by Rex Burns
Wager didn’t bother to use a barstool; the bartender already smelled cop. But he flashed his badge anyway—it was part of the ritual. “I’m looking for Guillermo Arellano, calls himself Halconito.”
The bartender, a narrow face pitted with old smallpox scars, glanced at the row of noisy machines against the back wall. “Never heard of him.”
“Right.” He headed for the group of long-haired kids whose baggy clothes looked like leftovers from a yard sale except they were too dirty. Up close he could see that their stringy hair was unwashed, too, and none of them looked as if they had a mother to nag them about it. The tallest, a mouth-breather around fifteen or sixteen, saw him headed their way and nudged the shorter kid whose head was stuck in the hood of the Space Raiders machine. He, too, fell silent and stared flatly as Wager approached, and Wager congratulated himself on being a real detective: the kid’s shirt was pulled open across his bony and hairless chest to show that tattoo of a spread-eagled bird whose wingtips brushed each of his nipples. One nipple had a tiny gold ring through it.
“Halconito, right?” Wager showed his badge. The figures moved closer together, a variety of heights and faces, but one expression—suspicion.
“Are you Halconito?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“I’m with Denver Police. Need to ask you some questions about a murder victim you know.”
The five other kids had grouped themselves behind the one with the tattoo, making it clear that he was their leader and that his tattoo was as much their flag as his name. On the left hands that Wager could see, he made out one large, dark tattoo per knuckle: L,1,0,2.
“Who’s that, man? Who’s rapeadad?” He made the word sound something like “raped,” a pun mixing the Spanish for “snuff” and the Anglo for “raped.” One of the slang terms when Wager was a kid had been tendido—stretched out—but language, too, changed.
“Un negrito named John Erle Hocks—se llaman Doodle Bug.” Wager added, “I heard a lot down at police headquarters about you and the Lipan One-oh-twos. I heard you knew him.”
“You heard about me?” Surprise mixed with pleasure; Arellano, who only came up to Wager’s chin, seemed to swell another inch or two. “You people know about the L-One-oh-twos?”
“Sure. It’s police business to learn about la gente, no? You people are getting a name—people are starting to hear about the L-One-oh-twos.”
“Fuckin’ right, man! And a lot more people going to hear before long! Nobody be giving the L-One-oh-twos any shit, man, because they’ll all know who we are!”
The chorus mumbled “That’s right, man” and “You fuckin’ right on!” Even the open-mouthed kid in the back, a foot or so taller than Wager, nodded hard, his stringy brown hair swaying back and forth limply across his face.
“Por supuesto. That’s why I came to talk to you—ask you about Doodle Bug. Figured you’d be the ones to know.”
Arellano shrugged, the gesture of a man who knew a lot more than anybody might guess. “So you find out who did him?”
“Not for sure. That’s why I’m asking around about him. Asking those people who know enough about what’s going on.”
“Yeah—well—yeah. We knew him.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Right?”
The heads nodded, but no one added anything.
“Do you know how he got that mote—Doodle Bug?”
“Sure. This little book he carried around, he was always writing in it. Big plans, man, a real tiburón. He was going to set up his own organization, like, and was always making notes about things to do, how to do it.”
“What things?”
Some caution. “Things. Business. You know.”
Wager was beginning to get the idea. “Did he say he was working for Big Ron?”
“Never heard of no Big Ron. Who’s he?”
“Deals crack over in north Denver.” A faint shuffle of unease among the group. Wager shook his head. “I don’t care about that—I’m in homicide. My job’s to find out who killed him.” He gave Arellano another chance to add something, but the kid remained silent. “How’d you meet him?”
“Around. On the street. You know.”
“But he was a black kid.”
“We got friends—connections. All over the place. Some are black, some Anglo.”
“Yeah.” One of the medium-sized faces spoke up. “Even a couple Koreans. This is America, you know?”
They laughed loudly, and Wager smiled and nodded, too. The speaker was probably the group clown, the comodin. “Democracy—ain’t it great!” That got another round of laughter, not quite so loud. “So Doodle Bug offered you a business deal—he was going to provide the stuff, and you could sell it and make a lot of money?”
That good feeling went as fast as it came. “Hey, man. I didn’t say that.”
“No problema. I didn’t ask it. But if I knew something like that, I might be closer to his killer.”
Arellano’s grin made his face grow younger, bringing to Wager a sharp memory of one of those distant faces from the old Auraria barrio. It was a kid Wager had long ago forgotten and whose name he could not dredge up now. A distant relative in his family by somebody’s bloodline.
“If there was a deal, it fell through. That’s all I’m saying.”
Wager nodded. “Entiendo.” He paused before leaving. “You ever hear of Julio Lucero or Roderick Hastings?”
The leader shook his head. Those standing behind him shook theirs.
“Lucero was shot a few weeks ago over on Thirty-fourth and Eliot. Killed.”
“I heard about the shooting. I didn’t know him, though.”
“Thanks, men. ’Sta la vista.”
“Yeah—la vista.”
