Angle of Attack

by Rex Burns

  “That’s all?” asked Wager.

  “That’s all.”

  One step back. All Wager had done was push the point of beginning one step back, and it was still out of sight. How many more steps would he have to push? “I still don’t see why this Chavez would be the one to hear it when nobody else did.”

  Tony-O’s white head wagged. “He says he picked it up in L.A. That’s where the Ortegas went when they left here. That’s all I know.”

  “What was he doing in Denver?”

  “Playing the ponies when I saw him.”

  “Did he have any other reason for being here? Family? Business? Anything that could give me a lead on him?”

  The old man drained his beer and set the glass carefully on its ring of moisture. “He’s street people. I didn’t know him too good in the old days and I know him a hell of a lot less now. I don’t know what he was doing here. But I do know this: I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t said one damned thing to you. You really are starting to bug me with these questions.”

  Wager ordered another round from the bartender, who checked glasses whenever the TV set glowed a commercial that did not have bouncy, smiling girls in short shorts. “Estoy apurado, Jefe, y no tengo compadre ni padre.” The saying—“I need help, Chief, and I don’t have a friend or a father”—came from so far out of Wager’s past that it brought with it the clean smell of fresh tortillas, the sunny rustle of cottonwood leaves beyond the cool of the back porch. It was a phrase supported by the truth of murmured childhood lore, that if you were ever really in trouble from something you couldn’t take to your parents or uncle or anybody, you could always go to Tony-O and whisper those words and he’d say, “I’m here.”

  But that was when Tony-O’s shadow lay long through the barrio, and the barrio itself still had life. Now the old man’s already straight back stiffened slightly as if he heard a long-forgotten voice. Then it relaxed with a slight shrug and he said to the glass in front of him, “No soy jefe. Not any more. I can’t help you, Wager.”

  “But I’ve got to ask the questions, Tony-O. It’ll be a big help if you try to answer them.”

  “O.K., Gabe.”

  They both sipped at their beers.

  “Did this guy know anything about Gerald? Is there a possibility that he meant Frank’s brother did the hit?”

  “The only Covino he named was Frank.” The knotted fingers tapped against the glass, their dry, hard flesh making a muffled tink. “He could of been wrong, yeah. Or whoever gave him the word could of had it screwed up.” He looked at Wager in the mirror. “Or maybe Scorvelli knew it wasn’t Frank but Gerald that did it, and had somebody down there slip him some iron.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” said Wager. But even if that made sense for part of it, Frank’s death was still a puzzle. Unless … “Have you heard any rumors about anyone making a move against the Scorvellis?”

  “Like how?”

  “Taking over their action. Bringing the Ortegas back, maybe.”

  Tony-O’s face dipped toward the floor and he bit off a small white blob of disgusted spit, which dropped between his feet. “No. The Ortegas, they’re finished. There’s not enough of them left to do anything. The kids these days … bombings, marchings, singing goddam songs! No, I ain’t heard nothing like that.”

  “Something’s got to explain Frank’s death. Maybe somebody with big ideas heard the same thing you did and tried to tell Scorvelli something by killing a Covino. But they got the wrong man.”

  “I ain’t heard nothing like that, either.” The thin shoulders wagged once. “Hell, it’s possible, though. There’s a lot that’s possible.”

  “Have you told anyone else what you heard?”

  “No. Just you. But if it’s all over town like you say, then Bernie must of told somebody else.”

  Like every other theory, that might be the reason—or it might not. So far, every thread Wager pulled either snapped off or frayed short. And one was cut.

  “Could be it was Scorvelli himself,” said Tony-O. “Could be that Bernie told the truth and Scorvelli heard it and measured Frank for a wooden overcoat. Then did the same for Gerald so there wouldn’t be no revenge. Or because he was afraid Frank told Gerald about the hit. Could be Scorvelli’s got some answers to that—maybe you should go sit on him awhile.”

