by Rex Burns
“Hey, I didn’t …”
“I understand, Jesus. Believe me. If somebody dusted my cousin, I’d want to get him myself. But we have a good case on Innis; he’s not going to get away. If you go after him, it’ll cost you a hell of a lot more than Innis is worth. If something happens to him, you know who we’ll come looking for.”
“I ain’t afraid of that!”
Wager could see it in Quintana’s eyes: he had cooled off enough to want to get clear, but he still had to puff a little. “Nobody said you were. I know you’re un caballero. But you don’t want anybody to call you dumb, either. And it’s dumb not to let us handle Innis when we already know what happened. Think about how dumb that would sound on the street.”
“Well …”
“It would be a dumb thing to do to your kids, too. For somebody like Innis.”
“Well, I ain’t doing it because I’m scared of that son of a bitch.”
“Scared has nothing to do with it; just dumb. Nobody’s going to call you scared for helping us nail the guy who shot your cousin; but they’ll call you dumb for not letting us do the work. Now, which one’s the man who did it?”
There was no hesitation. “Here’s the fucker.”
“You’re positive?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. Now, you write another statement and make sure everything in it’s the truth, and I’ll tear up this one.”
“What about the park?” His hand hovered over the blank paper. “You gonna want to know what went on in the park?”
“If it’s got nothing to do with the shooting, I don’t need to know.”
Wager returned to his desk to finish his report while Quintana wrote. He was stapling the sheets together when Walt Adamo stuck his head in the doorway. “You got a positive I.D. on Innis yet?”
“Three. I’m just finishing up.”
“Three! You sure got the son of a bitch. Is the victim dead?”
“I haven’t heard.”
“Can I use your phone?” The patrolman dialed Denver General Hospital. “Uh huh. I see. Thanks.”
“Well?”
“He’s in good condition. Want me to take your report over to the Assault Division? Those hard-working lads have just solved another case.”
Adamo was right; the win wouldn’t go on homicide’s statistics. “Fine.”
Laughing, Adamo paused in the doorway. “Ain’t that the way it goes, Gabe? When you got a suspect identified, the goddamned victim never dies.”
From his corner, where he had been sleepily propping himself in a tilted chair, Ernie asked, “You mean all this was for nothing?”
“It’s still an assault charge. If you want to take off, you can; if you want a ride, it’ll be a few more minutes.” He went to tell Quintana that his cousin was alive.
“That’s good,” said Quintana. “What’s it mean for that son of a bitch Innis?”
“Five to ten, with his record.”
“That’s good, too.”
Wager eyed the paunchy man for a long moment.
“What’s the matter? What you looking at?”
“Your cousin’s got a good-sized jacket, Jesus.”
His wide face closed like a fist. “So what?”
“So you’re smart enough not to have a record. But from what I’ve noticed tonight, you see your share of the action.”
Jesus’s expression twisted between suspicion and a flattered smile, then it settled back into the mask of a hard case talking to a cop. “Maybe I do; maybe I don’t.”
Wager read through Jesus’s new statement and then slowly tore up the old one and dropped it into the wastebasket. “I’m doing you a favor, right?”
Quintana’s upper lip peeled away from his teeth like flypaper. “So what’s this got to do with the price of eggs in China?”
Wager pulled up a chair and sat so his head would be on the same level as Quintana’s. Leaning forward, he dropped his voice to a murmur that died before it reached the open doorway and the hall beyond. “Here’s what. You have a lot of contacts, you hear a lot of talk. I’d like you to listen around for me—I’d like you to do me a favor now.”
“You want me to do what?”
“I helped you.” Wager tapped the wastepaper can with his toe.
“But you’re a cop!”
“And I’m trying to catch a hit man, Jesus. It’s some heavy action, and there’s some danger in it. But if I didn’t think you could handle it, I wouldn’t ask you.”
“Well, yeah. I see what you mean.” Quintana scratched once more at the soft mound of flesh lifting the red and orange designs on his shirt. “What can you give me to go on? I mean, I ain’t saying I will or I won’t—I’m saying I might.”
