Killing Zone

by Rex Burns

  “Cowboy boots. All we have to do is arrest everybody wearing cowboy boots.”

  Which was probably about half of Denver. Wager was dialing the Motor Vehicle Department when Stubbs looked up again from the wad of papers. “A blonde?”

  Wager nodded, talking into the mouthpiece. “That’s right: HRG-1, registered to Horace R. Green.” He spelled the last name. “A dark Lincoln Continental, a year old.” It was the third time Wager had called to see if MVD had turned up the vehicle. Each time they needed another full description, and each time they asked the same questions. “No,” said Wager, “he’s not a felon; he’s a homicide victim and that car could be material evidence—that’s why. All right, thanks.” Nothing. The car could be anywhere, parked on a public street until the tickets piled up deep enough to attract attention from the city impound lot, or, more likely, parked on somebody’s private land—an empty lot, an unused driveway, a pay lot—and left there until the neighbors complained maybe a month or two from now. Wager had alerted the patrol division to look for it, too, but that was hit-or-miss; they had a lot of other things to worry about besides a parked car. And he didn’t need Wolfard to tell him that there wasn’t enough reason to assign a special detail of scarce patrolmen to a city-wide search. A dark car at the crime scene, Green drove a dark car, his dark car was missing. It all added up to a possible lead, but if they didn’t find it, it wasn’t worth a fart in a whirlwind.

  “Gabe, Green had sex with a blonde?”

  “I read it.”

  Stubbs flipped through the next few pages of the report. “That’s all it says.” He turned back to the notation. “Any idea when?”

  Wager looked at the little column of figures he had in his notebook. “There are a couple possibilities. First, he left the furniture store a little after seven and turned up at Vitaco a little before nine. Or, after he left there, after nine. He was killed as early as then or as late as two the next morning. The witness saw a dark car parked at the curb around eleven. If that was the killer, maybe Green had a hundred and twenty minutes of bliss before he died.”

  “Which means the sex could have happened at the time of death?”

  “That’s what it means.”

  The man shook his head. “We’re getting a hell of a lot of motives all of a sudden.”

  “Like what?”

  “Now it’s jealous women—a jealous blonde, a jealous wife. Maybe even some other woman who was jealous of both of them.”

  “Don’t forget he spent part of the afternoon with a blonde.” Wager’s pencil tapped the column of numbers. “He was with Andersen from about four-thirty to six-thirty.”

  “They were at the store.”

  “They went out for coffee.”

  Stubbs stared at Wager. “Sonja Andersen?”

  “Know any other blondes in his life?”

  “No. But that doesn’t mean there might not be.”

  That was true, but one of the basics was that you started with the knowns and givens of a case and worked out from there. You didn’t waste time or create confusion by chasing down vague possibilities unless that was all you had to go on. “We’ll begin with Andersen. If that doesn’t work, then we’ll look for other blondes.”

  Stubbs glanced at the wall clock. “The furniture store doesn’t open for an hour, but I’ve got her home address here.” He showed Wager a page in his notebook. “We could swing by.”

  “We’ll wait until the store opens. We’ll want to talk to the other people again, too.”

  And there were other phone calls to make. Wager dialed the four-digit extension of Intelligence and asked for Norm Fullerton. “This is Gabe Wager in Homicide, Norm. What can you give me on the White Brotherhood?”

  “What’s your need-to-know, Gabe?”

  Wager sighed and played the game. “They may figure in the Green homicide.”

  “I see.” The line buzzed and hummed a moment. “Better not tell you over the phone. You downstairs?”

  “Right.”

  It took him a couple of minutes before he came in, walking quickly, with the look of a man who had too much on his mind and was trying to figure how to handle it all. But that was the way he always looked, Wager knew, even when he was only chewing gum. As he did now while pouring himself a cup of coffee from the Silex. “Hi, Lester. Wager. You think the White Brotherhood’s involved in the councilman’s death?”

  “It may be. We talked to Sonny Pickett; he said they weren’t. But then he wouldn’t be likely to tell us they were.”

