by Rex Burns
“Sure! Even some Anglos and blacks. Rafael deals in good stuff; everybody knows it.”
“He cuts it thin, doesn’t he?”
“Thin? Hell, no—fifty percent. You can’t keep customers if you rip them off that way. Alvarez, he’s too big time for that little crap.”
Then one of the ounce men had cheated Labelle; a little here and a little there, just enough for an extra balloon or two. “Give us some names.”
Martinez finished his beer and looked at Wager, who took another from the refrigerator and carried it to the seated figure. “Ernie Sandoval’s a big one; he’s always ready to buy. I seen Lumpy Gallegos in the store, too, and, ah, Joe Fernandez and this nigger, Spider Robbins.”
“Roland Robbins?”
Martinez shrugged. “They just called him Spider.”
“All these people come to the store?”
“Yeah, but there’s a lot more dealing on the phone. Rafael don’t like too many people hanging around the store.”
“What are the addresses of the apartments?”
“I don’t know them all, just the one I use. Rafael’s got them all over town, but he only gives me the key to one. Say, don’t go busting in there—I mean, that’s my drop! If you guys bust that one, Rafael will know who told you about it!”
“We just want to keep an eye on it. What’s the address?”
“It’s out in Lakewood, on Virginia Avenue—7620, Apartment 5.”
“Who’s making the run with Alvarez this time?”
“I don’t know—there’s a bunch of us. We never see much of each other. He tells us to stay the hell out of the store unless he calls us.”
Martinez fell silent and sipped at the beer; Wager glanced at Billington, who nodded. “Frankie, we do owe you now. Stay cool, don’t do anything different. If we want you, we’ll call you and set up a meet. In the meantime, you call us at this number when Rafael’s ready for another run.”
“Hey, I don’t always know when he’s going unless I’m on it with him. I mean, I just hear he’s gone, and that’s it until he comes back, and then sometimes I help with deliveries.”
“You call us when you hear something.”
“Yeah—sure. You guys really do owe me now, right?”
“Right, Francisco, we really owe you now.”
CHAPTER 9
DENBY, STILL SITTING on the Clarkson Street address, answered Wager’s call with a bored “No action here.”
“All right. We’re about two blocks from you; we’ll take over.”
“How’d you do?”
“Pretty good. I’ll tell you about it in the morning.”
Denby’s transmission paused. “I can wait here for you.”
“That’s all right. We don’t want you late for that movie.” He shouldn’t have said that, but it felt too good not to. There was no reply, and by the time he and Billington got to the Clarkson address, Denby was gone.
“You don’t get along with him?”
“He’s not so bad, I guess.”
“Is he a good cop?”
“He could be, if he’d just do his job and stop sweating so much.”
“Manic-depressive?”
Billy had finished college, a psychology major, and he let it slip occasionally. But Wager didn’t hold it against him; he was a good cop nonetheless. “You might call it that—he’s either up tight about nothing or cocky as hell over nothing. He can’t seem to tell the nothings from the somethings.”
“How long has he been a cop?”
“Five, six years.”
“That’s too long to be nervous in the service.”
Wager nodded as they backed into a parking place—probably the one left by Denby—and settled into the boredom of waiting. They talked a few more minutes about the puzzle of a cop like Denby, then gradually fell silent as the sky darkened into the smoke of a late-autumn evening. Streetlights came on, glowing red at first and then hardening into blue. Lights in the houses came on, too: large yellow squares behind roller shades or thick drapes.
Around eight, Billy sighed, “Damn, I’m hungry. Why don’t you get a couple of burgers and some coffee? I’ll wait for you here.”
Wager came back with the hot cardboard boxes and they slouched low in the seat and ate. The smell, fragrant while the heat stayed in the cardboard, turned to the familiar stale, sour odor as the food cooled. Like almost everything else that got stale, Wager thought; and it was the smell as much as the taste that depressed him: so much life spent watching and waiting, so many hours and days and weeks—maybe years, by now—spent on surveillance. Watching scum eddy around the gutters of the city. And more often than not, it resulted in nothing more than heartburn. And farts. He rolled down the window to let the odor escape.
