by Robert Greer
“What the hell’s he doing?” CJ whispered.
“Beats me,” said Rosie.
“He’s fiddling with something next to our back-door stoop,” said Mavis. “Can’t see what it is.”
“We don’t wanna spook him and get him running Petey’s way,” said CJ, spotting Petey’s head as it bobbed up from behind a trash can. “He looks big enough to flatten Petey on his way out and keep going. I’m gonna circle around the front of Mae’s and plug up the other end of the alley,” he said, slowly getting out of the Bel Air.
“Try not to scare Petey shitless,” said Rosie.
“Don’t you think we should call the police?” Mavis asked.
“There’s no time,” CJ said, stooped and duck-walking away from the car.
“Be careful, CJ,” Mavis whispered.
CJ didn’t hear her warning as he worked his way around the corner of the building that housed Prillerman’s Trophy and Badge and onto the Welton Street sidewalk. When he slipped and fell in a pool of icy slush before beginning a sprint down Welton, he mumbled, “Shit,” brushed the slush off his new sport coat, and took off.
He’d reached the alley’s east entry when he slammed chest-first into the fleeing Petey Greene. Petey screamed, “CJ!” just as a loud pop that sounded like an exploding firecracker erupted in the alley. Within seconds, CJ spotted smoke rising from what looked like the kind of incendiary flare he’d used to expose enemy machine-gun nests during Vietnam.
“What the hell’s going on?” he asked, helping Petey to his feet.
“There’s a guy down the alley who’s trying to torch Mae’s,” Petey said, loudly enough to cause the man in black he was pointing at to look their way.
Realizing he’d been spotted, the man turned to run in the other direction. When he caught sight of a hulking, snow-covered Rosie Weeks and the Bel Air blocking his exit, he turned and ran back the other way. The glow from what was now a porch fire illuminated the man as he raced toward Petey, knocking him aside as if he were a rag doll before slamming a shoulder and all his weight into CJ’s ribs.
Grunting in pain, CJ reached for the man’s hood, grabbing one of the drawstrings, as they went down in a heap.
Back on his feet now, Petey wrapped both arms around the man’s legs as CJ, cutting off his airway with the drawstring, tried to gain control of the solidly built arsonist.
Howling and swinging wildly as they groveled in the snow, the man slammed a fist and pinkie ring into CJ’s forehead, opening a two-inch-long gash.
With blood streaming down his forehead, CJ screamed, “You fuckin’—” and did his best to knee the man in the groin as he slammed his right palm into the sweet spot just above the man’s nose. The loud crack that followed, akin to the sound of a tree limb snapping, sent the man writhing in pain and rolling in the snow until he eventually stopped moving.
When Petey screamed, “You finished him, CJ. The fucker’s out cold,” CJ said, “Yeah,” concerned suddenly that he might have killed the man. Scooting over on his knees to the arsonist, CJ passed a hand in front of the man’s mouth. When he was certain their firebug was still breathing, he let out a sigh of relief. Shivering in a post–adrenaline rush, he looked back toward Mae’s to see Mavis and Rosie using two fire extinguishers they’d retrieved from inside the restaurant. The restaurant’s back porch, overhead fascia, and steps were charred and smoldering, but the fire looked to be under control.
“Petey, run inside Mae’s and call the cops.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“They’ll be askin’ questions.”
“So we’ll answer them. Hurry up.”
As Petey raced for the restaurant, CJ slipped the hood off the man whose septum he’d broken. One of the man’s nostrils was streaming blood. Checking again to make certain that the man was breathing, CJ watched his head flop back and forth in the wet snow. As the semiconscious man’s eyes opened wider and his lower lip quivered in obvious pain, CJ realized that the blanket of snow the man was lying in and the man’s thick head of hair were nearly an identical white match.
Chapter 18
Rosie Weeks had a knee planted firmly on Detroit Whitey’s chest when two Denver cops, guns drawn, responded not to Petey Greene’s 911 call but to a burglary-in-progress call that had come in less than a minute earlier.
With his nose bleeding and gasping for air, Whitey moaned, “Get him off me,” at the younger of the two confused-looking cops who stood less than three feet away.
