by Robert Greer
His heart started racing when, from the end of the passageway, he caught sight of a man dressed in hospital scrubs pushing a gurney top-heavy with a body bag toward the open back door of a Denver coroner’s wagon. Only after the gurney’s legs collapsed and he watched the body slide into the wagon did CJ notice the yellow chalk outline where a body had once lain. His mouth turned dry when he spotted a second outline twenty yards or so farther up the alley.
With no cops in sight and in the absence of the technical crime-scene people he knew typically managed a homicide scene, he reasoned that the man in scrubs was merely a driver. Boldly and without hesitation, he stepped out from the protection of the archway where he’d been hiding and headed toward the man.
“Hey, man, I live just up the alley here,” he said, flashing the startled man his very best concerned-citizen look. “What’s going on?”
Looking as if he wanted to ask CJ, How the hell’d you get here? the man in scrubs instead nodded toward GI Joe’s. “Some one-armed guy who worked at a pawnshop and another guy, some Asian, bought it. Already carted the first guy off.”
“Robbery?” CJ asked dolefully.
The driver shrugged, slipped behind the wheel of his vehicle, and cranked the engine. “Real likely. Now, if I were you, I’d head back home. The cops are gonna come outa the back door of that pawnshop hungry for suspects any second. Don’t think you wanna end up bein’ one.”
Aware that being in the wrong place at the wrong time was all too often what Ike liked to call the black man’s penalty point, CJ was prepared to heed the driver’s advice. However, he stood listless and dumbfounded for a few seconds as the coroner’s wagon pulled away. Only when he heard voices from just inside GI Joe’s did he sprint for the protection of the archway.
“Hell of a way for Wiley to buy it after workin’ for me all this time. Real sad,” CJ heard a man whose voice was clearly cracking say, a split second after he slipped into the shelter of the archway.
“You’re right, Mr. Steed. Pretty damn sad. But that’s the world we live in,” a second man said.
CJ didn’t hang around to catch any more of the conversation. There was no need for him to end up being the cops’ initial murder suspect. He’d gotten what he’d come for. Wiley Ames was dead, and no matter how much he might want to, he couldn’t change that.
The rest of CJ’s day was a sour-tasting dog of a day. One that carried with it a strange, sorrowful, missed-opportunity kind of hurt.
He’d known Wiley Ames for less than two days, yet it seemed as if he’d known the crusty, one-armed World War II veteran for years. When he found himself thinking about what it was that made people friends—like him and Rosie Weeks, the man now sitting across the table from him—he couldn’t put his finger on anything specific. What he did know was that he and Rosie both loved cars, appreciated the same kind of music, and enjoyed the same kinds of food. All pretty superficial connections in the end. He realized that the roots of true friendship, like those that linked him to Rosie or Henry Bales, sank much deeper than that.
Perhaps he and Wiley Ames would never have become true friends, but someone had stolen that opportunity from them, and perhaps more than anything else, that was what had made CJ not simply sad but angry. Sitting forward in an old straight-backed kitchen chair and planting both elbows on Ike’s kitchen table, CJ sighed.
“You sound put-upon, brother,” said Rosie. Six-foot-four with an enormous head, no neck, and shoulders that made it appear as if he was permanently wearing football pads, Rosie was even-tempered and slow to anger. Even so, he could intimidate just about anyone with his size and legendary ice-dagger stare.
“Yeah.” CJ stared blankly past his hulking 250-pound best friend toward the door that separated the Victorian’s business offices from Ike’s living quarters.
“Well, spit out your problem.”
“Have you seen the news?”
“Nope. No need to listen to all the problems in the world when I’ve got problems enough of my own.”
“A guy I knew got killed.”
“Damn! Did I know him, too?”
“No. He managed a pawnshop down on Larimer.”
“What happened?”
“He and another guy got shot. From what they’re saying on the news, the cops think it was robbery.”
“Bad shit. Did he serve with you in ’Nam?”
“No. He was a World War II vet.”
“Old guy, then. A brother?”
“Nope. He was white,” said CJ, smiling at his best friend’s old-age take on a man who’d probably only been in his late forties.
