Blood Line

by Rex Burns

  “Hold it, Wager—just keep a civil tone in your head. I didn’t tell her that. I asked her if it was true. She denied it.”

  “Goddamn right she denied it because it’s not true! But you hurt the woman, Gargan. You made her think her dead son was a dirtbag.”

  “Hey, I got a story to write, and I was following my lead.”

  “What lead? Nobody ever told you Julio was dealing!”

  “Oh, yeah! Yeah, they did, Wager. I interviewed the official officially in charge of the investigation—Officer Golding—and he made the statement that the killing seemed to be the result of a dealers’ squabble. And that, Wager, is what I was following up on. If you’ve got further information pertaining to the case, I’d like to have your statement.”

  “My statement is go to hell, Gargan.” As he was putting the receiver down, he heard the tiny voice say, “Hey, I hear you got shot. Too bad they—”

  Golding wasn’t at his desk; the location board said he was on patrol. Wager reached him on the radio. “Where can we meet, Maury? And how soon?”

  “The Satire? About half an hour?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  The Satire Lounge on East Colfax was a favorite stop for old-timers in the department. It was owned by the brother of an ex-chief of police and offered a discount on meals for officers. Importantly, the cramped area where food was served was separate from the large barroom, so it didn’t look like the cops were drinking on duty. Wager found Golding at one of the small booths beside the Colfax window, grazing on a large salad and sipping a cup of something.

  “Gabe, what’s the word?”

  “I want to know why in the hell you told Gargan that Julio Lucero was a dealer.”

  The fork full of lettuce and purple onion slices hung in front of his chin, and Golding stared at him in surprise. “Because that’s what I think!”

  “On what evidence, Maury?”

  “A statement from an informant. I been checking it out”

  Wager studied the man’s wide eyes. “Who? Who told you that?”

  Golding put the forkful of greens into his mouth and chewed slowly. Then he washed it down with a sip from his cup. “Herb tea,” he said. “Celestial Seasons chamomile. Soothes the nerves and lowers the blood pressure. Looks like you need some.”

  “I don’t need any goddamned chamomile tea. Who told you that?”

  “One of the people he worked with out at DIA. Davenport. Said the Lucero kid was selling dope out there.”

  Wager reached back in his memory. Freddy Davenport: white kid, late teens, scrawny goatee and moles. “Tell me about it.”

  “Well, that’s just about it. He said he saw Lucero a couple times selling Shermans or speed or whatever to some of the construction workers. I figure he tried to skim a little and his supplier got pissed, or maybe he couldn’t pay for a delivery for some reason.” Another mouthful of lettuce and Golding talking around it. “I mean, it all fits: The kid’s all of a sudden afraid, his mother says he’s getting these phone calls that he won’t answer. He’s afraid to go outside. I figure somebody wanted him and they were watching his house, and when he went to the store—bang!—they got him.”

  It did make sense, and it wasn’t an impossible story: John Erle had it happen to him. “So if he was dealing, what happened to his money? Dealers make money, but I haven’t found anything saying Julio had any.”

  Golding shrugged. “Maybe he put it all up his nose.”

  “The autopsy doesn’t show that. He was clean—no traces, no marks, no organ damage.”

  “OK. He was stashing it somewhere. He was smart enough to know that his mother would suspect him if he started flashing it around, so he put it somewhere.” A final sip of tea. “It could be in a bank account, for all we know. Under a different name. Stay there till hell freezes over, now, and we’d never find it.”

  “His mother would find a record of it. A bankbook, a deposit slip, something.”

  “She looking for it?”

  No. She wasn’t, and Wager wasn’t about to ask her to.

  “She could have thrown it out by now, Gabe. Not even known what it was.”

  “Everybody knows what a bankbook is.”

  “OK. So maybe she knows and doesn’t want to admit it. It wouldn’t be the first time somebody covered for the dead—figure what difference does it make now, and destroy the evidence.”

  “She says he wasn’t dealing. I believe her.”

  Golding watched his fork push some shreds of green pepper through a little pool of Italian dressing. “Well, she’s not my relative, Gabe.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means I’ve got to treat her just like anybody else. It means that I got to look at all the angles, not just the ones I would like to look at.”

