Three Weeks to Say Goodbye Read online

  “I’m going to leave you two alone,” I said, getting out of bed. “I’m still too wired to sleep. I’ll be back. I’ll try not to wake you up when I come in.”

  Melissa was already falling asleep, an arm stretched lightly over Angelina. At the doorway I stopped and looked back. My wife and my daughter in my bed, both breathing softly.

  I KEPT THE LIGHTS OFF in the family room and turned on the television. Since our remote had been stolen and ruined, I’d learned where to power it up on the set itself. It was tuned to CNN. I was too lazy and disinterested to surf through more channels using the buttons on the set and I sat down in my chair. The light from the set flickered on Cody under the blanket on the couch. Periodically, he would make me jump with thunderous flatulence or a racking snort. I could smell old bourbon in the room, as if it were seeping through his skin. I smiled as I contrasted Angelina and Cody, and wondered what it was about age that made the odors so much worse.

  Over the news anchor’s shoulder on the screen were the graphics MONSTER OF DESOLATION CANYON and the booking photo of Aubrey Coates. They cut away to a local correspondent named Erin somebody doing a standup in front of the court-house hours earlier as the snow began to fall.

  “The case against Aubrey Coates was dealt a major blow today in the Denver courtroom of Judge John Moreland,” the attractive dark-haired lady said, “when…”

  I half watched, half listened. Cody was shown stomping out of the courtroom, snarling at the camera. I couldn’t help but glance over at his broad back on the couch.

  The segment ended as the reporter said, “I’d bet you a bag of donuts that unless the prosecutors have something powerful and unexpected up their sleeves, Aubrey Coates is going to walk. Back to you, Anderson.”

  Anderson said, “That was recorded earlier to night. And Erin, a bag of glazed donuts will be just fine.”

  “Motherfucker …” Cody growled in his sleep, tossing about violently.

  Friday, November 9

  Sixteen Days to Go

  EIGHT

  THREE DAYS PASSED. THERE was nothing in the papers about Luis. I had no idea if he was dead or alive. There were no police visits, no calls from Garrett or John Moreland. It was as if that night had never happened. I could say I felt relief with each passing day, but it wasn’t like that at all. Instead, I felt the tension mounting, anticipating their next attack, wondering this time if it would be with real bullets. And never doubting that it would come.

  While women can generally intuit the subtle feelings and motivations of other human interactions better than men, men instinctively know one thing: when they’re at war. What shocked me was how smoothly I slipped from the bank into the full current.

  ON FRIDAY, I went to the office early to tie up loose ends. I wasn’t the only person at the bureau, despite the early hour. Jim Doogan, the mayor’s chief of staff, flashed by in the hallway but made a point of pausing in front of my open door and looking in.

  I waved hello.

  “Let me get a cup of coffee,” he said, and continued down the hall.

  I smiled. Doogan couldn’t even wave back until he had coffee.

  Doogan was a curious man—he looked just like his name. Late fifties, Irish, beefy, red-faced with short-cropped red hair speckled with gray. He was a blunt object, so different from the mayor, who was young, thin, handsome if effete, so filled with energy one expected shooting sparks from his enthusiasm to start a fire in the wastebasket. But Doogan was necessary. Someone had to scare off sycophants and interest groups who wanted too much of the mayor’s time. Someone had to run interference and fix things out of public view. Doogan was the man sent in to tell someone who’d met with the mayor and claimed Halladay had promised them something to tell them no, the mayor had simply acknowledged the problem. I’d always kind of liked Doogan. There was nothing slick about him. He reminded me of men in Montana—cattle buyers, country commissioners, who, when they bested you, would throw an arm around your shoulder and offer to buy you a beer.

  Apparently, the mayor was having his monthly breakfast meeting with our bureau president, H. R. “Tab” Jones. Before being appointed to the bureau, Jones was the mayor’s campaign manager and chief fund-raiser. Jones was tall, loud, slick, and from what I gathered from longtime staff, not as intolerable as past presidents. Jones came from banking and had no background in tourism promotion, which never stopped him. In staff meetings, he threw around hot business buzzwords and catchphrases—“metrics,” “skill sets,” “paradigm,” “worldview”—but he often used them incorrectly. He urged us to “push the envelope” and “think outside the box.” Behind his desk were dozens of current business and motivational books which, I noticed, had uncracked spines.