  That, too, made as much sense as everything else. But there was a good reason why Wager wouldn’t go running down that trail yet: Sonnenberg. “I’ve got too many ifs, Tony-O; what I need is hard information. Do you know anybody else around who might have a lead on this Bernie Chavez?”

  “No.” This time the old man spoke quickly, and like the shadow of a fast, thin cloud across his mind, Wager faintly wondered if it was too quickly.

  Eleven

  WHEN AXTON ENTERED the office the next morning, Wager first told him the latest on the case, then drew the day’s initial cup of coffee.

  “Let me call down to Cañon City,” said Axton. “I know some people there, and maybe they’ll give us the scoop and save a long drive.”

  He dialed and waited and then, as Wager handled the morning paper work, began asking questions of someone named Allen. “Right, Al, the one yesterday. It has a bearing on something we’re working with up here. Right. Sure, I’ll hang on.” He covered the mouthpiece with two broad fingers. “Al’s calling the officer in charge of the investigation,” he explained.

  Wager nodded and focused on the stack of requests and queries, the bulletins, alerts, advisements, and warnings, the reports, statistical summaries, graphs, and diagrams that flowed in rivers and rivulets through the police routing system. Many were to be noted and shoved elsewhere, others to rest in homicide in various files and with varying degrees of permanence. Most would never be looked at again, but only a few could be thrown out immediately. When Max hung up at last, Wager was ready for him. “Well?”

  “They’re calling it a local fight. Gerald and a black guy got into a squabble during a softball game the afternoon before, and the guard thinks they carried it over. They met the next morning and the other prisoners say Covino started it, and of course he’s not around to say he didn’t. Anyway, they tangled, and by the time the guard got there, Covino had a sharpened spoon handle in the heart.”

  “What’s the black’s name?”

  “Ronald Greenlee, a.k.a. Ali Uhuru.”

  “Anybody mention Scorvelli’s name?”

  “Christ, Gabe, I wouldn’t ask that!”

  Wager would. But he let it pass—Axton was probably right not to talk the name around any more than they had already. “Any hints at all that it was a setup?”

  “I asked him twice; he said no. Greenlee has been in for about four years on a murder conviction. About three months ago he was transferred out of maximum security into Covino’s cell block; and as far as past records show, there was never any connection between him and Covino. The fight seems to be the first time the two ever talked.”

  “Do we have a jacket on Greenlee?”

  “Yeah—they gave me his file number. Want to look at it?”

  “Might as well.” Besides, it would delay a little longer the thing they had to do today, which had awakened Wager this morning with that weary feeling of wanting to drop this day out of the calendar.

  Axton brought the jacket back from the Records Section and they started going down the column of entries that was the man’s life according to the law.

  “Busy dude,” said Axton.

  He had been. The juvenile record started at thirteen; they skipped over that. The adult record, which began at eighteen with an arrest for attempted rape, listed a conviction for robbery, another for assault—this one with intent—and finally first-degree murder with life imprisonment. That usually meant parole in six to ten years. Greenlee’s second known murder, that of Covino, would put off his parole a little longer. Nowhere in the official or unofficial entries was there any hint of a connection with either Scorvelli or Covino. But, Wager figured, if Sco
rvelli or anyone else wanted to arrange for Covino’s death, then Greenlee was a good choice for the job: violence-prone, little to lose, and—since the payoff would come through a third or even fourth party—no direct link at all to Scorvelli.

  Axton was thinking along the same lines. “It doesn’t really help us one way or the other, does it?”

  It was good when you and your partner could think together like that. It was like family. Better than family, from Wager’s point of view, because the jealousies and secrets, the old regrets and newly twisted affections, the family memories and family jokes, did not tangle things up. It was a much cleaner and more precise bond of shared labor, a bond one wasn’t just born to but which one chose. “It doesn’t shut off any possibilities, anyway. Can you call your friend Al back and get a full report on Greenlee’s prison record? Whose cell he shares. What gang he runs with or any recent changes of behavior.”

  Max picked up the telephone and dialed again.

