The Mongoose Deception

by Robert Greer

  Cavalaris nodded and walked with Agent Hogan over to CJ and Pinkie. During the walk, Hogan kept the barrel of his 9-mm aimed at Cavalaris’s side. Cavalaris’s instructions to CJ and Pinkie were exacting and brief, and soon all five men were headed for the unmarked cruiser. A minute later, CJ, Cavalaris, and Pinkie sat in the back seat, locked down and jackknifed in semifetal positions. Demming, on his knees and facing them from the front seat, kept his gun barrel trained on the back seat as Hogan threaded the vehicle through a maze of police cars, past a second SWAT van, and finally past a glum-looking line of news reporters. It was another three minutes before the nervous deputy from the evidence locker raced up to Sheriff Vickers to report that the five men were missing.

  On a deserted Adams County road three miles from the sugar-beet factory, CJ, Cavalaris, and Pinkie were transferred to an armored car, where their mouths were taped shut and they were handcuffed to bench-style metal seats with their ankles also shackled. For the next half hour they rode along in silence. When the armored car finally pulled to a stop, they were unloaded and led across the pristine-looking concrete floor of what at first appeared to be a warehouse.

  Demming and Hogan, now armed with submachine guns, escorted them to a walled-off area the size of a spacious living room that was tucked into a corner of what CJ suddenly realized was a huge World War II—style Quonset hut. When Demming swung open a door in the center of the walled room, CJ was the first to see Ron Else seated at a metal 1950s-style teacher’s desk in the middle of a room. They were ushered to a long metal bench that was bolted to the floor. “Everybody have a seat,” Demming said. Once they were seated their feet were shackled to U-bolts in the floor. Demming checked each man’s handcuffs to make sure they were secure before taking three steps back, aiming his submachine gun at CJ, and announcing, “All set.”

  Else nodded and watched Demming strip the tape off all three men’s mouths. Able once again to breathe normally, CJ and Pinkie gulped fresh air as Cavalaris began coughing violently.

  “You about done there, Lieutenant?” Else asked after watching Cavalaris cough and gasp for air for the better part of a minute.

  Red-faced, Cavalaris looked up and squeaked out, “Yeah.”

  “Hope so, because we’ve got a lot to discuss here, and in a very short time.” Else glanced down at a sheet of paper on his desk. “So what have we got here?” he said, tapping the paper with an index finger. “Hmmm … Cavalaris, Augustas, homicide lieutenant, Denver Police Department, seventeen-year vet, twice decorated for bravery. A lifelong stutterer. Not bad, Lieutenant, overcoming the odds like that.” He turned his attention to Pinkie and smiled. “Niedemeyer, Andrus, known to friends and associates as Pinkie. Professional hit man. One tour of Vietnam, one Purple Heart. Just couldn’t get the killing out of your system, huh, Niedemeyer?” His gaze finally fell on CJ. “Floyd, Calvin J., bail bondsman, bounty hunter.” Else chuckled. “And latter-day antique merchant. Two tours of Vietnam and, oh my, a Navy Cross.” Else drummed his fingers on the paper. “Tough hombres, it would seem.” He eyed the other two agents before locking eyes with Cavalaris. “So, I’ve got a question for you, Lieutenant. Why were you out at the sugar-beet factory tonight?”

  Cavalaris leaned back against the wall, took a deep breath, and said, “Investigating the m-m-murder of a man named Antoine Ducane. But y-y-you already know that, don’t you, Agent Else?”

  Else turned to CJ and Pinkie without responding. “And you two? Why were you out there?”

  “Same reason,” said CJ.

  “But you’re not a cop, Mr. Floyd. So you must’ve been investigating Ducane’s death for somebody other than the taxpaying citizens of the city and county of Denver.”

  “I was, for a client.”

  “Your client have a name?”

  “Yeah, but I’m afraid that’s privileged information.”

  Else laughed. “What if I told you that your client’s name’s Willette Ducane?”

  “I’d say the same thing. Privileged information.”

  “Okay, Floyd. Play it tough. Just remember, in the end it might cost you.”

  Realizing that CJ was stalling for time, Cavalaris interrupted. “Almost forgot, Agent Else, but I’m a-a-afraid I’m gonna have to a-a-ask you to have Agents Demming and Hogan show me their FBI badges again. I sort of missed getting a good look at them in the dark.” Cavalaris’s tone was unmistakably condescending.

  Ignoring the remark, Else said, “Tell me what you know about Sheila Lucerne, Floyd.”

