The Alvarez Journal: A Gabe Wager Novel

by Rex Burns

  “I hope so.” Wager waited a moment, then: “Do the Bureau files have anything on a dude named Alvarez?”

  “Man, you got as many Alvarezes as we got Willy Joneses.”

  “Rafael. About thirty-two, busted once for transporting marijuana. Now works at an import shop on the north side.”

  “Can’t place him. What do you have on him?”

  “Nothing yet. I’m trying to get enough for a team surveillance.”

  “I’ll let you know if we turn anything up.”

  “Thanks.”

  A corporal called down the hall, “Wager? We got a Detective Wager here?”

  “Here.”

  “Phone.”

  “Coming.” He stuck his head into room 2. “I’ll be right back —I have a phone call.”

  “Yeah? Well, this is supposed to be my coffee break,” the officer said.

  “I’ll do you a favor sometime.” The dumb bastard should have taken his break like everybody else: in front of the television watching the New York police catch all the criminals. Or was it Thursday? If it was Thursday, it was the Los Angeles police’s turn. He picked up the receiver resting on the night desk. “Detective Wager.”

  “Hi, Gabe. Denby. How’s it going?”

  “She’s full of kind thoughts for you, but that’s about all.”

  “She thinks I’m the snitch?”

  “Right—our man’s covered.”

  “How about Annie?”

  “Masters thinks he can work her around. She was clean, but we can get an accomplice charge. And a concealed-weapons charge.”

  “Think I can get any part of her?”

  “Better stay clear. We want to keep our man covered while he’s still useful.”

  “Yeah. Damn. No good at all with Labelle?”

  “Nothing. She’s been this route before.”

  “Damn. I sure need to build a string of snitches.”

  “We’ll get some for you.”

  “Yeah. Well, Helen’s calling me. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He went back to room 2 and waved the uniformed officer out of the interrogation room. “I got her now.”

  “Some coffee break!”

  “Thanks for the help.” And next time keep your goddamned nose out of other people’s business.

  The woman sat motionless in the hard light.

  “You’re not hurting anybody but yourself, Labelle.”

  “That’s the story of my life, pig.”

  Wager yawned a bit wider than he had to. “It’s your fanny, honey. I’ll see you in court.” He called the matron.

  “Hey, piggy, one thing—you tell that Freddy somebody gonna be looking him up.”

  “But, baby, it won’t be you. Not for a real long time.”

  The yawn had been half true; he was tired. Behind the sting of his burning eyes he felt weariness spread in his mind, and one by one his senses lost their edge until, as he closed the car door, he had the familiar woolly numbness of exhaustion. He started home, his body already hungry for sleep; then, with a curse, he turned north instead of south when he came to the Valley Highway. If he didn’t do it, nobody would: one quick swing past the Rare Things before bed.

  The alley was almost black—few of the store owners replaced the lights constantly being broken by stray rocks—but the parking area was crowded with four cars nosed against the import-shop wall. He recognized three: Anthony’s, Rafael’s, the Texas plate. The fourth—a tan Pontiac Le Mans ‘72, Colorado AF 1306—he called in. It was registered to Henry O. Alvarez of 3422 Kalamath, Denver; DPD checked the name for him and came up with file number 159319 and a middle name, Obregon. No warrants. Rafael’s older brother. The weariness faded with the interest of finally seeing something happen, and Wager parked across the street from the store and watched the front. At 12:53 A.M., a dark-colored 1971 Buick Skylark, BC 7130, parked in front of the building and two males—Chicano, medium build, one dressed in a suit, the other in the Levi trousers and jacket of a bracero—knocked on the glass door. Anthony let them in and locked the door behind them. Wager noted the information and called for a make on the license: Francisco Xavier Martinez, Apartment 6, 800 Thirtieth Street, Denver; Dalewood Apartments. Denver Police Department had no file number for that Martinez. He tried to dredge the name up in some connection with the papers and references in the Alvarez folder. Nothing. At 2:03 A.M., the two men came out, one carrying a grocery bag, got into the Buick, and swung around east on Thirty-eighth. A few moments later, Wager saw the cars from behind the store turn on to Thirty-eighth at the end of the block. The deal was over. He let Rafael’s Firebird go two or three blocks down the empty tunnel of streetlights, then followed. He knew where Rafael was going; he could see it on the city map he carried in his head, and he even drew a mental circle around Rafael’s home. He knew exactly where the suspect was going, but he was cop enough to have to be certain. Rafael turned south on Valley Highway at a moderate rate of speed, and finally took the Evans Avenue turnoff east to Monaco and home. Wager wrote the time in his notebook and, fighting the weariness that was coming back much stronger now, like a heavy tide, he drove north to the Martinez address to tie in that one loose thread. It was an aging brick apartment set just off a thoroughfare and tucked under heavy trees that lined the slabs of red stone walk. The white columns on the porch and the bay windows reminded him of a poverty-stricken old lady trying to keep up appearances—and succeeding if you didn’t look too close. He debated searching the mailboxes for the name but decided against it; he was too tired. Francisco X. would have to wait until morning.

