by Robert Greer
“I’ve been tellin’ you that all along. ’Bout time the two of you listened. I wouldn’t’ve shared nothin’ with a blockhead like Billy. The dumbass fucker. Now, you done with me here?”
“No need for name-callin’ the dead,” said Ike, recognizing that Leander was feeling at least half his oats again. “Think we should let this little puke go?” he asked CJ.
“Might as well.”
“Good.” Leander rubbed at his sore neck with cuffed hands and stood. “Would you get these damn handcuffs off me?”
Staring Leander down as he moved to uncuff him, CJ said, “Don’t ever shoot at me again, Leander. You hear me?”
Leander sheepishly eyed the floor, suspecting that if he ever took another shot at CJ, he’d have an eternity to regret it. Rubbing his wrists, he said, “Since the two of you are so hell-bent on findin’ Billy’s killer, here’s a tidbit for you. Shouldn’t give you shit after the way you’ve treated me, but I’ve already passed it on to the cops, so what the hell? Since you’re so damn keen on Billy havin’ a partner in with him on that winnin’ Policy ticket of his, I’d be lookin’ in the direction of that stuck-up girlfriend of his, Ray Lynn. She had dumbass Billy’s nose open a mile wide. Word on the street is she’s pregnant and that because of that, Billy was gonna ditch her. I don’t think her daddy the judge woulda liked that one bit.”
“Well, well, well. Here come the judge,” said Ike. “Looks like I might need another private session with my old field-artillery lieutenant.”
“Tonight?” CJ asked eagerly.
“Nope. Marguerite and me got eatin’-out plans for tonight.”
“What about Marguerite bein’ Billy’s partner?” asked Leander. “After all, the woman was once a whore. Hell, for all we know she coulda offed him over that Policy money.”
“Get the hell outa here, Leander!” Ike yelled, rising from his chair as Leander made a beeline for the open office door.
Grabbing Leander by the arm and shoving him though the doorway, CJ said, “Outa here, Leander, before I get to thinking we’re back in Commerce City.”
“She coulda killed him, ya know,” Ike said, looking up at CJ with a dour face.
“No way.”
“Anybody’s capable of killin’, CJ. We both know that. Just takes the right kinda circumstance.”
Ike slowly and thoughtfully rose from his seat, grabbed a jacket off the wall hook behind his desk, and stared pensively at CJ. “You don’t look no worse for wear after being shot at,” he said, changing the subject. “Next time you go after a little turd like Leander, think before you act. Like I said, anybody’s capable of killin’ given the right circumstances. See you later.” He pivoted and headed for the front door.
“I’ll do that,” said CJ, who’d learned the truth in his uncle’s statement during Vietnam. Looking guilty and a bit disoriented, he stared through the open office doorway for a solid two minutes before he rose and headed for his apartment upstairs.
Thirty minutes later, sitting at his kitchen table after polishing off a beer and a couple of cheroots, CJ found himself thinking about the myriad of reasons someone might have wanted to kill Billy Larkin. The reason topping his list remained money. Eighteen thousand dollars’ worth of it that could have soothed Otis Suggs’s fears of taking a step down the social ladder, mollified Ray Lynn’s revenge over a potential dumping, and erased Coletta Newby’s indebtedness. Strangely, however, everyone on his list of suspects seemed to have a straight-up motive for killing Billy except for Coletta’s poker-wielding, gravy training boyfriend, Lannie Watkins.
Easing out of his chair, he walked over to his refrigerator and slipped the two half sheets of paper he’d taken from Billy Larkin’s apartment from beneath a couple of Cheyenne Frontier Days refrigerator magnets. Studying the decidedly different printing styles on the two sheets, one rich with big, black, looping letters that slanted to the left and the other as close as you could come to a scribble, he shook his head and sighed. He was almost certain he’d seen the larger, neater printing before, but he couldn’t place where. Convinced that the two pieces of paper were key to Billy Larkin’s murder, he decided he’d run down Lannie Watkins and find out if one of the handwriting specimens belonged to him.
