First of State

by Robert Greer

  Setting the first folder aside, he picked up the second folder, shook his head, and started poring through the information he’d gathered on Quan Lee Chin. No one connected to the GI Joe’s murders seemed to know much about Chin, including the cops, Cheryl Goldsby, and Harry Steed.

  Chin’s life had apparently started in New Jersey when he had enrolled at Princeton as a twenty-year-old immigrant studying music. He seemed to have had no childhood, at least nothing CJ could dig up; the only concrete information he had on Chin was that he was from Taiwan and, according to scrounged-up Princeton records, had been a gifted student and a stellar cellist. CJ had been able to glean one other piece of information about Chin during a phone call two years earlier with one of Chin’s former professors. According to the professor, Chin had had a great love of the ocean and a passion for fishing, and he’d been friends with a Denver Symphony cellist, a woman named Molly Burgess.

  Bored with looking through papers that he knew pretty much word for word and aware that he had a more immediate problem to address, CJ decided that in the name of thoroughness, he’d drop by GI Joe’s in the next few days and ask Harry Steed if he had any new information about the case. Slipping the piece of paper on which he had jotted Walt Reasoner’s business name and phone number from his pocket, he checked his watch, picked up the phone, and called Epic Produce & Meats. After giving his name to the woman who answered, he was quickly put through to Reasoner.

  Sounding heavily stuffed up as if from a cold, but pleasant, Reasoner asked, “What can I do for you, Mr. Floyd?”

  CJ was blunt. “Willis Sundee asked me to look into a problem he’s having with your produce delivery service. I’d like to meet with you and talk about it if I can.”

  “I see. Good man, Willis. Surprised he didn’t want to handle our negotiations himself, but that’s his business. We can meet whenever you’d like.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  “How about here in my office in about an hour?” Reasoner said, pausing to cough. “I’ll give you the address.”

  “I’ve got it. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “Good. Very good. See you then.” Reasoner suppressed a sneeze and cradled the receiver.

  CJ sat in momentary silence, staring out toward the rush-hour traffic before placing his GI Joe’s folders back in a nearby file cabinet. Looking around the room and for some reason feeling suddenly closed in, he told himself that perhaps if he painted the walls white instead of beige, the space would open up. It was something to think about, he thought as he headed for his apartment to get his jacket and snub-nosed .38, taking the Victorian’s rarely used inside stairway that he’d recently reopened because as Ike loved to remind him, “Every rabbit needs more than one hole.”

  Chapter 11

  CJ decided to drive Ike’s 1947 Willys Jeep to Epic Produce & Meats instead of the Bel Air. The restored World War II–vintage four-by-four was in close to mint condition save for its transmission and windshield. The original windshield had been shot out twelve years earlier as a more youthful Ike had chased a drunken, bond-skipping Apache Indian on a Harley down an arroyo south of Santa Fe, New Mexico, dodging scatter from a sawed-off shotgun.

  Ike had eventually shot the Apache in the leg, turning him into a lifelong cripple. He had never forgiven himself for that shot, often reminding the sometimes overzealous CJ, “Ain’t no need to kill or maim a man in order to do your job.”

  Turning off I-70, CJ took a road that looped behind Denver’s National Western Stock Show complex. With Ike’s advice at the forefront of his mind, he patted the .38 in his jacket pocket and reminded himself that no matter what transpired at Epic Produce & Meats, his job was to stay calm.

  He spotted the produce company’s building with its high-pitched corrugated-metal roof just before reaching Sixtieth Avenue. The roof gave the building the look of a Western barn. As he drove onto the company’s recently resurfaced parking lot, he realized that more than half of the parking spaces had reserved signs. Thinking that Reasoner employed an awful lot of important people, he parked in a nonreserved space, hopped out of the Jeep, and headed for the front door.

  The building’s sprawling lobby was dimly lit and hot. Following a sign with a finger stenciled below the word “Offices,” he walked down a short hallway into an austere waiting room that contained only two chairs and an unmanned reception desk. He was about to ring a bell on the desk when a door just to his left opened and a man a shade taller than CJ stepped into the reception area.

