by Rex Burns
“Fine. What do you use for evidence?”
“The kid at the movie theater—he saw Tony pick up Frank.”
“He saw a coat and hat. Not a face.”
Max poured straight soda water into a glass of ice and gulped at it, cracking a cube between his teeth so that its muffled splintering was loud in the room. “How about the bum, Whistles? He saw the car.” Then he answered his own question. “No—from what you told me, he’d never make it through cross-examination.” Snapping his fingers, Axton grinned, his heavy jaw pushing out like a sliding drawer. “Laboratory tests! Fred Baird said that if we found a suspect, he could match the clothing to the environment!”
“Tony-O lives about eight blocks from the crime scene, and he wanders all over that area. Any trace material would be easy to explain.”
Axton splintered another ice cube. “So every bit of it’s circumstantial.”
Which was the worst kind of evidence, especially in a murder trial, where jurors tended to be cautious. And there was something else, too: “Don’t forget Sonnenberg’s operation.”
“Yeah. There is that. And Tony-O won’t have trouble coming up with an alibi, either.”
Wager couldn’t stifle all the bitterness. “That’s right—he was a jefe; people will help him out.”
Polly and Kathy came in from the kitchen, Axton’s wife ready to try again with an eager, “Well, now! I hope you two haven’t been talking police business!”
Neither Wager nor Axton answered, their thoughts still chipping and prying on the rough fact of Tony-O.
“Would you boys like to challenge the girls in bridge?” Polly looked hard at her husband, who seemed to be gazing somewhere beyond his nose. “Scrabble?”
After a pause that seemed a lot longer than it was, Kathy patted Polly’s hand and said she had a very early conference in the morning and really had to go, that she enjoyed meeting Detective Wager and hoped they saw each other again sometime. Wager answered something, and a few minutes after Kathy left, Polly said an extravagantly polite good night to Wager and went to bed with a headache.
Axton poured himself another drink; Wager shook his head no to the lifted bottle. “You really are sure you want to do this?” the big man asked.
“I’m sure.”
“It’s a wrong move, partner.”
Wager didn’t bother to answer. There were a lot of rights and wrongs that traded places back and forth, and then there were a few that never changed. But not everyone held to the same few. What Wager chose, Max didn’t, and it wasn’t open to argument any more.
“You realize what can happen if anyone gets a whisper of this?”
“Yes.” Though that wasn’t something he worried about; that was simply a part of the landscape now.
“Both Marco and Frank will go on the statistics as unsolved cases, Gabe. Doyle won’t like that a bit.”
Wager’s silence told him where Doyle could shove his statistics.
Axton’s restraint finally cracked. “Wager, God damn it, how can you do it?”
It was a nasty, smelly little job, like scraping shit from a shoe, but he would do it. “Easy.”
Axton lapsed into silence and pulled at his drink, the bare ice cubes making a high-pitched rattle as he set the glass down. “Gabe—partner—there’s no statute of limitations on homicide. Let the law work the way it should. Don’t do it this way.”
“Sonnenberg’s operation could take years to complete. This is the right way.”
“It is not, goddamn it. You’re a cop, and a good one. Good cops don’t create violence; they prevent it!”
“I’m not asking for help, Max.”
“Ah, shit.” Axton’s thick fingers wriggled as if the table he leaned on were burning to the touch. “You’re my partner, Gabe, and a good one. We work well together, and we both know how seldom that happens. But after this, I don’t know. I just don’t know if I can call somebody ‘partner’ who goes outside the law.”
Wager had not counted on losing that; but if that’s what it cost, then that, too, would be paid. The sooner the better. “I ought to be going. He’ll be there by now.”
“I said I’d back you up with Scorvelli.”
“I’ll go by myself. If something does leak out, you won’t know a thing about it.”
“I said I’d go.”
“Max, I don’t want you to. I don’t want you going with me any further.”
Axton looked at him for a long time and finally spoke without heat. “It’s the wrong move, Gabe. And you know Scorvelli won’t go for it; you’ll just be wasting your time.”
