by Robert Greer
Part 2
Settled In
AUTUMN 1976
Chapter 10
America’s bicentennial year, a year filled with pomp and circumstance and self-congratulatory political posturing, was also the year of Nobby Pittman’s first five-year parole hearing.
CJ had been way off the mark when, on the night he’d pegged Nobby as Billy Larkin’s killer, with a .38 aimed at his chest, he’d told the slow-thinking former semipro lineman that he’d surely get either the death penalty or life for a second killing. In fact, murder and attempted murder had simply earned Nobby a twenty-four-year sentence in Colorado’s maximum-security prison in Canon City and the chance of serving just five years before being granted parole.
CJ had never been able to square the fact that the legal system would allow such an early opportunity for parole, but Ike had said to him right after Nobby’s trial, “Ain’t no way to understand the American judicial system, no matter how hard you try, boy. Just gotta learn to go with the flow.” CJ was learning to take Ike’s advice to heart.
Sitting with Ike and Rosie Weeks at an oversized table at Mae’s Louisiana Kitchen on the day of the hearing, nursing a postlunch frosted mug of beer, CJ looked frustrated. Mae’s, an understated plain brown wrapper of a place squeezed between Rufus Benson’s House of Musical Soul and Benny Prillerman’s Trophy and Badge, sat squarely in the heart of Five Points. A neighborhood gathering place since 1937, Mae’s had been run by the Sundee family for just short of forty years.
In true Louisiana tradition, the restaurant was nothing more than a long, narrow box, reminiscent of a New Orleans shotgun house. The entryway was tunnel-like, with barely enough room for three people to stand. At the back of the entry a hostess, often the late Mae Sundee’s daughter, Mavis, greeted people at a mahogany pulpit that had belonged to Mavis’s preacher grandfather but had long since been modified for more pedestrian use.
Fifteen tables covered with checkerboard oilcloth hugged both walls. Most tables seated only two, but a few jutted out to accommodate as many as six, so the main aisle down the middle of the restaurant undulated in and out, increasing and decreasing in size to produce an obstacle course that made it difficult for any waitress to work. The restaurant’s only concession to extravagance were its Colorado-marble floors, ceilings of ornate stamped tin, and spotless stainless-steel kitchen.
The smell of high-cholesterol, mouthwatering, Southern-fried food hung in the air as Rosie, fiddling with the handle of his beer mug, eyed CJ and said instructively, “You still don’t get it, CJ, and you being a bail bondsman and all. In the US of A, you kill somebody and you wanna get off, you take out a second mortgage on your house—or like Nobby, your business—hire yourself the city’s best white lawyer, one who’s been lookin’ for a long time to build a little black-community rep, have him convince a sympathetic jury and judge that you’ve been mentally slow all your life and you didn’t really know what you were doin’ when it came to killin’ a welsher like Billy Larkin, and bingo, the gas chamber turns into a prison sentence of twenty-four years, and likely a lot less.”
Ike nodded in agreement and took a sip of beer. “You need to soak up some things a lot better, CJ. You’ve been out there on the streets five years now, and you’ve damn sure written enough bonds, chased down enough bond skippers, and talked with enough double-talkin’ lawyers and jackbooted cops to know that more often than not, the system’s rigged.”
“Doesn’t make me have to accept it.”
Looking disgusted, Ike said, “Better grab yourself a chunk of reality, boy. Idealism’s for fools.”
Feeling ganged up on and with no real rebuttal to offer, CJ stared into his beer. In the five years that he’d been back home, he’d largely shaken off his war demons, and most nights now he was able to sleep in peace. He’d found a line of work that suited him, and along the way he’d learned to make use of investigative talents he never would have guessed he had. Since Billy Larkin’s murder, he’d rekindled friendships and made new friends, gotten back into collecting Western memorabilia and antiques, and even started attending swap meets and flea markets again when he could find the time. A few months earlier, he’d shelled out all of four dollars to become a member of the Rocky Mountain region’s Automobile License Plate Collectors Association, and recently he’d overheard Ike tell a friend, “You know I think the boy’s pretty much settled back in.”
