Blood Line

by Rex Burns

  Wager sipped at his own water. “You might make a good homicide detective.” He meant it as a sincere compliment, and that’s the way she took it.

  Elizabeth accepted the seriousness of the charges far more quickly than Wager had, and less calmly. “It’s stupid! Utterly and completely stupid! That man was trying to kill you, Gabe. You were acting in the line of duty and you had a right—even an obligation—to protect yourself and others!”

  “You know it and I know it. But a jury has to know it, too.”

  “So you’re definitely going to court? Your lawyer—what’s his name? Dewey?—thinks there actually is a case against you?”

  “Dewing. It’s a she. And she says we’d better plan on it. She’s going to ask for a dismissal on the strength of the investigation team’s findings, but the judge could say no.”

  “It’s preposterous!” In her quick anger, she had shoved aside the papers littering the coffee table and now half-absently groped for the page she had been working on. “Is your lawyer any good? I know a couple to recommend.”

  “I think she’ll do.” He spotted the paper and pushed it toward her: a scribbled draft of a position statement for the reelection campaign. It argued against offering any more tax breaks to the Denver Broncos, who were pleading poverty and patriotism in order to have the citizens of Denver donate a new stadium to them. The numbered paragraphs were marked by additions and deletions and arrows that moved sentences around. If she’d argue the other way, her campaign fund would be a lot fatter, but then she wouldn’t be any different from most of the people lining up to run against her. Nor would she be honest. “Who’s going to be your main opponent?”

  “What? Oh—Dennis Trotter. He has the Chamber of Commerce behind him.” She slapped her pencil down. “You don’t seem at all worried by those charges!”

  What she meant was that he didn’t seem worried enough. But she was arguing more with the situation than with him, and that was something which—right now—was out of his hands. He told her that, but it took her a few more angry swings to get it out of her system. Finally, she asked, “Who is this Neeley? What kind of claim can he possibly think he has?”

  “He was a suspect in a murder, a shoot-out between the Bloods and the Crips about a year ago. I wanted to arrest him and he didn’t want to be arrested.”

  “Gangs, again!”

  “Yeah. He was convicted—should have got manslaughter, but Kolagny settled for a negligent homicide plea. Kolagny would probably have given him a medal for street cleaning, but Neeley’s lawyer didn’t think to ask. Anyway, the scumbag’s spending more time for resisting arrest and assaulting an officer than for killing a guy.”

  “You were the assaulted officer, of course.”

  Wager nodded, blinking away the sharp memory of Neeley tumbling frantically out of his car to disappear into the entrance of the old apartment building. And Wager, pausing at the door, weapon in hand, listening to the thudding feet run up the stairs and then sprinting after them. And the sudden, tense silence just over his head on the third landing. Then, at the end of a shadowed hallway, Neeley crouching in the shadowed corner like a trapped rodent hoping he was invisible. Wager could still smell the sour odor of the place: clogged drains, urine, the mustiness of caked filth. Neeley pleading, “Don’t shoot, man, please don’t shoot!” Then the stubbed barrel of a shotgun swung from behind his leg and Wager flung himself against a closed door for the thin protection of its sill and frantically jerked the trigger. Shoot first. Get the first round off—you don’t have to hit anything, just shoot first and hope the muzzle blast and noise will screw up his aim, but the shotgun boomed, plaster and stinging fragments peppering Wager’s leg as he fired again, more carefully this time, and again, before another round could be chambered into the smoking shotgun, sending Neeley doubled and grunting to the worn carpet.

  He took a deep breath, coming back to the present and recognizing the various shades of blue in the painting on the wall of Elizabeth’s living room, feeling his pulse slow back to normal. “He doesn’t have any case at all. He’s trying to build up his disability allowance for when he gets out, that’s all.”

  “I hope that’s so.”

  “Of course it is.”

  If Wager had to take a vote, he’d guess that more people sided with Elizabeth’s worry than with his own confidence. His pigeonhole had three messages from Gargan—please return call—and a copy of the police union newsletter that headlined OFFICER CHARGED IN SHOOTING and named one Det. Sgt. G. V. Wager as the officer. They used the same official department photograph that Gargan had used and mentioned that since Wager wasn’t a member of the union, the future of his career looked pretty grim. Even the good-morning nods from other detectives busy at their desks had a little extra, some a wag of sympathy, others a touch of satisfaction. He was doubly surprised by a note from his ex-partner, Max Axton, who was still on medical leave: “Gabe, how many times I got to tell you—kill the bastards and then they can’t sue you.” The first surprise was the note: how far and how fast the news of Neeley’s charges traveled; the second surprise was the content—it sounded as if being shot finally made old Max-of-the-bleeding-heart realize there actually were people who didn’t like cops. Even if, Wager smiled to himself, there didn’t seem to be anyone who didn’t like Max.