  “Golding—”

  “Hey, I’m not saying you would do it on purpose. But think about it, Gabe: You want to believe her. Her son was your cousin, she’s your aunt, you’ve known her all your life, you want to believe her. Think about what that means.”

  Golding was right. He did want to believe Aunt Louisa. And when you started slanting your facts to fit what you wanted to believe, you could go way wrong on a case. Anybody could. “What else did Davenport say?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About Julio’s dealing. When did he see him do it? Who else saw it?”

  “Nothing. Just that he saw it a couple times.”

  “He told you this when you went out to DIA?”

  “No. Yesterday. He called me up and said he remembered it and thought I should know.”

  “Why didn’t he tell you sooner?”

  “I don’t know. Didn’t ask him. He just remembered, that’s all. Witnesses do that, Gabe. You know that—that’s why we leave our cards.”

  Wager knew it. He told Golding what he’d learned from LaBelle about Hastings.

  “And Adamo confirmed it?”

  “He’d heard there was a lot of action out there, but he didn’t have any names.”

  “Jeez, that fits! I mean if Hastings maybe has something going out there, and here’s Lucero working with or for him, right? Or maybe he’s even moving in on Hastings’s territory. That’s a whole nother angle, Gabe!”

  It was, and whichever angle you looked from, it was ugly. He might know in his heart that Julio wasn’t involved in dealing, but Arleta Hocks had felt the same way about John Erle. In fact, the shock of reading that little book and finally seeing the truth was what had made her crazy enough to look for Big Ron.

  Golding was counting out a couple of ones and some change to cover his meal. “I’ll get on that, Gabe. Anything else you’ve come up with?”

  “No. Nothing else.”

  Dewing had ordered him, if he cared for his job, to stay as far as possible from any contact with Neeley or anyone who knew the man. But as much as Wager did care, he had made a promise to Aunt Louisa and that was all there was to it. A short call to the Motor Vehicle Division for a name on Roderick Hastings’s license plate told him that the car was registered to a Harold Allen and had been bought less than six months ago. Previous owner: Sunrise Motors on East Colfax in Aurora. That figured. That dealership was known in area police departments as one that made a lot of money recycling cars through various gang members. If a car was wanted for a particular job, a member would buy it under a false name, use it for a few days, and then sell it back to the dealer for 20 percent less than the original cost, plus repairs. It was a good deal all around. It provided an unlimited and varied supply of legitimate and untraceable cars, it saved the gangsters a bundle in overhead, it gave a nice, steady income to the dealer, and—except for the false registration—it was perfectly legal. And as for the little question of the registration, hey, the guy came in and said that’s who he was and where he lived; no law says a dealer has to check an ID before selling a car. A joke around the department was that Sunrise Motors was the only dealership that washed your car and wiped it clean of prints, too.
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br />   As for Freddy Davenport, nowhere had Wager found any indication that he was connected to Neeley, Hastings, Heisterman, or any of the various Bloods gangs. A search through CCIC and NCIC had not turned up any figure who matched the kid with the skinny goatee, and no one Wager asked had ever heard of him. So Davenport was not only clean enough to keep Dewing happy, he was fair game, and Wager went after him.

  It didn’t take long, MVD’s file listed only one Freddy with a birth date that matched this one’s age; his home address was on Acoma Street in the Platte Park neighborhood of south Denver. Wager parked directly in front of the frame house with its porch and front door tacked awkwardly like a small box to a corner of the building. When Davenport drove up from work, Wager watched the youth back into the parking place Wager left in front of him. The frame around the license plate said TIGHT BUNS DRIVE ME NUTS and the vanity plate itself said REDY-1. Ready Freddy. Maybe it paid to advertise. Lunch box in hand, Davenport started across the lawn toward his front door.

  Wager stepped out of his car. “Hello, Freddy. Got a minute?”

  “Oh—hi.” He looked puzzled, trying to place Wager. “Where’d we meet?”

  “Out at DIA. I asked you a couple questions about Julio Lucero.”

