Blackbird, Farewell Page 12

  “I'm ready.”

  “Then I need you to remember somethin’ about teamwork, and I'm not referrin’ to the kinda sports-games teamwork you're used to, Damion. I'm talkin’ about the kind that's expected outta you when you're carryin’ a rifle and the scared-shitless grunt next to you has your life in his hands. I gotta tell you, I was more than a little bit nervous about startin’ down this road in the first place, and so far I ain't run across nothin’ to calm my nerves. So we act together on this thing, no matter which way it goes and no matter what. You got me?”

  “Yes,” said Damion, sensing that he was no longer talking to the caring woman who'd help his mother raise him but instead to war-hardened Sergeant Major Flora Jean Benson.

  “Fine. So now that I've said my piece, unless you've got a new lead for us to follow here right this very second, I'm thinkin’ we're done for the day.” Flora Jean checked her watch. “It's about time I headed down to Colorado Springs to hook up with Alden. We'll get back at it tomorrow.” She shoved her legal pad across her desk as if to punctuate the statement. “Where're you headed?”

  “Thought I'd go over to Niki's and see if I can't talk her into making me some chili and see how Connie Eastland's holding up. Connie was there most of the day, and according to Niki, she's a real basket case.”

  Flora Jean looked surprised. “Never realized that Connie and Shan-dell were all that tight. Sorta figured she was just the latest notch in Blackbird's six-gun.”

  “Surprised me at first too. But I guess they were getting serious. She's gotta be hurting.”

  “Well, give them two beauty queens my best, and tell Connie I said to hang in there.”

  “Will do.” Damion rose to leave. He was halfway to the door when Flora Jean called out, “And remember what I said about teamwork, sugar.”

  “I will.” Flashing her a thumbs-up, he stepped out into the hallway and headed for the echoing Victorian's front door. The door of the stately old building had barely closed behind him when Flora Jean picked up the phone and dialed CJ. When a cheerful hotel operator patched her through to CJ and Mavis's room, she couldn't help but smile at the thought that after all these years, CJ and Mavis were actually honeymooning.

  “It's me, sugar,” she said in response to CJ's trademark “Floyd here,” “and I think I've bought myself a problem.” CJ didn't interrupt as for the next seven minutes she filled him in on the people and the point-shaving and drug-dealing issues that had surfaced in the early stages of her investigation of Shandell Bird's murder. Sounding peeved as she wrapped up her summary, she said, “Damion's holdin’ back on me, CJ. I've known that boy since he was ten. He knows somethin’ he ain't sharin’ with me. I know it.”

  CJ glanced out from his suite at the Mauna Lanai Hotel to a west-facing balcony where Mavis sat enjoying the sun and reading a book. “Damn, Flora Jean—sounds messy.”

  At almost fifty-five, he was no longer the imposing 235-pound, six-foot-three, win-at-any-cost bail bondsman and bounty hunter he'd been for the past thirty-five years. His wiry hair was salt-and-pepper now, and although he still cut an impressive figure, outfitted as he was in loose-fitting swim trunks and a muscle shirt, the muscles didn't respond the way they used to. He'd only recently come to understand that his days as Denver's lead-dog bail bondsman were clearly numbered. That was part of the reason that he'd brought in Flora Jean as his partner several years earlier.

  Stroking his chin, he said, “You should've let the cops handle things instead of trying to play private eye and surrogate mother. But what's done is done. Where'd you say Damion was headed when he left the office?”

  “Over to Niki's.”

  “Better check with her. If Damion wasn't being straight with you, I'm betting you'll find out from her pretty quick. I'll call Mario and Pinkie Niedemeyer and give them a heads-up. Maybe they can help.”

  “Pinkie? CJ, are you sure?” Flora Jean asked, puzzled as to why CJ would call in a hit man like Pinkie Niedemeyer.

  “Dead sure. For some reason, Pinkie and Damion have an understanding. And believe me, I don't get it. Why two men as different as sunup and sundown would be on the same wavelength beats the hell outta me. But ever since Pinkie saved Damion's behind last summer up at the Pawnee grasslands when Damion got himself all tangled up in that Eisenhower Tunnel murder case I was working, they've been as tight as Dick's hatband. You know Pinkie showed up at every one of Damion's CSU home games last year, don't you? And that Julie almost peed her pants and tripped over her tongue when he showed up at Damion's graduation party to toast Damion's future along with several well-placed judges?”