Folding the pages and stuffing them into his shirt pocket as his stomach gurgled loudly, he decided that a little music and a burger might not only help ease the tensions of the day but also stoke his energy level before he took off after Watkins. Slipping his Stetson off a hook near the kitchen door, he reluctantly lit up a third cheroot and headed for Nobby’s to grab a bite to eat, telling himself as he bounded down the fire-escape stairs that as soon as he found Billy’s killer, he was going to make a concerted effort to stop smoking.
Nobby’s was subdued and pretty much weeknight-empty when CJ walked in. He shook hands with a couple of people he knew as he crossed the barroom, waved to a woman he’d gone out with in high school, and headed for the jukebox. Marvin Gaye was wrapping up “Stubborn Kind of Fellow,” a tune CJ’s former gunnery chief, who had been born and bred in Motown, had blasted over loudspeakers as a wake-up call every morning during CJ’s first tour of duty in Vietnam. He slipped a quarter into the old Seeburg, punched in E7 and G5, and leaned against the jukebox, hoping the E7 selection, “My Girl,” would be the next song. Unlike the night Billy had died, no one was playing pool, and the only activity on the juke joint’s dance floor turned out to be a middle-aged couple scrunched together as if they were one.
“CJ, my man. How’s it hangin’?” Nobby called out, approaching CJ with a wad of small bills crumpled in his right hand.
“About half,” said CJ, giving Nobby a fist bump before taking a seat at a table next to the jukebox.
“You do look a little ragged around the edges,” Nobby said, stuffing the bills into his pocket.
“Had a dog of a day.”
“Hell, I can fix that in less time than a rattlesnake strike. How about a plate of fried chicken, beans, and ’slaw? You need to pass on them burgers and fries for a change?”
“Next time,” said CJ. “I’ve been thinking burger and fries ever since I left the house. How about a medium-rare cheeseburger, coleslaw, an order of fries, and a Coke?”
“Suit yourself. And maybe when your order’s up, you’ll tell ol’ Nobby about that dog jumped into your day.”
“Yeah,” said CJ, watching Nobby jot his food order on a ticket before whirling around to respond to his bartender, who was complaining about being nearly out of ice.
CJ’s G5 selection, “What’s So Good About Goodbye,” was ending when ten minutes later the sweet, melodic sounds of “My Girl” finally erupted from the jukebox. CJ was relaxed back in his seat, humming along to the refrain, when Nobby’s always harried Hispanic short-order cook delivered his food.
“Here ya go, CJ,” the cook said, placing the order down and turning to head back to the kitchen.
CJ had pinched off a fry and eaten it before he realized that his coleslaw was missing. “I had an order of coleslaw, too, Hector,” he called out to the retreating fry cook.
“Wasn’t no ’slaw on your order ticket,” Hector said, returning. “Have a look.”
He slid the ticket across the table.
CJ glanced down at the grease-stained ticket. Burger, medium rare $1.75, fries 50 cents, Coke 45 cents, total $2.70. “Guess Nobby missed it.”
“Guess so,” said the cook, shrugging. “I’ll have your ’slaw up for you in a second.”
CJ was two bites into his cheeseburger and still eyeing the ticket when something odd and worrisome began to gnaw at him. At first he thought it was the fact that he’d just that moment realized that Nobby had raised his prices. Placing his burger back down on his plate, he picked up the ticket and examined his order more closely. It wasn’t until his third reading that he realized that it was the printing on the ticket that had grabbed his attention. When his stomach started to quiver the same way it always had when the Cape Star had set out on a mission
during Vietnam, he mumbled, “Shit.”
Reaching into his shirt pocket, he slipped the two half sheets of paper he’d taken from Billy Larkin’s apartment out and spread them out on the table. As he silently read off the numbers on his food-order ticket, he realized that the order’s back-slanting 5’s and 7’s were dead ringers for those on one of the torn half sheets and that the hastily scribbled block-letter E’s and undotted i’s in possible winner, lucky set, and good bet were nearly identical to the E’s and i’s in the words burger, fries, and medium, rare. The clincher, however—the thing that told him the same person had more than likely authored both items—turned out to be the identical sets of double underlines beneath the 70 on his $2.70 bill and beneath the zeros in the $50.00 that had been jotted at the bottom of one of the half sheets of paper he’d taken from Billy’s.
There was little question in his mind now that Coletta Newby and Leander Moultry had both been right about Billy having a partner, and that partnership had probably cost Billy his life. Slipping the order ticket and the papers from Billy’s apartment back into his shirt pocket, he got up from his chair. His entire insides felt queasy.