  “Afraid I’m gonna have to ask for some additional ID too,” said CJ, smiling and following Cavalaris’s lead.

  “Niedemeyer?” Else asked, turning red. “Wanna tell me why you were out at that sugar-beet factory?”

  “ID first,” Pinkie said, flashing Else a spiteful grin.

  The veins in Else’s forehead pulsated as he forced a wry smile. “Okay. You want identification? Fine, I’ll give you some.” He reached into a desk drawer, fished out several ID wallets, spread them out on the desktop, and flipped the one closest to him open. The wallet contained an FBI shield. He eased it across the desktop for all three men to see. He then shoved a wallet with an LAPD shield inside across the desktop, followed by a third wallet with a U.S. Secret Service badge, and finally a wallet with a U.S. Customs shield. Smiling as he watched each man’s eyes dart from wallet to wallet, he said, “The bottom line’s this, gentlemen. I’m whoever I want to be, which, unfortunately for the three of you, means I can also pretty much do anything I want to. You can appreciate that kind of leeway, can’t you?”

  When no one spoke up, Else said, “You three strays have been rooting around in a hole you never should’ve stuck your inquisitive noses into, and you need to ease back out on your haunches, turn tail, and haul ass back down the road. Clear enough?”

  “And if we don’t?” CJ asked, continuing to stall but less certain now whether the tactic could help them.

  “Then I’ll have to deliver the same message to you, Mr. Navy Cross recipient, that I was forced to deliver to Cornelius McPherson.”

  “I see,” said CJ, wondering how forthcoming Else would continue to be in his obvious attempt to let the three of them know that he meant business. “And I’m betting your friend you rescued from the silo rooftop is the one who delivered that message to McPherson?”

  Else flashed CJ the sly, knowing smile of someone well-schooled in the art of interrogation. “That’s your take, Floyd. Perhaps you need to stop confusing fact and fiction. Rooftop rescues, intimidating messages, even this meeting we’re having right now. Did any of them happen for real? And if they did, and you told somebody about them, who would believe you? I’m simply suggesting what could happen if you stick your nose any deeper into that hole I mentioned. Of course some people prefer to step away from those kinds of treacherous holes and find themselves a whole new life.”

  “Like Rollie Ornasetti and Sheila Lucerne,” said CJ. “Sorry, but I like the life I’ve got. Don’t need you or anyone else inventing a new one for me.” When Else didn’t respond, CJ said, “Doesn’t sound to me like any part of what you’re offering here is in the FBI policy manual. Midnight helicopter rescues, contract hits, new identities—hell, they all seem more like a page from a CIA handbook.”

  “There you go, Floyd, rooting around where you shouldn’t once again. Here’s some advice. In order to put together a puzzle, you first need to make sure you have all the pieces. Otherwise, in the end all you have is an unfinished puzzle. If I were you, that’s where I’d leave things—unfinished.”

  There was a moment of silence before Cavalaris spoke up. “We seem to be dancing around some issue here, Else. W-w-wanna spell it out?”

  “Cut the con, Lieutenant. You know exactly what the issue is. And I’m telling all three of you to back the hell away from it!”

  “Why not just kill us and be done with it?” CJ asked matter-of-factly.

  “That’s your problem to figure out, Floyd. Just like it’ll be your p
roblem to keep from making missteps in the future. The kind of missteps that could get you run over by a bus, or maybe even a road grader,” Else said, flashing CJ a toothy grin. “What I’m saying to you is, the three of you are going to get to spend the rest of your lives walking around on eggshells. We’ll see if you like it.”

  “Won’t bother me,” said Pinkie. “I don’t scare that easy.” He leaned forward on the bench and locked eyes with Else. “You’re just a flunky, Else. You ain’t poppin’ us ’cause somebody told you not to. Somebody who can’t afford the publicity. It would be tough to explain takin’ out the three of us after what happened tonight. And shit! That could start people to, uh … how do you keep puttin’ it? Rootin’. I don’t know what infected pussy you crawled out of, Else. The FBI’s or the CIA’s, or whether your orders are comin’ from the people I usually get my assignments from, which I doubt. But I don’t run scared. Can’t afford to. You’ll have to kill my ass first, fucker.”

  Else smiled. “I had the feeling that would be the kind of response I’d get from you, Niedemeyer. So here’s a little food for thought. There’s a homicide committed every nine minutes in this country, and if I choose to I can peg you as the killer in just about every new one. Arrange to have your DNA found at a murder scene in a dozen different cities on a moment’s notice. Get my drift, hit man?”