“You’re worried about what happened to some white guy left over from World War II? Shit. After what the Man just put you through? Come on, CJ. Get real.”
Since the Man had once shipped Wiley Ames’s young white ass to the same kind of hellhole where he’d shipped CJ’s, CJ found it hard to buy in to Rosie’s take. In no mood to debate the issue, he simply said, “I’m gonna find out who killed him, Roosevelt.”
“That serious a deal?” Rosie asked, knowing CJ would never otherwise have called him by his full name.
“Yeah, that serious.”
Rosie, who understood CJ’s tenacious nature better than anyone except perhaps Ike, shook his head. “Don’t pay to get involved in some white man’s murder case. Only thing worse would be gettin’ dragged into one involvin’ a white woman.” When Rosie realized his words were falling on deaf ears, he said, “You better listen to me, CJ.”
“I’m listening,” said CJ, who suddenly found himself pondering the issue of friendship once again, knowing that in spite of Rosie’s protest, he wasn’t about to change his mind.
For most of the next week CJ moped around feeling sorry for himself, telling himself that had Wiley Ames lived, he would have had a mentor to help guide him in the right direction.
A week to the day after his and Rosie’s kitchen discussion, as Rosie helped him sort through a basement stash of more than a hundred handblown glass bottles that CJ had amassed over the years, the two lifelong friends found themselves on different sides of the same argument once again.
When Rosie suggested to a morose-looking CJ that what he needed to get his head straight was less time on his hands to worry about Wiley Ames, CJ shot back, “What I need is folks who support me, Roosevelt.”
Rosie’s assessment had come after CJ had interrupted what they were doing to show Rosie three hanging Pendaflex folders filled with newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, and xeroxed copies of a local Denver talk-show host’s interview with a panel of experts about what was now being called the GI Joe’s murders.
“Come off it, CJ. You got Ike, me, and Etta Lee, Henry Bales when he ain’t busy studying, and most of the folks in Five Points pullin’ for you.”
CJ’s response was a snort. “Pulling for me? None of them helped me babysit that .50-caliber of mine in ’Nam. None of them shouted from their rooftops, ‘CJ’s had enough. Send him on home.’ None of them suffered through foot rot or endless days of one-hundred-degree heat. To the best of my knowledge, none of them fought off disease-carrying bugs the size of small birds, and Lord knows, not a one of them, including you, ever had to put up with the smell of rotting flesh or the cries of wounded men dying.”
Rosie’s jaw muscles tightened as he tried to stave off his gathering anger. “You can stop, CJ. I get the picture. Don’t matter, though, really. You been through what you’ve been through. The issue now is, where the shit are you headed from here?”
“For a life full of lots of nothing it looks like!”
Rosie had had enough. He’d held CJ’s hand all week, let him cry on his shoulder, assured him that things would work out, promised him the cops would find Wiley Ames’s killer. For weeks before that, he’d sat up with CJ, sometimes all night, calming him down when he screamed at the sound of nothing, reassuring him that things would be okay when CJ sometimes sat for hours in a corner. He’d sworn things were getting better until the ki
llings at GI Joe’s. Uncertain what to say or do next, Rosie said, “Hate to say it, my man, but you’re actin’ more and more like a scalded dog on the run. Maybe what you need is professional help.”
Fighting back tears, CJ yelled, “Get outa here, Rosie. Right now. Go on home to Etta Lee and that precious gas station of yours.”
Sensing that he needed to do just that in order not to damage their lifelong friendship, Rosie said, “I’m goin’. But you better get help, CJ, and quick.”
“Go, Rosie. Please!”
Rosie shrugged, turned, and headed for the musty earthen basement’s stairs, leaving CJ staring at a fifty-year-old wooden tennis racket he’d picked up for a dollar at a garage sale just before leaving for his first tour of Vietnam.
At the top of the stairs, Rosie ran into Ike. Brushing past him, he whispered, “CJ needs help real bad, Ike,” before quickly heading down the hallway and out the drafty Victorian’s front door.
Ike paused and took a deep breath before heading downstairs. When he reached the bottom step, he called out, “Now that you’ve sent your best friend runnin’ for cover, am I next, CJ?”