  “Sonny Pickett! Now there’s a body you don’t forget. I can’t say that about his face—I never saw it. He still working on elevators?”

  Stubbs nodded. “With one hand, while he holds up the building with the other.”

  “He’s a big boy, all right. But he’s only one of the soldiers.” Fullerton, frowning deeper with effort, told them what they already knew about the history of the Brotherhood, then began on what they wanted to hear. “Pickett’s usually the sidekick—kind of a sergeant at arms when they have formal meetings. He could be more important if he wanted to, I suppose, but he never was in the center of things.”

  “Who’s the leader?”

  “Leaders. It’s a collective leadership. Sometimes three guys, sometimes four. They’re usually the same but not always. They come up with a plan and the rest go along or don’t, depending on how they feel about it. It’s a gang, but it’s not really as tightly organized as some.”

  Wager and Stubbs waited through Fullerton’s explanation of several models of group structure, and the differing definitions of “collectivity” and “gang” and “organization.” “The membership’s more consistent and formal than a collectivity, you see, but the internal structure’s not nearly so rigid and clearly defined as an organization.”

  Wager smiled politely and tried not to notice the clock’s minute hand take another tiny bite out of the morning. “Who’s the leaders, Norm?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m trying to explain—there’s no specific leadership. It varies. But there’s a nucleus of figures who seem to be in on most of the major decisions most of the time. From the technical point of view, it’s really a very interesting structure.”

  “Names, Norm?”

  “Oh, let’s see …Big Nose Smith, Leon Oakland, Little Keith Brownell. They’re three of the most central. Billy (“Two Fingers”) Marshall and Big Al Turner are involved a lot of times. Wiley Kreuger, Stinky Malone—there’s some others, but those are the ones I’d concentrate on if you want the nucleus.”

  Stubbs looked up from making notes. “Have you heard of any ties with the Green killing?”

  “Only from you. Where’d you get it?”

  “It’s on the street. All over.”

  “That’s kind of a surprise.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, they talk a lot about race war and so on, but most of the real activity’s running contraband into the prisons at Canyon City and Buena Vista. That and cornering the dope market in the topless-bottomless joints where their women work. I can’t imagine they’d want to stir things up by knocking off a city councilman even if he is black. I mean, you’ve already come down on Sonny, right? Those people are smart enough to know they’re going to get hassled for something like that.”

  “You have an informant in the gang?”

  Fullerton got cautious. “Our information’s reliable. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Can you have him find out what he can?”

  The man frowned even more deeply. “I’m not going to jeopardize sources, Wager. Our sources are protected—that’s from the top—and I’m not about to put any heat on any informant for you or anyone else.”

  “I’m not asking for heat, just for an ear. I’ve already put some heat on Sonny, but he’s not going to turn. What he might do, though, is stir something up that your informant can catch.”

  “I did not say we had an informant in place.”

  “Right—I understand. But you un
derstand this, Norm: We’ve got a murdered city councilman. And he’s black. And we’ve had one night of ten-fifteens and we have a whole weekend to go.”

  “I know, I know. And if you had something concrete, I’d be willing to risk making contact. But all you’ve got is a rumor. You want me to take a chance with a source it took us years to develop—to have that source nose around on nothing more substantial than a rumor. I’m not going to do it.”

  “I want you to get in touch with him and ask him to listen, that’s all. Just tell him what to listen for, that’s all. We’ve got to start getting some action on this thing soon or all hell’s going to pop. That’s from the top, too. The very top.”

  Fullerton drained the coffee and pulled the paper cup from the plastic holder and crumpled it into a waste basket. “I’ll ask him to listen. That’s all I can do.”

  “That’s all I want you to do. That, and tell me as soon as possible if he hears anything.”

  “All right.”

  When he was gone, Stubbs glanced at Wager. “What he says makes sense, Gabe. The Brotherhood doesn’t want all this heat.”

