by Rex Burns
Which was the real problem, and made Wager occasionally consider the benefits of drug legalization. But it wouldn’t happen—too many people made too much money from keeping it illegal. “If Hocks was really working for him, was he maybe trying to push crack in someone else’s territory?” Which could mean that John Erle would be just the first victim in a possible gang war. There were always squabbles and fights among members who needed to show heart, but Denver, unlike some eastern cities, hadn’t yet suffered a major war over trading territory. Still, it could come. Like the flu, it was bound to arrive someday.
“I ain’t heard nothing about that, but he could’ve been.” Blainey’s head wagged. “Maybe Big Ron wants to be bigger; it does happen.” He finished his sweetroll and coffee. “But if that’s the case, Gabe, they gonna be some bad shit flying around, because Big Ron, he might be hungry enough to try but he’s too dumb to get.” He frowned and scrubbed with a paper napkin at the mustache over his heavy lips. “I sure hope that ain’t what’s happening. I hear anything else, I let you know. You going to talk to Big Ron?”
“Yeah.”
“Want me with you?”
Wager shook his head. “Won’t make any difference. If he wants me to know something, he’ll tell me; if not, he won’t. And there’s no sense letting him guess where I got his name.” Wager added, “He’s not the brightest guy in the world, but he’s one of the meanest I’ve run across.”
“Ain’t that the truth. You know what he told me once?”
“What’s that?”
“Say he love his mama, but he love his Bloods more—they his real family.”
And that, for Wager, was why there would always be gangs: because people who were too weak or too dumb to stand alone needed other people around who could make them feel strong and smart.
It was midmorning, and that meant Big Ron Tipton was probably still asleep; Wager pulled to the curb in front of the bungalow and crossed the tiny patch of front yard. What was left of the walk sheltered a few sprigs of grass around the broken concrete slabs, but the rest was gray dirt packed hard and bare by feet and neglect. The home was like a lot Wager had visited over the years, built in the 1930s, a main floor with another couple of rooms jammed under the hipped roof, a basement that might or might not have been finished. Probably wasn’t, but could have had someone living there just the same. The roof over the front porch was held up by four pillars whose lower halves were yellow brick and whose upper halves were square wooden posts that tapered slightly and still had a few patches of brittle white paint left on them. Three wooden chairs with well-worn cushions filled the space to one side of the door; the other side was empty of everything except a scattering of cigarette butts, scraps of paper trash, an empty beer bottle on its side. Molson. Big Ron had moved up from Rolling Rock. Getting to be a real yuppie. Wager knocked and waited, knocked again.
Finally the slap of loose slippers sounded on bare boards, and a woman, almost as tall as Wager but twice as wide, appeared in the darkness behind the rusty screen. “What you want?”
“Good morning, Ms. Tipton.” Wager flipped his badge case open and shut over his forefinger and tucked it back into his shirt pocket. She knew him and he knew her, but the law required an officer to identify himself. “Need to talk to Big Ron. How about waking him up for me?”
“Maybe he need his sleep more’n he need your talk, Detective Wager.”
She always made his name sound like something you scraped off your shoe. But that was fine with Wager; he didn’t like thinking that any of these people might believe they were friends of his. “Just trying to save your little boy a trip downtown, Ms. Tipton. Less trouble all around if we can just talk here and get it over with.”
The woman made a grunting noise and disappeared, the slapping sound sharper. She received her welfare, being a poor widow and all, but her real income was a big slice of her son’s dope money, which she wasn’t wasting on fixing up their house any. Aside from the brand-new Coupe DeVille sitting in the rattrap of a garage behind the bungalow, they didn’t spend it on much else, either. Man who cleared a couple thousand tax-free dollars on a payday weekend must have a big pile of cash stuck away somewhere.
“Mama say you want to talk to me.” He had come to the door quietly in his stocking feet, wearing baggy drawers and a tank-top undershirt stretched almost transparent across his chest and stomach. There was muscle beneath the fat, and a lot of both, and he had to hunch a bit to fit under the lintel and glare out. “About what?”
