Angle of Attack

by Rex Burns

  “Not a whole lot. The doc gave us the time and place of death, and we have a poor description of a possible suspect. That’s about it,” said Wager.

  “I see you asked for a p.c. on Dominick Scorvelli.”

  “Yessir. But it’s just routine more than anything.”

  Doyle looked hard at Wager. “You did go over and talk to those people in O.C.U., didn’t you?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Well? Is this p.c. related to that?”

  “Not really. They didn’t know of any possible link between Scorvelli and Covino.”

  “Wager, are you giving me the straight skinny? I got the feeling you’re holding something back from me, and I sincerely hope that’s not the case.” Those thrusting lower teeth showed briefly in the way that had earned Doyle his nickname, and his voice rose. “I sincerely hope you remember who in the hell you are working for now.”

  Axton’s voice rumbled in a nervous gargle. “Gabe and I went over together, Chief. Both of us. Inspector Sonnenberg provided us some—ah—updating on the Scorvelli organization. But none of it was—ah—pertinent to our case. At least, not so far. It may prove later—ah …” His voice faded out.

  “What kind of ‘updating’?”

  “Facts and figures, mostly. Operational information. That kind of thing,” said Axton.

  “Is this information confidential?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Axton and Wager together.

  “Those people over there scream ‘confidential’ every time they break wind.” Doyle studied each of them; in the corner of his office, the Bulldog’s personal coffeemaker gave a muffled pop and hiss and a short, small dribble somewhere inside. “All right. Let’s leave it at that for now. But I want no question in your minds about where your loyalties lie. Do you understand me, Wager?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And I will not let the O.C.U. or anyone else put me in an embarrassing position by withholding information about my own goddamned cases. Is that clear?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And you’d better remember that your files and fitness reports are in homicide. I don’t give a tinker’s damn if Sonnenberg claims confidentiality or not. If there’s vital information concerning one of my cases, I want to know about it. If some other agency seeks priority over my department’s activities, that is my decision to grant. Not yours or anybody else’s but mine. You two got that?”

  “Yessir.”

  The blue, slightly bloodshot eyes fixed on Axton. “Don’t disappoint me, Max.”

  “No, sir.”

  Neither detective spoke as they entered the elevator, which moved jerkily downward. Wager was half angry about things he should have said when he had the chance and half puzzled over how someone like Doyle could make him act like a guilty schoolboy. Axton must have been feeling the same thing, because he finally whistled between his teeth and said, “It’s not like we were selling secrets to the goddam Russians.”

  “Maybe Doyle and Sonnenberg are both rupturing themselves to be deputy chief.” The anger at Doyle was spreading to anger at himself: He was the one who had let Sonnenberg put him in this position; it was his own damned fault for giving a promise to Sonnenberg, and for not coming right out and telling Doyle that to start with. That had been a mistake, and Wager was not the kind to shrug off mistakes, his own or anyone else’s.

  “If we screw up with Sonnenberg, we’ll never get anything out of him again.”

  “That’s right,” said Wager.

  “But if we screw up with Doyle, it’s going to be our fannies.”

  “He needs us as much as we need him,” said Wager. “If he wants to come down on us, there are ways we can get even.”

  “Sure—but that’s a shitty thing to have happen in any department. I’d hate to cause something like that.”

  Axton was right; Wager had been in units that had gone sour with infighting and jealousies and favoritism, and the result was a total waste—waste of energy and effort, waste of purpose, waste of men and careers. “I guess we’ll have to keep them both happy while we go out and catch the bastard, won’t we?”

  “Yeah. But, Gabe, let’s use a lot of couth, O.K.?”

  “‘Smooth’ is the word.” The elevator doors pumped open on the ground floor as Wager’s radio popped his call numbers and the code that he had a message at the Motor Vehicle Division.

  “Sounds like they located Covino’s car,” said Axton.

  They would find out. At the main desk, Wager asked to use the telephone; a sergeant with cropped white hair handed it to him and turned placidly back to the woman standing on the civilian side of the desk and loudly wanting to know why she couldn’t see her Jason right now. Wager poked the buttons for the M.V.D.