  Wager saw it that way, too. But a lead was a lead. “I wouldn’t call those bastards the sanest bunch of citizens in the state, would you? Besides, Wolfard wants us to investigate the Brotherhood, we investigate the Brotherhood. Among other things.” He reached for the telephone again.

  “Who’re you calling now?”

  He had been going to call Julia Wilfong to see if she’d heard anything about a payoff to Green, but that was an aspect of the case he didn’t want to spread any wider under Stubbs’s nose. “The furniture store to see if anyone’s there.”

  A tape recording said they were closed on Saturdays until 9 A.M. But if the caller would leave his name and number, a representative would return the call as soon as possible. Wager tried the home number that was in his little green notebook, beside Andersen’s name. Another recording simply said he had reached that number and after the tone leave name and number and any message thank you.

  The clock said 0845; he figured Sonja Andersen was on her way to work. “Let’s give the store a try.”

  The graveled parking lot in front of Embassy Furniture was empty, but a large red sign on the door said OPEN. Employees probably parked around back, using a rear door. Wager and Stubbs passed through the electronic eye that set off a faint chime somewhere behind the shadowy forest of headboards and tall china cabinets, and a moment or two later, Ray Coleman—the young salesman—came out of the gloom. When he recognized them, his face shifted from a smile to inquiry. “Can I help you officers?”

  “Is Miss Andersen in?”

  “Back in the office. This way.”

  He led them past groupings of furniture to the small alcove whose light, blocked by a partition from the rest of the store, was a hard fluorescent glare.

  “Sonie, those detectives are here again.” The young man disappeared beyond a cluster of rolltop desks.

  Under the harsh light, the woman’s eyes looked puffy and masked by heavy makeup. Wager nodded hello and he and Stubbs refused a cup of coffee from the glass pot steaming on a hot plate. On the desk, invoices and receipts, wholesale catalogs, and brochures sat in loosely organized piles. The woman seemed to be groping toward some kind of classification of them rather than doing anything as concrete as making ledger entries or filling out orders.

  Wager sat in a chair placed beside the desk for customers. From this angle, the light bounced back off the strewn papers and he could see her face clearly. “Can you tell me what kind of key ring the councilman carried?”

  “Key ring?” If she had expected any question at all, this wasn’t it.

  “Yes, ma’am. We found no keys in his pockets. Just about everybody carries keys.”

  “Oh … I see …” Two creases folded in the pale skin between carefully shaped eyebrows. “It was a key ring with a gold nugget. A small one on a little chain—you know the kind?”

  “Real gold?”

  “Yes. But not very big. He didn’t like his pockets bulging out with keys.”

  “There weren’t many keys on it?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe four or five, I suppose. I really don’t know.”

  Wager nodded and asked the next question. “Did he see a lot of furniture jobbers, Miss Andersen?”

  She followed Wager’s gaze to the glossy covers of the brochures. “Jobbers? No—he saw a few, I mean. But generally they deal with me now. His schedule, you know.”

  Wager nodded. “Those that he did see, were any of them women?”

  “There are a few women jobbers. But I can’t remember any who …” She finished the sentence with a shake of her head, the blond hair glinting in the artificial light.

  “You can’t remember if any of them had blond hair?”

  “No. Why?”

  “The autopsy report, Miss Andersen. It shows that Horace Green had sex with a blond woman sometime before he was killed.”

  She stared at Wager. “They can do that?”

  “They can even tell who it was with. If necessary.”

  The rush of blood from her face left it ashen in the brittle light and she swayed toward a faint. Then she gripped the desk tightly and forced herself to inhale a long, shaky breath. “I didn’t kill him. I swear I didn’t kill him.”

  Stubbs pressed a bubble or two of water from the large bottle in the corner and handed her the paper cup. “Why not tell us about it, Miss Andersen?”

  She took the cup, her eyes shifting from Wager’s flat, alien stare to Stubbs’s kind smile. Sometimes, usually with Hispanics, Wager and Max played it the other way: Max was the blue-eyed gringo angry with suspicion, while Wager showed he understood and even sympathized with the oppressed victim of an Anglo police state. But Stubbs’s round face had a softness to it that blurred any sense of grim duty, so Wager told him to play the friend.

