by Rex Burns
“What?”
“I said I liked the story. Maybe I’ll make Senior Detective because of it.”
“You’re shitting me, Wager!”
“No—I’m serious. I liked it. It’s nice to be appreciated, for a change. I tell you what—I go on duty in an hour and a half. Meet me at the Frontier and I’ll buy you a drink.”
“I don’t think so—I got a story to file.”
“And I’ll tell you something about the Crowell case.”
“Like what?”
“I’ll see you there.” Wager hung up and tugged his jacket on; before he could get out the door, the telephone rang again. It was still jangling when he left.
He just beat the wrestling fans to his favorite booth near the Frontier’s serving window. They pushed in noisily from the Convention Center Arena across the street, trying to keep their sweaty and screaming world with them a little longer. Excited faces turned this way and that to shout at other faces, and beefy women still giggled at the craziness of The Crusher or Gonzo the Gorilla as they towed baggy-eyed kids who wriggled with nervous energy and late-hour whines. Through the calls for beer and the howling “did-you-see”s Gargan pushed and tugged his way to the booth.
“Jesus, you pick such nice places!”
“I like it.” He signaled Rosie, who stopped by on her way to the wrestling fans. “Martini?” Gargan nodded. Wager ordered a beer for himself and told Rosie to make the martini a double.
“We can’t talk in this place, Wager!”
“They’ll quiet down soon. Here’s to your story—thanks a lot.”
Gargan’s eyes narrowed slightly as he sipped his drink. “Sure, Gabe. Ross was really wrong in telling me you didn’t like fulsome praise, right?”
“I don’t know what ‘fulsome’ means. But I sure like praise.” He waved to Rosie for another round.
“Jesus—I just started this one!”
“She’s busy. By the time they get here, we’ll be ready.”
Gargan’s shoulders bobbed. “You’re buying.”
Wager lifted his beer glass and smiled.
“You said you had something more on the Crowell case.”
“Right. But it’s really sensitive stuff. I wouldn’t tell you except you did something for me. Now I want to do something for you.”
“Sensitive like what?”
“You sound suspicious, Gargan. I’m trying to thank you for what you did and you act like I’m a sack full of snakes.”
“It doesn’t seem like the real you, Gabe.”
“What’s not? Gratitude? Tell me the last time you did something I could be grateful for.”
“True, but—”
“And when a debt’s owed, it’s got to be paid. That’s part of my colorful Hispano heritage.”
Gargan popped the olive from his martini into his mouth and stared at Wager through the dim light. Then he reached to grasp Wager’s shoulder. “Aw, you don’t owe me anything, Gabe!” He gulped a mouthful of his drink. “In fact … you really want to know something funny?”
“I sure do.”
“When I wrote that story”—he glanced up and grinned—”I wanted to piss you off.”
“Is that a fact!”
“Don’t get me wrong, Gabe—you’re a good cop. A lot of people—other cops included—don’t like you. But you’re a good cop.” Gargan scratched at his head. “Maybe not much of a human being, but a goddamned good cop. I really got to tell you that.”
“It’s nice of you to say that, Gargan.”
“Well, the thing’s this: when I wrote the story, I tried to make you look like you told me what to write—that you wanted all the credit for everything. I mean, I tried like hell to make it look like there wasn’t anybody else on that case but you and God, and that you were in charge.”
“I’ll be damned! The joke’s on me.” Gargan’s glass was almost empty. Wager looked around for Rosie, to order another round.
“No, man—that’s just the point. Here you take it seriously, and the whole goddamn thing’s turned around. Now the joke’s on me.”
“Ain’t that something,” said Wager.
“No hard feelings for what I was trying to do? Really?”
“Would I hurt my press agent?”
Gargan’s thin mustache bobbed from side to side and finally settled in decision, “Gabe—whatever I might have thought about you is forgotten. You are 100 percent!”
They touched glasses and drank. Wager ordered another round.
“You ever heard of Klipstein? Gerald Klipstein?” he asked the reporter.