“Tell your wife the dinner was good and that I enjoyed meeting Kathy.”
“Sure.”
Wager parked across Federal Avenue from the Lake Como restaurant and walked toward the parking apron that surrounded the dumpy building. The curtained front door was open to the cool night, and as he pushed through, he smelled the warm odor of freshly brewed coffee.
The quiet talk and laughter faded, the lounging figures on bar stools and around the booths stiffened. Henry, wearing another denim leisure suit and a broad collar open at the neck, rose out of a booth, his glance checking the mirror behind the bar, which showed the empty doorway and its black curtain undisturbed. “What the hell you want, cop?”
Dominick was at his usual rear booth, cigar halfway to his mouth; Wet Dick stretched his head around the seat back and muttered “Shitbird” as Wager pressed the fingertips of both hands gently against Henry’s chest.
“Hey—”
“My business is with Dominick.”
Henry’s angry face started to say something.
“Don’t fuck up, Henry—better see what Dominick says.”
The young man glanced over his shoulder and Wager saw Scorvelli half nod. He shoved Henry’s awkwardly twisted body aside and went to the rear booth.
Scorvelli asked flatly, “What are you here for, Wager?”
“I’ve got some questions for you. Let’s go outside.”
“I want to see your warrant.”
“If I get a warrant, I’ll have to book you. That means hauling Counselor Freiberg out of bed and wasting a lot of time with paper work down at headquarters. You know how slow things can move on Sunday nights.”
“You got something to say, you can say it here.”
Wager shook his head. “What I have to say you might not want on your tape recorder.”
Scorvelli’s brown eyes, alert beneath his bushy eyebrows, blinked to hide surprise and a wary interest. “You got some kind of proposition for me?”
“Just a few questions that only you might want to hear.”
The bright eyes studied Wager’s, then Scorvelli scraped a feather of ash from his cigar and slid out of the booth. “Henry,” he said to the bodyguard, “you come along.”
“Yessir, Mr. Scorvelli.”
Dominick led Wager through the kitchen to the back door, pausing to let Henry go out first. After the bodyguard looked around briefly, Dominick ushered Wager into the dimmest corner of the parking lot. “You carrying a body plug, Wager?”
Without answering, Wager raised his arms. Henry roughly patted him down, searching for a transmitter, and then shook his head. “He’s got his piece is all, Mr. Scorvelli. You want me to take that?”
Scorvelli shook his head and Wager said, “Your turn.”
“What?”
“You want privacy—so do I, Scorvelli.” He quickly ran his hands over the older man’s body and legs. “Stand over there,” he told Henry. “This is grown-up talk.”
Henry did not move until Scorvelli nodded again. “All right, Wager. What’s these questions?”
“Suppose someone laid a murder at your door?”
“What murder?”
“Just a kid—just somebody who was wasted in order to frame you.”
“The law would protect the innocent, right? And justice would triumph.”
“Suppose it didn’t? Suppose the guy who arranged all this was sm
arter than the cop working on the case?”
“If that cop was you, I’d say it’s a good possibility, Wager.”
“Where does that leave you?”
Scorvelli puffed on the cigar and shot a stream of smoke into the chill night air. “It leaves me wondering just what the hell you’re after. It leaves me wondering just what the hell you mean, because I don’t know of any murders laid against me.
“Tony Ojala—Tony-O—told me you were behind the Frank Covino killing.”
“That so?” Another deep puff. “Well, it’s plain you didn’t believe him. People say a lot of things about me, and most of them’s lies.”
“Why would Ojala do this?”
A shrug. “I don’t know. Ask him.”
“I did. But I don’t have the leverage to make him talk yet. Like I said, Scorvelli, he’s a very smart man. Maybe smarter than you, and he knows something. Right now, I don’t have a thing I can take him into court on. But I found out that he’s the one who killed Frank. What I don’t know is why he wanted me to think you did it.”
“Maybe he needed an alibi, Wager. People who commit murder generally need an alibi.”