“Get off him,” the young cop ordered, the barrel of his revolver aimed squarely at Rosie’s chest. “Hands in the air.”
“Son of a bitch tried to burn down Mae’s,” Rosie yelled up at the cop, pointing toward Mae’s charred back porch, where CJ, Petey, and Mavis stood next to the two spent fire extinguishers.
“Get the fire department out here,” CJ shouted at the older cop, who, pointing his finger like a weapon at CJ, yelled, “They’re on the way. Meantime, the three of you stay the hell put.”
When Mavis took two steps in Rosie’s direction, the young cop, his gun still drawn, ran toward her, shoved her backward, and knocked her off balance into CJ. “Can’t you hear, lady? Stay put.”
When CJ reached out to grab the cop’s arm, Mavis wrapped her arms around him in a bear hug. “CJ, no!” Only the sounds of sirens in the distance served to defuse the situation.
“Stay the shit here with your girlfriend, buddy, and don’t move! You, too, shorty,” the cop said to Petey, holstering his gun.
As the young patrolman walked back toward Rosie, who was standing, arms in the air, with rivulets of melted snow and beads of sweat streaming down his cheeks, CJ wanted to scream, “You dumbass! The guy on the ground’s who you want!” But with Mavis still hugging him protectively, he did as he was told.
“Hey, I ain’t your torcher,” protested Rosie to the older cop, who was busy cuffing him. “The guy on the ground’s your man.”
“What have you got, sarge?” the young cop asked, eyeing Rosie, then Whitey, as wailing fire-engine sirens closed in.
“The big fellow here says the guy on the ground tried to torch the building behind us.
“What’s your name?” the sergeant asked Rosie, ignoring Detroit Whitey’s moans.
“Rosie Weeks.”
“You workin’ with the three down there?” he asked, pointing toward CJ and Mavis and Petey.
“Yes.”
“Doing what?”
“Helpin’ out.”
“Sure,” the cop said sarcastically, deciding that with things under at least some semblance of control, he could take a look at the man on the ground. As he knelt next to the partially hooded man, he smiled and a sudden hint of recognition crossed his face. “My, my, my, Louie Jordan. What the hell’s an old-time torcher like you doing out on a snowy night like this?”
When Whitey didn’t respond, the wily old sergeant answered for him. “Setting fires to try to stay warm, I’d bet.” Eyeing Rosie, and to the clear disappointment of his young partner, he said to the other cop, “You can uncuff Weeks. After that, why don’t you go take the other three people’s statements? And call for an ambulance while you’re at it.”
“Okay,” said the younger cop, heading to where CJ, Mavis, and Petey stood in the headlight glare of an approaching pumper truck. The sergeant watched the younger man trot eagerly into the headlights, then turned back to Rosie. “Why don’t you start from the beginning for me, Weeks?” he said, staring down at Whitey, who, fully conscious now, said, “I need medical attention, damn it!”
“You’ll get it,” the sergeant said. “In the meantime, Louie, my boy, I’d get busy polishing up my story.”
CJ had barely slept thirty minutes all night after his arrival home from the District 2 police substation just after 1:30 a.m. Over nearly three hours, he, Rosie, Mavis, and Petey had given more statements to not just cops but more sleepy-eyed arson investigators than he would ever have imagined the city and county of Denver
employed. Fifteen minutes into the lead investigator’s unrelenting questioning, CJ had the sense that Fire Lieutenant Archie Simms was the kind of ambitious, take-no-prisoners man who likely had his eye on someday becoming the city’s fire chief.
They’d all finally left the substation in Willis Sundee’s vintage ’58 Buick Roadmaster under sleet-spitting skies after promising Lieutenant Simms, who seemed eager to work through the night, that they would do everything they could to assist him in his investigation.
Willis, who’d dropped CJ off at home first, seemed puzzled by CJ’s parting comment: “Sorry I let you down, Willis. Never should’ve let anybody get that close to Mae’s, but I’ll make it up to you in the morning—count on it.”
“No need for that. We’re over the hump now,” Willis had said, hoping to assuage CJ’s feelings of guilt.
“Yeah,” CJ had said as he’d gotten out of the car. “But I’m gonna make certain we don’t get shoved back down the hill.”
