The Alvarez Journal: A Gabe Wager Novel

by Rex Burns

  Anthony reached for another cigarette and hid his face in the busy work of taking it out of the package, tapping in the tobacco, lighting it, feeling the smoke in his lungs.

  “You tell Rafael I was by, nephew. We’ll be seeing you again.”

  “Yeah. Not if I see you first.”

  He watched them through the glass panel of the door; Wager smiled good-bye as they walked past the display window and down the block to their car.

  “You haven’t changed much, Gabe.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Whenever you smile at somebody, I feel sorry for them.”

  “Humor’s a personal thing.”

  “I reckon. What’s a vendido?”

  “Sellout—a turncoat. Little Anthony’s the kind who thinks all Chicanos are on one side of the street and all cops are on the other.”

  “He didn’t look so little to me.”

  “I’m not talking about his size. I’m talking about his manhood. He has a lot to learn.”

  “He seems to be learning pretty fast.”

  “I hope he learns self-control as well as his uncle’s business.”

  “One of those?”

  “One of those. We were close to playing fun and games, just then.”

  “I wouldn’t mind coming down on the son of a bitch any time he wants to try something.” Billington whistled shortly between his teeth in the tuneless way that told Wager his mind was attacking, one by one, each fact of the new case. “You say customs hasn’t come through on this dude from El Paso—what’s his name?”

  “Fuzzy Valdez.”

  “Valdez, Fuzzy. A rat’s nest of family and friends. We’ve got to get to someone inside; the phone tap’s not going to be approved unless we have something solid first.” He whistled again. “Hell, you’ve thought of all that already. What have you come up with?”

  Since he had put Leonard on the bus, Wager had been thinking of Francisco Martinez; he told Billy about the new suspect. Billy grinned in admiration. “Same old cool Gabe!”

  They drove past the store and swung back through the alley. The Mach-1 sat nosed to the concrete block; the rest of the parking lot was empty. “That’s Anthony’s car.” Billington jotted the description down in his notebook; Wager leafed through his until he came to the page of vehicle identifications. “Here’s what else I’ve got on cars and licenses.”

  Billy copied that, too. “Yeah, I think Martinez might do. Let’s drop by my office on the way.”

  Wager glanced at his watch. “I guess we have time.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “Denby’s staked out on Clarkson Street. I told him I’d relieve him at six.”

  “He only works a forty-hour week?”

  Wager tried to keep the embarrassment out of his voice. “His wife wants to go see a movie.”

  “Jesus H. Christ—it ain’t the old corps!”

  They inched through the quitting-time traffic that flooded the freeways and the cross-town boulevards. Billington ran into his office and popped back out a few minutes later. “Had to borrow some evidence.” Finally, Wager turned out of the stop-and-go lines of cars on Colfax and began looking for a parking place.

  “How do the TV cops always find a parking place right in front?” Billington said.

  “They bribe the meter maid.”

  “Watch that language, man. The persons in blue are incorruptible.”

  “Tell that to the Staff Inspection Bureau,” Wager said.

  “You goddam greasers are a cynical lot.”

  “It comes from centuries of shameless exploitation by Anglos—rootless immigrants to the land of Aztlan. No colorful culture, no historical past, no cheerful pottery; just money, money, money. No wonder all you Anglos are so rich.”

  “Yeah. And I eat head lettuce and grapes, too.”

  Wager punched at Billington’s shoulder. “Come on, you blue-eyed son of a bitch, let’s go roust a Chicano.” It was good to be working with Billy again.

  They stood in the small foyer of the Dalewood Apartments and studied the mailboxes. “We’re locked out. You want to ring the manager?”

  Wager shook his head. “Let’s try something quieter.” He pressed the button to Apartment 24: “R. Targ.” A woman’s voice answered, “Who is it?”

  “A package for Mrs. R. Targ. It has to be signed for.”

  “For me?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. It has to be signed for.”

  “Just a minute.”

  A buzzer clattered as R. Targ cleared the lock on the hallway door. Wager and Billington opened it and the buzzer stopped.

  “You lied to that nice lady, Gabe.”

