Killing Zone

by Rex Burns

  CHAPTER 12

  SATURDAY, 14 JUNE, 1944 Hours

  That was all anyone had: street rumors about the White Brotherhood, rumors about threats to his wife and to other prominent blacks, rumors about what was going to happen tonight and who was threatening to do it. Wager tried sitting in his apartment with the TV low enough so he could monitor the police traffic on his radio, but the air felt stuffy and the walls—bare except for a couple of pictures and his NCO’s sword—seemed to swell inward from the pressures building up outside.

  There were familiar pressures from inside, too: stray echoes of the visits Jo had made to this apartment, and he could even hear her laughter at his few wall decorations—“Uh, oh. I stepped on his macho”—which brought the ghost of a smile to his mind even now. That had been one of those times when they were hunting for some subject to talk about that didn’t have anything to do with the job. It had been difficult, more so for him than for her, because until she forced him to, he hadn’t considered anything beyond the job to be worth talking about. But slowly and with a lot of retreats back to police work, they had found other things, usually following her lead—photography, fishing, horses. They even had a ski trip vaguely planned. And the changes in his life wrought by her hadn’t been so bad. Sitting in his apartment, the police traffic a steady buzz at the edge of silence, he could still see that little gleam of triumphant laughter in those golden eyes when she’d tricked or teased him into trying something new. It hadn’t been so bad at all. Then, of course, he had talked her into that raft trip. That had been bad.

  He stood and, with an effort, forced his mind away from that theme. It was one thing at night when the loss and sense of failure came on him in his sleep. But he didn’t need to surrender to it now. He was awake. He could control his own mind. He didn’t have to sit here and be drawn into a dead past like a cockroach down a swirling toilet.

  The television show was lousy, anyway. Something about some old lady solving a homicide because the killer drank a certain brand of herb tea. Wager didn’t think even Golding could do it that way. Better to ride around in the Trans-Am, where he could feel the wind across his face and see motion and lights; better than sitting here with the television on and not watching it, with the radio on and not listening. Better to be out close to whatever might happen than trying to keep his mind free of those other thoughts.

  He drove slowly along Downing to Colfax, the street scene gliding past the window to bring its familiar narcotic for the images that troubled him in his apartment. The glitter of a cluster of emergency lights a block or two west caught his eye, and, swinging toward them, he pulled into the parking lot of an Arby’s. Hanging his badge on his jacket pocket, he strolled over to the teams of policemen standing beside a handful of civilians.

  “Hello, Blainey. What’s going on?”

  “Gabe!” The black officer grinned hello and pointed his Bic pen at a figure sitting in the back seat of the cruiser. “We got us a social reformer.” He lifted a butcher knife from the hood of the cruiser. The long, narrow triangle of steel flashed icily in the blink of the emergency lights. “He’s trying to get rid of sin.”

  “Aren’t we all. What’s his gimmick?”

  Near the second police car, a stout black woman shook her head angrily at something an officer said, and pointed indignantly toward Blainey’s cruiser. “Him!”

  “He’s going after the ladies with this pig-sticker. Says he wants to get rid of abonibations in the sight of the Lord.”

  “Get rid of what?”

  “Aboniba—whatever the hell he calls it. Tattoos. Tattoos are sinful, he says. They’re not from God.”

  “So he’s going to cut them off people?”

  “You got it.” Blainey set the long knife down and began writing again. “But I guess he couldn’t find anybody to volunteer, so he had to go out looking for customers. I hope the good Lord can save me from people who want to save the world.”

  Wager peered into the cruiser’s back seat, where a slender figure hunched forward against the pull of his arms handcuffed behind him. The pale face glared back at Wager, his eyes wide with silent, wild rage and a smear of grime and blood streaking one side of his face. Under the dirt and tangle of hair, he seemed somewhere in his twenties, skinny with an insane tautness, and shorter, perhaps, than Wager. He was another of those released from a mental hospital because the courts said they had a civil right to be free. And because there wasn’t enough money to house and feed them.