  “We’ve located a vehicle registered in the name of Frank Covino,” answered the police person. “His address is 2901 Quivas Street; the vehicle was ticketed this morning for a parking violation—it wasn’t moved for the street cleaner last night.”

  “Have they towed it away?”

  “We haven’t put a tow order on it yet. The ticket just came through.”

  “Hold off on that; we’ll get the lab people over there.”

  “Yessir,” she said.

  Wager hung up and then dialed the laboratory. The desk sergeant, voice as expressionless as a recording, was again telling the woman that her Jason would be kept in a holding cell until released or until transferred to County Jail, and that the only visitors allowed upstairs were the prisoners’ lawyers.

  “Lab. Baird speaking.”

  “This is Wager. That homicide victim’s car turned up on Eliot Street. Max and I are going over there now.”

  “Wait a minute, let me get the address and description—”

  “Forty-two hundred block,” Wager read from his notes. “A 1972 Chevrolet Impala, license BF 7479.”

  “I’ll try to get somebody over there after lunch. Don’t screw up the evidence too much, O.K.?”

  “We won’t touch it. Let us know when you’re through so we can tell the family where to find it.”

  “Right.”

  The car was at the end of a block on a residential street that was quiet because it ran parallel to a main artery that took away most of the traffic.

  “We’re not too far from that theater Covino went to,” said Axton. “It’s one block over.”

  That was so. Wager walked once around the car with its slip of yellow paper tucked under the wiper blade. A film of dust had settled on it, and yesterday’s wet snow, burned away by this morning’s hot sun and clear sky, had left little circles and streaks in the dust. But there were no large dents in the fenders and the chrome had been polished free of rust. As his mother had said, Covino kept the car in good shape.

  Max peered through the windows. “It’s locked. Didn’t the victim have his car keys on him?”

  “Yes. GM keys.” Wager, too, looked at the car’s interior; then he turned to gaze around at the small homes, some with brick porch pillars, others fronted by turned wooden posts painted white.

  Axton read his glance. “What side of the street do you want?”

  “This one, I guess.”

  As Wager worked his way from one door to the next, showing his badge and asking the same questions about that car parked by itself and anyone who might have been noticed with it, he could see his partner keeping pace across the street and occasionally hear the rap of Axton’s knuckles on a doorframe. Wager did not expect much, and that’s the way it turned out; but if they had not tried, he would have felt that his work was sloppy. In a lot of ways, it was like the carpentry his dad used to do before he had died: an extra brace inside where a lot of finishers might not put one because it couldn’t be seen; a beveled edge or a countersunk screw that no one else would see. And the only explanation he had ever offered was to say, “It’s my work.” That was the way Wager felt, and that was why he wasted time knocking on doors when the chances were a thousand to one against learning anything. And, Wager was
glad to see, that was the way his partner felt, too.

  “I suppose it had to be done.” The large man settled into their car’s front seat and Wager felt the vehicle bounce a little under the weight. “Now what?”

  “We’ve got a warrant to serve.”

  Six

  DOMINICK SCORVELLI’S OFFICE was a booth in the rear of the Lake Como restaurant. The sign over the entrance was outlined with pink and green neon scroll at night, but in the hot morning light, the painting of stiffly symmetrical mountains surrounding a splotch of blue water had peeled in large scales to show the dull red primer beneath. Even this early, two cars were nosed into the building’s blank side; one wore a glow-pink bumper sticker stating “Thank GOD I’m Italian.”

  “There’s some ethnic pride for you,” said Wager.

  Axton read it. “That’s more than the Pope can say.”

  Wager drove once through the circular driveway that isolated the square building from its neighbors; Scorvelli’s black Coupe de Ville with its leather bumper strips and half-open sun roof was parked in its own slot at the rear.

  “That’s exactly where we found Vern the Gimp six years ago,” said Max. “They killed him in the back seat of his own car and parked it in that same spot.”