  “Oh, yeah! Right—you’re the—” He stopped in midsentence as he thought of something. Looking suddenly uncomfortable, he asked, “I mean, how’s it going?”

  “Fine, fine. Have you remembered anything that might help me find Julio’s killer?”

  “No! I would’ve called you, man. I still got your card.” His free hand patted at his shirt pocket and then his hip pocket. “Somewhere.”

  Wager nodded. “I’m glad to hear that. How are you and Roderick Hastings getting along?”

  “Rod? OK—I mean, we only see each other on the job, so … why?”

  “He’s deep in shit, Freddy. He’s going to go under real soon, and so is anybody with him.”

  “I’m not … I don’t know what you mean, man.”

  “Anybody working with him, anybody doing what he’s doing—they’re called accessories, and they get the same treatment.”

  “Hey, I don’t know what the guy’s into, man. I mean it’s not like we’re big buddies or something. I only see him on the job, and the job’s only got another few weeks to go—another couple paydays, that’s it, and then I probably won’t never see the guy again!”

  Wager studied the youth’s light blue eyes, looking for guile or excessive innocence or that blankness used by a lot of people to convince themselves that they’re not lying. But all he saw was worry. “I talked to Detective Golding a couple hours ago, Freddy. He told me what you reported about Julio. That he was selling dope to construction workers out at DIA.”

  His thumb scratched in the little tuft of brown hairs at the tip of his chin. “Yeah—ah—I mean that’s maybe what I thought I saw. I mean maybe that wasn’t it, you know?”

  “No. I don’t know. You tell me exactly what you saw.”

  “Ah, well, I mean maybe he was just talking to these guys, like. I mean it looked like he was handing them something, but maybe I was wrong.”

  “When, where, and who, Freddy? Tell me now. Exactly. Where were you standing, where was Julio standing, exactly what did you see?”

  “Aw, man!”

  “It was a lie, wasn’t it, Freddy? You never saw Julio deal a thing, did you?”

  “Aw—”

  “Why? Are you working with Hastings?”

  “Naw, man. I don’t know nothing about Hastings.” He winced and twisted his torso as if his shirt itched and then said, “Aw shit, look, it was just a joke, like. Hastings saw that story on you and Julio in the newspaper. You know, the one told about Julio being your cousin and all …”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, he said it would be funny to sort of, you know, make it look like a cop’s relative was dealing. You know, embarrass a cop—a practical joke, like.”

  “Why didn’t he call Golding himself?”

  “I don’t know. He said it would sound better coming from me—coming from a white guy. It was just a joke, man!”

  “So you made a false report.”

  “It was a joke!”

  “What do you know about Hastings dealing?”

  “Rod?” Davenport’s surprise looked genuine. “I … I don’t … I never thought of it. …”

  “You’ve never seen Hastings do anything that looked like he was selling dope to the construction workers?”

  “No.” He shook his head for emphasis. “The guy’s not around that much—he’s always cutting out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He leaves. Tarbell’s got a schedule, like. Gets us going and checks once around noon, and then in the afternoon. Rod takes off for about a half hour, always gets back before Tarbell shows up again.”

  “Where does he go?”

  “Says he takes a crap—got some kind of stomach trouble, he says. Says for us not to tell Tarbell so he won’t get fired. But he does his work—I mean he makes up for it when he gets back, so as long as he does his share, we don’t care.”

  “He does this every day?”

  “Yeah, midmorning, midafternoon. Says he can’t go more than three hours without taking a crap. Some kind of bug he got in the service, he said.”

  The only service Hastings saw was slinging hash at the state pen cafeteria. But with regular meets, say near the portable toilets, making sales twice a day every day, the man could distribute a hell of a lot of drugs and make a hell of a lot of money. One, two thousand a day? No problem. Maybe more than that, if he sold enough. Fifteen, twenty thousand a week was a good estimate. It was a lot of pocket change.

  “Is it possible that Julio saw Hastings dealing?”

  “I don’t know. Could’ve. He was always being sent here or there for—” The meaning of Wager’s question finally reached his brain. “Oh, shit.”

  A lot of pocket change. Enough to shoot a kid for, if that kid somehow was a threat to take it away.