When CJ didn’t answer, Ike called out in a tone an octave higher, “I asked you a question, boy.”
“Nope,” CJ said somberly.
“Who is, then? Etta Lee? Henry Bales? Those halfwit ne’er-do-wells who hang out at Rosie’s Garage, talkin’ all the time about you bein’ a war hero and all? The paper boy? The mailman?” Ike walked over to CJ and placed a reassuring hand on his trembling nephew’s shoulder. “Have you reached the point where you’re needin’ to see a shrink, CJ?”
The way Ike said the word shrink, so forcefully and straight into his face, caused CJ to take a half step back.
“No. What I’m in need of is a future.”
“We’re all in need of that, son,” Ike said, removing his hand. “But you gotta imagine one before you can have one. And even then you gotta have the gumption to go after it.”
“I was thinking I was on the road to having one until Wiley Ames got killed.”
“Horseshit! You’re just usin’ those GI Joe’s killin’s as an excuse. Just like you been usin’ most of your wakin’ hours this past week mopin’ and spinnin’ your goddamn wheels. Clippin’ articles outa the papers about them killin’s, talking to that pawnshop owner and Ames’s niece on the phone without ever once goin’ to see ’em, hoverin’ over the radio and TV, playin’ like you gonna investigate two murders when you don’t know what the shit you’re doin’.”
“I’ve dug up some things,” CJ said defensively.
“Like what?”
“I know a lot about Quan Lee Chin, that Chinese guy who was killed. I know for certain he was a fence.”
“Okay.” Ike looked unimpressed. “Do you know anything about the weapon that was used to kill ’em? Got any insight on a motive for the killin’s besides robbery? Have you talked to any eyewitnesses, to the cops?”
Looking puzzled, CJ said, “Word on the street is that the murder weapon was a .44 Mag; and the papers say—”
“The papers, my ass. All newspapers are good for is gossip-mongerin’ and wrappin’ fish. What you wanna know is why Ames and that Chinaman were there at that pawnshop so early in the mornin’, whether somebody had set up a meetin’ with the two of ’em, and if so, who? You need to know if either one of ’em was followin’ somebody else’s orders. Was Chin at that pawnshop makin’ a delivery, or was he there for a pickup? Most of all, you need to find out what coulda been valuable enough inside that place to murder two men for, or if maybe Ames and Chin were packin’ what the killer wanted on ’em. Those killin’s didn’t have to be over money or goods like the media’s been busy claimin’, neither. They coulda been over nothin’ more than a minor insult. Now, have you looked into every one of those things?”
“No.”
“Well, if you haven’t, them folders you been fillin’ up with newspaper clippin’s and God knows what else all this past week ain’t worth dogshit. No offense, CJ, but I’m gonna do somethin’ that needs doin’ here—a little investigatin’ of them murders on my own. I need you to agree to do somethin’ for me first, though.”
“What’s that?”
Ike’s response seemed prepared: “I’m gettin’ older and slower and flat-out more arthritic by the day. Can’t run this bail bondin’ business of mine much longer on my own. Sorta been countin’ on you to step in. Now, I offered you this job before, and you been puttin’ it off while you moon around over these murders.”
“I’ll have to think—”
“Ain’t no thinkin’ involved. I’m tellin’ you I need your help, CJ.”
CJ found himself at a loss for words. He couldn’t recall hearing Ike ask anyone for help more than three or four times in his life. But as he stared up at the man who had raised him and caught a whiff of the ever-present alcohol on Ike’s breath, he couldn’t help but notice the increasing stoop of his uncle’s shoulders, his gnarled, arthritis-ravaged hands, and his constant wheezing. Realizing that Ike could no longer do all the heavy lifting required to keep a bail bonding business afloat, CJ said, feeling instantly guilty, “And you’ll help me find out who killed Wiley Ames?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“So when do you need me to start?” CJ asked. There was more trepidation than enthusiasm in his voice.