Some things, however, remained both unsettled and unsettling. Interacting with women was uncomfortable, precipitated perhaps by the fact that during his time in Vietnam he’d seen so many women either killed or turned into whores in order to survive. No matter how hard he tried, he still often found it difficult to control his temper, and at least once a week, he caught himself slamming his hand down on a table and feeling guilty about not convincing a potential client to use his and Ike’s service, or about getting stiffed on a bond. What still churned his anger the most, however, as much as anything, was that he’d made so little headway in finding out who’d killed Wiley Ames.
He’d filled four two-inch-thick Pendaflex hanging folders with newspaper accounts and police reports about the murders, not to mention the snippets of gossip and pages of interview notes he had. He’d talked to everyone from GI Joe’s owner, Harry Steed, to the cop who’d directed him away from the murder scene the morning of the killings, and he still had almost nothing to show for his persistence other than the fact that over the years he’d struck up a friendship with Harry Steed and managed to make an enemy of Wiley Ames’s niece, Cheryl Goldsby. Over time, Steed had grudgingly admitted that, like the cops, he suspected that Ames had been killed as a result of his involvement in the fencing of stolen goods. Ames’s supposedly loving niece, Cheryl, didn’t seem to care.
Watching CJ stare intently into his beer, Ike asked, “You see any fish swimmin’ in there?”
“Not today.” CJ relaxed back into his seat and smiled.
“You ain’t really thinkin’ about Nobby at all,” Ike said insightfully. “I know where your head is, boy. You’re thinkin’ about them GI Joe’s killin’s again. Sooner or later you’re gonna have to drop that suitcase.”
Ike slapped his hand face down on the table to punctuate the point just as Mavis Sundee, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the restaurant’s owner, waitressing her last few weeks before going back to college in Boston, walked up.
“Need any refills here?” Mavis asked, clearing away Ike’s and Rosie’s plates.
“None for me,” said Ike.
“Me, either,” Rosie chimed in.
“CJ?” Mavis asked, smiling.
“No, but I’ll have a slice of sweet-potato pie to go,” CJ said, ordering his favorite dessert.
“Keep orderin’ pie at noon and you’re gonna earn yourself a paunch,” Ike said before turning to address Mavis. “When you headed back East?” he asked the exotic-looking, dark-olive-skinned woman who more than a few of the restaurant’s white patrons seemed to think was Spanish rather than black.
“In a couple of weeks,” said Mavis, eyeing CJ, on whom, although seven years her senior, she’d had a crush for years.
“You still studyin’ business accountin’ so Willis will have a reason to rope you into comin’ back here to the Points and runnin’ his businesses?”
“I sure am. But we’ll have to see about me running those businesses of his. Who knows, I may head off to California to find my fortune after college,” she said, looking directly at CJ.
“Hope not,” CJ said, sounding flustered. “Wouldn’t want to lose any of the Queen City’s beauty to the Left Coast.”
Looking surprised by the uncharacteristically forthcoming comment, Mavis said, “I’ll have your pie up front for you along with your check. Oh, and CJ, before you leave, my dad needs to talk to you about something. He’s standing out front.”
“I’ll catch him on my way out,” said CJ, admiring the sensual fullness of Mavis’s lips, the slender grace of her athletic body. “Have a good year
back in Beantown.”
“I will.” She flashed everyone at the table a smile before walking away.
“Looks just like her mamma,” said Rosie, watching CJ’s eyes follow her up the center aisle until she disappeared through the kitchen’s swinging doors.
Realizing that both of his companions were staring at him and feeling self-conscious, CJ scooted his chair back and stood. “Better see what Willis wants,” he said, heading for the front of the restaurant to find Willis Sundee and evade the teasing that was certain to follow if he remained.
As CJ made his way to the entryway, Ike, nudging Rosie with an elbow, said, “Girl’s always thought CJ was Superman, and up ’til recently I don’t think CJ’s as much as glanced her way twice.”
“He’s glancin’ now.”
“Yeah. Hard enough to give most folks a headache,” Ike said, trying his best not to snicker.
CJ reached the restaurant’s entryway as Willis Sundee was saying his good-byes outside to a couple of longtime patrons. With a full head of wavy silver hair, smooth, nutmeg-brown skin, and green eyes, Willis, the son of Louisiana Creole parents who’d moved to Colorado in the early 1900s, looked every bit the ethnic gumbo mix he was.