  “Come to think of it, I do recall Julie lookin’ a little flustered, and I remember Pinkie lurkin’ in the background like the killer snake he is at some of them home games too. You don't think he woulda had anything to do with Shandell's murder, do you?”

  “No way. And remember, for what it's worth, that he's our killer snake, Flora Jean. If anyone can worm his way into Garrett Asalon's world besides Mario, who's been out of that loop for over four decades, it would be Pinkie. Don't shrug Pinkie off. You might need him.”

  “Okay. But I'm tellin’ you, CJ, I've got a feelin’ that Damion's out there about to bite off more than he can chew.”

  “You can't hold his hand forever, Flora Jean. He's grown. Funny, I told Julie the very same thing just recently. Let's just hope that if Damion's out there on his own, sticking his nose into a dirty business like murder, he has enough sense to know when to either back off or call for help.”

  “Think I should tell Julie what I think he's up to?”

  “Not right now. No need upsetting her over a hunch. Sit back for just a little bit. In the meantime, I'll make those calls to Mario and Pinkie.”

  “Guess you better.” There was a sense of urgency in Flora Jean's tone that hadn't been there when the conversation started. “I'm headin’ down to Colorado Springs to Alden's. If you need me I'll be there.” Hoping to end the conversation on a lighter note, she said, “And remember, you've got yourself a whole lifetime left to treat Mavis like a queen.”

  “Always have. Talk to you later,” said CJ, glancing toward Mavis with a smile before hanging up.

  After making phone calls to Mario Satoni and Pinkie Niedemeyer, expressing Flora Jean's concerns and requesting that they keep tabs on young would-be Dr. Madrid, CJ sat back in his chair and teased a cheroot out of a flip-top box on a nearby coffee table.

  “Not in here, CJ Floyd,” Mavis admonished, stepping in from the balcony. “Besides, you promised to work on not making me an early widow, remember?” She slipped the cheroot from between his lips, tossed it aside, and kissed him gently. “Who were you talking to on the phone?”

  “Flora Jean.” CJ eyed his brown-skinned, green-eyed bride of three days, thinking that she filled out her swimsuit like a woman in her midtwenties, not her midforties. He couldn't resist patting her on the behind.

  “Anything up in Denver?” Mavis asked, slapping his hand.

  “Only the price of gas,” said CJ, rising from his chair.

  Realizing that CJ's flippant response was meant to end the conversation, Mavis remained silent. Normally she would have probed further, delved a little deeper. But she was on her honeymoon, and at least temporarily planted in paradise. When CJ wrapped his arms around her and kissed so passionately that she could only conjure an endless Polynesian bliss, she found herself suddenly thinking, Denver be damned.

  Damion felt sick to his stomach over lying to Flora Jean, but he'd followed his instincts, and now, as he stood alone on the Twenty-ninth and Welton Street light-rail station platform in the center of Five Points, waiting impatiently to meet a very-late-arriving Leotis Hawkins, he had the sense that Flora Jean probably knew he'd been less than truthful with her about what he'd found during his trip to CSU.

  He found himself wondering whether either Jackie Woodson or Rodney Sands had set him up for a kill. He knew Jackie wasn't about to let anything stand in the way of his fast trac
k to an NBA career. Not a drug-dealing or point-shaving scam, for certain. He couldn't be so sure about Rodney, but he suspected that anyone who prided himself on being the ultimate manipulator, even referring to himself on occasion as “the floor manager,” might just be egotistical enough to think he could outsmart anyone, including the cops and the American judicial system, and in the end get away with murder.

