Angle of Attack

by Rex Burns

  “Richard, make our friend comfortable,” said Scorvelli. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  Max was standing behind the kid in the blue denim suit, who looked worried when Dominick passed him, as if he thought he should do something. Wager gave him his chance. “What’s your name, punk?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “The name fits your face. Let’s see your I.D.”

  “What for?”

  “Consorting with felons, witnessing an arrest, wearing an ugly suit, and because by God I told you to.”

  The kid’s eyes again shifted to Dominick and a red flush rose up the side of his neck; behind him, Axton cleared his throat with a low sound like distant thunder.

  “Show him your I.D., Henry. Detective Wager likes to act a lot bigger than he is. He gets his pleasure from harassing innocent taxpayers. But all he ever gets out of it is a joke. A very small joke.”

  Henry took his cue and relaxed; high-class hoods didn’t lose their cool in front of cops. He snapped open his wallet and pulled his driver’s license from a small inside pocket. “I don’t trust you with the whole thing,” he said. “There’s money in it.”

  “You shouldn’t trust your birth certificate, either, if it’s got your father’s name on it.” Wager noted the address of Henry Clark and handed the license back to the kid. “It’s a real pleasure to make your acquaintance, Henry. I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again.”

  “I can’t wait. Believe me.”

  Wager steered Scorvelli toward the glare seeping in around the curtain across the entryway; Axton lingered a step or two behind until Wager had his prisoner at the car. They set him alone in the back and Axton drove, slowly, as Wager leaned over the front seat to talk to Scorvelli. “We’re interested in what you know about a murder.”

  “What murder? That’s this what’s-his-name on the warrant?”

  “Frank Covino, yeah. Somebody did it to him, Dominick, in a very professional way. Naturally, your name came to mind.”

  “For Christ’s sake! What’s with you people? Somebody dies, you come see me like I was supposed to write his obituary. I don’t even know who this guy is!”

  “You never heard the name Frank Covino?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I have; maybe I haven’t. Hell, I don’t know all the names I’ve heard. What you think, I keep a list of every name I hear? Bah! I got nothing to do with this guy getting killed. Anything else you want, talk to my lawyer. Come on, let’s get down there so he can spring me.”

  “How’s your mother doing these days, Dominick?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Is she still taking Marco’s death hard? I remember she was pretty upset at the time.”

  That got home; Scorvelli’s right eyelid, the one behind the thicker lens in his glasses, suddenly drooped. He shifted his arms behind him to a different position and glared at Wager.

  Who could not help another slow, wide smile. “Anybody ever claim that reward?”

  “There’s nothing illegal about offering a reward—for the arrest and conviction of.”

  “Not a thing. And it was a nice touch, Dominick. Real class. Now, why did you want Frank Covino killed?”

  “I got nothing to do with that and nothing to say without my lawyer.”

  “He’s probably waiting at the station for you now.”

  “He’d better be.”

  Freiberg was there, a dapper figure in a double-breasted brown suit and glasses whose wide horn arms disappeared into the carefully dyed silver hair curling at his temples. He trotted down the half-dozen steps of headquarters’ front entrance, squawking about his client’s being in handcuffs and about how the chief would be held responsible for this travesty of justice. Axton and Wager led Scorvelli through the small foyer with its two long benches, one on each side, crowded with friends and relatives waiting in silence for the bailed-out prisoners to be processed somewhere along the waxed and echoing corridors behind the front desk. On the end of a bench, his restless eyes never looking at the person he murmured to, Watson James—sole owner and operator of the Angel Wings Bail Bond Service—stifled surprise at glimpsing the handcuffed Scorvelli, and quickly found something else to gaze at.

  “How’s business, Watson?” Wager asked loudly.

  The man smiled uneasily at a corner of the room. “Could be better, Officer Wager. Business could always be better.”

  “We’re trying to help.” Wager patted Scorvelli’s shoulder and steered him to the front desk, where the sergeant with the cropped white hair, impassive as ever, hauled out a blank admittance form and beckoned Scorvelli closer.

  “Maybe Counselor Freiberg, here, can give you some work, Watson,” said Wager.