“I get the feeling it’s something more. Something bigger. I was hoping you could tell me.”
Scorvelli flipped the long cigar butt across the gravel in a bounce of scattered sparks, then pulled another from his vest pocket and slipped it out of its metal tube and cedar wrap. Deliberately, he fitted a cigar snipper over the end. The blade of the snipper clicked sharply. “I don’t know.”
“If Tony-O gets away with it, it’ll be all over the street that he did a number and a half on Count Dominick Scorvelli.”
Scorvelli’s eyes laughed coldly. “You’re trying to get me to handle your work for you, right, Wager?”
“I’m trying to find out why he’d want to do that to you. If you won’t tell me, I’ll keep working on him. Sooner or later, he’s going to let something slip. Sooner or later, I’m going to find out, and then I’ll have him.”
“The world is full of sooner or later, Wager. And a lot of things people sweat over never happen. You’ve had your questions, cop, and my heart bleeds that I can’t help you. Now take off.” He strode into the kitchen door, Henry close behind him.
Wager turned, his shoes crackling dryly in the gravel of the parking apron. When, earlier, he had told Max what he was planning, one of Axton’s first questions had been, “Do you think Scorvelli would do it?”
“What choice will he have?” Wager asked.
Max, upset at the idea, said, “It’s almost like lynch law. It’s like going back to lynch law.”
And Wager asked, “What choice do I have?”
Turn the page to continue reading from the Gabe Wager Novels
CHAPTER 1
THE BODY LAY face up with that crumpled, unsymmetrical look of death. Its arms were tossed in careless surrender. One leg was twisted under the other in the shape of a 4. The coat, too, was flung wide, showing the bloody shirt that had dried to a wad of dark stain. The trouser pockets, inside out, hung lifeless. Homicide detective Gabriel Wager, Denver Police Department, bent carefully over the sprawled figure and, with a gentle tug, slipped a neatly folded piece of paper from the stiff fingers.
“It’s sure as hell no suicide note.” Max Axton, Wager’s partner, loomed over his shoulder as Wager used the eraser end of a pencil to unfold the page carefully. As Max said, “A man with his chest punched open like that wouldn’t turn his own pockets inside out while he died.”
“Hold the bag open.”
Axton spread the plastic bag with his fingers and Wager slipped the paper in. He pressed shut the ridge that sealed it, and labeled the item with the date, his initials, and the location.
“What is it, some kind of sketch?”
“It looks like a butterfly,” Wager said.
Max peered more closely. “Naw—it’s an angel. The wings are curved at the top. And that’s the robe.” He pressed the corners of the plastic bag to stretch away the wrinkles. “It’s holding something.”
“A sword,” Wager said. “It’s an angel holding a sword.”
Axton nodded and frowned with thought. “I don’t know any gangs with that symbol. Does it ring a bell with you?”
“No.” Wager gazed at the paper with its measured creases and the darkly inked lines of the figure. It wasn’t crumpled or dirty; if a dying man had clutched at it the scrap of paper would have been wrinkled.
“I’ll take the witness,” said Axton.
“Okay.” Behind him, Wager heard the slowing rush of motors as drivers paused to gawk at the line of a half-dozen patrol units and unmarked cars tilted on the road’s shoulder, and at the blue uniforms moving slowly over the corner of weed-choked prairie. When they were past the row of cars, the motors sped up again, pulling the drivers home from haze-shrouded Denver toward the dozens of suburban developments spreading eastward across the plains.
“You guys believe me, don’t you?”
Wager looked at the witness. The bearded young man was suddenly nervous, and beneath his shaggy hair worry pinched his brows.
“Any reason we shouldn’t?”
“No! But … I mean … all these questions … Honest to God, Officer, I was just hitching along here!”
Axton nodded and shifted his weight from one large shoe to the other. “We understand that, Mr. Garfield. We just want to get everything down now so we don’t have to call you up later.”