“You can pay at the bar, you need to, CJ,” the cook called out through a haze of smoke, wondering where CJ, who hadn’t finished his food, was headed. “Just show ’em your order ticket.”
CJ didn’t answer. He knew the drill, but instead of stopping at the bar, he walked past it and headed toward Nobby Pittman’s office.
A two-inch-tall stack of five-dollar bills, a short stack of tens, and a fifth of Jack Daniel’s sat in the center of Nobby’s desk. Nobby, surprised by CJ’s unannounced entry, shot a glance toward the top desk drawer to his right. “Shit, CJ, you scared the hell outa me,” he said, sounding relieved. “Thought you might be a damn robber.”
“No,” said CJ, his tone noticeably somber.
“Drink?” asked Nobby, shoving the bottle of Jack Daniel’s across the desktop.
“Nope.”
“Suit yourself. Whatta ya need?”
“A few answers, Nobby. That’s all.”
“’Bout what?”
“About Billy Larkin’s murder.”
“Terrible thing. But I’m afraid I can’t help you much more there.”
“I think you can.” CJ stepped up to the desk and laid his food-order ticket and one of the half sheets of paper he’d taken from Billy’s on the desktop. “Recognize these?”
“The one on the left’s the order I took for your dinner. Never seen the other one.”
“I think you have.”
“You callin’ me a liar?” Nobby sat upright and defiant in his chair.
“No. Just hoping to jog your memory.”
“I said I never seen it.”
“Strange. The writing on that sheet matches the writing on my food ticket.”
Nobby eyed the top drawer once again. “Damn, CJ. Bein’ a war hero ain’t enough? Now you’re a handwritin’ expert, too?”
“Don’t claim to be either, Nobby. But I’m betting a real handwriting expert will say that the same person wrote both things. Why’d you kill Billy, Nobby?” CJ asked, recalling Ike’s advice about ratcheting up the pressure on a suspect.
Nobby scratched his head and smiled. “Let’s say we keep what’s on them papers ’tween me and you, CJ. You stand to make yourself a grand richer if we do.”
“Can’t.”
“Two grand, then.”
CJ shook his head.
Nobby shrugged. “Suit yourself.” In one quick, sweeping motion he pulled the top desk drawer open, extracted a snub-nosed .38, and aimed it squarely at CJ’s chest. “You just spent two years seein’ what bullets can do to a man, CJ. Take the two thousand.”
When CJ didn’t respond, Nobby shook his head. “Billy tried to stiff me. Wanted to keep all that Policy money for hisself. Can you believe that? With me bein’ the one who originally picked the winnin’ numbers, and me layin’ down half the hundred bucks for the ticket. Never should’ve okayed that numbers runner shellin’ out all that money to Billy after we hit. But I was gonna be outa town for most of the week, and I trusted Billy the same way I’ve always trusted all you Five Points kids. See what you get for puttin’ your trust in people? Guess havin’ eighteen grand in his pocket was just too much of a burden for Billy to handle. Especially with that high-maintenance new woman of his advisin’ him. When I come for my share of money, Billy said he wasn’t givin’ me squat. Said that woman of his told him possession was nine-tenths of the law. I pleaded with him to give me my share of the winnin’s for three days, but he wouldn’t budge. In the end, I had to get what was rightfully mine. You can understand that, can’t you, CJ?”
“Afraid I really can’t.”
The pleading stare on Nobby’s face turned slowly into a look of rage. Nodding toward a chair in a darkened corner of the room and with the .38 pointed squarely at CJ’s chest, he said, “I want you to walk over there and park your ass in that chair while I think this out.”
“You think long, you think wrong,” said CJ.
“Shut up, CJ, and sit!”
CJ eased down into the lumpy, overstuffed chair, his eyes locked on the .38, uncertain what the onetime semipro football player who just about everyone in Five Points claimed had taken too many hits to the head would do. After a half minute of silence, Nobby said, “Gonna have to kill you, CJ. Ain’t no other way.”
“You need to be smarter than that, Nobby. They tap you for one killing, and you might be able to plea-bargain yourself a life sentence, maybe even just twenty years. Two killings, and the state will dispense with your ass permanently for sure.”