“The landlady said today was rent day?”
Wager tilted his watch to the streetlight: a little after ten. “If he doesn’t come soon, she’ll be in bed.”
“Maybe that’s how he pays the rent.”
“You didn’t see her.”
After a while, Billy said, “I should have brought my thermos of coffee. Say, did Denby tell you about coffee being bad for the heart?”
Wager grunted yes.
The local street traffic had subsided; most of the cars going through were on their way from one distant place to another and used Clarkson as a cross-town artery. The Mach-1 was easy to spot as it slowed to turn in to the driveway.
“That’s him,” said Wager. “That’s Anthony’s car!” He leafed back through the notebook and double-checked the license plate: BC 3226.
“One male, no passengers. Going up to the front door. About five eight, slender build; I can’t see his face.”
The silhouette had the springy walk of a young man, but it wasn’t big enough to be Anthony. Wager fished under his seat for the binoculars and rested them on the window frame. The glare of the opening door flashed into the lenses, and he quickly focused on Lucille Trujillo’s jaw. She was smiling and saying something to the dark head on this side of the screen door; the door opened and she looked down, took something, and nodded and smiled again. The lips made a “Thank you” shape and she stepped back and closed the door; then the shadowy head turned away and the light caught the profile for an instant before it became dark again. Wager slipped the glasses behind the door and leaned back from the gleam of passing headlights.
“That Anthony?”
“No. I never saw that one before. But it’s Anthony’s car.”
“Must be one of the runners.”
They followed the Mach-1 around the corner and down to Speer Boulevard, where it settled into a steady pace that caught the timed lights. “I bet he’s heading back to the Rare Things,” said Wager. Sure enough, the Mach-1 turned north on 1-25 and picked up speed until it reached the Thirty-eighth Street turnoff.
“Beautiful,” said Billy.
Wager nodded and fished in his shirt pocket for a contact card. “Here, fill this out in detail—we’ve got what Kojak calls a break.”
“And no scriptwriter to do it for us.”
“Only the big Scriptwriter in the sky.”
“Goddam cynical Mex.”
Wager was in no hurry now; he followed the Mach-1 automatically, staying a block behind, letting it make a light or two, and then catching up casually. He was busy thinking of what this might mean: nothing yet for the courtroom, but a definite tie between a known drop and the Rare Things; another healthy piece of evidence for a subpoena. Good old Rafael: the eyes mocking and the voice thick with overdone sincerity. He couldn’t resist taunting Wager, couldn’t deny himself the pleasure of gloating, couldn’t forget the old rivalries of childhood. Must be something in the blood, thought Wager—something that made it all worth so much more when there was an audience, a competitor to dance in front of, a loser to taunt. Well, he knew that tune, too; he could dance to those guitars.
“He’s turning right.”
“He’ll pull in behind the store.” Wager turned a block short
and cruised slowly down the alley to watch the distant tail-lights brake and swing behind a jutting wall. He waited a few moments and then drove past the car parked in the graveled lot.
“Beautiful,” said Billy again, and logged in the car’s arrival.
Wager nodded and turned back past the bar at the end of the block to park across from the dark front of the Rare Things. “Let’s give it a few minutes.”
“Right.”
Rafael had challenged him, and Wager had accepted it. Accepted publicly, in a way, with his second visit to the store. Rafael wouldn’t miss the meaning of that; and while it might make him more cautious, it would also mean it was his move. The move would be to push a little more dope a little faster, to score even while he was being watched and so to demonstrate machismo.
The minutes ticked into an hour. Finally, Billy, who had been yawning wider and wider, said, “Let’s hang it up—they’re probably in there playing poker and eating tacos.”
Wager spent the next morning with Billy filling out the affidavit for a telephone tap on the Rare Things. Denby came in around eleven with a report from Ma Bell’s records. “The only thing might be this.” He pointed to notations of long-distance calls to the same number in Juarez, Mexico. They occurred at fairly regular intervals—at least once and often twice a month for over a year. Most were less than three minutes.