“I understand, Jesus. You got a wife and kids, so if you think it’s too dangerous, I understand.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I’m just telling you I’ll understand if I don’t hear from you. And I won’t blame you, believe me, because the guy I’m after is a professional killer.”
“Hey, I’m not afraid …”
“I am. It’s one of the reasons I want the guy so badly. Anybody would be dumb not to be afraid.”
“Well …”
“But a guy with your connections can hear things that a cop never gets close to. If you want to, you can really help me out. And I won’t forget it.”
“Well, if I feel like it, maybe I will. I’ll think it over and see if I feel like it.”
“You do that. And if you do feel like it, here’s what I’m after: anything you hear on two brothers, Frank Covino and Gerald Covino. The first one got killed last Sunday, the second’s in Cañon City for breaking and entering. Maybe your cousin Charley knows something about him.”
“Covino. O.K. I maybe got some people I can ask. I got plenty of contacts on the street.”
“One thing more. I heard they were mixed up with the Scorvelli family. I’d like to know more about that, too.”
“The Scorvellis—holy shit!”
Wager pushed back his chair and stood, hoping he had not gone too far. But even somebody like Quintana had a right to know which shoulder to look over. “Come on—I’ll give you and your wife a ride home. And if I don’t hear from you, I won’t lay a thing against you, believe me.”
Nine
HIS REGULAR TOUR with Axton went by with that determined blur which comes from too many hours without sleep. While he was on his feet chewing gum or drinking coffee, he stayed awake; whenever he sat and tried to do the paper work that never ceased, his eyes burned and the words wouldn’t make that long jump from the page to his mind. Most of the sheets he initialed and dumped in the out basket; the few pieces of any importance he read while striding back and forth between desks in the small office. Just before noon, the lab report on Frank Covino’s car came in and, propped by another cup of coffee, Wager forced his mind to read each entry, but the effort wasn’t justified by the result. The car had plenty of prints inside and out, on trunk, hood, and mirrors, but most of them were the victim’s, and those that weren’t matched no known prints in the files of police or F.B.I. The best guess was still the one that had the victim parking his car and walking alone to the theater, being approached by the man in the long topcoat and beret, who talked him into leaving with him, and then being driven to the warehouse area, where he was shot. It wasn’t a bit more than they already knew, and that didn’t make the weariness any lighter or the hard sun less harsh against the window. And the telephone call that came in to a frowning Axton did not lessen Wager’s irritation, either.
Holding the receiver toward Wager, Max said, “For you. It’s Sonnenberg.”
He muttered “Damn” under his breath and then said politely, “Detective Wager, sir.”
“I want to know what the devil you think you are doing, Wager. I confided in you with the express agreement that you would be circumspect in your investigation. Now everything I hear and every paper I read tells me that you frog-marched him in
as if he were a two-bit dip or a pimp!”
Frog-march. Wager had not heard that phrase since he was a kid; Sonnenberg came up with an old-fashioned term like that every now and then. “I don’t think he is any better than a dip or a pimp, Inspector. So he got equal treatment.”
“Equal be damned! We had an agreement, Wager. You know what’s at stake, and so help me, if I have to I’ll go over Doyle’s head. And I’ll come back with yours!”
Wager tried to keep the exasperation from his voice. “He got the same handling he always does when there’s a professional hit, Inspector. Anything different and he’d get suspicious. He may be pissed, but at least he believes things are normal.”
“I won’t have you disrupting my operations. This case is more important than that homicide. You will keep out of it from now on!”
Nothing was more important to Wager than that homicide, because that homicide was his case—his jurisdiction—and by God, there was such a thing as interfering with an officer’s duty, even for Sonnenberg. Some of this feeling slipped into his voice when he said, “Why not wait until you’re hurt before you scream, Inspector?”
“By then it will be too late, Sergeant. You stay out of it or there will be plenty of hurt to go around!” The line went dead with a loud click.
Axton looked at him wordlessly.
“He wanted to express his appreciation for our smooth arrest of Scorvelli,” said Wager.