  An unexpected cold front had eased its way into the Mile High City, and in the half hour since he'd left Flora Jean's office the temperature had dropped from balmy T-shirt-and-shorts weather to a chilly 56 degrees. Damion stood there shivering, dressed only in a CSU sweatshirt with cut-off sleeves and a baggy pair of unlined basketball warmups, upset at not having slipped on the Windbreaker he kept in the glove compartment of his Jeep before striking out to meet Hawkins. He stared down a nearly deserted Welton Street toward downtown, wondering what Five Points and the jazz it had been famous for had really been like during the now struggling community's post–World War II heyday. He'd heard stories from Mario Satoni, a seasoned jazz aficionado, and on more than one occasion he'd listened to the boastful ramblings of Theo Wilhite. But there were no latter-day accounts, he told himself, imagining the excitement and the music that would have emanated from the now boarded-up Rossonian Club two blocks away. The club had once jumped with headliners like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, and Louie Armstrong, but the times had changed, and in the sixty years since its heyday, a community that had once been working class and exclusively black had transitioned into a yuppie-bound high-dollar oasis, replete with expensive condos, renovated Queen Annes, and remodeled bungalows owned by upwardly mobile whites.

  Aware that no amount of wishing or daydreaming could bring back the past, Damion eyed his watch, shook his head, and turned to walk off the deserted platform, thinking that his meeting with Hawkins, now almost twenty minutes past the scheduled time, was a scrub. He'd half expected Hawkins to be a no-show, so he wasn't surprised. Kicking at an empty McDonald's Happy Meal bag and a half-empty old-fashioned twelve-ounce glass Coke bottle that had been left on the platform, he started down the wheelchair access ramp that ran down to the sidewalk. He was halfway down when someone standing at the bottom of the ramp called up to him, “You lookin’ for somebody, homes?”

  “I am if you're Leotis Hawkins,” the startled Damion said in as calm a voice as he could muster. Holding his ground, he stared down toward a hooded-sweatshirt-wearing, 300-pound black man with the most massive, rectangular-looking head he'd ever seen.

  “I'm him. But you don't look nothin’ like Rodney Sands to me, bro. Not a blond hair nowhere I can see, and you're lookin’ way too Latin.” Hawkins burst into laughter. “Mind tellin’ me why you'd be standin’ here in Rodney's place?”

  Damion glanced up and down an all-but-empty Welton Street and found himself suddenly wishing that it was 1946, when the street would have been bustling with workaday people instead of curled up on itself and all but dead just a few hours after rush hour. “Thought I'd try and get an answer to some questions,” Damion said finally.

  “About what?”

  “About Shandell Bird supposedly doing a little drug pushing for you.”

  “Oh, that.” Hawkins smiled, showing off a set of perfectly aligned white teeth. Cutting the smile off, he looked around to make certain he and Damion were alone. “No big deal. Just helpin’ a future sports superstar make hisself a little extra college spendin’ money.”

  “Hard to believe.” As he continued to stare down at Hawkins, Damion realized that the sweatshirt the big man was wearing failed miserably at hiding his massive forearms and protruding belly.

  “Just as hard as it is for me to believe that you would be dumb enough to come down here on my turf and stick your nose into my shit, Madrid. Always heard you were the smart one in that hyped-up Bird-and-Blood combo folks around here still ramble on about so much. But it sure don't seem like it to me.”

  “You got any proof that Shandell was selling drugs for you?” asked Damion, his tone insistent.

  “Shit, you are a hardhead, aren't you, Madrid?” Hawkins shook his head in disbelief. “No, but I got this.” Again flashing his teeth in a smile, he slipped a bowie knife with a gleaming four-inch-long blade out of the hand-warmer pocket of his sweatshirt. “What me and your boy Shandell were doin’ don't matter so much, really. He's dead.” Clutching the knife in his left hand and extending the blade low and out in front of him, prepared for an upsweep, Hawkins glanced around one more time to make sure no one was around before starting up the wheelchair ramp.

  Damion glanced over his shoulder and gauged the height of the safety railing that skirted the light-rail platform. Thinking he'd have to leap the three-and-a-half-foot railing and drop seven or eight feet to the sidewalk, he looked for a good purchase point.

  “You look scared, Madrid,” Hawkins said, closing in slowly.

  “And you look real stupid, fat boy,” Damion yelled back, aware that just as in the world of sports, a properly placed insult in the heat of battle could be just the thing to keep an opponent off balance. “Is that how you got Shandell and Rodney Sands to do your bidding? Scared the shit out of them with a knife, blubber belly?”