  “Help you?” the man asked, in a nasally tone that CJ now recognized as being straight from east Texas.

  “I’m looking for Walt Reasoner. I’m supposed to meet with him. I’m CJ Floyd.”

  “You’ve found him.” Reasoner walked up to CJ, clasped his hand firmly, and pumped it once.

  “Glad I was able to catch you so late.”

  “You tend to stick around a little longer when you run your own shop,” Reasoner said, motioning for CJ to follow him into his office, where a massive rolltop desk flanked by three folding metal chairs dominated the bare-walled room. Nodding for CJ to take one of the chairs, Reasoner seated himself behind the desk and asked with a bluntness that surprised CJ, “Now, what kind of business are you in that would have you running interference for Willis Sundee, Mr. Floyd?”

  “I’m a bail bondsman.”

  “I see.” Reasoner looked reassured, as if he’d put the final piece of a puzzle in place, as CJ slid the metal chair a little closer to the desk, took off his Stetson, and held it in his lap.

  “I’m a smoker; hope you don’t mind.” Reasoner took a pack of Luckys out of his shirt pocket, tapped out a cigarette, lit up, and took a long, satisfying drag. “Will and I have been doing business for quite a while. I’m sorta surprised, to tell you the truth, that he’d balk at a little price increase. That is why you’re here, isn’t it, Mr. Floyd?”

  “Yes,” said CJ, thinking Reasoner hadn’t known Willis Sundee long enough if he called him by a nickname he abhorred. “Willis says it’s more than a little price increase you’re hitting him with. He says you want to stick him with a 40 percent increase on everything you supply across the board.”

  “It’s the cost of doing business in these heady times, Mr. Floyd. There’re lots of other suppliers around. Ol’ Will’s always free to do business with them.”

  “He tells me most of them are giants. Willis is too small a fish to swim in that sea. But I’m guessing you already know that.”

  Reasoner smiled slyly. “Didn’t realize you could see that far inside my head. Let me tell you a story, sir. Just to set things straight.” Reasoner’s tone was filled with condescension. “I started this business in my early twenties, straight out of Texarkana. A little over a month ago I turned forty-four. During my time in this business, I’ve fought off greedy suppliers, bad employees, economic downturns, unaccommodating banks, and even the mob. And fortunately, at the ripe old age of forty-four, I’ve carved out a niche for myself. A niche that lets me charge whatever the market will bear for my services, to put it bluntly. If the big suppliers out there scare ol’ Will, maybe he should try somebody smaller.”

  “There aren’t any such beasts around here, he tells me. Seems like once upon a time there were, but they’ve all been squeezed out by the big boys. Squeezed to the point that the mom-and-pop outfits out there, like Willis’s, have been forced to depend on you.” CJ stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I’m wondering if perhaps those other smaller suppliers who’ve all disappeared might not have had a little help from you with deciding to close down shop. Guess I’ll just have to do a little digging and find out.”

  Reasoner leaned forward and gave CJ a long, hard stare before stubbing out his cigarette in the oversized clamshell ashtray on his desk. “You seem real good at thinking for other people, Floyd. So you can take this thought with you and leave. I can charge whatever I like for my goods and services, and if for whatever reason there’s no other competition around, that’s in
my best interest. It’s American free enterprise, friend. You and ol’ Will should take notice of that.”

  “No question there, but the system doesn’t allow you to strong-arm people along the way or threaten them if they don’t step in line.”

  CJ didn’t so much as flinch when Reasoner jumped to his feet and took a step around the desk toward him.

  “Outa here, jerk! Now!”

  Rising slowly, CJ slipped on his Stetson. “Lay off Willis Sundee,” he said, squaring up his hat.

  His face flushed with anger, Reasoner said, “Here’s a message for you to take back to Sundee, mind reader. He pays the freight or he gets no goods.”

  “I’ll pass along the message.”

  “Good. Now, here’s a second message for you both to chew on. In business, you either set an example or you’re made an example of.”

  CJ, who’d started to leave, pivoted in his tracks. “Hope that’s not a threat.”

  “Take it however you like, Floyd. Now get the shit outa my office.”