  Doogan finally came back with a cup of coffee and entered my office, shutting the door behind him. He’d never done that before. I looked up and leaned back in my chair. His aftershave smelled sharp.

  He shook his head and pursed his lips, as if what he was about to tell me saddened him.

  “Brian Eastman?” he said simply. “Not a good idea.”

  And with that he was out the door before I could ask him how he knew so quickly, or more important, how the mayor knew.

  LATER, LINDA LEANED INTO my office after an executive staff meeting, asked, “What on earth did you do to piss off the mayor?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She said Tab Jones told her Mayor Halladay specifically asked him about me.

  “He asked if you were competent or some kind of loose cannon,” she said. “The mayor asked if you could turn out to be a liability. Tab said he defended you and our department, but I think that’s horse shit. I think he …” she delivered a devastatingly accurate imitation of Jones’s best executive voice, “expressed shock and concern and assured the mayor he’d look into it.” She reverted to her real voice. “Meaning, in all likelihood, your days could be numbered. Which leads me back to my first question: What on earth did you do to piss him off?”

  I suddenly felt cold. I desperately needed this job.

  “I didn’t do anything to the mayor,” I said. “But it’s possible John Moreland said something to him.” Wondering, did Garrett tell his father what happened Monday night? Or did he lie, make up some story about how he’d come to our house to see Angelina and was jumped by a maniac, his friend left to die in a vacant yard? Did our friendship with Cody, the disgraced cop, or Brian, who’d had a sour business relationship with the major before he was mayor, bring about this sudden interest in me? Were Brian’s inquiries hitting soft spots? Or was it all Judge Moreland?

  And I realized the Morelands didn’t need bullets, or paintballs, to attack. Breakfast with the mayor accomplished the same purpose.

  “Keep your nose clean,” Linda said, studying me, the wheels spinning in her head. “I can’t afford to lose you right now. I’m not sure we’d be able to hire a replacement, the way things are going with our bud get. And even if we could, it could take months, and we don’t have months. The trade-show season is upon us.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. “I always do.”

  She nodded, agreeing with me, but still with that look. The look of a race horse owner assessing a promising colt who’d just come up lame.

  MY FLIGHT TO BERLIN was to be Sunday, two days away, with arrival at Tegel at 7:05 A.M. Monday. The suitcase was nearly packed upstairs in our room, my briefcase heavy with my laptop, lead sheets, business cards, brochures, a six-pack of Coors beer for Malcolm Harris, who loved the stuff. I would be gone a week, returning the following Saturday. In my mind, I must admit, I was already halfway out the door.

  I had tried to convince Melissa to take Angelina and stay with her mother in Seattle while I was gone, but she’d have none of it. Melissa was still smoldering about her parents’ divorce and disliked her mother’s new husband. Even given the circumstances, she didn’t want to see her mother “hat in hand,” as she put it.

  CODY STAYED AT OUR HOUSE. He slept on the couch at ni
ght and watched television and helped around the house during the day. He’s better at fixing things than I am, plus he had the time. He rehung a couple of sagging doors, fixed the toilet so it would stop running, and painted the kitchen. Melissa said he took breaks only to follow the Coates trial on TV and smoke cigarettes on the deck. He told her he couldn’t remember what he said to Luis that night, but he had a feeling he “went all Dirty Harry on his ass.” He asked if he could stay with us until the reporters camped out around his house gave up and went away, and we agreed. Melissa appreciated his help and companionship, and I liked the idea of his being there with his weapons and training and capacity for violence in case Garrett and his boys showed up again.

  Saturday, November 10

  Fifteen Days to Go

  NINE

  AFTER BRIAN HAD LEFT THE night of Cody’s confrontation with Luis, we didn’t see him for the rest of the week. He was in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and the Bay Area on business. He kept in touch with Melissa by text messaging her from airports between flights. She kept the messages and showed them to me when I got home from work. I reviewed them over coffee Saturday morning.