  He shuffled quickly through the waiting paperwork, relieved that most of it belonged in the trash can, and then turned to his computer, keying into the central contact file. The screen told him there were at least a dozen Ronald Hastingses who had come to the official attention of some Colorado law agency and were therefore listed in the Colorado Crime Information Center. Even this early in the day, the system was overloaded with inquiries, and Wager had to try half a dozen times before he finally got in. Then there was another wait before the machine asked for additional identifying data: Social Security number, date of birth, middle initials, description, aliases, nicknames, marks and scars. Wager pressed the number for Description and typed in AA. The racial designation used to be “Negro” but a memo had come down stating that the new term to be applied was “African-American,” which—for computing purposes—was coded as AA. It was quicker to type, anyway: maybe in time the other races would be reduced to convenient letters, too: WA—White-American, HA—Hispanic-American, NA, OA; hell, some programmer would probably even break it down by subcategory: OAC—Oriental-American, Chinese; OAVN, OAJ. Which, of course, would mean Wager and a lot of others would need a slash in their initials: WA/HA. Then it would get so confusing they’d have to forget race and go back to skin color for identification, and that same programmer would be telling Wager to use BL, BR, R, Y, and W.

  But visions of progress aside, the racial identification had cut his list of Hastingses by three. Then, figuring the Hastings he wanted was less than thirty something, Wager typed “DOB 1965-” and the scroll flickered again to leave only four entries. He noted their file numbers and headed for Records.

  The flat-nosed face glared at Wager from the identification photograph stapled to its manila folder. Wager signed for that dossier and returned the others to the clerk. Then he settled at a worktable, ballpoint pen and notebook out, to read what the state knew about this particular citizen.

  No outstanding warrants; a note that made reference to an earlier criminal life in Los Angeles, but the detailed entries only began in Colorado in 1991. Arrest for assault, no conviction. Followed by arrest for rape with charges dropped. Another arrest for assault, this time with a dangerous weapon, pled guilty and took six months’ probation—Kolagny must have handled that one. No subsequent arrests. The Personal Information section listed names of known associates—only a couple of whom Wager recognized—and reputed gang affiliation: CMG Bloods. Crenshaw Mafia Gangsters Bloods, a group whose beginnings, like Hastings’s, were in LA. Like them, Hastings had moved to Denver and brought with him what he had learned on those streets. Wager glanced down the rest of the file, dwelling on addresses and telephone numbers. At the time
of his last arrest, our hero had been listed as “unemployed”; Wager dated and signed a note that Hastings was currently working at DIA for D & S Contractors. That was the way files were kept up to date, if enough cops took the time to do what they should do. Then he listed the names of the officers who had arrested or interviewed Hastings, checked the file back in, and headed for the basement garage.

  The District Two station was on Colorado Boulevard. Just across those busy four lanes was the Park Hill Municipal Golf Course. It had one of the highest crime rates of any public facility in the city, which gave rise to a broader definition of “course hazard.” As well as to some strange stories: the foursome, held up by an armed robber on the sixth hole, that had waited until they finished the eighteenth hole before reporting the crime; the fistfight over whether a ball could be moved after it had been mashed into the green by the body of a stabbed golfer. Some of the street cops had volunteered to go undercover on the course, but their suggestion hadn’t gotten past the lieutenant’s desk—that kind of job was more suitable for the gold shields than for the lowly patrolman, with the result that the district’s lieutenants and captains could schedule time to play golf in civilian clothes and call it serving and protecting.

  Wager pulled his sedan into a visitor’s slot and used the side entrance to the single-story building. It led to the locker room where two or three men half-dressed in their uniforms eyed Wager with a distance that verged on hostility. For one thing, he looked like he was from a plainclothes division; for another, his was an alien face invading one of the few places a uniformed cop could find privacy from the public.

  A doorless entry bent through a sharp angle and opened to the hall that led to the duty room. Wager saw Powers sitting at a desk; the man’s heavy, sloped shoulders curved forward as if to shelter the official form his pencil moved deftly across. “Hi, Andy.” Powers, like Wager, had it drilled into him by some long-retired shift sergeant that police reports were to be printed legibly, not scrawled in script or dictated into a recorder like the new academy graduates were allowed to do today.

  “Gabe!” He offered a hand to shake. “Let me finish this report—won’t take a couple minutes. You know where the coffee is?”

  Wager nodded and filled a Styrofoam cup, dropping a quarter into the coffee-fund jar with its slotted lid. He eyed the notices and bulletins stapled and tacked to the wall under a black sign that urged READ THIS. The display pattern was different but the contents were familiar. Finally, half a cup later, Powers tapped the sheets of paper into a manila folder and poured a cup of coffee for himself. “Roderick Hastings—I figured I’d be hearing more about that young man.” He pulled another folder from the noisy metal drawer of a filing cabinet. “What’s he into now?”

  Wager shook his head. “Don’t have anything definite. He’s an associate of a homicide victim, and I just need a rundown on him.”

  A wide thumb rubbed in the gray and baggy flesh under Powers’s eye as he leafed through the small stack of papers. Wager thought how this man, too, suddenly looked so much older. It wasn’t so long ago that he and Wager had stood in a line of stiff new uniforms, the smell of polish and hair lotion drawn out by a hot June sun, and raised their hands to be sworn in as peace officers of the city and county of Denver. At least it didn’t seem as long ago as their badge numbers said.