  And it was like Dominick to place his car right there; it was his challenge to the ones who had shot his uncle—and to anyone else who might have similar ideas about him. “Did you ever clear the books on that one?” Vern the Gimp had been a medium-sized name in off-track betting on the northwest side of town, and his death was one of a series in the Ortega family’s attempt to take over that corner of Scorvelli territory.

  “We had a little luck that time. Vern was killed by some people the Ortegas brought in from L.A. But when they got home, they shot off their mouths and the L.A.P.D. picked them up on a tip. I guess they’re still in Cañon City, though a couple other states wanted a look at them, too. Wherever they are, they’ll be locked up a long, long time.”

  “The Scorvellis didn’t go after them in the pen?”

  “Not that I heard. Maybe they figured it wasn’t worth the trouble.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the Scorvellis.”

  “You’re right. But I learned that somebody got Bruce Ortega when he went out to L.A. about six months later. Shot him in the knees and then set him on fire while he was still alive. I guess that got the message across; the Ortegas cleared out of Denver after that.”

  “Now, that sounds like the Scorvellis.” Wager parked and they sat a minute looking at the restaurant’s quiet doorway. It stood open to show a dark drapery that had the powdery stains of dried mud splashed up from the sill.

  “Gabe?”

  “What?”

  “Remember—we do this very smoothly. Just a routine pop.”

  “Por supuesto. Let’s go.”

  Past the curtained doorway, the entry turned sharply right toward a bar where the counterman, when he was on duty, could see whoever came in. Now the long, straight bar stood empty of all but a white glare from the fluorescent light beneath the shelf. The small ceiling bulbs gave a shadowless yellow glow, and when Wager and Axton turned into the room, a quiet murmur of voices from a knot of men at the back booth suddenly stopped.

  “The restaurant’s closed, gents.” A hefty young man, tie-less and mod in a blue denim leisure suit and wavy black hair, hopped up from a chair near the booth and came toward them. “We don’t open till one.”

  He was new, but Wager would recognize him the next time they met. Wager showed his badge and went past the kid without answering. Behind him, Max muttered, “Keep your cool, sonny,” and strolled closer to the bar for a better angle of vision into the booth—and a different line of fire if anything came to that.

  Four peering faces were pale ovals in the dim ceiling lights. Next to the wall on the near bench was the Scorvelli accountant, Sully O’Brien; across from him was another face new to Wager, fifty or so, trimmed mustache and white hair plastered down across a wide skull. As Wager pushed past the kid in the leisure suit, the man’s eyes widened into a startled look at Scorvelli.

  “Police,” said Wager clearly, holding both hands open in sight. “You people just sit still.”

  Richard Scorvelli—”Wet Dick” because of the drop of spittle that always seeped out of the corner of his twisted mouth—sat with his back to Wager, scowling over his shoulder; across from him and beside the man with the mustache sat Dominick. His cheeks were fuller than Wager remembered, and their flesh hung heavier from the jaw, but the dark fringe of hair around his balding head was the same, as were the clear brown eyes that lifted up and down once behind glasses as if measuring Wager for a coffin. Behind him, Wager heard blue-denim’s voice: “I’m sorry, Mr. Scorvelli—they’re cops.”

  Wager’s smile was wide. “Mr. Scorvelli! You are Dominick Scorvelli?”

  “You know who I am, Wager. What is it this time?”

  “I just need positive identification to lay this on you.” He leaned across the table and stuffed the oblong paper into the man’s coat pocket, wadding it on top of the three ears of the white handkerchief that peeped out.

  Scorvelli tugged it loose and opened it, knowing what paragraphs to scan and which to read carefully. Then he tossed it onto the dark table among the tiny coffee cups and ashtrays holding half-smoked thick cigars. “Just what in hell is this for?”

  “An invitation, Mr. Scorvelli, to visit our downtown office as the guest of the proud City and County of Denver. Let’s go.”