“Right now’ll do just fine. And you can begin by puttin’ away them hangin’ folders of yours and openin’ your ears and eyes a damn sight wider.” Ike draped his arm over CJ’s shoulders. “Somethin’ll come down the pike here soon enough concernin’ them killin’s. And when it does, you’re gonna have to learn to sniff out what’s important and discard what’s not. I can help,” Ike said with a wink. “But murder-sniffin’s a lot like wine-tastin’. You gotta develop your palate pretty much on your own.”
Chapter 5
For most of the next two days, with Ike pushing and shoving him all the way, CJ felt as if he was back in school again. He’d always been a decent though reluctant student and except for the time he’d spent in navy gunnery school learning the importance of coordinate couplings, backdrop sight-ins, and projectile slump compensation, most things that smacked of formal textbook learning tended to rest a little uneasily with him.
Recognizing at Ike’s insistence that what he needed to learn about the investigative end of the bail bonding and bounty hunting businesses was very much akin to his gunnery training, CJ found himself more often than not hanging on Ike’s every word.
Although he’d lived with Ike all his life and had an overall general understanding of what his uncle did for a living, he’d never paid much attention to Ike’s day-to-day business dealings. He did know that the majority of the bonds Ike wrote were underwritten by agents of the Pioneer Insurance Company and that Ike referred to every bond he posted and every bond skipper he had to track down as simply a case, never calling the people he represented or pursued clients.
CJ spent hours learning how to size up potential cases in the quiet dimness of Ike’s office with his chair pulled up to the left of Ike’s desk, listening and learning. Occasionally he found himself staring at the wall behind Ike’s desk, where a portrait gallery of the more than sixty bond skippers Ike had brought back to face justice hung. More often than not, the tutelage took place with CJ rolling an unlit cheroot from side to side in his mouth while Ike, outfitted in bib overalls, an always freshly laundered, heavily starched white shirt, and a bolo tie, chewed on a toothpick as he talked.
CJ learned quickly. In order to, in Ike’s words, tenderize a case, Ike always kept his office overly air conditioned in the summer and excessively hot in the winter, claiming that the temperature extremes tended to make belligerent, ill-tempered, and sometimes even psychotic cases worry more about their comfort than popping their top.
The temperature gambit, at least according to Ike, also tended to scoot cherry-pickers looking for a cheap bond straight out the door. Ike’s MO whenever he sized up a c
ase was to have the case ushered into his office by his next-to-incompetent secretary, Nordeen Mapson, while he remained seated in his high-backed red leather chair behind an oversized, 1950s-vintage, solid oak classroom teacher’s desk, staring at the two barrel-shaped imitation suede chairs where the case was obliged to take a seat. A Tiffany floor lamp, the only nonceiling lighting in the room, tended to give the massive floor-to-ceiling bookcase to the right of Ike’s desk, a bookcase filled with the writings of Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, Elmore Leonard, and Langston Hughes, plenty of light, but never the case.
Years earlier Ike had sawed three inches off the legs of the room’s suede chairs, claiming that when negotiating business, height offers its own advantage. Thus, any case who came to negotiate with Ike Floyd, unless he or she happened to be six-foot-five or more, always sat below Ike’s eye level.
Halfway through the week of CJ’s crash bail bondsman apprenticeship, Ike invited CJ into his office to watch him negotiate a bond for an arsonist whom Ike had bonded out of jail once before. The arsonist’s brother, a pudgy little clear-eyed Spanish man with a Benedictine monk-style hairdo and a goatee, sat nervously in one of Ike’s barrel chairs to negotiate on behalf of his incarcerated sibling.
Aiming his words down at the little man as CJ looked on, Ike said, “Your brother don’t seem capable of learnin’ his lesson.”
“He can’t help himself, Mr. Floyd.” The brother sounded as guilty as if he’d been the arsonist himself. “He just likes lookin’ at fires. Can you help him?”
“Yeah. But it’ll be the last time. Firebugs got too many screws loose for me to keep dealin’ with.”
A few minutes later the deal that would allow the arsonist to walk the streets of Denver once again, free on bond thanks to his brother offering up his house in North Denver as collateral, was done. Ike showed the brother to the front door with one arm draped encouragingly over the man’s shoulders. “He’ll be out by midday tomorrow,” Ike said, watching the little man with the monk-style haircut leave.