  “I’ll clear my soul at confession.”

  “You snappers take the easy way out.”

  “If it wasn’t for you black prods, we wouldn’t need a hell.”

  “Is it true all your priests are Irish?”

  “Not any more, honky. You’ve been watching too much Bing Crosby on the Late Show.”

  They stopped at Apartment 6. From inside came the blurred mechanical voice of a television reporter repeating the word “Watergate.” Wager knocked on the door; the voice shut off. He knocked again. “Mr. Martinez?”

  A few moments of tense movement, stealthy footsteps back and forth across the boards of the old floor.

  “He’s hiding his stash,” muttered Billy. Wager nodded and rapped again.

  “Who is it?”

  “Police officers, Mr. Martinez. I’d like to ask you some questions about Leonard Solano.”

  Quicker footsteps on the floor; Wager rapped harder. “He’s been shot. I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “All right, all right!” The door lock clicked and a chain and bolt rattled. Martinez stood in the half-open door scowling; he was slightly shorter than Wager, had the usual dark hair and eyes, and a round face with a Cantinflas mustache, shaved in the middle of the upper lip and heavy at the corners of his mouth. He was in his late twenties. “Who’s this you want to ask me about?”

  Wager showed his identification and pushed into the room; Billy closed the door and, as Wager talked Martinez back into the middle of the small living room, went through the apartment in a restless search. “Don’t shit me, Frankie; you did time with Leonard in New Mexico. He’s one of my Concerned Individuals.”

  “Your what?”

  “CIs—snitches. Leonard’s in my stable. He said you told him somebody was going to waste him.”

  “No! I never told nobody nothing like that!” Martinez sank onto the spindly-legged couch facing the color set.

  Wager propped a foot on the smooth plastic of the couch and leaned over the man’s paling face. “I’m not in the mood for your kind of cheap crap, Martinez. You and Leonard were kissing cousins, you goddamned prevert, and you tipped him that Alvarez was going to smoke him. You work for Alvarez now, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll work for me. I want information on Alvarez’s setup.”

  “No, man! Hell, no, man!” He lunged up from the couch;

  Wager jabbed his fingertips into Martinez’s throat and bounced him back. “That hurt!” he said, gasping for air.

  “I’m real good at hurting people, Frankie-baby. Now you better hear me good. I’ve got Leonard hidden away in protective custody. Alvarez’s people are going to want to know why he disappeared and who tipped him. They’re going to remember that you two were ass-hole buddies.”

  “You said somebody offed him!”

  “I lied to you, Frankie. So you’d open the door, Frankie. Right now you’re in shit up to your eyes, Frankie. All I have to do is whisper, and under you go.”

  “You’re lying now. Lenny wouldn’t fink on me!”

  “Lenny would. And did. He got his tail out of a crack and put yours in.”

  “That ain’t true!”

  Wager grinned into the man’s eyes. “Give Anthony a call and ask him if anybody tried to hit Leonard. He’s at the Rare Things.”

  “No …”


  Wager pulled the directory from under the small Danish Modern table at the end of the couch where the telephone sat. “I’ll call. I’ll tell Anthony you were just curious.”

  “Jesus, no!”

  Wager looked up the number and lifted the receiver. “If you think I’m lying, give him a call.” He poked the first four numbers on the lit buttons. “You want to talk to him or do you want me to?”

  “Give it here!” He poked the last numbers and glared at Wager as it rang. “Anthony? This is Frankie. Say, listen, I—uh —heard that somebody got to Leonard Solano. No, I don’t know. I thought maybe you knew. No! I ain’t seen him since Santa Fe—you know that! I just heard it on the street is all. I don’t know. Sure, Anthony, whatever you say. Por supuesto. Yeah. I’ll try to find out. Sure, Anthony. OK. Good-bye.” He set the phone on the cradle and stared blankly at Wager. “He don’t know nothing about it.”

  “Then how did I know he was after Leonard?”

  The round face worked against the answer and finally gave up in anger. “That son of a bitch!”