  “I don’t think so, Officer Wager. I sure don’t think he’ll need me at all.”

  Behind Wager, Axton gave a little moan and whispered in his ear, “Gabe, no waves, and very quiet—remember?”

  “Did I break his thumbs? Haven’t I called him Mister Scorvelli?” Wager whispered back. “I’m being as smooth as I damn well can.”

  “Smooth as a sledge hammer. That bondsman will have the word all over town in an hour. Let’s just get him upstairs before the goddam reporters get here.”

  The desk sergeant took his time with the form, finally looking up to ask in a bored voice, “What’s the charge, Detective Wager?”

  “No charge yet, Sergeant. He’s only here for questioning. Better give Counselor Freiberg a pass—he might want to go with us.”

  “I certainly do! And what’s more, on behalf of my client, I indignantly protest—”

  “This way, Counselor.” Axton clipped the plastic card to the lawyer’s silk tie. “You know where the elevator is.”

  “I also know where the chief’s office is, and I assure you that he will hear—”

  “Shut up, Freiberg.” Scorvelli had glimpsed the black turtleneck of police reporter Gargan coming up the outside steps, and he roughly shouldered the short attorney toward the elevator. “Just get the goddam habeas corpus and get me out. I don’t like the stink around here.”

  As the doors opened, Axton shielded the prisoner from view. Wager started a friendly wave at Gargan, but Axton’s wide hand pressed him firmly into the elevator.

  Once in the crowded homicide office, Wager unlocked the cuffs and offered Scorvelli the only hard, straight-backed chair in the room. Wager sat in one of the swivel chairs with its well-worn cushion, and Freiberg wasn’t offered a seat anywhere.

  “I’ll stand, Wager,” said Scorvelli. “I’m not going to be here that long.”

  “You’ll be here seventy-two hours if I want it.”

  “What the hell’s he mean, Freiberg?”

  “He—ah—can hold a person for seventy-two hours before advisement if the charge might be a felony.”

  “You can’t get me out of here right now? What the hell kind of lawyer are you?”

  “Good question, Mr. Scorvelli!” Wager was enjoying this.

  “Mr. Scorvelli, the law’s clear on this point. Until you are formally charged, the need for a habeas corpus is unrecognized. A judge wouldn’t waste his time hearing an argument for—”

  “Waste his time! What about my time? I’m the goddam taxpayer around here and I don’t know a goddam thing about this goddam Covino wipe or anything else, you bastard!”

  “Mr. Scorvelli, please!” Freiberg’s face turned splotchy with red and gray patches and he aimed a quivering finger at Wager. “You’re overhearing privileged conversation—you can’t bring a word of this into court! My client’s addressing his remarks directly to me!”

  “And accurately, too,” said Axton.

  “Suppose your client starts by telling us where he was last Sunday night,” said Wager.

  Scorvelli had put himself under control again; he beckoned to Freiberg and whispered something in his ear. Freiberg murmured back briefly and Scorvelli shook his head. “Bullshit, Counselor. I’m not going to spend seventy-two hours in this crap hole.
” He turned to Wager. “Is that when this what’s-his-name got hit?”

  Wager said yes.

  “Jesus.” His look asked Wager how dumb cops had to be to think a Scorvelli would put himself in the neighborhood of a killing. “I was out of town the whole weekend.”

  “Where?”

  “You don’t have to answer a thing, Mr. Scorvelli.”

  “What’s to hide? My wife and me went shopping in Chicago. We took a flight out Friday midday and got back maybe noon on Monday. It was United Airlines.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. I always fly United. I like to support local businesses.”

  Axton looked up from his notebook. “Do you remember the flight number?”

  “Naw. But how many morning flights do they have to Chicago? Just call up and ask. The first-class section—I always go first-class.”

  “You used your own name?” asked Wager.

  “Certainly! Whose goddamned name you think I’d use?”

  “You’ve got a few aliases.”