  “He from around here?”

  “Won’t say. No name, no address. Nothing but that there butcher knife and a thing for tattoos.”

  “First bust?”

  “First time I seen him, anyway.”

  The victim was the woman talking to the other pair of officers. She was still shaking her head rapidly, her spray of stiff hair wagging in the haze of passing car lights, and Wager recognized her as one of the street’s regulars. “Hello, Butterball. What kind of trouble are you into this time?”

  “Officer Wager! I ain’t in no trouble—it’s him.” She again pointed a long red fingernail at the police car where Blainey leaned over the hood to write. “He’s the one got trouble. Coming at me with that knife like that.”

  “He just wanted your tattoos, Butterball.”

  “He ain’t getting them! That man is crazy and he ought to be locked up!”

  One of the uniformed officers looked up from taking her statement. “Is your name really Butterball?”

  “Naw, it’s Mary Murphy. Don’t I look Irish? I been on this street ten years; I got rights! I ain’t going to let him or nobody start chasing me around with no knife.”

  Wager caught a glimpse of a familiar Honda Civic turn into the parking lot and watched Gargan—pulled, like Wager, onto the streets by the uneasiness spreading from Five Points—walk toward him.

  “I thought I recognized your smiling face, Wager. What’s going on?”

  “Officer Blainey’s in charge. He can tell you.”

  “It’s a real pleasure seeing you, too.” The reporter glanced at the woman still talking loudly to the officers, and then bent to study the face of the man in the car. “Assault?”

  “That’s right.”

  Gargan snorted something from his sinuses and spit it out. “First call tonight. Saturday night, too. Colfax isn’t the circus it used to be.”

  “Things change, Gargan. Most things.”

  “Ha. If I could get any better, I would change, Wager. And you’re sure as hell not changing—you can’t get any worse.” He listened for a moment to a call for police to respond to a fight in progress a dozen blocks away. A voice answered the dispatcher and a moment later they heard the distant wail of a siren. “What have you heard about Five Points?”

  “The same thing you have.”

  Gargan glanced at him. “You think the White Brotherhood did it?”

  “That’s the rumor.”

  “I’m asking what you think.”

  Wager smiled. “We’ve known each other for years, Gargan. And you know I don’t think.”

  The reporter spat again. “Yeah. I keep forgetting.” But he didn’t walk away in anger as he usually did. Instead, he idly watched Blainey pause in his writing to ask the suspect a question before laboriously filling in another section of the report. The suspect only shook his head, eyes fixing hotly on Blainey as the officer wagged his head and went back to his paperwork. “I never got a chance to tell you this, Wager: I was sorry to hear what happened to Josephine Fabrizio. She was good people.”

  He didn’t reply with the first thing that came to his mind. Instead, he answered stiffly, “That’s right. She was.”

  “I met her a few times in the Records office. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  Again, he forced himself to be polite. He didn’t like Gargan—never had, never would. And he really didn’t give one tiny damn what Gargan felt or thought. But the man was showing respect for Jo, and that demanded manners. “Thanks.”


  Gargan nodded shortly as if finishing an unpleasant chore he’d promised himself. “Just wanted to tell you.” He wandered toward Butterball and the pair of uniforms finishing up their part of the complaint.

  Wager had a twinge of something unfamiliar as he watched the narrow back swagger toward the police car. It wasn’t remorse—he didn’t feel remorse about anything he said to Gargan. It was more a recognition of having shared something valuable but fleeting: the sudden and ill-defined awareness that Gargan had a part in Wager’s own life—that he was in the picture that had included Jo. After all these months, her name was still alive in somebody else’s mind, and it turned out to be Gargan’s. Of all people, Gargan had become some kind of reference point for Wager’s memories of Jo. If he let it, the recognition might even generate a little warmth for the man—despite the defensiveness Wager felt about her memory. But he wouldn’t let it, because he knew Gargan. The moment would pass, and Gargan would do something, say something, in some way show that he was the same anus he always was despite his appreciation of Jo. Which, when Wager thought about it, was a comforting idea; dislike of the man was more familiar than this uneasy and new feeling that one of Wager’s most vital and important memories was shared with Gargan.