“The late departed John Erle Hocks. He was doing a little work for you, right? I want to know if that’s what got him scrubbed.”
“The shit you talking about?” The bloodshot, wet-looking eyes staring at Wager bulged with the effort of the mind behind them. “Who say he working for me? Doing what?”
“Selling crack, Ron. It’s no secret, and I don’t care what you do to stay off the dole. I just want a lead on who shot John Erle.”
The eyes blinked. “Wasn’t me.”
“That’s good. I’m real glad to have your word on that, Ron.” Wager smiled up into the wide, sullen face behind the screen. “Who did do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’ve got some ideas. Give me some names I can talk to and I’ll leave you alone.”
“He say he don’t know who, Detective Wager. He say it, he mean it.”
“Yes, ma’am, and I believe him, too. But a smart boy like him, keeps his ears open, hears things—I bet he’s got some ideas about who killed his man.”
“We take care of it; that’s my idea!”
“Shut up, fool!”
“Mama—”
“I tell you hush!” The woman’s angry face shoved in beside one of Ron’s biceps. “He say he don’t know. Now that’s it—you get on. You leave my boy be!”
“I wish I could, Ms. Tipton. I sure do. But Ron here’s a known associate of a homicide victim, and I’m going to have to keep my eye on him in case he remembers something.” And one thing Denver didn’t need was a dope pusher out for revenge on another gang. Wager looked up at the glowering face and shook his head sadly. “Just have to stay on him day and night. Weekends, too. Who knows when he might remember something?”
“You stay on me, you be goddamn sorry!”
The humor left Wager’s voice. “You threatening an officer?”
“Ronald Tipton you get away from here!”
“Mama—”
“Git! Now!”
The shape moved off into the gloom, its passage marked only by the creak of floorboards. Wager waited until the woman, staring hotly after her son, turned back to him. “The smart thing, Ms. Tipton, is for you to tell him that the police ought to handle it for him. We get the killer, and neither your son nor anybody he knows has to worry we’ll be after him for murder. Business as usual, right?”
“He done said all he know.”
“Right.” Wager stuck a business card between the screen and a door brace. “But when he—or whoever—knows a little more, here’s my number. Anytime.” He smiled again. “After all, we are here to serve and to protect.”
4
WAGER DIDN’T KNOW if his fishing trip with Big Ron and his mother would work, but it felt good to poke a stick into that wad of crap and it wouldn’t do any harm, either. In fact, that’s how most gang murders were solved—talk to enough people, promise anonymity, give plenty of opportunity for an enemy of the killer or a friend of the slain to drop a dime. And usually the tip came from a present or past member of the suspect’s own gang. You started with a hint here, a possibility there, and finally a name turned up. Then you verified it and started building the case that would give the guilty bastard his fair trial. The trick this time would be to get the tip quickly, because Big Ron was dumb enough to think starting a gang war was the way to go.
Wager noted in the case journal the information linking Big Ron and the victim, as well as who Wager had talked with and what they said; when a lead did finally c
ome in or if the case should be transferred to another detective, the journal would trace what threads ended where.
Turning to the day’s memos and queries piled up on his desk, Wager found two notices of homicide suspects reputed to be in the Denver area, a lab report on a beating victim—the suspect was already in custody—which had to be filed with the case, notices of continuance and scheduling for a couple of trials requiring Wager’s testimony, a request from the Houston PD for information on an unsolved homicide that seemed to have characteristics similar to one in Denver. The less important stuff included an ad for life insurance that provided a discount for public servants and gave great rates if you were a nonsmoker, in good health, and under the age of ten; a one-page police union bulletin whose headline trumpeted OFFICER SLAIN IN AURORA and had a large photograph of the victim smiling proudly in his uniform; a survey of on-the-job mileage that was due back yesterday; and a notice of the police bowling league’s latest scores. Beneath it all was a telephone message: Lab report on Hocks ready, Baird.