  “What other people call me, I can’t help. But my name—the Scorvelli name—that’s what I use. It goes all the way back to the fourteenth century. I paid a guy good money to look it up and he drew me one of these—what you call them—family trees. Count Scorvelli in the fourteenth century. He had his own castle and everything up near Monte Sirino. Now, that’s real roots.”

  “You’ve made it a name to be proud of,” said Wager.

  “You’re goddam right. Now, like I told you, Wager, I don’t know this guy that was wasted; I wasn’t in town when it happened; you got no right to keep me here. So let’s go, Freiberg.”

  “Just stay right there. We’ve got a few more questions.”

  The eyelid drooped again. “You got shit for brains, too.” Scorvelli pulled one of the massive cigars from a silver case in his coat pocket and nipped it with his teeth, spitting the end on the floor. “Gimme a match,” he said to Freiberg, who quickly leaned to light it.

  Axton spoke into the telephone. “That’s right—to Chicago last Friday. A Mr. and Mrs. Dominick Scorvelli.”

  “Where’d you stay in Chicago, Mr. Scorvelli?”

  “My client doesn’t—”

  “The Palmer House. I like to stay there because it’s too expensive for cops to go to.”

  “Is there anybody who can say they saw you there?”

  “The registration book, Wager. When I checked in, and when I checked out. Even you can figure that one.”

  “Under the name of Count Scorvelli?”

  “It’s a democracy, right? I just use ‘Mister’ in a democracy.”

  “When’s the last time you saw Frank Covino?”

  “Hey, hey—you’re sharp. By God, what dazzling technique! Penetrating questions! Counselor, you should take lessons from this man.” Scorvelli wiggled his fingers as if tying a shoelace. “He can twist a witness in knots.”

  “Well?”

  “I never saw Frank Covino because I don’t know Frank Covino.”

  “Who do you know who might want him dead?”

  “Don’t answer that, Mr. Scorvelli!”

  “But I never heard of the guy, Freiberg!”

  The lawyer whispered into Scorvelli’s ear and the man with the cigar too thick to fit comfortably between his fingers nodded. Freiberg turned to Wager. “My client refuses to answer.”

  “On what grounds, Counselor?”

  “On the grounds that it might incriminate him.”

  “Right,” smiled Wager.

  “A Mr. and Mrs. Scorvelli took flight number 236 at 10:25 A.M. on last Friday, and returned Monday on flight 263 at 11:32,” Axton read from a scrap of notepaper.

  “Where was Wet Dick over the weekend, Mr. Scorvelli?”

  “Hey, you shouldn’t call him that. People with an affliction, you shouldn’t make fun of, you know? Didn’t you have a mother to tell you that?”

  “Was he in town?”

  Scorvelli shrugged and plugged his mouth with the cigar. “Talk to Freiberg.”

  On a vague hunch, Wager asked, “What about Gerald Covino? Ever heard of him?”

  “Not that I remember. Who is he?”

  “Frank’s brother. He’s inside the walls for breaking and entering.”

  “And you want to blame me for getting him busted? I should get a medal for that, right?”

  “Did you ever know or have you ever had dealings with Gerald Edward Covino?”

  Scorvelli waved his cigar and Freiberg answered for him. “My client refuses to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate him.”

  “Who’s this Victor Galen you were sucking up to in the restaurant?”

  Again the cigar. “The question is irrelevant. My client refuses to answer.”

  The telephone rang and Axton picked it up. “Homicide Division, Detective Axton.”

  “Maybe you’re trying to get at Gerald by having his brother killed?”

  “My client refuses to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate him.”

  Axton’s voice rose and he caught Wager’s eye. “That’s right, Gargan, for routine questioning. I don’t care what Watson James told you, but it’s only for routine questioning. No, no leads. Whenever there’s a gang-style killing, we routinely talk to certain people.”

  Wager smiled at Scorvelli. “How’s it feel to be so famous?”

  “My client refuses to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate him.”

  “Do you wipe yourself after going to the toilet, Scorvelli?”

  “My client refuses to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate him.”

  Axton hung up and bobbed his shaggy eyebrows. “Gargan wants to come up.”