  2103 Hours

  The calls began to come in just after 9:00, half-a-dozen alerts and requests for officers to respond to disturbances and crimes in progress in District Two. It had the marks of a coordinated plan—H-hour at 9 P.M.—and in his mind’s eye, Wager spotted the locations on the city map. They formed a wide circle around the Five Points neighborhood, probably an attempt to spread out the police so the main disturbance could get well-started before enough cops could gather to squelch it. But the SWAT teams were already deployed and they would not be committed for such routine calls, Wager knew. Their vans would be in reserve at some quiet corner close by, and near them the K-9 trucks with their slotted air vents would be waiting, too, the tense night punctuated by the eager whines of the dogs.

  He pulled his Trans-Am against a shady curb on Columbine Street and followed the reports as they came over the police band. Burglar alarms had been set off by broken windows in the fronts of two stores, and looters had been reported running from the scenes; responding officers were looking for suspects or witnesses and guarding the premises until the owners could come down. A car had been set afire at Twenty-eighth and Curtis and firefighters reported hearing gunshots as they responded. They wanted police protection immediately. A patrol car was fired on by a sniper in the vicinity of Twenty-seventh and High—half a dozen blocks from Wager—and backup units were responding to cordon off the area and begin a systematic sweep.

  So far, the dispatcher had not put out the call for officers on standby to report, but Wager had the familiar feeling it would be soon. The watch was stretching thinner as more requests for backup came in, and call numbers for units from the adjoining districts began to be heard on the local frequency. He guessed that recruits from the Police Academy had been turned out to relieve those veterans for duty in this district.

  A brightly painted Channel 9 television van, with a cherry picker folded against its roof, lumbered past Wager.

  A pair of motorcycle officers followed, emergency lights dark as they slowed a bit for stop signs and then darted across in front of oncoming cars. The traffic sections would set up vehicle control points at the intersections surrounding the most volatile action, while Patrol would move in to determine whether or not a SWAT team should be called to the scene. That was often a tricky question; once SWAT was called, command of the scene shifted to the team commander. And despite a lot of schooling, many of the officers in Patrol did not like to give up their responsibility, because that meant they weren’t cop enough to control their own territory.

  Through his partly open window, he heard the drawn-out wails of sirens and, for a moment, the wind-tossed shouts of voices. He thought briefly about driving in for a closer look and decided against it; there was no sense adding to the confusion of traffic, and besides, he didn’t want his Trans-Am trashed. A fancy car driven by a Chicano through the middle of a Five Points riot. All he’d need to attract more friendly notice would be a Confederate flag on the antenna.

  Settling against the seat back, he listened to the muted sounds of the radio and waited for the alert that would call him and other standbys in. Initial queries and requests had slacked off and now situation reports were starting to come back. Wager recognized a few of the voices, and his imagination filled in the pictures that the words only hinted at. DiFeo, the born-again detective in Burglary who always said “God bless you” instead of “Thanks,” called for an ambulance in the 3200 block of Marion, where a looter had been injured by a shattering plate-glass window. Ryan, the alcoholic sergeant from the district’s fourth precinct, called for support in pursuit of a fleeing vehicle. Another voice that Wager did not know needed help to head off trouble: “We’re going to need some backup. We got a bunch of juveniles down on the corner of Thirty-third look like they’re trying to organize themselves into something.”

  “Yessir. We’ll get it to you.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Wager started the Trans-Am and swung it around toward downtown and the Headquarters Building. It wouldn’t be long now before they called in the standbys.

