by Robert Greer
In response to CJ’s fire-drawing taunt, Steed squeezed off three more shots that pinged off the concrete in front of CJ. “Seven rounds down,” CJ whispered, propping Marquee up and using him as a shield. When Marquee shrieked, “No!” CJ grabbed the terrified Englishman by his shirt collar and, half choking him, said, “I’ll call the goddamn fire in on your head, Marquee, or maybe just shoot you myself if you don’t cooperate.”
“No! No, please!”
“How the hell did Harry get all those license plates?”
“Like you said, he stole them from Ames. I was just an intermediary, steering Ames in the direction of rare finds. I didn’t kill anyone.” Rubbing his wounded leg, he said, “I need help. I’ll bleed to death.”
“No, you won’t.” Squinting in pain, CJ slipped off his jacket, draped one of the sleeves over Marquee’s thigh, and said, “Tie it in a knot around your leg.” The sound of fabric swishing drew another round from Steed as Marquee complied. When CJ heard Steed insert a new clip into his weapon, he smiled and said, “Eight rounds and out. I know your ordnance limits now, Harry. Hope you’re a fast reloader.”
Nudging Marquee in the ribs with a hard knee, CJ yelled, “Marquee’s giving you up over here, Harry. The rarest of the rare. Isn’t that what you said I should be collecting when you gave me that line of bullshit about buyers and sellers and specialists? And staging that break-in at your store to get me and the cops focused on Marquee. Real nice touch. So was the phantom Suburban you planted in Marquee’s garage. I should’ve realized all along that whoever killed Wiley and Chin was somebody looking to inhale rarefied air.”
He turned his attention back to Marquee. “You should check out your garage more often, friend. Now what about Chin? Just a pigeon, I’m guessing?”
“Yeah,” said Marquee, puzzled by the garage reference and shivering from blood loss. “Harry had me get Chin there that morning hoping a double homicide might send the cops scampering in the wrong direction. I made sure Chin showed up with a box of stolen seashells so he’d think the meeting was part of his and Ames’s normal fencing scam. Harry even ran off with the shells.”
“Then he killed Chin for no damn reason at all?”
“Oh, he had a reason.” Marquee glanced back at the Packard. “The license plates on these cars.”
Stone-cold killer, CJ thought, shaking his head in disgust as images of some of the combat-nurtured American GI psychos he’d run across in Vietnam resurfaced. The war had turned some men into nutcases just as capable of killing a fellow soldier over a carton of cigarettes or a night with some Saigon whore as they were of killing the enemy. He had no idea what had pushed Harry Steed to that point. Perhaps it had been his war. A war that had taught him to be a wheeler and a dealer, an insatiable hoarder of things, and, in the end, a killer. He guessed that if he’d looked long and hard enough, something he’d unfortunately never really done when it had come to Steed, he would have seen the soul-smoothing reflection of war in Steed’s eyes. A look that Wiley Ames had once sworn to him he could see in the eyes of every man who’d been to war, including CJ.
When he heard what he thought was Steed moving toward them, he whispered to Marquee, “Be right back,” and, duck-walking his way down the east side of the line of cars, moved to circle behind Steed. He’d reached the rear of the Nash Rambler when Steed popped out from behind the right front fender of the ’55 Chevy and squeezed off two rounds. Uncertain whether it was the poor lighting or the slightly cockeyed, out-of-line Rambler that spoiled Steed’s aim, CJ fired back, clipping Steed in the left cheek. Startled, with blood streaming down his cheek and his .45 dangling momentarily at his side, Steed took the full brunt of CJ’s bull rush. A forearm to the chin and full-steam charge drove Steed into the floor, slamming his head into the concrete. As CJ crawled on top of the unconscious pawnshop owner, the doors to the Quonset hut rolled open and the headlights of a Littleton police car, responding to a report from a terrified-sounding Grant Ranch sales agent that someone in a Jeep was trespassing on the ranch property, flooded the inside of the Quonset hut.
A boyish-looking patrolman stepped out of the car. When he saw three men down on the floor, he drew his service revolver and shouted, “Nobody move! Arms in the air—everybody!”