  CHAPTER 6

  WAGER ARRIVED FOR work late, but there had been little sleep for him. Despite his weariness, he had spent a night rolling and twisting hot in the sheets, trying to stop his mind from bringing up ideas about the Alvarez case. Ideas about old evidence, possibilities of new facts, areas for more investigation. And the old memories that sprang from his contact with Alvarez: faces, places, the undefinable sharpness of something one still remembers and for no reason at all—the fuzzy skin and the new-shoes smell of the chapped baseball they used for one long summer series of sandlot games. It was one of those nights that seemed to come more and more often the older he got, and they always left him more exhausted than if he had given up trying to sleep and just read all night. And, worse, sleeplessness for no real reason; he and Rafael hadn’t even been friends. By accident they ran in the same bunch, but there was never any compadre feeling. And it was a long time ago. Business was business, he told himself; he shouldn’t lose sleep over a criminal who was old enough to know the risks. If one runs with wolves, one starts to howl, he told himself in his grandmother’s voice. But it had been a lousy night despite what he told himself.

  “Gabe, Inspector Sonnenberg wants to see you.”

  “What about?” Even to him, his voice sounded harsh.

  “Well, I don’t know!”

  “I guess I’ll find out if I go see him, won’t I?”

  Suzy did not answer, and he patted her shoulder in awkward apology as he went to the Inspector’s office.

  “Shut the door, Gabe.”

  He took a captain’s chair and waited. Sonnenberg lit a maduro with one of the long fireplace matches he kept in a glass on his desk. “I hear Denby’s doing pretty well lately.”

  “Yes, sir, he’s been in on several busts, and last night played the snitch on Pat and Mike. He did a good job.”

  “Everything went OK?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Inspector studied the slowly growing ash of the cigar. “I had some doubts about the man, and I’m still not a hundred percent on him. There’s something”—he wagged his hand, palm down—”I don’t know. For all his time in uniform, he still doesn’t smell like a cop.”

  Sonnenberg was talking more to himself than to Wager, and though he knew exactly what the Inspector meant, Wager kept his lips shut. A man doesn’t bad-mouth his fellow officers. To a superior, anyway.

  And Sonnenb
erg knew that, too. “Well, I’m pleased he’s turning out well. I want you to make sure he’s in on as much as possible; we want him thoroughly trained as soon as it can be done. Our unit’s getting some flak from a few of the uniformed divisions who think they’re losing income to us, and by God I want to be able to tell the Joint Budget Committee that we’re not wasting the taxpayers’ money.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The cigar tipped up. “This Pat and Mike thing, how big is it?”

  “They’re third-rate heroin pushers. We only went after them because they were set up.”

  Sonnenberg’s pencil drummed against the metal lid of his round address file. “Anything else?”

  “The Seattle tip looks like it may be worth something.” He brought the Inspector up to date.

  “Your informant’s certain Alvarez is dealing in heroin?”

  “He hasn’t bought any himself yet.”

  “Then it’s just in the rumor stage so far.”