  Reasoner clicked a switch on his desktop, and the lights in the room suddenly dimmed. CJ shot a parting glance back at the darkened, hulking figure sitting behind the rolltop, smoke rising from a newly lit cigarette, and repeated, “Lay off Willis,” before gently closing the office door.

  CJ was back home at his kitchen table, sipping a Coke and talking on the phone to Willis Sundee, by seven-thirty. Smoke from a cheroot rose from the ashtray next to him. “I talked to your boy Reasoner. Sounds like a take-no-prisoners kinda guy.”

  “He can afford to be,” Willis said. “I’ve talked to a dozen other small restaurant owners across the city today about switching suppliers. No way any of us can. He’s the only game for the small guy in town. Over the years he’s tied up just about every mom-and-pop in the city. Got us all sucking from his sugar tit. Giannelli’s in North Denver, La Cueva, a Mexican place up on Colfax, Huc Tran’s Sweet Asian Flavors on Capitol Hill, you name it. The SOB’s had a game plan all along.”

  CJ took a long, surprisingly unsatisfying swallow of Coke. “Can’t you all pool your efforts and get Reasoner to cut you a deal?”

  “Afraid it’s too late. We should’ve spit out the Epic Produce & Meats bit and thrown in with the big suppliers years ago. They don’t want us now. Not enough money to be made on the deal. Reasoner’s already outright threatened Tran. In addition to delivering his produce and meats late, lower-shelf stuff at that, he’s been telling Tran how wonderful his recent remodel looks and how he’d hate to see any kind of damage come to it.”

  “Hell, Willis. It sounds to me like Reasoner’s straight out of some ’30s gangster movie. Why don’t you just call the cops?”

  Willis sounded defeated. “I told you, I have no proof. Anyway, Tran called them and nothing happened. He thinks, and I tend to agree, that somewhere along the line some politician and more than likely a few cops are getting paid off. We’re addicts strung out on Reasoner’s drug, CJ, and we can’t get off. So what do I do?”

  “For the moment, you pay Reasoner’s freight until I get a better handle on things.”

  “Okay. But don’t leave me hanging too long. The bastard could run me outa business.”

  “I won’t let him do that.” Looking frustrated, CJ shoved his half-finished Coke aside. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he said, hanging up and taking a final drag on his cheroot as he tried to gauge just how determined and ruthless a businessman Walt Reasoner actually was.

  At seven forty-five the next morning, CJ was back at his kitchen table, unshaven and dressed only in sweatpants, with papers from his GI Joe’s Ames files spread out everywhere. It had come to him during the night, largely because of Willis Sundee’s inference about how Walt Reasoner had been so methodical in the way he’d carried out his small-business squeeze, that he needed to be equally methodical in his investigation of the GI Joe’s murders and try one more time to hook up with the one person he still wanted to get back in touch with: Molly Burgess, who’d been the Denver Symphony Orchestra’s second-seat cellist at the time of the murders.

  Burgess, CJ had learned, had had a second time around audition session with Chin the day before the murders. He felt a little guilty about the fact that Willis’s comments about Reasoner had him digging back into the Ames case instead of dealing with Willis’s problem, but he’d get back to Reasoner. There was plenty of time.

  He had no idea whether Burgess was still with the symphony, or for that matter still even in Denver. But as he scanned the piece of paper on which he’d jotted notes about her two years earlier, the single asterisk at the top of the page told him that he’d indeed only talked to her once. Shaking his head, mumbling to himself, “Details, damn it, details,” and aware that it was too early to call the symphony offices, he told himself he’d call at midmorning. Deciding to pass on another cheroot, he got up and headed off to take a shower. He’d almost reached his bathroom when the sound of someone knocking on his kitchen door turned him around. Walking quickly back to the door, he opened it to see Petey Greene, a friend of his since grade school, standing on the fire-escape landing with a cardboard box tucked under his right arm. Looking apprehensive and shivering in the chill of the early-morning September breeze, Petey said, “Sorry to come by so early, CJ, but I wanted you to look through this box of mine and tell me if there’s anything in here worth taking up to the Mile High Flea Market on Eighty-eighth Avenue this afternoon. I’m sure hopin’ there is.”