Now, as CJ sat slouched behind the steering wheel of Ike’s Jeep, hoping to intercept Walt Reasoner as Reasoner arrived for work, his parting words to Willis Sundee the previous night echoed in his head.
All his life he’d hated to fail at anything, and the fact that he’d left the door open for someone to burn down Mae’s, whether they’d succeeded or not, represented a failure.
He had no reason to doubt that in the end the cops, eager-beaver Lieutenant Simms, and the legal system would coalesce to mete out justice to Detroit Whitey. But he had the uneasy feeling that they might not be so efficient when it came to Reasoner.
Rest-broken, guilt-ridden, and determined to do something about the possibility that Reasoner might skate, he found himself smoking a cheroot and pinched behind the wheel of the Jeep, intent on making certain that Reasoner, who he was sure had sent Detroit Whitey on his arson mission, would pay.
When his pager went off and the numbers 888 popped up on the screen, he knew that Petey Greene, who’d staked out Reasoner’s house since early that morning, had just seen Reasoner leave, presumably headed for work.
Pegging the odds of Reasoner heading straight for work as pretty high, especially since Reasoner likely hadn’t heard from the incarcerated Detroit Whitey, CJ thought back on what Ike had once told him about hiring out a job instead of doing it yourself: Roll out a throng and it’ll get done wrong. Feeling more guilty, he took a final drag on his cheroot and stubbed it out in the Jeep’s ashtray.
Ike’s words were still swirling around in his head when Walt Reasoner’s Mercedes-Benz pulled into the Epic Produce & Meats parking lot. When the late-model diesel eased into Reasoner’s assigned parking space in the totally empty lot, and Reasoner stepped out and shut his door, looking as if he owned the world, CJ yelled, exiting the Jeep, “Hey, Reasoner, wanna hold up?”
Startled, Reasoner looked up to see CJ only two strides away. “What do you want, Floyd?” He squared up to face CJ.
“Not much. Just want to bring you up to date. Your firebug got squashed last night, my man.”
“Got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then I guess I should lay things out for you. You sent someone to burn down Mae’s Louisiana Kitchen last night. A torcher out of Detroit. Goes by the name of Detroit Whitey.”
“Sorry, but I don’t know the man.”
“Well, he sure as hell knows you.”
Reasoner took a step forward. “Get the hell off my property, Floyd. Now!”
The stale aroma of garlic and alcohol curled up into CJ’s face as he grabbed Reasoner by the collar of his jacket, and slammed him back into his car door. Pressing a knee firmly into Reasoner’s belly, he said, “The cops will get around to you eventually, asshole. Then, unfortunately, the system will pussyfoot around with you while your lawyer wastes your money and the taxpayers’ time. So I figured in order not to waste such precious commodities, I’d drop by and discuss things with you in a quick-solution kind of way.”
With Reasoner struggling to get free, CJ grabbed him by a hank of hair and slammed his head into the door frame of the Mercedes. Woozy and barely able to stand, Reasoner listed from side to side. “And just to tie things up all nice and neat, the way I promised Willis Sundee I would when I took this job, I want you to think about this. If at any time in the future a single hair on Willis’s head looks like it’s out of place to me, or if for some reason on a day when things aren’t going particularly well for him he begins looking stressed out, I’ll figure you’re back trying to put the squeeze on him, and we’ll go a round or two like this again.” CJ had pulled his knee out of Reasoner’s gut and taken a step back when a Jeep Wagoneer sporting Denver Fire Department emblems on the front doors pulled into the parking lot and sped toward them. Archie Simms was behind the wheel.
“He assaulted me,” Reasoner wheezed, dropping to his knees and pointing at CJ. “Arrest his black ass.”
Waving off the cop who shared the front seat with him, Simms ignored Reasoner’s plea and asked, “Are you Walt Reasoner?”
“Yes. Now, cuff the fucking SOB!”
“I’ll have Sergeant Tully here do that just as soon as you answer a few questions. And just so you know,” Simms said, smiling, “the sergeant and I have worked lots of arson cases together. He’s very seasoned.” Reasoner’s jaw dropped as the burly sergeant stepped out of the Wagoneer, grabbed CJ by the arm, and muscled him aside but never cuffed him.