  Wager sorted through another half inch of paper work, pausing to read carefully an F.B.I. report forwarded to him through Baird in the laboratory. The fingerprints on the calling card of Victor Galen belonged to one Vittorio Galente, who was described as a figure active in organized crime, generally associated with operations in and around the Chicago area. Apparently, whatever expansion plans Dominick Scorvelli had, they involved closer links to Chicago through the white-haired man with the neat homburg and the flat black eyes. That tidbit meant nothing now, but later it might; Wager filed it in memory.

  “Allen will send Greenlee’s record this morning, and the courier should have it here late today or tomorrow,” Max said when he hung up the receiver. “Al’s really not sold on the idea of a planned hit. He says fights happen all the time down there, and this just looks like another black and Chicano run-in.”

  “If I wanted to cover a hit, that’s exactly what I’d make it seem like.” And besides, there was a lot less paper work if the killing was explained as being racially motivated instead of a conspiracy.

  “Yeah,” said Max. “You’re right. I think we should have looked a little harder at Gerald when we had him. I think we screwed up.”

  “It’s not ‘we,’ Max. It’s ‘me.’ I screwed up.”

  “Hold it, partner—I’ve got a brain, too. And I didn’t use it.”

  However Max wanted it. Though in his heart, Wager knew that if fault lay anywhere, it was with him alone. Wager should have thought out all the angles—should have looked ahead and asked for protective custody for Gerald. With the mere possibility of someone like Scorvelli mixed up in the case, Wager should have done a hell of a lot more than he did. It wasn’t the first time he had screwed up, and probably wouldn’t be the last; but it always felt newly bad when it happened. “You know who we have to go see?”

  Max knew and winced at the thought. “Lord, I hate facing that Covino girl again.”

  The small house with its half pillars of brick had not changed a bit. There was still an odor of sadness about it, even from the street, which made the silence and dark of its windows seem more intense than the other houses on the block. Wager had noticed that before: somehow, when you were sent to a house of bad luck, you knew which one it was even before you read the address. There was something in the waiting stillness, something in the light—as if the house and small yard around it were listening. Not that they would offer any reply—but they were suddenly, and quietly, listening.

  The daughter answered their knock, standing wordless behind the screen door with its scattered small patches of newer screen and a small puff of cotton pinned in the center to scare away flies.

  “We’re sorry to have to come back, Miss Covino,” said Max.

  Wager saw that she was picking through a dozen replies like a kid fingering stones, trying to find the one that would hurt most.

  “You attack the dead. Now you kill the living. You don’t want to leave us anything, do you?”

  Axton’s throat rumbled nervously. “We’re still trying to learn who killed Frank. We’re trying everything we can, even things that aren’t likely, because we have nothing else to try.”

  “So that’s why you got Gerry killed? You were ‘trying’ things?”

  “He was killed in a fight with another inmate, Miss Covino,” said Wager. “As far as we know, there’s no connection between that and Frank’s death.”

  “Oh? Then what the hell are you doing here? You just come by to say you’re sorry about Gerry? You’re not going to ask any questions about Gerry and Frankie, that so?”

  No, that wasn’t so. And grope as he might, Wager could not find a phrase that would make things sound nice. Things weren’t nice—they hurt, and there was no path long enough to work around the edges of all that hurt. He would have to go through it. “As far as we know, there’s no connection. But there may be, and that’s why we’re here. You’re right about that.” But Wager could not yet admit to her that he had anything to do with Gerald’s death. “We have to find out if there’s a connection,” he finished lamely.

  Grace Covino’s wet eyes narrowed and she gave a tight little smile that was no smile at all. “You tell Mama that. You come right on in and you tell that to Mama!”

  This time, Mrs. Covino was not in the tiny parlor waiting for them. Wager stood with Axton beside him, looming even bigger against the formal, close walls and ceiling and the crowd of overstuffed chairs and knickknacks, the small bookcase with its thinly gilded collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, the shelf with the madonna and the pictures and now three prayer candles glowing redly in their glasses. When Mrs. Covino entered, it was with the unseeing numbness of shock, the unnatural coldness of wearied but not exhausted anguish.