Semiconscious and slumped face forward, Gaylord Marquee barely heard the command. Harry Steed, who was flat on his back and out cold with a hole in his cheek that was oozing blood, couldn’t respond. Only CJ, who was staring down the barrel of a .38 police special, obliged and raised his hands.
In one way, Steed and Marquee fared better than CJ. Whisked off to Swedish Hospital for medical attention, they were spared the midnight police grilling that CJ was forced to endure in a drafty Littleton precinct substation while his shoulder screamed in pain.
Luckily, his interrogator, a graying, pudgy, clearly in-charge detective sergeant who had been called to the scene of the break-in by the two beat cops, was a seasoned cop with the investigative smarts to realize that the bizarre Quonset-hut scene, in which a verified Littleton resident and his companion, both white, had apparently been shot by a black intruder, wasn’t quite what it seemed.
Five minutes into his interrogation, following a half-dozen attempts to comfortably adjust his pear-shaped body to an undersized, rickety wooden chair, Kip Manson, a twenty-year veteran of the Littleton police force, said, “Five and a half years is a long time to chase after a case. Even one as widely known in these parts as the GI Joe’s killings, and especially if you’re not a cop. Why so persistent, Floyd?”
“Just something I promised myself I’d do. I’ve said too much already. Don’t think I’ll say anything else without my lawyer here.”
“Suit yourself,” said Manson. “But I can tell you this. You haven’t left yourself a whole lot of wiggle room, friend. You trespassed on private property, broke into a locked building, and shot two men.”
“Two men who tried to kill me!”
“It’ll be your word against theirs.”
Unwilling to bite his tongue and aware that he just might be digging himself a deeper hole, CJ said, “What about those license plates I mentioned? They’re stolen. They belonged to Wiley Ames, like I’ve already said, or to his estate, at least. Steed killed Ames over them. The plates on the cars in that Quonset hut are first-of-state issues from every state in the Rocky Mountain West. Altogether they’re worth sixty or seventy grand, easy.”
“Seems like an awfully strange reason to kill two men,” said Manson. “But then again, I’m no license-plate aficionado. Now, just for the record, if I were someone on the outside looking in, I’d say a more likely scenario is that you’re the one who was willing to kill for those license plates.”
CJ rubbed his injured shoulder and sighed as Manson glanced down at the two pages of notes he’d jotted on a yellow tablet. Flipping back one of the pages, Manson said, “You said Ames was a World War II vet and that Chin, the other guy killed that morning at GI Joe’s, was a concert cellist.”
“Yes.”
“Odd sorta ducks to be hanging out together, don’t you think?”
“Chin was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gay-lord Marquee, that other guy they carted off to the hospital, told me so himself.”
“The guy you shot.”
“He tried to kill me, damn it. Steed had Marquee lure Chin to GI Joe’s the morning of the killings, and Steed popped him along with Ames, hoping to get people like you looking in the wrong direction. Send you chasing after anything and anybody but them.”
“Hope for your sake you’re telling the truth, Floyd, and for the record once again, it wasn’t us Littleton cops who spent years looking the wrong way. For the moment, though, let’s forget about the GI Joe’s killings and get back to why you’re here. Maybe instead of the way you’re saying things went down at that Quonset hut, they really unfolded like this. After five and a half years of dogging a case, you finally nail down all the ins and outs, and you decide to grab those first-of-state lic
ense plates for yourself and eliminate two other people who also knew their true value.”
Looking frustrated, CJ said, “Talk to Gaylord Marquee if you want the truth. I’ve told you, he’s the one who lured Chin to GI Joe’s the morning of those killings, and I don’t think he’ll want to do Harry Steed’s time for him.”
“Okay,” Manson said, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Just tell me why, in all this time, Steed hasn’t done away with Marquee? From what you’re saying, the man clearly knew too much.”
“Beats me. Maybe Steed was paying Marquee to keep quiet. Right now I’m thinking maybe I’ll just shut up and wait for my lawyer.”
“Your choice, Floyd. Perhaps you weren’t out to steal those plates. Could be you, or maybe you and Marquee, were planning on stealing a couple of those vintage cars instead. Maybe Marquee got cold feet and you decided to get rid of him and score everything for yourself.”
