila. “There’s nobody here, Lydia, if that’s really your name. I’ve checked. No sweet little Emily, and no good folks from Iowa left to run interference for you. Just you and me. So, my dear, I’m thinkin’ we might as well let down our hair and share some secrets. For starters, my name’s not Reed, it’s Willette Ducane. And those remains they found up at the Eisenhower Tunnel were my son Antoine’s. Now, we can keep playin’ ring-around-the-rosy if you wanna, and dance around the issue of whether you knew my Sugar Sweet all day, but before I leave here, you’re gonna tell me everything I should know about you and my son.”
“You’ve got the wrong person, Mrs. Ducane.”
“Don’t think so.” Willette forced a smile. “And wouldn’t you know it, your eyes are dartin’, sweetie. I’ve got the right person, all right. And the right FedEx account number. And most importantly, you’re the right kinda woman.” Willette shook her head. “Antoine was always partial to you crossover types. And you’re like my sister—his real mama—pure-D crossover. I’m from where women like you do what they have to, sweetie. Believe me, I understand. Antoine preferred the types who could walk both sides of the street. One day you’re white. Next day you’re black, just like his mama, Monique. Sorta gave both of ’em a bigger box of toys to choose from, I guess. Never saw no percentage in passin’, myself. Always figured you had the same chance of runnin’ into good or evil, or maybe even sweetness and light, no matter which side of the street you walked.”
Surprised to hear that Willette wasn’t Antoine’s mother, Sheila took a half step forward.
“Stay where you are, sweetie. This piece I’m holdin’ ain’t no friggin’ piece of costume jewelry.”
Confused and out of sorts, Sheila thought about the fact that in a span of twelve hours, two people had been able to invade a world that she’d spent nearly thirty-five years crafting. She was angry with herself for sending the newspaper story about the earthquake and Antoine to the New Iberia address she’d kept all those years. In a moment of weakness, guilt, arrogance, and all-out stupidity, thinking she was free of the past, she’d made a terrible mistake. A mistake that had exposed her. Years earlier, when she’d staged her disappearance, she could’ve chosen to go to Montana or Idaho, or even the Everglades. But she hadn’t. She was in love with Colorado. That too had been a mistake. But the biggest mistake she’d made, the one that had her struggling to maintain her composure as she stared down the barrel of a .38, was falling in love with Antoine Ducane. With a hint of nervousness in her voice, she said, “I can call the sheriff. He’s a friend of mine.”
“Do that, my little passing-for-white princess, and I’ll shoot you right here on the spot. I’m eighty-eight years old, and I’ve pretty much already run my race. Won’t faze me one bit to plug you, honey.”
Sheila stared past Willette as if searching for some magical way out of her predicament. Suddenly she remembered the bail bondsman. “Then let me make a phone call to someone else. It could help us both out.”
“Why? Is somebody else out there ready to put a hole in you too?”
“No. I’m afraid that would be way too simple.”
“Well, pick your poison, hon. I don’t know how serious whoever you’re itchin’ to call is about helpin’ you, but like they say down my way, I’m here, and I’m as serious as a heart attack.”
“Okay, okay! I’ll tell you our story, mine and Antoine’s. Then you decide if I should make that phone call.”
“I’m listenin’.”
Eyeing the .38, Sheila said, “Can we go into the living room and sit down?”
“Lead the way.” Willette motioned Sheila toward the living room with a wave of the gun. “What’s your real name, by the way? I’m guessin’ it ain’t Lydia.”
“I’m Sheila Lucerne.”
“Nice name. Innocent and kinda biblical,” said Willette as they stepped into the living room. “The kinda name I know my Sugar Sweet woulda loved.”
Twenty minutes later Willette had a better understanding of Antoine’s years in Colorado and an appreciation for Antoine and Sheila’s strange love story. According to Sheila, the two had met at a Denver social mixer thrown by a New Orleans acquaintance whom each had known separately. The mixer had been an affair at which fair-and dark-skinned blacks with a Louisiana connection got together to choose opposite-skin-toned partners for the evening. She and Antoine, both light-skinned enough to pass for white, had ended up together because, perhaps intimidated by their good looks, no one else had stepped forward to choose either of them. In the wake of that gathering, first a friendship and then a five-year romance had blossomed. The love affair had ended abruptly in 1972. Sheila was just about to tell Willette why when there was a knock at the door.
“Let ’em knock,” said Willette. There were three more knocks as Sheila sat looking drained, and then silence. “So what happened in 1972?” Willette asked finally.
Sheila looked around the room helplessly. “First off, you should know that by then I knew Antoine was connected. We’d been going together for over five years. I knew most of his Denver associates—even some of the people he worked with up at the Eisenhower Tunnel.”