  The personal car lot was almost full, the yellow-orange glow of tall lamps bouncing back from metal roofs to illuminate the occasional figure hurrying like Wager toward the entry. Above, in the bands of dark windows that striped the stone facade, lights from various offices dotted the building. Wager let himself through the security gate and nodded to the uniformed sergeant behind the long shelf of desk. Upstairs, the civilian on duty in Crimes Against Persons lifted a hand when she saw him come in.

  “I was just going to call you, Detective Wager. Lieutenant Wolfard just sent out a call for all standbys.”

  “I’ll tell him I’m here.”

  Despite all the activity in the halls, the offices were almost empty; most of the duty-roster were on the streets, and the off-duty personnel stayed only long enough to be told where to report. At his desk in the corner, beneath the silently flickering television set, Devereaux talked to someone on the telephone about a new development in one of his dozen open cases. “Four years ago—yeah—two kids burned to death in a dumpster. No, this kid comes in a couple hours ago to say his father set it on fire and burned them up. No, he’s a screwball—the kid. He’s such a flake—hates his father so much that he’d turn off a jury. No, I’ve got it down to where the old man did start a fire in somebody’s backyard, but that’s all I’ve got. Yeah. Yeah. He’s got a brother knows something about it, too, but he’s in jail for butt-fucking his brother, so what good’s he in court?”

  Despite the riot, routine work had to go on, too.

  Wager stuck his head into Wolfard’s office and the lieutenant, on the telephone, beckoned him to sit down. “Yeah, that’s right.” He covered the mouthpiece to tell Wager, “Kansas City.”

  Out-of-state units always wanted to talk to a detective, and at night C.A.P. got all the calls whether it was their work or not. Wager settled into the plastic chair and glanced through his mail while Wolfard kept saying “Yeah, yeah, that’s right.” Nothing from outside had been delivered in the last few hours, and none of the memos said anything that was important. But one did catch his eye, a warning from the chief against taking liberties with bodies of the deceased. Wager had heard the story: a decapitation victim found where he had committed suicide by hanging himself with a piece of thin wire; when the body was placed on the stretcher for conveyance to Denver General, the investigating officer tucked the man’s head under his arm like a football. The memo said that when the sheet was pulled off, a nurse fainted and chipped her tooth and now was suing the city. All personnel were reminded of the appropriate section in the Operations Manual that prohibited unprofessional conduct, and of Section 18-13-101 of the Colorado Criminal Code, which classified abuse of a corpse as
a Class Two misdemeanor.

  “Do you have anything yet, Wager? Anything at all?” Wolfard was finally through with Kansas City and, rubbing at the dark flesh under his eyes, sipped at a steaming cup and stared at Wager like he was a stranger.

  Wager shook his head. “Nothing more than I had at the end of the shift.”

  “That wasn’t too damned much.”

  Wager stared back at the man’s hostility. “That’s right.”

  Wolfard rubbed his eyes again. “You remember what the chief said about keeping me informed so I could keep him informed?”

  Wager remembered.

  Wolfard slid a memo from under a blank sheet of paper and pretended to read it closely. “I thought you might have forgot. I goddamned thought you might have forgot, since you forgot to tell me about the possibility that Green was involved in malfeasance.”

  “I don’t have any evidence of that.”

  “But you goddamned well had information about it. You had it and you didn’t tell me, by God—what you did was go over to Councilman Albro’s office and accuse him of taking bribes, too!”

  “I went over to Councilman Albro’s office to check out the rumor. If he thinks I accused him, let him file a formal complaint.”

  Wolfard snapped the memo at Wager. “What the fuck do you think this is? Van Velson sent it down. Councilman Albro states you were insulting and insubordinate to him in his office.”

  “If that’s an official complaint, I want to see my copy of it. If that’s an official complaint, I want my hearing properly constituted and the complainant present.”

  The lieutenant’s mouth pressed into a dark, lipless line. “This may not be official, but by God it is a complaint—and it’s from a city councilman.”

  “You know what the manual says about complaint procedure, Lieutenant.”

  “All right, Wager. Let’s forget about this for a minute. Just what the hell have you learned about Councilman Green and possible influence peddling?”