Still silent, CJ glanced toward the room’s metal door, wondering why Ike’s lawyer, Sam Guterro, hadn’t yet appeared. Moments later the door edged open, and a plainclothes cop who’d been in the room when the interrogation had started stuck his head into the room and beckoned to Manson. Man-son said with a wink, “Back in a sec.” The two men whispered to one another with the door half open for a good thirty seconds before Manson returned. They’re setting me up, CJ thought as Manson, scratching his head theatrically, retook his seat. “Got a couple of new wrinkles for you, Floyd. We’ve done some checking on you. Two tours of Vietnam as a patrol-boat machine gunner. A Navy Cross to your credit and enough skirmishes with the Denver cops since coming home from ’Nam to make your name pop on our computers like you’re kin to Orville Redenbacher. War duty like that can make a man real hard inside. Make him think less about the price he might have to pay for starting something and shooting someone.”
“You’re headed down the wrong road, Sergeant.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I’m just a simple-minded suburban cop from outside your big city who’s stumbled face first into the real reason for a couple of five-and-a-half-year-old murders. You said earlier that Ames and Chin were killed with a .44 Mag.”
“There’s never really been any question about that.”
Manson beamed. “Well, stepcousins that we are to Denver out here in the ’burbs, we nonetheless try our best to be thorough. My partner, the man I just talked to, had someone get a judge out of bed to issue a search warrant for that Quonset hut you broke into, and lo and behold, do you know what my people found during that search?”
“Beats me.”
“A bunch more license plates packed up in boxes. Plates that I’m guessing must be pretty rare. They also found a .44 Mag semiautomatic tucked away in one of the boxes. Somehow I’ve got a feeling that gun isn’t yours, Floyd.”
“So why tell me?” CJ asked, suspecting that he’d all of a sudden become a bargaining chip.
“Oh, I think we both know why, Floyd. You and I, well, we’re both, when you come right down to it—now, how do they say it?—little cogs. If that .44 is a murder weapon, and if it belongs to either Marquee or Steed, things will move pretty swiftly from here. Brew yourself up a mixture of media types looking to milk a story and politicians jockeying for position, and guess what? You’ve got electioneering news for months.”
Surprised by Manson’s forthrightness and looking confused, CJ asked, “What the hell gives, Sergeant?”
Manson smiled. It was the confident smile of a man with inside dope. “Let’s just say somebody I don’t see eye to eye with, somebody who wants to be Colorado’s next governor, could be looking to ride your horse to glory, Floyd. That is, of course, if you’re telling the truth, and if that .44 we found turns out to be a murder weapon. Bottom line here is that whether I like it or not, and whether or not the person I’m talking about ends up hating our guts, we’ll all be sitting on the same side of the table in the end.”
“And if the .44 doesn’t turn out to be Marquee’s or Steed’s, what then?”
“Then that lawyer of yours who hasn’t shown up should be doing his best to whittle down the time on your prison term. Like I said, we’re bargaining chips, Floyd. Got another piece of news for you,” Manson said, finally relaxing back in his chair.
“Which is?”
The look on Manson’s face turned positively serious. “I did a couple of years in the navy myself. No Navy Cross, of course. Did my time in Korea, 1952 and ’53. Got mixed up in what some political types still like to call a conflict instead of a war. Guess that’s the reason I can’t stomach politicians. Wanna guess what I babysat on the high-speed transport I served aboard?”
“Couldn’t hazard a guess,” said CJ, knowing very well where the pudgy police sergeant was headed with the question. “But I’m betting she was a lot bigger than my .50-caliber.”
“Much bigger. A 40-millimeter cannon, to be exact, one of three on the old Horace Bass. Called her Harriet. What about you?”
The sounds and smells of the Mekong River Delta reached up and grabbed CJ by the throat as he whispered, “Bertha.”
“Never really goes away, does it?” said Manson, noting the strange lost look on CJ’s face.
Recalling what Wiley Ames had said to him the first time they’d met and feeling a strange, mission-accomplished sense of relief, CJ said, “Not really. But like a friend of mine once told me, you move on.”