“Sure he did. When’s he coming over to slice off our ears?”
“It wasn’t exactly our ears he had in mind.”
“If what we did to Scorvelli puts his agent in danger, Sonnenberg can slice whatever he wants to, and I don’t think the Bulldog or anybody else will do much to help us out.” Axton heaved himself out of the swivel chair, which creaked with relief and sagged slightly to one side. “And to tell the truth, Gabe, I don’t know if I’d want them to. I was awake half the goddam night worrying about that.”
Wager had been awake the whole goddam night. “We had to act as if no agent was in place.” Each word came out with the measured rate of worn repetition. “We did exactly what Scorvelli and everybody else expected. If we hadn’t brought him in, the street would think we knew who did it. And then, when we didn’t come up with a suspect—because we don’t have a damned suspect—people would start to wonder why we let Scorvelli alone. That would be more dangerous than busting him.”
Axton’s mouth set in a tight line as he picked up the ringing telephone and smothered it in one fist for a last comment. “Gabe, it sounds great when you put it that way. The trouble is, Sonnenberg sounds good, too. Homicide, Detective Axton.”
This time it was Gargan, and Max told him that Scorvelli’s arrest had been strictly routine and that nothing helpful had come of it. “That’s it, Gargan. The most we can say is that we’re still chasing leads, but we don’t have many. No, we haven’t gotten very far at all.” He hung up. “Let’s get some lunch, Gabe. If I worry about this on an empty stomach, I’ll end up worse than Munn.”
They ate at the Frontier, arriving too late for Wager to get his favorite booth, near the clatter of the serving window; instead, they had to take a small table out in the middle of the big room, which was more crowded and noisy than usual. Rosie, wearing a quick smile and a shine of sweat on her face, brought them two beers without being asked.
“Why all the people? Another convention?”
“Tomorrow’s our last day, Gabe. Everybody’s heard about it, so they want to say they’ve been here before we close.”
Wager had forgotten that, and the reminder made this long day chafe a little rawer. Nor did it help to have Axton take the closing so lightly.
“To the last of the old Frontier!” Max lifted his glass. “Rest in peace.”
Wager glared around. “Bunch of damned buzzards.”
Max drank and looked from the cluttered walls to the ceiling filled with ranch and mining gear, to the cigar store Indian tucked in a dim corner. “They really do have a collection of junk here, don’t they? What in God’s name are they going to do with all this?”
Wager shrugged and spooned hot sauce on his refritos.
“They should sell the good stuff to a museum. They should try to keep some of the history that’s here,” said Max.
“They shouldn’t build another parking lot. Who in hell needs it? Who in hell needs the goddam bulldozers coming in and scraping away everything?”
Axton studied him through the thin light. “You come here a lot, do you?”
Wager shrugged again; he wasn’t asking for one damned thing from Axton or anybody else.
“Well, I guess it’s a shame. Whenever a place gets a little feel of history, down it comes. But they’re starting to preserve some of the city’s old houses—people are moving back in and rebuilding them. It’s really important to keep something from the past.”
“Like bagpipe lessons?”
“Sure—anything, as long as it means something for you. It’s kind of like”—Max looked around for the word or simile that would fit—”an arrow. Your past is the tail of the arrow and if you know where it is, you have some idea what you’re bringing along with you. Even some idea of where you’re headed.”
Max was getting weird again, but this time Wager’s patience was too tired to stretch. “The past is dead, Max. It dies and gets buried and you forget about it. The only goddam thing that counts is right now and what’s coming. I tell you what: why don’t you shoot an arrow in the air and tell me where Covino’s killer is? Or tweedle your goddam bagpipes—maybe he’ll come out like a snake.”
Even in the dim light from the wagon wheel chandelier overhead he could see Max’s face turn red, and Wager felt—very faintly—a twinge of remorse. A man shouldn’t stomp on his partner; a man should have greater tolerance for the things his partner says, more latitude for foolish ideas, because partners were supposed to relax with each other and be able to say things they felt but hadn’t really thought through. You weren’t supposed to have to keep your guard up with a partner, and Wager had that feeling of having hit Max when he wasn’t looking and didn’t deserve to be hit that way. But apologizing was something else; Wager hadn’t much practice at apologizing. “You want another beer?”