“I think we can talk freely now that Mr. Floyd here is under control,” said Simms.
Surprised that a veteran police sergeant would allow Simms to dictate procedure, especially since the two of them had arrived on the scene of an apparent assault, CJ had the feeling that someone higher up than either man had cleared the way for them to operate outside the procedural rule book.
Sounding solicitous, Simms said, “I’d like to ask you a few questions about a fire that someone tried to start over in Five Points last night, if that’s okay, Mr. Reasoner.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to you without my lawyer,” Reasoner said, gingerly patting his throbbing head.
“Of course,” said Simms. “Why don’t we go into your office? You can call him from there.”
Simms started off boldly for the front door of the Epic Produce & Meats offices, as if to show he was clearly in charge, then paused to whisper to CJ, “If you want to get out of this gracefully, Floyd, I’d play things my way.” The look on Simms’s face spoke volumes. CJ had seen the look on the faces of apple-polishing naval officers bucking for promotion and on the faces of South Vietnamese soldiers who’d publicly defended the American war effort but secretly supported the Vietcong. He’d seen the look on the faces of the slick-as-shit lawyers Ike always claimed would sell their mothers down the river for a nickel and on the faces of Vietnamese whores shilling for the pimps they knew would cut their throats if they ever stopped. He knew the look all right. It was the look of someone for whom the end always justified the means.
Smiling as if he enjoyed hearing the sound of his own voice, Simms asked, “Are you on board?”
“Yeah,” said CJ as Sergeant Tully relaxed his grip on CJ’s arm.
“Good” was Simms’s only response.
An hour and forty minutes later, Reasoner left his offices in handcuffs with his lawyer at his side. Not the cuffs of Sergeant Tully but those of a Denver police commander with an up-bucking personality that matched that of Lieutenant Simms.
As CJ and Simms stood just outside the building’s front door watching Reasoner being carted away, Simms said, “Sometimes bad things actually happen to bad people. Detroit Whitey’s a two-time loser. The third time around earns him serious time, and I’m sure Whitey doesn’t want things to get that serious. He’ll cooperate. Sorta like you, I expect,” Simms said pointedly. “Reasoner’s the fish we want, Floyd. Remember that.”
“I’ve committed it to memory.”
“Good. The DA, Commander Theisman, and I appreciate it.”
“Just thinking, though, that
sometimes those bad things you mentioned happen to good people.”
Simms flashed CJ an insightful smile. “It’s the way of the world, Floyd. The way of our not-so-gentle world.”
Part 3
The Hidden Linkages
SPRING 1977
Chapter 19
It didn’t take much for Detroit Whitey to roll on Walt Reasoner and cut a deal with the Denver DA’s office that would end up buying him significantly reduced prison time. Extortion and contracting with someone to commit arson, Reasoner learned, could turn out to be a lot more serious than mere attempted arson. The day that the final Whitey-Reasoner plea-bargain deal came down, six months after CJ’s parking-lot encounter with Lieutenant Simms, turned out to be a surprisingly balmy fifty-degree college spring break weekend the following March.
CJ and Rosie were seated at one of Mae’s back tables having lunch when Petey Greene rushed in, sprinted the length of the restaurant, and plopped down in a chair next to CJ. “Reasoner’s gettin’ seven years. As for our boy Whitey—and you can take this to the bank—even though it ain’t come down official yet, he won’t do much more than a year.”
Amazed at Petey’s ability to extract information out of the criminal justice system before it was official and before it appeared in the newspapers or TV, Rosie, who tended to discount Petey’s prognostications, said, “How the hell you have such an inside track on everything that goes down in the Queen City beats the hell outa me, Petey.”
Petey broke into a broad, toothy grin. “I keep my eyes on the prize and my ears to the ground, that’s how. If you did the same, you’d know they’re plannin’ on puttin’ up a Sinclair discount station over in Curtis Park. A place like that, no more than four blocks away from you to boot, could end up puttin’ a knot in your business, don’t you think?”
“I know what folks are plannin’, Petey, and I’ve got my own plans for them, in case you’re wonderin’.”
“Yeah, and—”