  “What is this shit?” Wet Dick tried to stand, but Wager clapped a hand to his shoulder and pressed him back to the seat.

  “Mr. Scorvelli, you are not required to say anything to us or to answer any questions. Anything you do say can be used against you in court. You have the right to talk to an attorney before we question you and to have him accompany you during questioning. If you cannot afford—”

  “Goddamn it!” Wet Dick lurched upward again. “What crap is coming down, cop?”

  “Sit down and shut up, dribble-chin. I’m doing my constitutional duty. If you cannot afford an attorney and you want one, an attorney will be provided for you. If you want to answer questions without an attorney, you will have the right to stop answering at any time. And last but not least, Mr. Scorvelli, you have the right to remain silent until you talk to an attorney. Do you understand these rights, Mr. Scorvelli?”

  “I understand you’re on my private premises,” said Scorvelli.

  “Cut it, Dominick. You’ve got the warrant and it’s all legal. You’ve been through this enough times. Let’s go.”

  “The hell you do!” Dominick’s cousin tried for a third time to bounce out of his seat. “You can’t just come busting in here like this!”

  Wager turned to the angry face whose left side was clutched into a permanent scowl. “I am talking to your keeper, Wet Dick. You are interfering with an officer making an arrest, Wet Dick. One more squeak and I will include you without a warrant, Wet Dick.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  Wager’s grin was wider. “It’s your known alias. Wet. Dick.”

  “Richard!” Dominick’s voice was low, but it cut like a knife through Wet Dick’s anger. “Just what is this harassment, Wager?”

  “We’ll talk about it downtown.” He looked at the other two. Sully O’Brien was pushing back against the dark paneling of the booth as if Wager had bad breath; the man with white hair sat motionless and—the initial start of fear gone—without expression. Wager leaned closer to study the man’s features. His black eyes blinked once and a small muscle strained along his jaw, but he said nothing and didn’t move. It was the same blank look that Wager had seen in a thousand mug shots, and he bet there was one somewhere for this face, too. An old one, on file in a city back east, to judge from the three-piece suit and the pearl-gray homburg placed on the table in front of him.

  “Sully, call Freiberg and tell him to come down and get me out right away.”

 
“Yes, Mr. Scorvelli.” The accountant leaned toward Wet Dick to slide out of the booth, but Wager kept both of them pinned in the seat with his hip.

  “You got any identification?” he asked the white-haired man.

  Under eyebrows whose color matched the homburg, black eyes moved slowly up Wager’s shirt to his face. “I might have.”

  “Mr. Scorvelli, here, is a known felon. Wet Dick, here, would like to be known as a felon, too. So you’re consorting with known felons. I’d like to see your I.D. Either here or down at headquarters.”

  Silently, the man slipped a narrow hand inside the smooth tailoring of his coat and lifted out a long snakeskin billfold; holding a white card with two slim fingers, he flicked it on the table for Wager to pick up. It was a business card that said only “Victor Galen Associates.”

  “You’re this Victor Galen?”

  “I am.”

  “You want to watch who you associate with, Vic. It could hurt your reputation.” Wager took the card by a corner and slipped it into his shirt pocket, then he tapped Scorvelli’s shoulder. “All right, Mr. Scorvelli. Let’s get the cuffs on.”

  “I don’t need those.”

  Wager tugged the handcuffs from the back of his belt. “It’s department policy, Mr. Scorvelli. All prisoners get to wear them. Otherwise they get rusty—you know how it is.”

  Scorvelli’s lips, usually full, pressed into a tight line and his brown eyes seemed as brittle as the lenses in front of them. He slowly picked up a cigar and drew deeply, held the smoke in his lungs for a long moment, and deliberately mashed the fire from the tip. Then the corners of his mouth lifted in a thin smile. “All right.” He stood and offered Wager a cigar. “No hard feelings, right?”

  Wager did not smoke, but he sniffed the cigar appreciatively and tucked it in his pocket. “No feelings at all.” He snapped on the handcuffs and quickly frisked Scorvelli.