  “Yes, sir. But that’s where they all start.”

  He nodded and gently scraped the ash from the cigar into a ragged gray curl. “What kind of support do you need?”

  “Twenty-four-hour surveillance on Alvarez; systematic surveillance on the Rare Things. If it looks hot, I’d like to go to a full team plus a wiretap.”

  The Inspector slowly flipped through the pages of a green logbook and shook his head. “I can’t spare anybody right now, Gabe. The entire OCD is up to its ears with this Texas Mafia crap, and we’re supposed to provide investigators for three grand juries—two here and one down in Pueblo.”

  “How about outside support? There’s people who owe us favors.”

  “That’s the Lord’s truth. But we don’t have enough evidence yet to justify a request of this size.” The pencil tapped again. “I’ll tell Sergeant Johnston to hold you off new assignments so you can dig into this.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When he got back to his desk, Suzy had a message from the laboratory. “They said Browne’s heroin was thirty percent.”

  “Is that all? It was supposed to be fifty!”

  “They said thirty.”

  That was a second cut. Labelle was either ripping off an extra profit or she had bought when she should have boogied. “Has Denby called in yet?”

  “No.”

  “When he comes in, tell him I’m down talking to Labelle. And ask him to phone customs and immigration for anything they might have on this license.” He gave her the Texas number and then dialed Ray, telling the old man to meet him in the Civic Center park. “Oh, and Suzy, get a copy of DPD file 159319, Alvarez, Henry Obregon.”

  Sergeant Johnston issued the cash for Ray’s buy. “The Inspector says you might have something from the Seattle tip.”

  “I hope so, Ed. It feels pretty solid so far.”

  “He wants Denby on it with you when he’s free.”

  “I know.” He signed the form without looking up to see the grin he knew Johnston would have.

  “Good luck.”

  He didn’t want anybody’s sympathy, with or without a laugh. “I can always use that.”

  The gray concrete benches in the park matched the sky, and a dry autumn wind sent scraps of cellophane, leaves, and dust scratching along the broad walk between the formal plots of yellowing grass. More than the cold, it was the grayness and the scraping sound that made Wager shrug deeper into his topcoat with an odd feeling—half pleasure at the emptiness of the park, half discomfort at its bleak sameness. Near the semi-circle of concrete pillars, he found the old man bundled against the wind and pinching his cigarette stub for warmth. “Hello, Ray.”

  “Jesus, it’s colder’n a well-digger’s ass.”

  “We’re the weather capital of the world.”

  “Yeah—we get enough of it.”

  “Here’s the money; you’ll find a little extra in there.”

  “Hey, swell!” He slipped the envelope unopened into his frayed coat and stood up. “You mind waiting awhile before you leave?”

  “You worried about something?”

  “Yeah, well, I ain’t never been in on nothing this big before, and I guess it makes me nervous. It don’t hurt to be careful, anyway.”

  “I’ll give you five.”

  “Yeah. I’ll call you when I get something.”

  He watched the short figure, with its collar turned up to the windblown white hair, walk stiffly past the columns of the monument. Ray was right, it didn’t hurt to be careful; but there wasn’t really that much for him to worry about, either—it was a straight buy. He’d been around enough to handle something like that.

  In the cold, the five minutes went slowly, but a promise was a promise; Wager watched the clusters of assistant DAs bustle up the Civic Center steps, the distant Grey Line buses unload tourists to stand in shivering lines at the gates of the Denver Mint, the strings of yelping schoolchildren guided by harried teachers toward the rippling walls of the new art museum whose scalloped architecture still made him feel a little uneasy. A museum should look like the box it was, holding the things people want to go stare at; but this false-front thing just didn’t look like a museum. It looked like a make-believe castle where the builder wanted everybody to know it was make-believe, so he stretched it some here and there. Wager liked things to look like what they were supposed to be, like the capitol over there with its big gold dome and the long lines of columns that said government.

  Slowly the cold of the concrete bench worked through his trousers, but he gave it another couple of minutes. Then he walked the two blocks to the office parking lot. Denby was just getting out of his car as Wager arrived.