“What happened?” Willette asked impatiently.
“Hale Boggs died in a plane crash up in Alaska.” Sheila blurted the words out.
“The Louisiana congressman?” Willette asked, looking perplexed.
“Yes. That plane crash sent Antoine into orbit. I’d never seen him so upset.”
Still looking puzzled, Willette asked, “Why would Antoine care about what happened to Boggs?”
“Believe me, I asked myself the very same thing back th
en. When I put the question to Antoine, asked him point-blank why he cared about what had happened to some mealy-mouthed politician, he danced around the issue. For three weeks after that crash, Antoine was at odds with himself, juggling his work schedule up at the Eisenhower Tunnel, working twelve-hour shifts with three days on and one day off. On his off days he came down from the tunnel to Denver like always, but not to see me. He spent that time with other people. It wasn’t until the end of those three weeks that I learned why the Hale Boggs plane crash had him so shaken. He told me Boggs had been a member of the Warren Commission that had investigated the JFK assassination, and that in the months leading up to the plane crash and his death, Boggs had been making noises about being unhappy with the commission’s finding that Lee Harvey Oswald had killed the president. According to Antoine, Boggs had been pushing for the investigation into the assassination to be reopened. Three weeks to the day after that Alaskan plane crash, Antoine told me he’d been in on the plot to kill Kennedy himself. I was scared to death for both of us every second after that. Two weeks later Antoine disappeared.”
Willette took a deep breath and very slowly ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth. She’d always known deep down that Antoine had probably been in on the JFK killing, but she’d told herself that he’d been a minor cog in a much larger wheel. A runner, a driver, a drop-off man, a utility infielder of sorts. She’d purposely lied to herself. She’d never pushed him to tell her what had happened up in Chicago all those years ago, weeks before the assassination, and she’d never asked him why he’d run off to Colorado afterward. She’d never asked about the doodles and sketches he’d made on the day of the assassination or the day afterward while they’d sat at her kitchen table, glued to the TV. And there’d been reason. In spite of her reputation for toughness, she’d been afraid too. Afraid to talk or speak or ask for fear that she’d somehow end up like Antoine’s mother, her gullible baby sister. Monique had gotten herself involved with the mob as a teenager and eventually worked her way all the way up to having an affair with Carlos Marcello. Suddenly, as she thought about Monique, she found herself fighting back tears. Finally she asked, “Did Antoine tell anybody else about his involvement in the Kennedy assassination?”
“I’m not sure, but I have a feeling he told a friend of his, a man named Cornelius McPherson who worked with him up at the Eisenhower Tunnel bore.” Sheila drew a deep breath. “McPherson’s the miner mentioned in that article I sent you. He ended up getting murdered down in Denver just the other day.”
Still unable to envision Antoine as a miner, Willette asked, “What exactly did Antoine do up at that tunnel? And what about other mining friends of his besides McPherson?”
“He operated a crane for a bit, but mostly he drove a truck. As for his mining friends, as far as I ever knew, McPherson was it. Most of the people he hung out with were in Denver.”
“Not a lot to go on, I’m afraid.”
“There is one other thing,” Sheila said sheepishly. “It’s related to that phone call I wanted to make earlier.”
“Spit it out, child.”
“Last night a man came by here asking all kinds of questions about Antoine. A linebacker-sized brother dressed head to toe in black and sporting a Stetson. I stonewalled him—told him I’d never heard of anyone named Antoine Ducane.”
“A cop, maybe?”
“No way. I can sniff out a cop a mile away. He claimed to be a bail bondsman. I’ve got his card.”
Willette eyed the .38 she’d placed on the coffee table between them and thoughtfully stroked her chin. “Since we’re confessin’ here, I might as well too. I’m pretty sure there’re some connected kinda folks from back down in Louisiana who’re up here in Colorado after me. And if what you’re tellin’ me is true, it’s a lead-pipe cinch that sooner or later they’ll be after you.” She broke into a half grin. “Looks like the two of us are stuck between what people like to refer to as a rock and a hard place. We can sit tight, call the cops, contact your mystery man in black, or run. It’s your choice, honey. As for me, I’m too old to run.”
“Makes two of us.”
“The bail bondsman, then?” asked Willette.
“Unless you trust the cops, he’s the best thing we’ve got. I’ll go get his card.” Sheila rose from her chair. “But what if we’re wrong and he’s somehow connected to people from Louisiana who’d like to make us both disappear?”
“Then we’ll just have to disconnect him,” said Willette, reaching forward and tapping the butt of her .38. “But before we give him a jingle, maybe you can tell me a little more about how the whole Hale Boggs thing unfolded and how it is that, unlike my Sugar Sweet, you managed to keep on breathin’ and vanish up here into these canyon walls.”