Wager dialed the forensics number; Baird’s familiar laconic voice answered. “The Hocks case? Just a minute, Wager.”
How many other lab reports the man had piled up on his desk, Wager didn’t know. But, as usual, Baird took his own sweet time. It was what made him a good technician and a lousy coworker. “You want me to send you a copy or you just want the highlights now?”
“Both.”
“I should’ve known. One round, probably thirty-two caliber, entered the base of the skull two centimeters to the right of the spinal column, exited in the area just behind the frontal lobe. Can’t be more exact than that because it took out a big chunk.”
Wager visualized the path of the bullet; the pistol had been pointing upward almost parallel with the line of the boy’s neck. “Sounds like an execution.”
“What it looks like to me. We found dirt on his knees that looks like he was made to kneel, head on the ground, before he was shot. Dirt in the top of his left sneaker, probably scraped up when his leg jerked.”
“Killed on-site?”
“Yep; no indication the body was moved. Temperature, lividity, ocular fluid, they all indicate death occurred approximately twelve to twenty-four hours before he was found. My guess is closer to twenty—only a few fly traces in the wound, and they were pretty fresh, less than a day. Probably killed the night before, say around ten to twelve, and then the flies got to him around dawn. Little buggers don’t start laying eggs until daylight.”
“Defensive wounds?”
“None. Hands weren’t even tied. But it looks like he pissed in his pants before he was shot—the stain indicates upright position—so he knew what was coming.”
Probably cried, too, but that moisture would have evaporated by the time he was found. “Anything else?”
“Pockets empty. Looks like he was searched or made to turn his pockets out before being shot. Like I say, the body wasn’t moved afterward.” Baird added, “I did vacuum his pockets—found traces of crack dust in both pockets.”
Elizabeth settled with a sigh into her reclining chair and pushed it back to lift her tired and shoeless feet. “You heard about that policeman in Aurora?”
Wager nodded. “Still no suspects.”
“Was it gang related?”
That was the first question almost everyone asked, as if assuming that the policeman’s death was a skirmish in an ongoing battle against a vague but powerful enemy that prowled the streets for blood. The shooting had been the lead story for the evening radio and television news, and in his imagination Wager saw the scare heads of tomorrow morning’s papers echoing the police union bulletin: POLICEMAN SLAIN! “No evidence, but it could be.”
Another sigh as she held out her glass for a refill while Wager poured the wine. “Roger thinks the gangs might be his campaign focus.”
Roger was Roger Harmon, incumbent governor facing an election that his own polls said he would lose. They were probably right: Given the sour economy, anybody in office would lose because everybody out of office looked better. But since everyone with dreams of milking the public payroll was saying they could do better, the Republicans hadn’t yet winnowed out a single candidate, and that gave Democrat Harmon some time to establish a strategy. Elizabeth had been telling Wager about some of the various aides and pundits who offered suggestions on how to salvage the election. The importance of all this for Elizabeth was not only her intense interest in politics but also the fact that the governor’s party was her own. The political success of Denver’s city councilpersons was less dependent on party affiliation than that of most other elective offices, but as Elizabeth had said, even when a party leader’s coattails didn’t offer much help, tar still splashed a long way.
“Why does he want to focus on gangs?”
“Everyone’s talking about them. Television, newspapers. And now with this police slaying … But even if the gang threat does turn out to be Roger’s key issue, I don’t think he’s formulated a solution. I’ve heard talk about everything from providing neighborhood youth centers to calling in the National Guard. But,” she added, “I wouldn’t be one of the first to know about his plans anyway.”
“Would a gang war affect his reelection?”
“What? What’s that mean?”
He told her his thoughts about Hocks and Big Ron.
“My Lord! Do you think it could really happen?”
It was only a guess, and he told her that. “I’ve talked to some people in the Gang Unit and Intelligence. They’re getting on it for corroboration.” He hoped they were getting on it. At least they had taken the information and thanked him politely.