  “Hi, Gabe—holy shit, was I tired! I must have been more wound up than I thought last night.” He pinched his nose in the handkerchief and blew. “Man, is it dusty!”

  “The Inspector wants us to spend some time on Alvarez. I’m on my way to see Labelle now. How about checking this license out with immigration and customs?” He wrote the Texas number on a leaf of his notebook.

  “Sonnenberg thinks there’s something in it?”

  “He’s interested but that’s all.”

  “What’s with Labelle?”

  “She sold us a quarter cut.”

  “No shit! Man, if you can’t trust your pusher, who can you trust!”

  “Maybe we can get her for false advertising. See you in an hour.”

  The woman waited at the small table, face drawn and sagging with fatigue; the scrubbed gray prison smock hung baggy from her shoulders. Wager nodded good morning to the matron, a thick-bodied black woman with flat, expressionless eyes, then sat across from the prisoner. “Hello, baby.”

  “Well, well, the spicky piggy. You come offering another deal?”

  “I thought a good night’s sleep might brighten your outlook.”

  “Good night’s sleep—shit!”

  “Don’t hurt the taxpayers’ feelings, baby; this is a style to which you will get accustomed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want you to look at something. It’s a lab report on the smack you sold me.”

  She stared suspiciously at the cryptic form, her lower lip moving as she read. “So what’s all this shit?”

  “It says you sold me a quarter cut.”

  Her bloodshot eyes widened slightly before she could guard against surprise; then she laughed a harsh bark. “You gonna arrest me for cheating?”

  “If you paid full price, you got ripped off.”

  She stared again at the lab report. “A quarter cut, you say? Ain’t that just like a fucking greaser!”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The dude who sold me. I’ll tell you this much—what’s your name, Wager? What kind of name’s that for a greaser?—the dude that ripped me was a Chicano kid. I wouldn’t be surprised if that motherfucker Freddy wasn’t Chicano, too.”

  “Why cover for this kid? Why not get even?”

  Labelle’s humorless laugh came again. “Go out and work for your m
oney, piggy! Even a rip-off artist is better than you!”

  On the way back to the office, he mulled over the obvious connection: it could be the same pipeline for Labelle’s supplier as for Alvarez. Or it might not be. Best to hold the pieces close but still separate until something else turned up to link them together. Better to wait and be sure than to go running headlong down the wrong trail. Slowly, slowly, one step at a time.

  And that was how he went up the office stairs; Mrs. Gutierrez waved good morning from behind her Plexiglas window and pressed the buzzer to open the door to the inner offices. Denby was waiting.

  “Immigration had nothing for that license, but customs did. It belongs to a Richard Valdez, aka Ricardo, Dick, Fuzzy; 13228 Houston Avenue, El Paso, Texas.”

  Wager copied the address into his notebook. “Do they have a jacket on him?”

  “They got one, but it’s going to shake you.” Denby smiled and waited until Wager said “What?” “It turns out this Valdez is one of customs’ top snitches for the Juarez zone. They don’t want us going near him.”

  “Barbas tienes! Did you tell them he might be transporting heroin into Denver?”

  “No. I didn’t know if you wanted that out yet.”

  “You’re right, good thinking.” He picked up the telephone and dialed, “This is Detective Wager. Is Agent Hartnoll in, please?”

  “Hi, Gabe, what can I do for you?”

  “Howie, we’re working on something that might touch one of your Concerned Individuals: Valdez, Richard—from El Paso.”

  “Fuzzy Valdez? Yeah, I know him; I’ve used him a couple of times. He’s really reliable.”

  “Have you ever heard of him dealing?”

  “Nothing big. He may bring a baggie or two across, but you know how that goes.”

  “I know. Listen, I’ve got something confidential here. We think he’s tied in with a heroin ring in this area. His car was seen last night at a meet. Is there any way the El Paso people can get some information on him? Where he’s been, who he runs with —that kind of stuff?”

  “Fuzzy? Heroin? You sure?”

  “The car belongs to him.”

  “He’s one of our best informants. He only touches pot.”