“Who hasn’t? He’s got more deals than a deck of outhouse cards.”
“As well as being a civic leader.”
“The civicest. What about him?”
“He’s tied to the Crowell murder.”
“How the hell’s anybody like Klipstein tied to Crowell?”
“Shhh. That’s why the thing’s so sensitive.”
“Clue me in, Wager!”
“Guess who the chairman of the board for the Botanic Gardens is?”
“No shit?”
Wager glanced around the room that was slowly emptying of the wrestling fans, then pulled out a brochure that described the gardens and its worthy aims. “Look.” His fingernail tapped the list of board members.
“Son of a bitch! But—”
“I’m coming to that. Tell me, how was access gained to the conservatory?”
“The lab report said someone used a key.” Gargan’s eyes widened and blinked. “Him?”
“There’s only six keys. The chairman of the board has one. And …” Wager frowned and shook his head. “No. I can’t tell you that yet. But we have reason to believe he knows a hell of a lot more than he’s told us.” He leaned a little closer. “And we’ll find out tonight.”
“When tonight. What are you after?”
Wager beckoned toward the pale circle of face with its smudge of mustache in the middle. “We leaked just enough information to worry him. Now we think he’ll try a run for Nicaragua tonight.”
“Nicaragua?” The reporter’s eyes blinked again. “They don’t have an extradition treaty!”
“That’s it.”
“How do you know it’s tonight?”
“We’re not positive, but an informant tells us he bought a ticket on a flight leaving at 12:20 A.M. for Chicago. Now, there just happens to be a nonscheduled flight leaving Chicago for Mexico City at six-thirty tomorrow morning. We’re waiting to hear from the Chicago police whether or not he’s got a ticket on that flight. If he does, we’re going to be waiting right here at the airport to say, ‘Mr. Klipstein, we’d like to ask you a few questions.’”
“Holy shit—Klipstein! He’s really big. And taking off for Nicaragua! It sounds like a goddamn TV drama.”
“Don’t it, though.”
Gargan looked at his watch. “His flight leaves at twelve-twenty? Man, it’s almost midnight now! This could be the story of the year—let’s go!”
“Jesus, I didn’t know it was so late.” Wager called Rosie over and paid. He followed Gargan’s rapid lurch into the cold and empty streets that were downtown Denver after eleven at night. “Hold on a minute, Gargan—I’ve got to stop by headquarters to see if they’ve heard from Chicago. You start for the airport. If the move’s on, we’ll come up behind you running hot—lights and siren. Then you haul ass to the airport.”
“Right!” The reporter sprinted for the plain brown Ford with the press tag and swerved it, wheels shrieking, around the corner.
Wager pulled the antenna out of his radio pack: “This is X-eighty-five.”
“Go ahead,” said the dispatcher’s level voice.
“I have a tip on a suspect driving a brown Ford sedan with Colorado press plates, number 185. Suspect is said to be drunk and possibly repeat possibly armed and dangerous. Last seen driving at high speed north on Fifteenth Street, probably headed for Stapleton International.”
“Ten-four.”
&nb
sp; CHAPTER 16
WAGER KNEW LITTLE would come of showing Crowell’s picture around Irving Street, but it had to be done. Besides, it was still too early in the morning to visit Mauro; he’d learned that yesterday. Parking near where the Crowell vehicle had been ticketed, he began knocking on doors. It took an hour; no one in any of the small homes or sagging row houses had ever seen the girl. That corroborated what Baird told him last night—that the steering wheel and the various handles and mirrors of her car had been wiped clean by someone, and that the only prints found on the trunk or in the back seat belonged to the victim.
He said “Thank you” at the final door and checked his watch. With time out for breakfast—or supper—he should reach the Botanic Gardens when Mauro was just starting work.
The heavyset man was walking slowly with a bag and trash-pick down the side of a walk when Wager arrived. He let Mauro, face to the ground, come close enough to be startled when he saw Wager’s legs planted in front of him.
“Goddamned!”
“Don’t be nervous, Nick. I just stopped by to say hello.”