“That strengthens the affidavit,” said Billy.
Denby was trying his best not to feel sulky. “Say, you guys really hit it good with Martinez. Congratulations!” He rubbed at his nose with the handkerchief. “But if he’s a new snitch, how can you call him a ‘previously reliable informant’?”
Billy winked. “We lie a little. Hell, Denby, if every informant we use has to be ‘previously reliable,’ how would we ever get a new one admitted in court?”
“Besides,” said Wager, “I’m the one swearing to it, and he was very reliable about giving me his name.”
“Ha-ha,” said Denby.
Suzy had the half-dozen legal-sized pages typed by early afternoon and Wager took them to Sergeant Johnston. “How soon can this be acted on?”
Johnston read the pages slowly. “Good—this really looks good, Gabe. Let’s go see the Inspector.”
Sonnenberg read even more slowly, penciling a note here and there in the margins.
“Who’s the informant?”
Wager told him. “I haven’t used him before, Inspector. But what he says squares with Alvarez’s movements. And I think he’s too scared to lie.”
“Any corroborating evidence from other sources?”
“Nothing I could bring into court. I had two people on it, but one was blown and had to leave town; I haven’t had a report from the other one yet.”
Sonnenberg carved a notch in the end of a maduro and lit it slowly; he had a ritual of heating the tip before he drew on it. “The DEA has never tailed Alvarez to El Paso?”
“No, sir.”
“And customs has nothing on him?”
“Only on Valdez, but they don’t want me to touch him. I’m still waiting for routine information to come in on him.”
“Hmm.” The Inspector gazed out the window toward the gray stone of the capitol building.
Sergeant Johnston cleared his throat. “It’s a family operation, Inspector. It would be harder than hell to get anybody into it from the outside. Gabe did real good to get hold of this one informant.”
A ring of thick yellow cigar smoke bounced once on the affidavit and lifted heavily into the air. Wager watched it spread wide and curl inside itself; it had almost dissipated when Sonnenberg said, “Well, you did follow that car from the Clarkson drop to the store. It’s thin, but we’ll give the Rare Things number a try. The residence”—he shook his head—”no chance. Denby’s on this with you, isn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How’s he working out?”
“Fine, sir.”
“All right. I’ll see if Judge Weinberg’s got time this afternoon.”
Wager had a mid-afternoon lunch; Johnston was waiting when he came back. “Let’s go, Gabe. Weinberg’s ready now.”
The hearing was in chambers; Wager was glad to see Sonnenberg come in. The judge nodded to them and pressed an intercom button for a recorder. She came in and set up her portable machine and mumbled a few introductory phrases into the speaker; the judge himself, thin lips scarcely moving, said to Wager, “Do you, Detective Gabriel Wager, swear that the information in this affidavit pertaining to the Rare Things Import Shop and dated 2 October 1973, and signed by you, is true and complete to the best of your knowledge, so help you God?”
“I do, sir.”
Judge Weinberg shoved his glasses up with his thumb. “Have you or any other law enforcement officers purchased or attempted to purchase heroin from the suspect, Rafael Alvarez?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not? Isn’t that the usual procedure?”
“It would be, sir, if the suspect’s operation—alleged operation—was not a family thing. He doesn’t handle the heroin except at the buy, at the cut, and maybe sometimes for a few people he already knows. I don’t think any officer could get high enough in the operation to buy directly from him. We’d only get as far as third, maybe second, echelon people.”
Weinberg frowned at the affidavit, then looked up. “I’d prefer to see all the routine methods exhausted before granting a telephone tap.”
Sonnenberg spoke: “We understand that, Your Honor; but Detective Wager has been on this case for the last two months, and we’ve been extremely short-handed.”
“I hope you’re not implying that telephone taps should replace man power and normal procedures!”
“Of course not. I’m pointing out that, given our resources, we have followed all available routine avenues. The close-knit nature of the suspect activity—documented in the affidavit—is the real justification for our request. If one of our officers attempted infiltration in the usual manner, the results could easily be fatal to him. These individuals at the top are too well known to each other to be vulnerable to the usual information-gathering techniques.”