Chapter 30
CJ had never liked Sam Guterro—his holier-than-thou aloofness, his overly macho, manufactured courtroom stage presence, his arrogance, or his third grade pettiness. In all the years he’d known the man who’d been Ike’s lawyer, he’d barely been able to endure more than a few minutes of Guterro’s personality or his rancid-smelling breath.
He’d never understood why Ike had kept a man like Guterro around. Word on the street was that Guterro had once kept Ike from going to prison for nearly killing a man who had gotten too frisky with Marguerite in a bar one night, but Ike had never confirmed that rumor, and Willis Sundee, the only man CJ suspected knew the truth, had always been evasive or downright mum on the subject.
Guterro was his typical condescending, abrasive self the night he talked to CJ in private, lawyer-to-client fashion, following Sergeant Manson’s interrogation. In his dressing down of CJ, he implied that CJ was either naive or stupid to have talked to Manson at all.
Instead of cold-cocking the dish-faced, redheaded barrister on the spot, CJ bit back his anger, swallowed his medicine, and, expecting that he would be bonded out of jail by late the next day, went off to jail, shoulder separation and all. Now he was having trouble controlling his temper as he stood outside the Arapahoe County Courthouse, free on a seventy-five-thousand-dollar bond, talking to Sam. CJ was angry over the fact that because of Sam’s dawdling, and very likely his arrogance, he’d had to spend two nights in jail rather than one.
Henry Bales, recognizing the bad blood between the two men and trying his best to keep from being showered by Guterro’s excuse-laced spittle or bowled over by his bad breath, stood several feet away, looking toward the courthouse doorway, where he expected Rosie Weeks, his and CJ’s ride home, to appear any second.
Guterro, unwilling to back down, seemed intent on pushing CJ’s buttons. “You keep your trap shut from now on, you hear me? That’s what the hell delayed things. And never bet yourself that a cop like that Manson won’t be there to put a spear in your ass if he gets the chance. Big-town cops, small-town cops, it doesn’t matter. They’re all the same. Didn’t Ike teach you anything?”
CJ swallowed hard, thought briefly about his and Manson’s shared experiences, and remained silent.
Guterro continued, “Best thing you have going for you is that Suburban the cops impounded from that Quonset hut. It’s unregistered, but it’s Steed’s all right according to people in the know, and it pretty much ties him to the Petey Greene murder. That’s one thing in your overly loquacious favor, at least. Be certain that I’ll milk that connection for all it’s worth. The problem
will be getting Marquee to roll on Steed.”
“Nice to be blessed with small things,” said CJ.
Guterro looked offended. “Listen up, Calvin, because for some reason you still seem to be missing the goddamn point. You’re on the hook for trying to kill a couple of men. And to make matters worse, you’ve got some real damaging post-Vietnam stress history that won’t be hard to hang out there. If I were you, I’d jettison the smugness. From this point forward, your job is to sit in the wings and keep quiet. I’ll make the necessary connections between Steed and Marquee. I’ll force Marquee’s hand and get him to roll on Steed, and I’ll use my ins at the Arapahoe County DA’s office to move this thing away from where it could blow your goddamn head off. Got it?”
Looking fed up, CJ glanced at Henry and said, “Wanna step over here for a sec, Bull Tamer?”
Henry shrugged and stepped close to CJ and Sam.
CJ smiled. “Sam here just finished telling me how a smart lawyer like him can wrap up the case against Steed and Marquee in a tight little penitentiary-bound bow. Even outlined his strategy for me. Right, Sam?”
“Pretty much,” said Guterro, looking puzzled.
“So I need a witness who can attest to the fact that I’m not stealing any of Sam’s intellectual property from him when I do what I’m about to do.” Looking Sam squarely in the eye, he said, “You’re fired, asshole. Have your secretary send me a bill.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Afraid so. Now, shuffle on off to Buffalo or Podunk, or wherever in the hell jerks like you feed your egos, and get outa my face. I just spent an extra night in jail because of your sorry ass, and in all the time I’ve talked to you since my release, you’ve never once asked me about Ike.”