  LEARNING MORE AND MORE THINGS ABOUT THE JUDGE. CAN’T WAIT TO TELL YOU.

  And,

  TALKED TO ONE OF MY FRIENDS WHO DABBLES ON THE DARK SIDE. HE SAID THERE MIGHT BE SOME PHOTOS THAT WILL BRING THE JUDGE DOWN. I’LL FOLLOW UP. IT MAY COST US SOME CASH.

  “Photos of what?” I asked.

  “I texted him back,” she said. “He hasn’t replied.”

  She sighed. “You know how dramatic he can be. He won’t just tell us, he’ll want to show us.”

  Cody stood in the doorway in a paint-splattered T-shirt and a three-day growth of beard. He’d overheard.

  “Let’s take a drive downtown,” he said to me.

  “Do you mind?” I asked Melissa.

  “No,” she said, “as long as you’ll bring dinner home and not drink too much. Remember, you’ve got an early-morning flight tomorrow.”

  As if I didn’t know.

  IN SEVERAL NATIONAL SURVEYS, Denver has been cited as the least-overweight large city in the country, usually neck and neck with Portland. Health and recreation is a religion. I know this because I sell it overseas. In contrast, Cody sucked on his cigarette with a kind of junkie intensity, sat back in the seat, closed his eyes, and slowly blew the smoke out. He smoked with such needy and obvious plea sure that he made me wish I was a smoker.

  On workdays, there was traffic. Lots of traffic. On those days I compared the street we lived on out in the western suburbs to a tiny seasonal creek, like the one that used to flow through the ranch my father managed for a while near Great Falls. Like that creek, our street/creek trickled into a busier residential street (or stream, in my analogy) which poured into a tributary (C-470) of a great rushing river (Interstate 70 to I-25) toward downtown. Once I became a part of the river hurtling down the valley toward the high-rises, stadiums, and inner city, I became a different animal, a fish fearing for his life. Currents of traffic coursed across lanes while the entire river picked up speed and volume. Outlets (exits) lessened the pressure only temporarily, because inlets (entrance ramps) produced greater flows. I was a little fish in an ocean of them. At night, like a spawning salmon, I would navigate the powerful river of traffic back to my sandy creek bed of origin where Melissa and nine-month-old Angelina would be waiting for me, and all would be right with the world.

  Saturday-morning traffic was sparse on Interstate 70 into the city, although the situation was different westbound into the mountains. Several ski areas were already open because of the early snow and the snow they’d made from machines, and I’d never seen so many Volvos, Land Rovers, and Subaru Outbacks with skis or boards on top in my life. I imagined the occupants inside to be listening to Dave Matthews if they were under forty and John Denver if they were over.

  We took I-25 to the Speer Boulevard exit and plunged into downtown, past the gentrified lofts near Pepsi Center and Coors Field, empty except for the homeless on the 16th Street Mall.

  We parked in a lot that cost five dollars in a still-seedy part of downtown the developers hadn’t gotten to yet. Not that Cody paid. Instead, he badged the attendant as he strode past the booth. The attendant—tattooed, pierced, reeking of smoke—recoiled as if he were a vampire and Cody’s shield was a crucifix. I followed my friend to Shelby’s Bar and Grill on 18th. I knew it as a cop hangout.

  The waitress knew him and bowed like a subject before her king, but with a smirk on her face to project her sarcasm. “Your throne is ready, sir,” she said.

  Cody grunted and sat down heavily in a dark booth. I took the other side.

  “Hit you both?” the waitress asked Cody.

  “Jameson’s,” he said to her. “Three of ’em.”

  To Cody, I said, “Three?”

  When she went to the bar, Cody dug into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes, said, “I’ve got a guy coming in to meet with us. I hope he still shows up, given my current status with the department.”

  “About that,” I said. “How is the trial going?”

  “It’s all over but the shouting,” he said. “The defense rested without calling a witness. The jury’s sequestered for the weekend, and Monday they’ll all come in and set that bastard free.”