  Whistling unevenly through his teeth, Billy crossed from the bedroom carefully carrying a page from his notebook. “I think the lab might be interested in this powder.”

  “What powder?” Martinez sprang forward, and Wager, using the heel of his hand to leave no bruise, punched his forehead and again knocked him back to the couch.

  Billington held the paper just out of reach so Martinez could see its surface. “This stuff that looks like heroin.”

  “Hey, man, I don’t have none of that around here.”

  “Detective Billington just found the evidence,” Wager said.

  “But it ain’t mine—somebody put it there! You put it there!”

  “It’s our word against yours.”

  “But you put it there!”

  “We’ll lie in court, Frankie. Who do you think they’ll believe?”

  “We won’t even have to go to court to fix you up, Frankie-baby. All we do is put your bust in the newspapers. What’s Alvarez going to think: first Leonard gets a tip and skips, then you’re popped for possession—of his property. And then you’re let off with a big smile and no charges.”

  Billington tapped the powder into a waxed envelope, sealed it, and signed his initials. “I do believe Mr. Alvarez will think Mr. Martinez was trying to be a partner in the firm.”

  “That ain’t so! You know it ain’t so!”

  “But will Alvarez?”

  “Hey, you guys are framing me—you guys are gonna get me killed!”

  “I’ll try to control my grief.”

  “Detective Billington is a dirty cop,” said Wager, smiling. “Sometimes I’m ashamed to work with him.”

  “Aw, you say the nicest things, Detective Wager!” Billy tucked the envelope in his coat and leaned over the frightened man. “We’ve got you by the balls, Martinez, and the only way you’re going to live another couple of weeks is to work for us. You do good for us, we’ll do good for you.”

  “Hey, I can’t—”

  “You can, amigocito. And you’d better. All you have to do is give us information on Alvarez’s operation. We’ll cover you so nobody knows where the word’s coming from.”

  “Now, hey, now. I ain’t no snitch.”

  “It happens all the time. Look, we know what Alvarez is doing. All we want from you is how. We’re going to get him—and everybody with him. And if somebody blows the chance to help us …” Wager shrugged.

  “Frankie, in his own quiet way, old Gabe is meaner than I am. When the time comes, he’ll hang you higher than Alvarez because you turned us down.”

  “Look, Francisco.” Wager offered him a cigarette from the stale pack he never himself used. “You’ve got nowhere else to go. You can’t ask Alvarez for help—he’d never forgive you for tipping Leonard. And if I have to, I’ll see that he finds out about it. If you give us a little information, we’ll keep you covered. When the bust comes, we can work a deal. Nobody will ever know—we couldn’t operate if we let the word get out on our informants. But if you don’t come to us, I’ll make sure Alvarez sells a wolf ticket on you.”

  “I’ve seen dead snitches before.”

  “It does happen, Frankie. But for you it’s going to happen a lot quicker if you don’t come over.”

  “Yeah—and if I do, then I’m your property. I do what you want once, and then you really got me.”

  “We’ve got you now.” Billington patted his coat pocket. “But we don’t owe you anything yet, so it doesn’t make a tiddly-damn to us if you live or die. If you help us so that we owe you something, then we’ll look after you. We’ll cover for you; you’ll get no hassles from us if you don’t get too far out, and you’ll make a lot of bread from a grateful citizenry. Just think, you could be a civil servant!”

  “I could be a dead one.”

  “If you don’t, it’ll be more than ‘could,’ Francisco. We both know what Anthony’s like.”

  “Gabe, let’s hang it up—I’ve got a lot of things to do. This shitbird don’t want us to owe him. We’ll let Alvarez off him and save the taxpayers some money.”

  Wager sighed and stood erect.

  Martinez swallowed and tugged at the little bunch of hairs at the corner of his mouth.

  Wager picked up the telephone and started poking the Rare Things number. “Last chance, Frankie-baby. I’m going to make the call, and then me and Detective Billington are going to walk out of here and you’re going to be dead.”

  “Hey—wait! Wait a minute, now!” Sweat had started in thin lines on his forehead, and Wager could see Martinez’s white shirt quiver from his heartbeat. He held his finger over the last number. “You guys gotta cover—you promised you’d cover me!”