“If I get caught. Get up. We’re headin’ out the back.” Nobby motioned CJ toward a doorway near the opposite corner of the room. “Go ahead. Move.”
CJ headed for the doorway, aware that the door opened onto an alley. He found himself praying for the right moment to make some kind of defensive move as the sounds and then the smells of the Mekong River Delta suddenly filled his head. As he slipped through the doorway and out into the moonlit night, he could have sworn he heard the roar of F-100s overhead and the sound of machine-gun fire in the distance.
“We’re gonna walk down two blocks and around the corner to where they found Billy. It’s the same place they’ll be findin’ you. I’m figurin’ that when the cops start scratchin’ their heads and listenin’ to the hubbub your murder’s bound to generate, they’ll think we got us a serial killer down here on the Points. One who likes finishin’ off his victims in the very same spot. And don’t think about runnin’, CJ, ’cause if you do I’ll just have to plug you in the back and cart you there.”
Spotting a Dumpster jutting out into the alley several yards ahead, CJ felt a sudden rush of hope. Telling himself that when he reached the Dumpster, he’d leap behind it, scrounge up some kind of weapon, a stick, maybe a rock, perhaps even a bag of garbage, and fend Nobby off, he was less than five feet from the Dumpster when he heard a familiar voice behind him shout, “Hold your horses right there, Nobby!”
He and Nobby turned in near unison to see Ike Floyd standing twenty feet behind them, his hunched, arthritic figure awash in the glow of moonlight and a flickering overhead streetlight. The .45 Ike had carried during Korea was aimed directly at Nobby’s midsection.
“Had my eyes on you ever since you stepped out your back door with CJ in tow, Nobby. I don’t know what the hell’s goin’ on here or why you’re holdin’ that peashooter of yours on my nephew, but you better drop the fuckin’ thing.”
Nobby squeezed off an errant shot in Ike’s direction as, with a painful grunt, Ike dropped to the ground on his belly. Steadying the .45 with both hands and aiming up at Nobby, Ike squeezed off two rounds. The first shot missed its mark. The second slammed into Nobby’s right thigh, sending him sprawling face first onto the ground.
CJ was on top of him, full straddle with a knee to the back of his neck, in seconds. Moments later Ike stood over them both, shaking his h
ead. Looking up at Ike, who had his .45 trained on a moaning Nobby’s belly, CJ said, “Nobby killed Billy. It was all over that Policy money just like you thought.”
“Figures,” said Ike, looking back toward several heads that were now poking out of Nobby’s back door. “Best get our story together for the law. Cops’ll be checkin’ in here real quick.”
“When did you get to Nobby’s?” CJ asked, applying palm pressure to the oozing wound in the shocked and totally defeated-looking Nobby Pittman’s leg.
Ike smiled. “Been trailin’ you off and on for a couple’a days. Checkin’ on how well you were doin’ with your assignment.”
“What?” said CJ, looking embarrassed.
“You didn’t really think me and Marguerite could be eatin’ as much as I kept claimin’, now, did ya?” Ike couldn’t help but chuckle. “You may’a been a big dog in Vietnam, CJ, babysittin’ that .50-caliber of yours, but when it comes to bail bondin’, bounty huntin’, and dealin’ with the Five Points bottom feeders we got ’round here, you just another unschooled pup, son.”
“So you decided to glue yourself to my tail?”
“Somethin’ like that. Watched you make your phone calls, followed you to Coletta’s, to Billy’s apartment, even tailed you when you went to Metro State to talk to the Suggs girl. Finally ended up followin’ you here to Nobby’s tonight. You never saw me once and that means I ain’t as washed up as some folks think. When you left your food unfinished and headed for Nobby’s office like you’d just been stung by a bee, I knew some-thin’ was up. Only one way outa Nobby’s place besides the front door, everybody in Five Points knows that,” Ike said, glancing back toward Nobby’s office door.
“Why?”
The look on Ike’s face turned deadly serious. Watching Nobby grunt back his pain, Ike locked eyes with his nephew. “’Cause, CJ. You’re the only kin I got in the whole damn world. Wouldn’t want no harm comin’ to you. Besides, when it comes to breakin’ in new hires, it’s a matter of policy.”