  I shook my head. “So there was nothing else on him?” “We had enough,” Cody said, lighting up. “We had more than enough.” He inhaled and blew a long stream of smoke at the NO SMOKING sign above our booth. The ban was statewide.

  “You want to ask me if I set him up,” Cody said.

  I didn’t say yes, I didn’t say no.

  And he didn’t answer.

  Cody’s cell phone burred, and he went through a comic ritual of patting all of his clothing with the cigarette dancing in his mouth before he found it in his breast pocket and pulled it out.

  “Yeah, we’re here,” Cody said to the phone. “And I already ordered, so come on in.”

  He closed the phone and put it on the table so he wouldn’t lose it again. “Jason Torkleson just came up to detectives last week,” he said. “They assigned him to my squad. He’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, like all of us were when we started. Before he could get bogged down with a caseload or get coopted by the lieutenant, I asked him to research Garrett Moreland and Luis and Sur-13 and put together a background report.”

  The door opened and sunlight streamed into the dark room and a slender young man with pale skin and deep red hair came in grasping a manila folder. He was wearing a track suit, and he looked fit, as if he’d completed his morning workout shortly before the meeting.

  “Is that him?” I asked.

  Cody bent over and craned around the side of the high-backed booth and waved Torkleson over.

  “Obviously, they’re still talking to me,” Cody mumbled.

  After introductions, Torkleson sat down on my side so he could face Cody and present his findings to him. The file was on the table. The waitress delivered the three drinks, and Cody took his from her hand before she had the chance to set it down. He drank deeply, said “Aaaaugh,” and slowly lowered it. I sipped mine. It burned nicely.

  “Starting early, eh?” Torkleson said.

  Cody sang a line from a Louis Jordan song, “What’s the use of getting sober, when you’re gonna get drunk again …” and laughed. I did, too. Cody had been growling that line for ten years.

  “Maybe I’ll pass,” Torkleson said.

  Cody’s expression went dead, and he beheld Torkleson with heavy-lidded eyes. “What, you keeping in shape?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  Cody said, “The word ‘actually’ is overused these days, and when it’s used, it’s not used correctly. You youngsters say ‘actually’ nearly as much as you use the word ‘like’ and ‘basically.’ They’re all unnecessary words the way you use them. Both are incorrect usage, according to my Helena High English teacher Ms. Lesa Washenfelder. Right, Jack?”

  I no
dded solely so Cody would move on.

  To Torkleson, Cody growled, “Now drink your fucking drink.”

  Torkleson sat back as if slapped. It took a beat, but he reached for his drink and sipped it gingerly, his eyes flinching at the taste.

  The file just sat there.

  “Aren’t you going to look at it?” Torkleson asked.

  “Later,” Cody said. “Give me the gist.”

  Torkleson looked at me, then back to Cody.

  “He’s all right,” Cody assured him. “Anything you tell me he can hear.”

  Torkleson tapped the folder. “I wish I had more in there, but there wasn’t that much information available. Garrett Moreland is the son of Judge John Moreland, but I think you already knew that.”

  “We did,” Cody said, working his fingers on the tabletop like a blackjack player wanting another hit from the dealer. “Give me more.”

  “Garrett’s mother …”

  “We know that, go on.”

  “There’s no rap sheet and as far as I can tell no juvie record.”

  “Damn.”

  “The only thing I could link to Garrett was his name showed up a couple of times on cross tabs—he’s listed as a known associate of a couple of gangbangers. I found that surprising.”

  “Go on.”

  “Sureñ o 13. I printed out all the info on them I could find in our files. Sureños is a Spanish word for Southerner …”

  Cody held up his hand. “You don’t need to go into all of that if it’s in the file. I know all about Sur-13, from the fact that it was born in the California prison system and has now spread into all fifty states, that the thirteen refers to the thirteenth letter of the alphabet—M—which stands for Mexican Mafia. The gang identifies with the color blue, members have three tattooed dots on their knuckles, and as an organized crime gang they handle most of the meth and heroin in Colorado.”