  Pinkie’s eyes narrowed into a determined squint. “Fuck you, asshole.”

  Hoping to get Pinkie under control, Cavalaris spoke up. He was certain Else had no idea that he’d caught a glimpse of Franklin Watts during the silo rescue, and that, he reasoned, gave them a leg up on Else. A leg up that he couldn’t afford to get chopped off because of Pinkie. “And if we s-s-stop rooting? What happens then?”

  “Like I’ve already said. You walk. Then all you have to do is get used to your eggshells. I’d forget about Ducane and McPherson and whatever else it is you think Ducane might’ve once been party to and go back to my mundane little life if I were you, Lieutenant.”

  Cavalaris sat back on the bench. Eyeing CJ and then Pinkie and giving each a subtle nod he hoped they understood, he said, “You’ve g-g-got me convinced.”

  “Floyd? Niedemeyer?”

  Uncertain why Cavalaris had suddenly decided to change their strategy from stalling to caving in but realizing there had to be a reason for the switch, CJ said, “Yeah, I’m okay with it.”

  “Me too,” said Pinkie, reluctantly following suit.

  “Good choice,” said Else. “But just to make sure you all keep playing the game the right way, I’ve got a final piece of advice. First off, Floyd. Go back to rooting around in things that don’t concern you and some people real close to you could get hurt, maybe even killed. The Madrids, the Benson woman—and of course Satoni.” Else chuckled and turned to Cavalaris. “And Lieutenant, got no problem at all with you. I can have you off the force and bagging groceries in a split second. An easy enough thing to do considering your a-a-affliction. Some rookie cop misinterprets an order of yours during some intense situation, he shoots the wrong person, maybe even a politician, and you’re thin-blue-line history. As I’m sure you know, life can be a tough row to hoe for stutterers.”

  Suppressing the urge to lunge at Else, Cavalaris thought about the piece of the Antoine Ducane puzzle he had tucked away for safekeeping: the leg up that just might keep him and CJ and Pinkie from spending the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders. Controlling his rage, he simply smiled.

  Else drew a deep breath and turned to Pinkie. “I’ve already said my piece to you, Niedemeyer. Think about it.” He swept the ID wallets on the tabletop into a pile and dropped them one by one back into a desk drawer. “So, gentlemen, I’d say that’s about it.”

  Drinking in the look of consternation on the three men’s faces, he laughed. “Yep, I’m whoever and absolutely whatever I want to be. Remember that.” He glanced briefly toward the two men with the submachine guns, nodded, and said, “Think it’s time we take an armored-car ride in the country.”

  Chapter 33

  The predawn sky was low and dark when CJ, with Gus Cavalaris and Pinkie standing at his side, rang Julie Madrid’s front doorbell.

  Hours earlier they’d been left in a corn field a hundred miles from Denver at the remote eastern edge of Elbert County. They zigzagged their way across miles of farmland in the dark before finally stumbling onto a creek and following it downstream until they reached a farmhouse. Cavalaris banged on the back door of the farmhouse until a rail-thin, weary-looking, barefoot man wearing coveralls appeared at the door. After Cavalaris announced that he was a police officer, the man reached to his right, grabbed a shotgun, snapped the weapon’s twin barrels shut, and aimed them at Cavalaris’s Adam’s apple. When the man demanded to see some ID, Cavalaris, calmly and without a single stutter, asked him to call his captain back in Denver. Cavalaris had to repeat his captain’s cell-phone number four times backward and forward before the shotgun-toting farmer agreed to make the call. After talking to Cavalaris’s captain for over fifteen minutes while his pimple-faced fifteen-year-old son stood pointing the shotgun at the three men, the farmer finally let the exhausted trio into the house. When he put Cavalaris on the line with his captain, it was another five minutes before Cavalaris turned to CJ and said, “Settled, at least temporarily, but don’t expect a warm reception in Denver.” And when the farmer finally asked why the three of them were out in the middle of nowhere stumbling around in the dark, Cavalaris said, “We’re w-w-working undercover, sir.”

  “Drugs!” the farmer said, glancing knowingly at his son.

  Cavalaris smiled and said, “Nope. N-n-no drugs. But if you can help us get back to Denver, I’ll give you some of the particulars.”

  A few minutes later the farmer and his son, both of them listening wide-eyed to Cavalaris, agreed to drive the three men back to Denver. For the entire two-hour trip, they listened in amazement as Cavalaris recounted what had happened at the sugar-beet factory. Every word of it was the truth up to the point of Ron Else’s arrival. Everything after that, Cavalaris made up on the fly.