He greeted CJ with a firm handshake as he stepped back into the restaurant, then looked around as if to make certain no one was watching them. “Let’s step back outside for a second,” he said. “Don’t want anyone to hear this.” Quickly he and CJ were standing outside in the bright noonday sun.
Looking around apprehensively, Willis said, “Got a problem, CJ. One I’m hoping you’ll help me handle.”
“You couldn’t possibly need a bail bond, Willis,” CJ said with a grin.
“No, no, nothing like that.” He looked up and down the busy noonday Welton Street. “What I’ve got is a problem with my produce and meat supplier. He thinks I should pay him quite a bit more than invoice in order to keep the quality up on the stuff he delivers. Otherwise, according to him, I could start to receive second-rate goods.”
“Sounds like a shakedown.”
“It is,” Willis said indignantly. “And it’s pretty common in the restaurant business. For most of my years in the business, I’ve been able to steer clear of it.”
“Why don’t you just call the cops?”
“Because I’ve got no proof he’s trying to shake me down other than a few insinuating conversations. Besides, I’m too small in the grand scheme of things for it to matter to the cops or the larger judicial system. They know what goes on in the restaurant business, and to them it’s just part of the cost of being in the game.”
“I’m not sure how I can help you, Willis. Maybe you should spell it out.”
“I was hoping you could help me the same way you helped Lody Gissman with those two thugs who threatened him last year, the ones who wanted him to start paying parking-lot protection money so his furniture-store customers would find their cars intact when they left his store.”
“That was a little different, Willis. I caught them in the act.”
“And you whaled on ’em like nobody’s business,” Willis said, beaming.
Thinking back to the events that had led to his nearly serving jail time for assault, CJ said, “That was a different situation, Willis.”
“So what did the law want Lody to do? Wait for those hoodlums to bash in a dozen windshields? I’ve got pretty much the same situation here.”
“Maybe not. Your problem could be bigger. Produce means trucking, and trucking more often than not means the Teamsters, and the Teamsters means the mob.”
“Not with this deal,” Willis said, shaking his head. “The guy wanting to squeeze me is an independent. No union folks involved. He’s only got four or five trucks, and he mostly supplies small establishments, minority businesses like mine.”
“I don’t know, Willis. Maybe you should run the problem past Ike.”
“He can’t do what you can do. Least, not anymore, and here’s another kicker. The guy putting the squeeze to me supplies other businesses here in Five Points. Watt’s Grocery, Kapri Fried Chicken, Elwood’s Burger Den, just to name a few. None of us can afford to have the union folks who supply Safeway or the other big supermarket chains and restaurants stock us. For what we’d have to pay ’em to deliver, we’d go broke. We have to go independent to cut our costs.”
CJ shook his head and sighed. “So who is this guy?”
“Name’s Walt Reasoner,” Willis said eagerly. “His company is Epic Produce & Meats. He operates out of North Denver, west of Globeville. Just talk to him, CJ. That might be enough.”
“I’ll see what I can do. But I still think you should go to the cops.”
Ignoring CJ’s recommendation and with a huge smile on his face, Willis said, “Great. What are you charging for investigating things these days, anyway?”
Until that moment, CJ hadn’t thought much about what he charged for anything but bail bonds. In fact, he hadn’t charged Lody Gissman anything to solve his problem. He’d taken on Lody’s problem because Ike and Lody were lifelong friends, and Ike had asked him to. It had been the same thing when he’d dealt with Winifred Hickman’s abusive husband. Ike had asked him to do that, too. And with Sammy Newcomb’s thieving, bond-skipping nephew, whom he’d pretty much hogtied to the back of a rented pickup and dropped at the police station in Clovis, New Mexico, as part of a bounty hunting job Ike had passed his way. Realizing that over the past couple of years he’d done much more pro bono private investigating and bounty hunting than he’d imagined, CJ said, “Sixty bucks a day and expenses.”
Willis nodded his quick consent. “You’re on the clock right now, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll call you with info on where you can find Reasoner.”