  “Gargan can go to hell. Well, Mr. Scorvelli, I certainly want to thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Can we give you a lift back to the restaurant?”

  “I got a ride.” Scorvelli thumped the ash from his cigar onto the desktop and straightened his black overcoat. “There’s a lot of things wrong with cops, Wager, and you got them all. If you’d of used your head, I might have asked around some and maybe could help you out, you know?”

  “Mr. Scorvelli!” Freiberg’s fingers clutched at the air.

  “Maybe somebody would of picked up on something.” Scorvelli tossed the long cigar into a crowded ashtray and straightened his glasses before leading Freiberg from the small office. “Now you can burn in hell for all the help I’ll give you. And I’ll laugh, Wager. I’ll split my sides watching it.”

  When Axton returned from escorting Freiberg and his client past the security gate, he slowly poured himself a cup of coffee and then gently asked Wager, “What in the name of God did you want to do that for?”

  “What?”

  “Make a big show of bringing him in, Gabe. Pretending you were on TV or something.”

  “I want him worried. If he’s worried, he might let something slip.”

  “But we were supposed to handle him with discretion, remember?”

  “We didn’t do one thing to tip him to Sonnenberg’s operation.”

  “I hope not. I truly do. But we didn’t show much goddamned couth, did we? We made Sonnenberg a promise to go slow, and then for Christ’s sake we’re telling Watson James and Gargan and everybody else about Scorvelli’s bust. Sonnenberg’s going to hear about that, Gabe. And he’s not going to like it one bit.”

  “I handled Scorvelli just like I would every other wad of puke. Anything different, and he’d start to wonder why.”

  “I hope to hell you’re right.”

  So did Wager, but he wasn’t about to say so—especially not with Doyle leaning through the doorway to pick up every word.

  “You just had Dominick Scorvelli up here?” asked the Bulldog.

  “Yessir. But he told us about what we expected. Not a thing.”

  “If he’s really mixed up in this, I’ll be glad to give whatever help I can. I’ve been watching him for years. He goes around and around like a turd i
n a toilet, but he never gets sucked down.” Doyle’s palm slapped the doorframe as if he spotted a mosquito. “I’ll be more than glad to help, Wager. As a matter of fact, eager!”

  “Yessir,” said Axton. “We’ll yell if we need help.”

  “Be damned sure you do that. It would be very, very good to get Dominick Scorvelli.”

  Axton peeked down the hall after Doyle and then muttered to Wager, “You’re going to make me paranoid, Gabe. A man my size shouldn’t have to feel paranoid; when I look over my shoulder, I run into things. And I still don’t understand why you want the entire city to know we picked up Scorvelli—or why you wanted to rub his nose in it.”

  “Aside from plain not liking the son of a bitch, I’ve got a feeling .… I can’t give it any more weight than that—a feeling. I think Tony-O was right; I think there’s some connection between Covino and Scorvelli.”

  “And you want him nervous about that connection?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Well, now I’ve got a feeling, too, Gabe. Call it ‘sick.’”

  Seven

  WAGER HAD BEEN reading a book on fur trapping, telling of attacks by grizzlies and Indians, winter storms and starvation, summer rendezvouses and prairie battles within sight of his apartment balcony. It was with some feeling of irony that he also listened to his new microwave oven thaw a couple of filets of trout. Behind him, the television chattered monotonously to make the living room seem less empty, but when the telephone rang, its sound still echoed slightly through the apartment. It was the duty clerk, trying to locate a stand-in for Munn, who, it turned out, was as ill as he had looked.

  “He’s on the midnight-to-eight, right?” asked Wager.

  “Yessir. We tried to get either Detective Ross or Devereaux to extend their tours, but they’re union members and have their quota of overtime this month.”

  That was all she needed to talk Wager into it. His watch told him he could still get three or four hours’ sleep, though he had planned on using the time in a better way, to prowl the loading docks where Frank Covino had been found.

  The duty clerk misunderstood his silence. “It’s only this one time,” she said anxiously. “Captain Doyle can get a replacement tomorrow, but the hospital called just ten minutes ago to say Detective Munn had been admitted with a perforated ulcer.”