  Moments after CJ rang Julie’s doorbell a second time, Julie, who’d already been awake for an hour, appeared at the door, dressed in a full-length Vietnamese silk robe and looking as fresh as if it were midday. Only mildly surprised to see the disheveled trio on her doorstep, she ushered them into the house. Shaking her head, she said, “No need to explain. I watched your Broadway opening last night on the TV. No doubt there’re still reporters out there at the sugar-beet plant waiting for you to surface. News, you know. They had your names still crawling across the bottom of my screen last night at 1 a.m.”

  “Figures,” CJ said with a shrug, his voice noticeably hoarse.

  “I’ve already been on the phone with Flora Jean, Mavis, and Alden this morning. Alden drove up from Colorado Springs last night. He’s at Flora Jean’s,” Julie said as they walked down the hallway that led to her living room. “Mavis is beside herself. Better call her, CJ.”

  Barefoot and dressed in CSU basketball warmups, Damion appeared in the kitchen doorway near the end of the hall. Relieved to see that CJ, Pinkie, and Cavalaris were all in one piece, he said, “You’ve been all over the news.”

  “So I’ve heard,” said CJ.

  “No cops here yet, but we’re expecting ’em. What happened?”

  “Damion, please.” Wagging a finger at Damion but looking directly at CJ, Julie said, “Call Mavis. I’ll get Flora Jean, Alden, and Mario headed this way. Willette and Sheila are upstairs, asleep. I’ll get them up in a sec.” Turning to the weary-looking Pinkie and Cavalaris, she asked, “Up for some coffee?”

  “Yes,” said Cavalaris. “I’m th-th-thinking we’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

  “Sure thing,” Pinkie added. “As long as I can have a shot of whiskey in mine.”

  “CJ, coffee?” Julie asked.

  “Yeah, and I’m calling Mavis right now,” he said, punching in Mavis’s number on the kitchen’s cord
less phone.

  Turning back to Pinkie, Julie asked, “Any brand preference?”

  “Nope. As long as it’s alcohol.”

  “How do you like your coffee, Lieutenant?”

  “B-b-black, if you don’t mind. And strong,” said Cavalaris, surprised by the graciousness of the woman he’d up until then thought of only as simply one more shark.

  Smiling, Julie said, “Sounds like a civil rights slogan,” as she watched CJ walk, phone in hand, toward a far corner of the room.

  Looking exhausted, CJ took a seat on a metal kitchen stool. With his back turned to everyone, he spoke softly into the receiver. “Mavis, it’s me.” There was a pause before, in response to Mavis’s rapid-fire questions—“Where are you? Are you okay? And should I get right there?”—CJ answered, “Julie’s. Yes. Yes. And hurry up.”

  An hour and twenty minutes and three pots of coffee later, Julie, CJ, Cavalaris, Pinkie, Flora Jean, and Alden Grace sat at Julie’s dining-room table, thoughtfully dissecting everything that had occurred from the moment Antoine Ducane’s body had been found at the Eisenhower Tunnel until CJ, Pinkie, and Cavalaris had been dropped in the corn field outside Limon. Sheila Lucerne, Damion, Mavis, Mario, and Willette Ducane sat in the adjacent kitchen, doing a lot more listening than talking. On the heels of Alden’s deconstruction of the three-city JFK assassination plot, the discussion, opinionated and vocal, had moved to the issue of what Antoine Ducane’s role had been in the assassination and what exactly had happened to Ducane back in 1972.

  Mavis, sounding subdued, startled everyone by leaning forward on a kitchen stool and asking, “So how did they get Antoine’s body up to the tunnel?”

  Surprised that the question had come from Mavis, Pinkie, who’d been waiting for an opening, said, “I’m tellin’ you, they froze the body. I’m sure of it. Just before all hell broke loose last night, I was in the process of inspectin’ a refrigeration unit in that old sugar-beet storage shed CJ and I had been escorted to.” Pinkie shook his head. “We shoulda known better. Anyway, I remembered seein’ a couple of similar units when I was … ah … out at the … ah … place on business before. I think that sugar-beet-slicing show that old caretaker put on for us was just PT Barnum bullshit, made up to keep the old fart amused. The real way I think old Arnie and the folks tellin’ him what to do handled the … uh … kinds of problems that came up out there was to freeze the problem away and then move it.” Pinkie looked at Cavalaris and shrugged. “Never thought I’d be talkin’ like this in front of a cop.”