  CJ smiled, aware that his skinny, brown-skinned visitor, a man with a pencil-thin mustache, half-inch-thick prescription lenses in his glasses, and a permanently furrowed forehead, made his living as an antique scrounger and book scout, combing Denver’s streets for anything he could sell for a profit. That included the snitch-type information he would peddle to bail bondsmen, PIs, and cops. He also knew Petey wouldn’t be on his doorstep that early unless he knew CJ could throw him a bone that would mean a little money.

  “Come on in,” CJ said, looking past Petey toward the cloudy fall day.

  “Didn’t know better, I’d swear we’re in for snow,” said Petey, shuffling into the kitchen and placing his cardboard box on the kitchen table on top of the GI Joe’s papers.

  “It’ll come soon enough,” said CJ, eyeing the box.

  Noting CJ’s interest, Petey said, “Go ahead, have a look inside. That’s why I’m here.”

  CJ nodded and began sorting through a cache of old Christmas ornaments, some of them broken, soiled oil-company road maps from the 1940s and ’50s, electrical switch plates, bottle caps, key rings, school-desk inkwells, and, near the bottom of the box, a three-inch-thick, rubber-banded stack of old postcards. Wedged between the postcards and the road maps was a single, pristine-looking Canon City, Colorado, prison spur, a Western collectible gem that CJ knew had been crafted fifty to sixty years earlier as a rehab-mandated project by some Colorado State Penitentiary inmate.

  CJ took the spur out of the box, certain it was the item that had instigated Petey’s visit. “Got the mate to this?” he asked, examining the spur carefully.

  Petey shook his head. “Got some other ones at home, but no mate for that one.”

  “Well, if I were you, I’d get to looking for it because if you find it and it’s as mint as this one, you’ll have yourself a seven-hundred-and-fifty-dollar set.”

  “Sorta figured that,” Petey said with a grin.

  CJ went back to sorting through the box, quickly examining several of the postcards, pushing the stack aside, and moving on to several vintage Rocky Mountain National Park souvenir key rings, half-a-dozen or so old soda-bottle caps, and two dogeared Louis L’Amour paperback books. “The postcards might bring you a few bucks,” he said. “But nothing else here hits the mark, Petey.”

  “Thanks, CJ. Thanks,” said Petey, busy reexamining the spur. “I knew you’d be on top of what this baby was worth. By the way, I ain’t seen you at a single auction, swap meet, farm sale, or even up at the flea market in months. What’s up?”r />
  “Been busy.”

  “Well, you’re missin’ out. I’ve seen lots of license plates and tobacco tins and more than a few bits and spurs around. Your kinda stuff. Even ran across an old cattle-brand book at the flea market last week.”

  CJ’s eyes lit up. Thinking of his prized 1906 Colorado brand book, he asked, “What state and what year?”

  “Didn’t get the year, too many other people were pawing at it, but it was an old one all right, Wyoming, I think. Leather-bound and no bigger than an appointment book you might stick in your shirt pocket.”

  “Damn. That size and leather-bound. The book would’ve had to be turn-of-the-century or earlier.”

  “Like I said, you been missin’ out.”

  “Yeah,” said CJ, clearly disappointed.

  “Well, you better get back at it, man. The flea market’s up and runnin’ Wednesday through Sunday ’til the end of October. With a find like that brand book I mentioned showin’ up there, seems to me you owe it to yourself to drop in.”

  With visions of some rare turn-of-the-century thousand-dollar cattle-brand book dancing in his head, CJ said, “I’ll make it a point to. Maybe even today.”

  “Great. Maybe I’ll see you there.” Petey slipped the spur back into the cardboard box, asking as he tucked it safely away, “You ain’t in need of no info on anybody’s comin’s and goin’s, deeds, doin’s, or whereabouts, are you?” It was Petey’s way of offering CJ a little payback for the Canon City spur appraisal.

  “Nope. Nothing on the docket for today.”

  “Well, let me know when you are. Ike, too.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Petey secured the cardboard box under his left arm and headed for the door, pushing the kitchen door open to a sky that was far cloudier than when he’d arrived.