“No.” Then Max saw what Wager meant. “Well, why not? Sure.”
Wager ordered and they kept the talk on Covino; Max said no more about history or bagpipes, and gradually their voices lost the strained note and warmed again like those of people who cared what each other thought. But beneath that, Wager had the feeling that maybe he had been a cop too long—that maybe he needed to step somewhere out of the scum he crawled through and be reminded that the world wasn’t filled with only dope and arson, bunko and rape, contraband and killing. He had the suspicion that he should look for some kind of island outside himself that would let him view a world without the insanities that hid the horizon of each day. An island to tie to instead of being forced to rely solely on his own internal bearings, never sure that they coincided with the fixed bearings that must exist somewhere, since so many others seemed to know them.
“You have kids, Max?”
“Yeah, two—boy and girl. Thank God the girl looks like her mother.”
“What do they think about you being a cop?”
“The younger one, Annie, she’s still excited about it. She sees all that stuff on TV and thinks her old man’s a fat Clint Eastwood. Tom couldn’t care less any more.”
“I mean, do they resent it? Sometimes people feel—ah—jealous of this kind of job.”
“Sometimes, sure. They don’t like it when I have weekend duty or the four-to-midnight shift. And I don’t like to miss things that are important to them, either. Annie was in a school play when I had night duty last time and we both felt bad about that. But I’m home other times. It balances out.”
“And your wife?”
“She’s used to it. Most of the time, anyway. It’s a lot better now that I’m in the detective division. I t
hink the years in uniform were the roughest for her.”
If regret came now to add depression to the restlessness he felt, then that was something Wager would have to hold off until it went away again, because you don’t look back. The dark time after the divorce had convinced him of that. It wasn’t much in the way of a philosophy, but it—and his work—had provided the only anchor he could trust. For the most part, anyway.
“Say, Gabe—why don’t you come over for dinner some night? Polly would really like to meet you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’ve got to sooner or later. Polly keeps telling me to ask you over; she really enjoys knowing the other people in the department, and she’ll just keep after me until she gets to meet you. Hell, I won’t get any rest until you’ve been over.”
Wager looked suspiciously at the blue eyes, but there was nothing in them of laughter or pity. “We’ll see.”
“Good! I’ll tell her to plan on it.”
Axton talked him into going home just after lunch. “Your eyes look like two piss holes in the snow. If anything comes up this afternoon, I can handle it until Ross and Devereaux come in.” But though Wager was half undressed and sound asleep by 2 P.M., he was awake and staring at the ceiling five hours later. Too much coffee, maybe, or too many questions about Covino that prevented the deeply relaxed feeling of work well done. He tried the pillow doubled under his neck, then over his face; he lay with his eyes closed and swept at the jumble of thoughts that kept tumbling back into his mind. Finally, he gave up and, with watery, puffy eyes, soaked in a long, hot shower that was as good as another four hours’ sleep. In the emptying refrigerator he found the last frozen dinner—roast beef and mashed potatoes, the picture said; and by eight at night he was cruising in his own car under the heavy dark band of the viaducts bridging the area where Covino had been found.
The first slow, aimless pass showed a few early groups walking quickly and noisily down the center of empty and badly lit streets toward the old Oxford Hotel, which advertised the return of the Queen City Jazz Band. An almost vacant Union Station was partially lit, a white fluorescent contrast to the lightless windows of the buildings surrounding it. Past that, closed warehouses and bare loading docks slid by the car windows like fruit crates and timber bobbing in a black river. Wager pulled to a halt beneath the Twentieth Street viaduct and got out, locking the car. The people he wanted to find tended to lean out of sight into alleys and doorways whenever a car cruised by slowly, but they did not hide from a person on foot and alone. Neither the police nor the hoods patrolled this area on foot, and never singly.