The rusted iron needle leaped at a paper cup. “Why didn’t you just leave another goddamn note?”
“Because you have something to tell me.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know. But you do.”
“I got nothing to say to you! I say to you leave me the hell alone!”
“Tell me what it is, and I’ll leave you alone. It’s going to happen sooner or later; do it now and save us both all this crap.”
The man’s barrel chest rose and fell and he twisted his head back and forth on its thick neck to glare along the path leading through tangles of bare rose branches. Wager watched the tip of the trash-pick twitch upward once, twice. He didn’t think Mauro would do it—but the graveyards were full of cops who didn’t think someone would do it. His hand slipped beneath his coat to the walnut handle of the Star PD holstered above his kidney. The man’s eyes caught Wager’s arm tucked behind him and a hard gleam of laughter came into them. “Now who’s nervous, piggy?”
“Maybe we both got reason to be.”
“Goddamn you, I didn’t kill nobody!”
“Then tell me what you did do.”
“I don’t have to tell you nothing. There’s laws against harassment, even from sons of bitches like you.”
“You’ll have to go to court to make those laws work, Mauro. I’d like that.”
Silence. Across an expanse of frost-killed grass two children shrieked and tumbled down the broad side of one of the geometrical slopes that led down to an empty patio at its bottom. The mother—a long tan coat and blue-and-white scarf—stood at the edge and called something after them. Behind Mauro, the diamonds of the conservatory roof split the sun into sparks of white glare.
“I’ll tell you a little story, Mauro, and you tell me if a prosecutor can make a case out of it. A woman’s stabbed to death during midday on October 19th. It probably takes place in an apartment—that could be anywhere, couldn’t it, Mauro? The killer then cuts off the woman’s head. My guess is he did it in a bathtub. It would be a messy job, but you can just wash out a bathtub, right? Hell, just turn on the shower and hose it down. I’ll bet you’ve hosed down a bathtub that way, haven’t you, Mauro? The guy leaves her until it’s dark. He comes back about midnight, maybe one o’clock, and puts the body in a plastic garbage bag. One of the black ones that everybody has. I bet you have some around your place, don’t you? Then—and here it could be the other way around—he dumps the body in an old car in a junkyard, and comes over here with the head. Probably that’s in a plastic bag, too, so it don’t drip all over; the lab people couldn’t find any splash marks anywhere, but the head still drained a little on the sand. You should have seen the sand, Mauro—it stuck together in a kind of wad from the stuff that came out of the neck. Some blood, some other stuff off the brain.” He looked at the man, who stood head down and legs spread like a steer clubbed between the eyes. “Pay attention, Nick—here’s where it gets exciting. The guy who brought the head into the conservatory had to have a key. There’s just no evidence that shows any other way to get inside. But everybody who has a key also has an alibi. Or almost everybody. There’s this one guy who says he went to the park at the time the woman was killed, and that he stayed home during the night the body was moved. But he was all alone, Nick; there’s nobody to back up his story. Not even the peanut seller remembers. Think about it: one means of entry, one key, one man with no alibi. And a hell of a lot of pressure on the D.A. to nail somebody—anybody—for the crime. What’s a prosecutor supposed to do, Nick? Especially if the prime suspect already has a record for violence.”
“I didn’t do nothing like that, goddamn you to hell!” The thick knuckles whitened on the wooden handle of the trash-pick. “I did not do that!”
“Everybody says they’re innocent, Nick. You’ve been inside—tell me how many innocent victims of justice are inside. And then tell me an ex-con’s going to get a break.”
The wide head, showing upright bristles and a scattering of gray, still faced the ground. It shook slowly back and forth. “No. I did not do that. No! I did not do that!”
Legs spraddled, he stood almost bending the wooden handle between his broad fists.
“Think how that prosecutor’s going to tell that story to some jury. Who do you think that jury’s going to believe?” He waited and tried not to look tired. He stood and waited. But the figure was motionless now. “I’ll see you again soon, Nick.”