  Powers flipped a photocopied page across the desk toward Wager. “Here’s his LA rap sheet. He’s another one of those jailbirds some California judge paid to leave the state, so he came here.”

  The Los Angeles courts, in an effort to save space in their prisons and further drain on their state tax dollars, now practiced banishment: the judge would ask a felon if he had relatives anyplace else in the country, and then provide a one-way bus ticket there. If the crook came back, he’d serve his time, plus the cost of the ticket. If not, he was no longer a burden to the California taxpayer. It was a nice way to clean up LA, but the effect was that Los Angeles had spread its criminals like a virus across the rest of the country. Somebody had even come up with a word for it: Californication.

  Wager glanced down the arrest record. The information was laid out differently from a Colorado form, but Wager had seen enough from the West Coast to read it quickly. It listed a series of the usual vandalism, thefts, and assaults and finally a conviction in Anaheim for burglary. “He had relatives here?”

  “A cousin, an aunt, something. Enough to get his free bus ride, anyway. I had him for assault with intent—got into a fight with one of the bartenders over at JP’s Lounge and took it home with him. Came back next night and caught the guy coming out after work. Clobbered him with a sap or a set of knuckles, something. Victim never saw what hit him, spent three months in the hospital. The only witness, a hooker named LaBelle Rhone, changed her story. Figure Hastings had one of his bros talk to her.”

  “LaBelle? She still working?”

  “You know her? Yeah, she ought to be retired by now, but what the hell—it’s not like she works standing up.”

  “Got a current address for her?”

  “Got the address she gave me, anyway.” Powers thumbed through his notebook and copied a line onto a piece of paper. “Don’t knock before noon.”

  “Is Hastings still in the CMG Bloods?”

  Powers shrugged. “Haven’t heard he’s quit.”

  “You’re saying he’s still active?”

  “I’m saying I don’t know otherwise.”

  Wager thought about that. “Did you know he’s got a job out at DIA?”

  “I didn’t know. Maybe he’s getting religion.”

  Remembering the sullen glare Hastings had given him, Wager said, “Yeah.” Then he said, “Any run-ins with him since the assault?”

  “No. Might check with somebody in the Gang Unit, though. They might be able to tell you more.”

  Wager tried Powers with the names of the rest of Julio’s crew, but the sergeant didn’t recognize any of them. He thanked the man, and they made noises about getting together for a beer sometime, then he drove back to department headquarters. He was scarcely aware of the busy midday traffic that weaved past his slower-moving vehicle.

  11

  DETECTIVE FULLERTON WAS the only Gang Unit officer available. Wager stifled a groan and tried to look happy to see him as he entered the warren of cubicles and desks that made up the Gang Unit offices. He needed information and Fullerton might have it; that’s what Wager would have to remind himself when the detective launched into one of his bullshit sociological theories about what he called the structures of alternative cultures.

  “Heyo, Gabe—coffee?”

  He nodded and waited as Fullerton rinsed somebody’s mug and filled it from the bulb of steaming black liquid. There was no coffee-fund jar here; headquarters units had made their caffeine fix a line item in their budgets. They also made their coffee so bitter that no one would pay to drink it.

  “I pulled the file on Hastings.” Forehead wrinkling with the seriousness of the issue, he tapped the cover of a thin manila folder but held it just out of Wager’s reach. “We don’t have much on him so far, but he’s definitely a player.”

  “He’s active?”

  “One of the OGs—Old Gangsters. You know what that means?”

  “I know, Norm.”

  “Right. Well, my information—and this is confidential, Gabe, you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “My confidential information is that he’s a main connection between the local CMG Bloods and the parent CMG group in LA. The local group’s in the process of developing from a collectivity to a gang, and Hastings is one of the second-level organizers.”

  “He’s some kind of leader?”

  “Well, yes and no. ‘Leader’ is kind of an oversimplification because he’s not an everyday figure in the nuclear structure. He’s more of a resource and liaison figure. An adviser, you know what I mean?”

  “No.”

  Fullerton’s wiry eyebrows pulled together with
the intensity of his effort to explain it. “He’s a connection with the LA bunch—they’re a bona fide organization, way beyond a collectivity and a lot more centralized and structured than a gang. They got a lot to teach our local people, and it’s a way for the LA bunch to set up a satellite-type organizational structure. So Hastings tells the locals how to lay out a neighborhood crack distribution system, how to protect their territory, what to charge, law evasion techniques, the whole bit. Maybe even bankrolls them at first to get them set up. Then he acts as a liaison with the wholesaler, the LA organization.” The frown turned into a happy smile of discovered analogy. “Think of him as a kind of a franchise consultant: helps set up a local business with advice, supply, and start-up funds.”

  “He makes money himself from it?”

  “Oh, yeah—he gets his slice of the markup between the LA source and the local price. That’s SOP. Maybe even a piece of the local action, if the Denver people go along with it.”

  Wager asked the question that had troubled him on the drive over from the District Two station. “Then why’s he working out at DIA for minimum wage? It must be pocket change compared to what he gets off dope sales.”