  “Oh, man. Hey, honest to God I didn’t never think of …”

  “You know what the penalty is for a false report?”

  “What? No.”

  “It’s not that much. Just a class-one petty crime—most you can get is a five hundred dollar fine and six months in county jail.”

  “Man, listen—I just did it for a joke, man! I had no idea none of this other stuff was going on, even!”

  “But the thing is, Freddy, I’ll bet some of Hastings’s bros are sitting in the county jail, too. They hang out a lot in places like that, you know? And they’re the kind who’d be happy to do him a favor. They like tight buns. Especially on a nice tender white boy who says he’s ready.”

  “Aw, come on, man—”

  “You tell me the truth, Davenport, you tell it right now and I’ll help you out. You lie and I will toss you into the Denver County jail like dog meat. Now: are you dealing dope with Hastings?”

  “No!” Again he shook his head. “I swear! I swear to God!”

  Wager peered into the youth’s eyes, wondering what it was about the color blue that made them more difficult to read. “Today was your last day at work, Freddy. You just quit.”

  “No problem. What you tell me about Hastings maybe doing what he did to Julio, no problem, man!” He added, “There’s only two or three weeks of work left, anyway.”

  “You don’t call Hastings, you don’t see him, you don’t talk to him.”

  “I don’t even know where he lives, man—we never get together after work, and I don’t want to!”

  “And not another word to anyone about Julio dealing.”

  “Oh, no. Not a word … Listen, Officer, I’m sorry about that, you know? It was a dumb thing to do and I’m really sorry. I mean that.”

  “I hope I don’t have to talk to you again, Freddy.”

  “No! I mean, me too. I mean, yeah, you won’t. Believe me!”

  He left the youth leaning weakly on the fender
of his parked car, sweating and sagging as if he’d run a long distance on a hot day. But Wager’s mind wasn’t on Davenport: it was on a part of their conversation—the part that finally clicked in with that tangle of ideas he had been unraveling just before the dispatcher sent him to Arleta Hocks’s corpse.

  18

  WHY WOULD HASTINGS want Golding to think that Julio had been dealing? Why draw attention to it at all? Time. If every day meant another couple of thousand dollars, and every week another fifteen or twenty thousand, then what Hastings wanted was time. Especially if the construction was going to begin shutting down in a couple weeks. Time enough to hang on for those last few weeks, for that last thirty or forty thousand dollars. Maybe if the airport job was just starting or had another year or two to go, Hastings would not have bothered to hurt Julio, just pulled out and come back later. Maybe. But there was something about wanting that last little bit that sharpened a greedy person’s hunger. And dope pushers weren’t in the business for charity. Besides, Julio—like John Erle—was a nobody. A throwaway.

  Wager sat at the keyboard of his computer waiting for the CCIC to open up for him. It had been twenty minutes since he sent in his request, and the system was still backed up by other traffic. So he waited. He could have gone on to the other paperwork that was stuffed into his pigeonhole, but he would have had trouble focusing on it. So he just sat there, glancing at the screen’s “Please Wait” now and then, staring at the office wall between times.

  It really had been a chess game. Or checkers. Or whatever. A game, anyway, whose rules and aims had been hidden from him and only the effects of someone else’s moves felt. But Hastings finally screwed up. Trying to muddy the water one more time in order to be certain of that last couple of weeks, he had used Davenport to call Golding instead of doing it himself. Wager could see it now, the man wondering how close Wager was getting as he probed into Julio’s death; knowing from the rumors and phone calls that Wager was constantly poking, looking, asking. Then, from Gargan’s news story, Hastings learned why: he or one of his people had killed a cop’s cousin. And all Hastings wanted was a few weeks more. Just hold Wager off for those few weeks … First, try it through a very willing Neeley and his bullshit suit to give Wager something else to think about. Then add a witness—Nelda Stinney—in case Wager wasn’t taking Neeley’s charges seriously enough. Hide behind Davenport to feed a line of crap to Golding, knowing it would get back to Wager … But Hastings finally screwed up with that move. He screwed up because Davenport had no ties to the Neeley case, and that had allowed Wager to move in close enough.