“Again” was the next morning, Wednesday, fifteen days after the killing. Wager yawned and waited along the route that Mauro followed to work. When his rear-view mirror showed the slow figure approach with its slightly waddling stride, he opened the door. Mauro stopped to peer at the car’s back window; then the man started past almost at a trot.
“Good morning, Nick.”
“Get off my back!”
“It’s a public street. Even cops can be in public places just like innocent citizens. Maybe I’ll drop by Elton’s Place tonight—just to buy you a beer.” Wager smiled. “I’ll come in every night for a while. Then I’ll start missing a few. I’ll make it so whenever that door opens, you’ll look to see if it’s me. Like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Every time that door opens, Nick.” Wager tried not to look as if he’d just finished another eight-hour shift; he tried to look happy at the thought of visiting Mauro every night. “Elton’s is a nice little bar, almost like home; I’ll like it there. If you don’t want to see me, you can stay in your room.”
“You bastard.” Mauro jabbed a thick finger at him. “I been doing some thinking. And you can’t lay a thing on me!”
“Tell me your thoughts, Nick.”
“I thought about you maybe having a case. And you ain’t. It’s all circumstantial, Wager—I learned some shit at Buena Vista, and all you got is circumstantial evidence. And there ain’t no motive, either! On a heavy charge, things like that work for a defendant, and you know it.”
The man was right. He had seen too many juries without the talangos to call a guilty bastard guilty unless the evidence was absolute. But more important was Wager’s feeling about Mauro—he could be dumb enough to kill, but he wasn’t dumb enough to put the head in the place where he worked. Yet he’d lied. “How about an accessory charge? If you know something about the killer and don’t tell the cops, you can get nailed for an accessory after the fact.”
The grinning face turned away from Wager’s eyes, and with the surge of returning worry Mauro’s shoulders sagged. “I didn’t think of that.”
“You’re in trouble. All you got to do is tell me what you know and you’re out of trouble.”
His voice was a whisper: “If I tell, I’m still in trouble.”
“What kind?”
“My job, goddamn you! In eight years I get a pension—I lose this job and I lose it all! It ain’t much to you, but it’s a lifetime to me—a whole lifetime!”
“
You’re a state employee?”
“Yes.”
“When I take you into court, you’ll lose your job anyway. Accessory to murder is a felony charge. Felons don’t get state pensions.”
The wide shoulders sagged more and Wager heard a faint strangled sound deep in the man’s throat. But Mauro didn’t give up yet, and Wager, now that the end was in sight and the weariness was lifting from him, in a way liked that.
Mauro said, “If I tell you something, you bastard, will you keep me out of it?”
“You tell me. Maybe I can, maybe I can’t.”
“I want a deal, Wager. I want you to do it so I’m clean.”
“I’ll see. You did know Rebecca Crowell, didn’t you?”
Mauro whispered something.
“What?”
“Yes!”
“When?”
A deep sigh. Wager beckoned him to sit in the car. The heavy body slouched against the creaking seat and he stared through the windshield. “Maybe two months ago now. I didn’t know her name, but her and this guy got to talking with me at work. I guess they came to the gardens a few times because they knew what they wanted. But I never noticed them before they talked to me.”
“Who was the guy?”
“A photographer. I forget his name. They had this thing about shooting some pictures of her in the conservatory. It sounded like a bunch of shit to me—she said she was a plant freak, and he called her a—I don’t know—a ‘woods goddess’ or some crap. But he paid me a hundred bucks to borrow my key for one night. I was supposed to tell him when the place would be empty—no classes or meetings or things—then I would leave my key in a flowerbox where he could find it. Him and this girl would take the pictures, and put the key back for me to pick up the next day.”
“Sumner wouldn’t allow him to use the conservatory?”
“No. There’s this rule against professional photographers. When Sumner finds out, he’ll can me for sure. A whole goddamned lifetime for a shitty hundred bucks.”
“Was this for the night of the nineteenth?”
“No. Maybe a month before—six weeks, maybe. A while ago.”