  “You fuckin’ asshole. I'll teach you somethin’ about fear. And wasn't nobody scared in all this but your buddy Blackbird. Scared of losin’ his fuckin’ reputation. But he ain't got that to worry about no more, does he?”

  “What did you have on him?” Damion called out as Hawkins suddenly bull-rushed him, screaming “Yahee!” as he charged. Sidestepping, leaping back onto the station platform, and realizing that Hawkins would surely cut him before he had time to clear the guardrail and jump, he looked around for a weapon, finally grabbing the half-empty Coke bottle that he'd kicked at earlier. Holding the bottle aloft as its syrupy mixture of Coca-Cola and cigarette butts dribbled down his arm, he yelled, “You as good with a gun as you are with a knife, blubber boy?”

  Hawkins let out a loud whoop and, surprising Damion with his agility, swung the blade of the knife from knee height up and around in a wide half circle, catching Damion in the middle of his left biceps.

  Yelling, “Ahhhhh,” Damion jumped back, uncertain how badly he'd been cut until he saw blood streaming down his arm.

  Buoyed by the success of his second lunge, Hawkins moved in for the kill. With spittle streaming from one corner of his mouth, grunting and wheezing, he attacked again. In midlunge, Damion slammed the nearly empty, solid-as-a-rock Coke bottle into Hawkins's temple. The mammoth-headed Hawkins barely had time to look dazed before dropping to his knees. Looking like a man in the first stage of what would later become a full-blown grade-2 concussion, Hawkins fell face first onto the platform.

  Uncertain what to do next and with a light-rail train suddenly bearing down on the station, Damion scooped up the knife, leaped over the platform's south-facing railing, and dropped down to the sidewalk. Racing up Welton Street into the darkness, he sped across a vacant lot that led to the alley between Welton and Champa Streets with blood oozing down his left arm.

  He'd parked his car on Twenty-eighth Street just at the east end of that alley. Lightheaded, gasping for air, and hoping as he raced down the alley that he wouldn't bleed to death, he found himself thinking less about his own safety and more about whether he'd just killed a man. By the time he reached his vehicle, he was floating on pure adrenaline.

  As he slipped into the Jeep, gripped by the feeling that he'd somehow just torched his life, he recognized that he was close to being in shock. Shivering and trying his best to remain calm, he popped the glove compartment, slipped his Windbreaker out, looped the sleeves around his bleeding arm, and tied them into a tight knot above the lengthy gash in his arm as he tried to fathom what to do next.

  Flora Jean was in Colorado Springs, so she couldn't help. CJ was in Hawaii, and Damion's girlfriend, Niki Estaban, who for the last six weeks had been working evenings on a behind-schedule high-rise architectural project, probably was
n't even home yet. He couldn't run to his mother's house, tail tucked between his legs; she was in San Francisco. He knew he had only two choices. He could head for Denver Health and Hospital's emergency room, where sooner or later he could expect to be grilled by the cops and where very likely, as a felon on the run, he would see his medical-school dreams evaporate, or he could head for Mario Satoni's. In the euphoric state of quasi-shock he was unable to think clearly, and the choice seemed simple.

  As he nosed the Jeep away from the curb, running temporarily without headlights and headed for Mario's house in a mostly Italian neighborhood in North Denver, he kept telling himself, Just let me make it, God. Just let me make it.

  Chapter 13

  Andrus “Pinkie” Niedemeyer had lost all his front teeth, top to bottom, eyetooth to eyetooth, and the pinkie finger of his left hand during a New Year's Eve firefight outside the village of Song Ve three days before he was scheduled to come home from a year-long tour of duty in Vietnam. He'd received a Purple Heart and earned himself a nickname for doing his duty that day. In the years since Vietnam, he'd worked his way up a killing ladder to become not what he'd always dreamed of being, a butcher, but a first-tier mafia hit man. He liked to remind those rare, insightful people who knew he was a hit man that he was anything but full-blooded Sicilian; that, in fact, he was half Jewish, and as a kid he'd wanted to be a butcher and own a little neighborhood specialty-meats store with an adjoining pastry shop.