Willis reached out to shake CJ’s hand and seal the deal just as Mavis stepped outside. With the wind blowing and sunlight beaming through her coal-black hair, she held up CJ’s boxed slice of sweet-potato pie. “Here’s your pie, CJ.” Eyeing CJ sheepishly, she added, “Are you going to help Daddy with our problem?”
“The best I can.”
Looking relieved, she flashed Willis a look that said, Told you so. “Sure hope you settle things before I head back off to Boston.”
Uncertain why he said what he did, other than the fact that he had a sudden unshakable urge to please Mavis, CJ said, “I will.”
CJ spent most of the rest of the afternoon writing a bond for a small-time Five Points car booster who’d gotten high on cocaine and a stolen Denver Regional Transportation District bus. Following a fifteen-mile police chase north on I-25, he’d flipped the bus onto its side and down into an irrigation ditch, suffering, as luck would have it, not a single scratch. After being apprehended and asked why he’d stolen the bus, the thoroughly stoned, blasé-sounding car thief, a pint-sized black man with a voice an octave higher than Mickey Mouse’s, said, “’Cause I never boosted no bus before, officer.”
A little before 5 p.m., after getting a call from Willis Sundee with the business address and telephone number for Walt Reasoner’s Epic Produce & Meats, CJ gave up on watching traffic gear up for its rush down Thirteenth Avenue and west past Bail Bondsman’s Row for the Denver suburbs. Instead he plopped down in his office overlooking Delaware Street and stuck his nose back into the thickest of his Wiley Ames folders.
Each time he sat down to restart his investigation, usually after having been away from it for months, he felt as though he should simply pack it in. It seemed that no one, except perhaps Harry Steed, really cared what had happened to the one-armed former alcoholic. Ames’s stick-figure niece, Cheryl Goldsby, a sour-faced woman of about thirty-five, had pretty much told him so when he’d visited her on her isolated Colorado eastern plains ranch outside Sterling some five years earlier. Goldsby’s significant other, Ramona Lepsos, a squat, muscular, overly suntanned woman with a bulbous nose and crooked teeth, had ultimately butted into his and Cheryl’s conversation to punctuate the point, angrily pointing out to CJ that Ames hadn’t liked her a
nd Cheryl’s kind and telling him with a finger wagging in his face that she hoped he didn’t have the same views.
CJ had left that meeting feeling as unwelcome as an interloping voyeur with nothing more to show for his efforts than the feeling that he somehow needed to prove he wasn’t antigay or homophobic.
Except for a cache of collectibles that the niece freely admitted Ames had left her, and which she refused to let CJ see, and the five hundred dollars each he’d left the Denver Rescue Mission and a local VFW post, as far as CJ could see, Wiley Ames hadn’t left behind much of an estate.
CJ had grudgingly accepted the official police position that Quan Lee Chin and Wiley Ames had been victims of a professional hit. It was clear that the motive for the GI Joe’s murders hadn’t been robbery, since Harry Steed had acknowledged that nothing in the pawnshop had been taken and, after a close inspection, the cops had concluded that all of Ames’s personal possessions were intact. The .44 Mag murder weapon, leaked to the press early in the investigation and corroborated by Ike’s longtime friend Vernon Lowe, had never been found.
CJ had no idea what Ames and Chin might have been fencing, but Harry Steed’s take, in the face of considerable pressure from the cops, who for months had him near the top of their suspects list, had always been that they’d been fencing stolen Indian artifacts.
Drumming his fingers on the desktop and idly flipping through the contents of a folder, CJ wondered why he was struggling again with the Ames case and, more pointedly, why he continued to dig into the five-year-old killings that no one else seemed to care about. It certainly wasn’t because he’d once promised himself he’d find Ames’s killer. He was long past the stage of honoring promises he’d made during a period in his life when he’d felt guilty about being alive and remained haunted by war-induced night terrors.
The real reason was simple: investigating things had become a part of him. The night he’d almost been killed by Nobby Pittman, an investigative novice, as it were, stumbling into a world he barely understood, had sent him spiraling headlong and forever in that direction. And, much like his RTD bus-stealing client, he found that each new case, even each new trek after a bond skipper, gave him a special rush.