  “If we owe you, Martinez, we’ll cover for you.”

  “OK—oh, God—OK. But you guys will owe me. You’ll really owe me!” It came out more like a groan than a sentence.

  Billington took a deep breath of relief and sat beside the hunched figure. “Let’s have it—let’s see if it’s worth owing for.” He took out his notebook and jotted the date.

  Martinez, tugging at the mustache, swallowed again and started in a low, dry voice: “I don’t know it all; I’ve made three or four runs with him, but I don’t know how it all works.” He stopped and looked at Wager. “Can I get a beer? It’s in the icebox.”

  “I’ll get it for you.” He opened it and poured it and set it on the phone table near Martinez.

  “Alvarez, he’s into smack real heavy. The last run I made with him, he bought fifteen pounds of smack.”

  “Run to where?”

  “Juarez. There’s this guy Fuzzy Valdez—he’s the Mexican connection. I don’t knew where he gets his. South America, maybe—France, maybe.” Martinez shrugged and gulped at the beer.

  “How often does Alvarez make a run?”

  “Depends on business. It’s up to once a month or so now. He’s down there now.”

  “Tell us about your run.”

  “Well, we get the bread—maybe seventy, eighty thousand in cash—and sometimes pistols and rifles. Saturday-night stuff, you know. Alvarez said that if we could get some automatic pieces we could really clean up—Vietnam war stuff. But he ain’t been able to get any yet—the wops have that stuff all sewed up; we been looking. They really want that stuff down south—something’s building up, maybe. Anyway, we load up at the store and drive all night and get to El Paso maybe two in the afternoon. Sometimes we stop on the way, it all depends. Anyway, we check into a motel and Alvarez makes a call from a pay booth.”

  “Which motel?”

  “Ramada. Sometimes a Holiday Inn. One of them big ones. Rafael likes to go first class.”

  “Who does he call?”

  “Fuzzy.”

  “And then?”

  “We have a few drinks and crap out awhile. Then Rafael tells me to sit tight and he goes to the meet. Then he comes back and tells me where to pick up the stuff; I go get it and bring it back. He
never touches the stuff.”

  “You carry it back to Denver?”

  “Yeah. Rafael only sees it twice—once at the buy and once at the cut.”

  “How do you bring it back?”

  “Sometimes by bus, sometimes on a plane. I don’t know what it’s going to be until he gives me the tickets.”

  “He never delivers to customers himself?”

  “I only know of once or twice. He might get a call from a big customer he knows personally who won’t take it from anybody else. But that’s all. Say, can I have another beer?”

  Wager poured another one. “Where does Alvarez take these calls?”

  “At the store. He does all his business at the store, but the stuff never goes there.”

  “Where does he stash it?”

  “He’s got apartments all over town—Alvarez is smart, man! You’ll never get him with the stuff on him. Like, when I make a run, you know, he gives me a key and a address, and I go from the airport or bus station to that address and just leave the stuff in a closet and then take the key down to the store and give it to him.”

  “What about the cut?”

  “Yeah, he’s always there for that. Sometimes Anthony or Henry or maybe one or two other people that I don’t know, they usually do the cut and make the deliveries. I help with deliveries sometimes. But Rafael’s always there to supervise the cut. I been at the cut maybe three or four times.”

  “Do they set up the cut from the store?”

  “Yeah, Rafael calls everybody and tells them which apartment, and they all meet there.”

  “He never keeps anything at the store?”

  “No, man, Rafael’s not dumb. He does all the dealing there, but none of that stuff ever leaves the apartment until a deal is set.”

  “How’s the deal handled?”

  “Well, Anthony or Henry or somebody might get a call, or some dude might come into the store and want a buy. Rafael tells them where to leave the money—up front, usually. Or else they bring the money to the store. Then the dude calls the next day and Rafael tells him where to pick up the stuff. If there’s more money coming, somebody will meet the dude at the drop and get the rest of the payment.”

  “But never Rafael?”

  “Never.”

  “Does he have steady customers?”