Garfield sucked in a breath and scratched somewhere up under the blond-streaked beard. “Yeah. It’s just all of a sudden I thought, Jesus, what if you guys think I did it?”
“We don’t know who did it,” Wager said. “Yet.”
“Can you show me exactly where you were when you first saw the victim, Mr. Garfield?”
Wager left Max with the witness and went back to the body.
Jones, the police photographer, was framing the scene from yet another angle. The thin black man took three or four more shots and then capped his lens. “That’s it for the meat, Gabe. What else you want?”
“Get a couple from the witness—where he first saw the body. And one more of the site after the body’s been removed.”
“Sure thing.”
Two ambulance attendants who sat on their stretcher at the shoulder of the road watched in silence. Finally Wager motioned to them. “You people come around this way and take it out the same way.”
“We’ll need some help up this bank,” said the shorter one.
“You’ll get it.”
Photographs, forensics, field work. But no immediate witnesses. Wager would be surprised if any of it told them much at all. The note was supposed to do that. Without that little drawing of the angel, this would look like only one more of the casual stranger-to-stranger murders that were becoming routine in booming, shoving Denver—the tossing away of a human being for a watch, a ring, a few bucks. But for some reason this killer left his signature. For some reason he wanted somebody to know something about this death. An execution? An advertisement? A dope deal gone wrong? Forensics would find out if the victim was a user.
The ambulance attendants, lips tight as though trying to pinch out a bad taste, strained slightly to break the rigor in the corpse’s shoulder joints. The body would not fit through the ambulance doors with the arms spread like that, and they had to strap them, bent at the elbows, across the chest to keep them from lifting open again. The rigor told Wager that the man was probably shot right here. Probably the killer or killers walked the victim straight down the embankment and stood just there while he turned to face them. Wind. Almost always a night wind out here on the prairie east of Denver and its bright glow. Maybe a step or two closer for a good shot. Maybe early this morning before dawn, where the lights of the few passing cars would not splash across the man or the gun aimed at him. Perhaps the victim’s arms were already held out—don’t shoot me, I don’t have anything; perhaps they flew up as the bullet hit his chest like a baseba
ll bat and knocked him flat and numb with shock and dead before he hit the ground. A hole that close to the heart and that big. Soon enough, anyway, so he did not move before he died and stiffened in that awkward angle. The killer may have waited, may even have moved close to look at the victim, to make sure a second round from that heavy-caliber weapon was not needed. Then he—or they—went through the pockets very quickly, not needing a light because of the sky glow of Denver. Careful of fingerprints, hurriedly gathering keys, coins, matches—anything the killer’s fingers might touch while going through the pockets for whatever he was after. Then that note, which was to tell someone why the man was shot, if not who pulled the trigger. Wager guessed that the note had been folded and resting in the killer’s pocket, ready for use. Folded precisely into a rectangle whose edges were flush all around. When you’re in the dark, and in a hurry, and you’ve just killed a man, you don’t take time to align the edges of a folded slip of paper. That’s something you do when you’re carefully planning ahead. Then you put it where you know you can find it, so that when you’re sure the fingers have stopped living you can wedge it high up between them so it won’t blow away. Then back up the way you came, through those broken weeds and the matted earth that left no footprints in the bricklike clay. And, probably, you stepped into your car to pull onto the empty highway, mingling your tire prints with the dozens of tracks that Baird was busy casting in plaster of Paris.
“Detective Wager?” One of the uniformed officers picked his way through the tangles of Russian thistles. “We been all over the grid twice—didn’t find a thing.” He watched the ambulance attendants and two policemen scrabble the heavy stretcher up the embankment.
Wager nodded. The fact that nothing had been found outside the ten-foot radius fit the feeling he had about this killing: it was a quick and efficient assassination. And by this time, the killer could have run anywhere.
“You gonna want us for anything else? The shift’s due off in a few minutes.”
“No—send your people back. Thanks, Clark.” No sense wasting the overtime; the city council already screamed at the cost of police work at the same time that it screamed about the rising homicide rate.