  “I loved him!” She spoke to Stubbs. “I did!”

  The man nodded and sat in the upholstered chair placed so customers could talk over prices and terms before moving to Wager’s seat to sign papers. Wager leaned back to leave her with Stubbs.

  “Just tell us what happened, Miss Andersen. You and Horace were lovers, is that it?”

  Lips pressed tightly together, her hands fumbled blindly for something among the piles of paper on the desk and her eyes blinked rapidly to fight the sting of tears.

  “All you have to do is tell us the truth, Sonie.” Stubbs laced his fingers like a father confessor and leaned closer, his voice a low murmur against the steady buzz of the overhead lights. “You’re the blonde he made love to, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It happened after work, didn’t it? On Wednesday.”

  “No. In the afternoon.”

  “What time?”

  “I’m not sure. Around five. Five to six. That’s the time we usually—”

  “Did he force you to do it?” asked Wager.

  “No! It wasn’t that way!” The tears spilled over and she said “Damn” and found the packet of Kleenex under a sheet of paper. “I promised him—I promised his memory—I wouldn’t cry. Damn!”

  They waited while the woman’s shoulders twitched with stifled breaths in a futile effort to stem the tears. She finished with a tiny, cramped blow of her nose and wadded the Kleenex into a fist.

  “It wasn’t that way. We … we loved each other. I knew he was married. I knew he couldn’t get a divorce—his political career, the gossip … But we loved each other.”

  They waited for her to go on.

  “He was so … so alive. And bright. And gentle. And he had such a good, fine sense of humor—we’d find so much to laugh about. Despite …”

  “Despite what, Sonie?”

  “Despite knowing we could never be anything but lovers. That even if he could get a divorce, people would never accept the two of us together.”

  “Because he was black?”

  She looked startled, gazing at Stubbs as if
seeing him for the first time. “No. Because I was white! He could never be elected to anything if he had a white wife. He ran such a risk to be my lover! If anyone had found out, his political life would have been over.”

  “How long were you lovers?” asked Wager.

  “A year and eight months. Seven months after I came to work here. It just happened—we fell in love long before it happened, and then one afternoon … we touched. That’s all it took—that one little touch of our hands.”

  She was speaking more to a memory she had replayed over and over rather than to either of them. They waited.

  “After that first time, he offered to find me a job anywhere I wanted. To pay my salary until I found one I liked. He thought he had taken advantage of me because I worked for him.” The golden hair wagged from side to side in remembered surprise. “He was so apologetic. I told him over and over I didn’t want to work anywhere else. That I wanted to be with him.”

  Which probably wasn’t exactly what Green wanted to hear. “You knew at the time he was married?” asked Wager.

  “Yes. But it didn’t make any difference.” Her eyes turned angrily to Wager. “And it still doesn’t, except for his … for Mrs. Green.” A spasm of fright chilled the eyes wide. “She doesn’t need to be told, does she? She doesn’t need to be hurt by this, does she?”

  Stubbs smiled and shook his head. “We’re not interested in his sex life. We’re after his killer.”

  “I don’t know who could kill a man like that. He was a good man—really. A good man.”

  “Do you know if he had other girlfriends, Sonie?”

  “No.” The Kleenex went back to her eyes, blotting the damp mascara. “No, he didn’t. I know what you’re thinking—a cheap, sordid office romance. But it wasn’t. I was the first—the only—other woman he had since he was married. And we both knew it shouldn’t have happened.”

  The words were coming easier now. Wager had seen it before: The pent thoughts and worries held in silence for so long suddenly spilling out when there was someone, preferably a stranger, who would listen and not dispute. And the survivor’s willingness to ignore the faults of a dead loved one—to believe that he or she was capable of nothing but good. What wasn’t clear to Wager was whether the saintliness of the dead was the result of grief or an intensifier of it, a means of honing guilt and loss into a luxuriance of pain. He had seen it in others; maybe he even had a touch of it himself.