Elizabeth dug her weekly minder out of her purse and jotted a note to call the governor’s office first thing in the morning. The mayor may or may not have been briefed by the police chief about the possibility of a gang war—their weekly meetings took place on Monday mornings, and the Hocks boy had become a statistic sometime Monday night. But even if the Republican mayor knew, he wouldn’t be likely to tell the Democratic governor—not if the information could be used for political purposes first. And even the possibility of such a war should be an item of concern and preparation.
But the state’s political infighting was a long way from Wager’s plate, if not from Elizabeth’s. “What do the polls say about your reelection?”
“Marginal. But I haven’t started campaigning yet. My guess is most people haven’t given much thought to the city council races.” Nor, both Wager and Elizabeth knew, would they until just before voting. Often just one minute before, which was why most council incumbents didn’t begin their races until late. “I meant to ask, how’s your cousin doing?”
Wager sighed. “I don’t know—haven’t had a chance to talk with Aunt Louisa for a few days. I ought to call her.” Hocks’s death wasn’t the only reason he hadn’t called her. It was also a duty he wasn’t eager to remember, and when he did, something more important always came up. Perhaps because he looked for it. But now he could almost feel the woman’s teary voice at his ear, and it was best over and done with. He picked up the cordless telephone resting on the end table by the couch. A woman’s unfamiliar voice answered, and Wager asked for his aunt.
“Who wants to talk to her?”
“Gabe Wager. Her nephew.”
“Just a minute, please.”
“Gabe? You heard about Julio?”
The half-strangled sound of his aunt’s voice warned him, but the sudden numbness in his mind did not want to accept it. “No. What?”
“He’s dead, Gabe. They shot him. My son—” The voice broke into a hoarse gasp. Then heavy, lurching sounds twisted at his guts.
“I’ll be right over, querida.”
5
ELIZABETH CAME WITH him. It wasn’t Wager’s idea, but she insisted and Wager figured it couldn’t do any harm and might even do some good—it promised to be one of those times when women needed other women more than they needed a man. In fact, it was Elizabe
th who reminded Wager that they should call his mother and tell her the bad news. From there, Wager knew, the word would go to the rest of the family and, forgetting any differences or jealousies, they would gather around Aunt Louisa to offer words or touches or just presence.
His mother, of course, wanted to know if Wager had caught the murderer yet.
“No, Mom. I just heard about it. I wasn’t on duty when it happened.”
“You’re going to, right? I can at least tell Louisa you’re going to?”
“Whoever’s on duty’s working on it right now, Mom. I tell you that.”
“No, you—you should be the one, Gabe. Es una cosa de la familia.”
A family thing and another detective’s case—two damn good reasons why Wager should not become involved in the homicide. But he could never explain that to his mother. And to tell the truth, he wasn’t sure he could explain it to himself, either. “I’ll be working on it, Mom.”
He had telephoned in a request to the duty clerk before they left Elizabeth’s, and by the time his Camaro nosed into a parking place along the crowded curb near his aunt’s home, the reply, heralded by his call letters, came back on his radio.
“The report came in at seventeen fifty-three, Detective Wager, location West Thirty-fourth and Eliot. At eight-twelve responding officers called for a homicide detective. Detective Golding was on duty; he’s at the scene now. I’ve advised him you would be in contact.”
“Thanks.” Golding would be busy at the crime scene for at least another two or three hours; Wager led Elizabeth up the narrow concrete walk to the shadowy front porch. The small dormer window that was Julio’s was dark.
A man about Wager’s age answered the door—Cousin Frank, Wager’s mother’s brother’s son, and one of the kids in Wager’s memory who used to play baseball with him in the streets of the Auraria barrio. When they had been kids and when there had been a barrio. He, too, had aged more than Wager thought he should.
“Hello, Gabe. Been a long time.” He looked genuinely glad to see Wager.