The next time they saw each other might not be so friendly. Or maybe it would. Maybe one of the neighborhood do-gooders would reach the kids before they got so far in that Wager would be calling on them officially. Or trying to find their murderer. But that was a future he couldn’t worry about, because the present was making its own demands. Back at his desk, he pulled the Hocks file and leafed through the crime scene analysis one more time. No mention of a notebook of any kind. Wager dialed the lab, managing to catch Gebauer before he took off for lunch.
“Notebook? What kind of notebook?”
“I don’t know. A little one, probably; something he carried around with him. I hear Hocks was always writing in it. They called him Doodle Bug because he scribbled in it all the time.”
“Can’t recall it. If it’s not in the site inventory or the list of personal possessions, it wasn’t there.”
“OK—thanks.”
“Say, I heard you got shot.”
“Nothing I’ll get a medal for.” Wager seldom thought of the wound now, except when he touched the slowly healing scab.
“Heard you’re getting sued, too.”
“That’s worse than being shot.”
“You leading an exciting life. Get the bastard who did it?”
“Shot me? No.” Hadn’t gotten the one who was suing him, either.
“Any idea who it was?”
“I think so. No proof yet”
“Well, if you need some help with him, or if I hear anything …”
Wager hardly knew Gebauer, but like almost every cop he’d talked with after the shooting, the man was ready to help Wager get vengeance. It was like a family: No matter how much you squabbled among yourselves, if someone from outside attacked, you were all against him. “Thanks.”
His next call was to Arleta Hocks’s work number, a convenience store on north Downing Street. She didn’t have anything new to add to what she had already told Wager, but she was grateful that he was still looking for her son’s killer. No, she didn’t know of any notebook, but she would look through his belongings when she got off work this afternoon. Her mild voice was almost toneless, as if the death of her son had moved from a sharp pain to a constantly suffered throb of ache that was to be kept inside and borne alone. Yes, she would ca
ll right away if it was there.
His hand still on the telephone when it warbled. “For somebody who was acting in such a big hurry you sure ain’t easy to reach.”
“You’ve got me now, Willy. What is it?”
“That address you wanted—you know, LaBelle.” He gave Wager the street number. “How long she gonna be there I don’t know, but that’s where she at right now.”
“Got it—thanks, Willy.”
“You heard what I done said about thanks.”
Wager’d heard. He shoved his name across the location board to On Patrol and grabbed the elevator down to the garage.
It was a neighborhood of small brick houses separated from each other by narrow sidewalks that led to backyards. A few had squares of grass mowed, watered, and edged with what flowers had managed to survive this late in the year. Mostly chrysanthemums and petunias. The rest were fronted by yards either gleaming with standing water or churned into mud by busy kid feet. LaBelle’s address was for a tiny brick duplex whose twin front doors shared the same small porch and central stairs. Brick bungalows crowded close on each side, one an unpainted red, the other a robin’s egg blue that, even in the wet overcast, stung Wager’s eyes. He rapped on the warped screen door and waited, listening for the sound of movement inside. Again, louder this time. After a third and even louder knock, the floor quivered with thudding heels.
“Yes? What you selling?”
“Hello, LaBelle. It’s been a long time.”
The face wrinkled to squint through the screen at Wager. “Who you? You that cop! What’s his name—the one thinks he got solid gold balls.”
“Wager.” He put his badge case away. “How’s tricks?”
“What you coming after me for? Whyn’t you leave me alone—I ain’t done nothing to you!”
He didn’t want her to, either, but it looked like a lot had been done to her: a lot more years than the calendar said, and a lot less weight than he remembered. It could have been prison. It could be AIDS. It could be dope. Or maybe just a hard life that had ground her down like a worn knife blade. “I’m not here to bust you, LaBelle, not even for skipping out on your rent. I just want to talk about Roderick Hastings.”
“I got nothing to say about that man!”
“I understand you saw him beat up a bartender over at JP’s Lounge.”
Something quivered beneath her defensive anger, and her voice rose in pitch. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. It’s in the police files—Officer Powers took your statement and you were called in as a witness against Hastings. Then you changed your story in court.” Wager smiled. “We can go down and read the records if you want to. Or we can talk here.”
“I didn’t see nothing and you can’t make me say I did!”
“That case is closed, LaBelle. Dismissed. Over. All I want is information about Hastings—where he lives, what he does, and who he does it with.” He added, “Unless you think you owe him something. Is that it? He did something real nice for you so you’re going to do him a nice favor now?”
Her face, clawed with wrinkles that put deep folds from her nose to the corners of her mouth, peered past Wager up and down the street. He noticed, hidden deep in the wiry hair curling at her temples, gray root that had grown out beneath the orange dye. She unlatched the screen door. “Come in. I don’t want the whole neighborhood to see me talking to no cop in broad daylight.”
The story was pretty much what Powers had told him: LaBelle had been hanging around outside JP’s, waiting for any customers coming out at closing time, when she saw Hastings attack the bartender. “You ain’t give me no Miranda warning—you can’t make me go in court on this.”
The Miranda didn’t apply to witnesses, only to suspects, but LaBelle didn’t have to know that. “I told you that case is closed. I’m after Hastings for something else.”