  Max apologized again, but Mrs. Covino, gray hair combed and black dress neat with the touch of someone else’s care, did not seem to hear him. She stood a long minute staring at the row of pictures and the candles, and, with a quivering breath, sat slowly on the heavy sofa. Grace Covino stood beside her, hand on her mother’s rounded shoulder, and glared at them.

  “Ma’am,” said Axton, “is there anything more at all that you can tell us about Frank’s death? Anything that might help explain Gerald’s?”

  Her voice, level and almost girlishly thin, prickled the skin at the back of Wager’s neck. “You killed him.”

  “What?”

  “You killed him.”

  “Why do you say that, Mrs. Covino?” Max asked gently.

  “Gerry told me. He knew it was going to happen. He knew what you did to him.”

  “When?”

  “He wrote a letter. When it came, I didn’t even know the handwriting. We never wrote much, and I didn’t even know my own son’s handwriting.”

  “Can we see his letter, ma’am?”

  “Gracie …”

  The girl came back a moment later and handed Axton the envelope. The paper inside held a few penciled lines, and Wager could see a couple of wrinkled spots on the well-folded sheet, spots that had dried. Axton held it so Wager could also read.

  Dear Mom

  I heard about Frankys death and I am sorry for you and him.

  He was a good boy and did not deserve what he got. The cop

  who told me said some other things to which has me worried.

  If some thing happens to me in this place go see Pete Zamora.

  You remember him. Tell him what has happened and show him

  this letter.

  Con amor y siempre su hijo, Gerry

  There was no date on the letter. “When did this come, Mrs. Covino?” asked Wager.

  Grace answered, “Three days ago. Two days before it happened.”

  A stray hair on Mrs. Covino’s head quivered. “Now my family has no man. First Frankie. Then Gerry. And Gracie’s not married.”

  “Did you go see this Pete Zamora?”

  “I went,” said Grace. “Yesterday afternoon.”

  “What did Zamora say?”

  “I don’t have to tel
l you. Whatever Gerry did, he paid for it.”

  “Why not tell us, Miss Covino?” Max urged. “We really are trying to find out who killed your brother.”

  The girl studied his face and then said angrily, “He gave me forty-five hundred dollars. Zamora and me went to a bank and he handed me forty-five hundred dollars. He said Gerry left it with him in case something like this happened.” Her jaw pushed out, and in that gesture Wager saw a dim reflection of her brother’s last interview in prison.

  There was a long silence as Wager and Axton weighed the implication of the money. “Where is it now?”

  “I’ve got it safe. Mama don’t want it, but we can use it to pay for all the funerals. I guess you’d like to take the money, too, wouldn’t you?”

  The state’s tax collector might be interested, but not Wager. “Your money’s none of my business, Miss Covino. Unless it gets in the way of our investigation. Can you give me this Pete Zamora’s address?”

  “All he did was hold my brother’s money for him.”

  “That’s not against the law. But we’ve got to talk to him. You understand that, Miss Covino?”

  She seemed to, but it still took time to get her words out. “He’s got a wrecking yard on the south side. Near Mississippi and Mariposa. It’s called Pete’s.”

  Wager caught Axton’s eye for any other questions and the big man’s head shook slightly before he said, “Thank you very much for your help, ma’am. And we’re sorry all this has happened.”

  Mrs. Covino said, “Gracie …” and murmured something that only the girl could hear.

  “What’s that, ma’am?” asked Wager.

  “She wants to know,” said Gracie, “why you had to get Gerry killed. She wants to know why you had to do that.”

  It was Axton’s turn to drive; he headed the sedan south on Federal Avenue and, for the first dozen blocks, neither man said anything. Finally, “Gerald’s death wasn’t our fault.”

  “That’s right,” said Wager.

  “We were following a lead on a homicide, like anybody else would do.”