“You ever heard of something called a plant?” asked Sheila, certain Willette’s answer would be no.
“Sure have,” said Willette, smiling. “It’s mob parlance for facilitatin’ somebody’s disappearance instead of killin’ ’em.”
Sheila looked at once surprised and guilty. “Turns out that money to get by on, and my move up here the following year, was my reward for never saying anything about what I thought might have happened to Antoine. I spent some time in Denver after he disappeared, setting myself up as a living, breathing white woman. Even hooked up with a real nice white boy, an aerospace engineer, before I was told to move up here.”
“Bet the new boyfriend didn’t like you buggin’ out on him.”
“He didn’t. But like me, he liked living, and since he’d gotten himself all tangled in my life, he had no choice but to go along with the long-term consequences of the plant. How about I tell you the whole story after we talk to that bail bondsman?”
“Time’s a-wastin’,” said Willette. “And by the way, we got one other good reason for goin’ with the bail bondsman.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s black,” said Willette reaching for the .38 and stowing it back in her purse.
Chapter 26
Droplets of dried blood spotted the parking stripe just to the left of Rollie Ornasetti’s BMW. Hours earlier Denver police had cordoned off a fifty-square-foot area around the late-model BMW, and crime-scene technicians were now busy dusting the car for prints.
Gus Cavalaris stood inside the ribbon of crime-scene tape talking to a stubby fireplug of a cop with a bulbous nose and bushy sideburns that were on the verge of being dress-code noncompliant.
“So what’ve you g-g-got for me, Toby?” Eager to head for Poudre Canyon, Cavalaris eyed his watch.
The husky cop looked at notes he had jotted on a folded sheet of paper. “Not much more than I had when I called you earlier. And for the record, Lieutenant, I know you’re in a hurry, but you’re the one who put the word out to be called about anything that went down concerning Ornasetti.”
“S-s-sorry, Toby. Got too many irons in the fire right now. If I d-d-don’t get up north in a hurry, I’m afraid a little chicken I’m after is gonna fly the coop. Should’ve dealt with the issue last night.”
“No question we’ve got ourselves a missing chicken here. It’s a cinch Ornasetti’s gotten himself either killed and planted, or abducted. And considering the minimal amounts of blood the crime-scene boys have found, I’d vote for the latter.”
“Who called it in?”
“Ornasetti’s secretary. She flagged down a passing patrol car after she got to work this morning and found Ornasetti’s car sitting here with a door wide open.” The cop eyed his notes. “Told me Ornasetti normally walks into the office like clockwork with a box of LaMar’s donuts and his thermos of coffee between eight and eight-thirty every morning. He’s got a five-thousand-square-foot townhouse-office combo just above us. I’ve checked the place and the secretary out. She’s a 42D, with the curves to match, but she wasn’t much help.” The cop folded up his notes, shoved the piece of paper into a shirt pocket, and glanced at the BMW. “No real signs of a struggle, and there’s nothing missing from the car,
at least on first blush. A cell phone and a fancy voice-activated tape recorder were sitting on the front seat. Nothing on the recorder; I checked. For right now that’s about it, Lieutenant.”
Cavalaris walked over to the car. The cop stayed glued to his side. “N-n-nice car,” he said, running a finger along the rear bumper.
“This year’s model,” said the cop. “A hundred and thirty grand if you want one.” Eyeing Cavalaris quizzically, he asked, “Why the interest in Ornasetti? Never knew you were into small-time, old-school North Denver mobsters, Lieutenant. Always thought our city’s more upscale homicides were your beat.”
Cavalaris smiled. “Normally, you’d probably be r-r-right, b-b-but your missing mobster’s linked to one of my cases.” Peering into the shiny black BMW and thinking about the car Carl Watson had described in the McPherson drive-by, he said, “Real plush.”
“A whole lot plusher than the sled dogs we get to mush around all day.”
“You can say that again.” Cavalaris stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Think this car might be linked to my case. Can I get you to do something for me, Toby?”
“As long as it don’t involve pissin’ into the wind or underaged women.”
Cavalaris slipped his wallet out of his back pocket, fished out the business card on which he’d jotted Carl Watson’s home and work numbers, and handed it to Toby. “Call either of the numbers on the card and ask for Carl Watson. Tell him you want him to have a look at a car—see if there’s any chance he recognizes it.”
Toby Sanchez eyed the car longingly. “So you’re thinking this baby was involved in the murder case you’re working?”
“It’s better than an even bet. G-g-gotta run. I’ll get back with you this afternoon.”
“What if I can’t hook up with Watson?”
“Then let me know, and I’ll d-d-deliver him to the car.”
“Think your guy Watson might’ve swept in here and done Ornasetti?”