“I do understand that, Inspector.”
“Yes, Your Honor. But you should know, too, that the information which is needed to further the case against the suspects is not available by any other means. The circumstantial evidence clearly indicates a crime in progress at that address. The times and places of meetings, the runs to Mexico, the actual dealings are all discussed by these highly placed individuals only in strict privacy and only over their private telephone at the Rare Things.”
“Detective Wager was emphatic enough about that in the affidavit. But are you saying that corroborating evidence from the other informants is unavailable? I see only one lengthy statement in here from a firsthand informant. The remainder appears to be double hearsay.”
It was Wager’s turn. “I had another reliable informant on the case, sir, but his life was threatened and to protect him I had to send him out of town.”
“The informant was afraid for his life?”
“He sure was, Your Honor. And he never got anywhere near Alvarez himself.”
The judge said “Hmm” and reached for the old-fashioned pen on his desk. “It’s a borderline case, but I’ll do it this one time.” He dated and signed the affidavit’s subscription line and told the clerk to fill in a court order for his verification. “But if the telephone tap does not result in substantial information by the time this court order expires, I will not renew it.”
“We understand, sir.” They stood in patient silence while the judge, tilting his head back to read carefully through his bifocals, signed the court order.
In the hall outside chambers, Sonnenberg coldly nipped a cigar with his silver cutter. “We used up a lot of good will on that one, Wager.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Get on over to Ma Bell and set up the tap”—he prodded the unlit cigar at Wager’s chest—”and make damn certain that
it pays off.”
“Yes, sir.”
It took the rest of the afternoon before Wager completed the arrangements at the telephone company. Each office he was passed to had to read the order and verify it with someone else, until the final office, high up in the ugly yellow building, finally called Sonnenberg. Wager could hear the squawk of the Inspector’s voice from where he sat.
“I can’t help that, Mr. Sonnenberg.” The man behind the desk wore a dark suit and a medium-wide tie with muted stripes, the kind of clothes that emphasized his anonymity. He passed his hand over the thinning hair on his head. “We have our federal regulations to follow on a matter of this sort, and we also have to follow company procedures in checking this—er—special equipment out of our warehouse. …. No, not until tomorrow … You said you wanted a pen register, and I’ll have it tomorrow. No sooner. … Fine—good-bye.” He looked at Wager with hostility. “I’ll need your signature on this form and a copy of the court order. Your men will have to monitor the equipment—I don’t have the personnel to do it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Clinton. I’ll have a detective over here first thing in the morning.”
“Not here! Send him to the properties building on Arapahoe Street.”
“Who should he see?”
“Tell him to ask for Mr. Osborne.”
The OCD office was closed when Wager returned, and he let himself in with the passkey. The door buzzed louder than usual in the silence of the room, and he was grateful for the building’s emptiness that offered a few moments’ quiet in a day otherwise filled with endless words. He left a note on Suzy’s typewriter about Mr. Osborne and told her to notify Sonnenberg as soon as she came in. In the center of the blotter on his desk lay a thin folder with “El Paso” printed in Suzy’s hand; inside was an abstract of the El Paso file on Valdez: place and date of birth, current residences in El Paso and in Juarez, physical description, a list of half a dozen entries in the arrest column and half as many in the conviction column. All before 1968. Wager studied the charges; the last arrest was for transporting with intent to sell—if he had been convicted of that charge, it would have been the fourth major sentence, and that was the handle customs had on him. It was a good one. That, and a free pass across the border. Wager copied the data into his notebook and sat in the silence to feel around the outlines of the plan that was forming in his imagination. Occasionally he made a note or two: names, sequences, special logistical support. But most of the time was spent in what his fellow officers would call daydreaming. And he supposed he would have to call it that, too—even though the daydreams all centered on the case at hand—because they were guesses and possibilities and maybes that very seldom came about. But he enjoyed picturing the variety of ways the pieces of the puzzle fit together; enjoyed starting first with one item and then another, and following step by step the links between the new A and the new Z.