“What?”
“He might have had something to do with a kid’s death.”
“Who he kill?”
“My cousin. Maybe. Maybe not.”
The maybe didn’t surprise her. As for it being Wager’s cousin, well, in the world she knew people got killed every day, no matter whose cousin they happened to be. “He liked to hurt people. Him and them people he runs around with. Bloods. Say they hurt me if I go to court against him. Hurt me real bad.” She nodded. “Would, too.”
“Didn’t Officer Powers offer you protection?”
“Shit! Ain’t no protection against them. They wants to get you, they gonna get you. In jail, out of jail, ain’t no protection gonna stop them!”
“Who are some of the people he hangs around with?”
She gave him some names that he would have to check with Fullerton—Ball Peen, Rubberhead, Wild Bill. More important, she told him where Hastings and his friends usually gathered. “They got them a place in that apartment house over at Sixteenth and Washington. Call it the snake ranch. You going over there?”
“Probably sooner or later. Why?”
“They gonna shoot you dead, then.”
“Why’s that, LaBelle?”
“Same reason they beat up that bartender. Maybe same reason they shoot your cousin: They got a business to protect and they don’t want nobody to know nothing about it.”
Wager studied the dark brown eyes that looked back at him from under lids that were wrinkled and dry from some kind of allergy or disease. “How’d you know about it?”
She shrugged. “I see things. I hear things.” A snort. “Lots of men likes to talk after they fuck, you know? That’s when they feel like they really somebody.” They were both silent a moment. “That cop over in District Two—Powers?—he think Hastings and that bartender they just had a dustup.” She shook her head. “More’n that went down. That bartender, he took some stuff on commission and then went and used it all—couldn’t pay Hastings what he owed him. I bet your cousin done it too. I bet your cousin try and short Hastings, too. I bet you got a dope head in your own fambly!”
That was all she could or would tell him, but it wasn’t all she meant. Wager, on the drive back to police admin, kept seeing the malignant laughter in the woman’s eyes as she accused Julio of using drugs. Not that she had anything against his cousin, but it was Wager she felt triumph over; the cop who had arrested her in the past was now learning that he wasn’t any better than she was, that if she was dirt so was he and all his family. And Wager knew that the reasons she had talked so freely to him about Hastings was not just out of revenge against those who had threatened her but as a way of getting even with him, too.
He was trying to explain that to Elizabeth later that evening. She had a rare night without campaign meetings or party functions or neighborhood electioneering; and they had gone to his apartment for a change of environment—and to get away from her telephone—to cook spaghetti, toss a salad, find some quiet time to share a glass of wine or two. But of course what they talked about were the very things they were trying to escape: the election and Wager’s cases.
“Dennis Trotter’s taken a leaf from the governor’s campaign.”
“What’s that?” Wager mopped at the remains of the sauce with a hunk of bread. Liz had been right: Trotter had emerged as the strongest challenger for her council seat; Wager had seen his large glossy posters in yards all over the district.
“Crime. ‘Police and citizens working together to stop crime.’ That’s his main theme.” Her tone expressed disgust. “It’s his way of shifting attention from the stadium issue.”
It was also a bunch of election-year crap—cops learned before they were out of their probationary term that damn few, if any, civilians ever came to their aid. That’s why an Officer Down call took precedence over everything else: the down cop was always alone. But he didn’t tell that to Elizabeth; despite the good food and the snug sound of rain whipping at the balcony doors, she would rise to argue with his cynicism. Instead he told her about Roderick Hastings and Julio and what LaBelle had said.
“It’s their choice, Liz. Nobody makes them use it or deal it.”
“Nobody except the greed of our society, and our callousness toward our own children.”
“That puts the blame everywhere and nowhere. Each one has to make his own choice—nobody can do it for them.”
“How do you make an eleven- or twelve-year-old kid understand that, Gabe? Especially one who lives in a world of fear and intimidation in his neighborhood, in his school, often in his own home. He’s going to join a gang for survival and he’s going to do what he sees the other members of that gang doing.” It genuinely hurt her to learn from Wager some of the uglier aspects of life in her city, and that pain was in her voice. “It’s a reversion to tribalism—our children are losing the sense that we’re a civilized people, that we should all live together in our city and that we can do it. Instead they form tribes whose purposes are defense from and attack against the other tribes. It’s a horrible vision of the death of a civilization, Gabe.”
Which meant that one of the first things to do was to make the world a little safer place—and that’s what Wager’s job was and what he was trying to accomplish. “Julio was not a user. The autopsy showed no traces in his system and no marks on his body. And I don’t believe he was in a gang or that he was dealing.”
“Then why was he killed?”
“Because he was some kind of threat to Hastings’s racket—or maybe Hastings believed he was.”
“What does Detective Golding think about that?”
“Golding doesn’t think.” Wager had told the man what he was working on, but Golding had only nodded earnestly and said what a good idea it was but that he would wait and see if anything turned up to corroborate Wager’s theory. “He wants somebody to step up and admit they shot Julio.”
