The Alvarez Journal: A Gabe Wager Novel

by Rex Burns

  The early glare faded into the cold overcast of a slow-moving storm somewhere out of sight beyond the wall of mountains, and Wager wondered anxiously at the amount of business the telephone did. Hardly an hour went by when someone didn’t use it, and they always seemed to spend at least twenty minutes gabbing and grinning and noting addresses.

  “Maybe it’s a bookie’s phone,” said Billington through the sliding window behind the truck’s seat.

  “Tourists,” said Denby. “Used to be springtime was tourist season; now it’s all the time. I’ve had seven sets of my wife’s relatives visit us in the last six months. All with kids.”

  “Jesus. No wonder she likes to go to movies.”

  That was still a sore point with Denby. “Yeah. You think Francisco was pulling us through the grease?”

  “If he was,” said Wager, “I’ll kill the son of a bitch.”

  A little after ten, an El Paso County sheriff’s car pulled up and a figure wearing sunglasses stepped slowly from the cruiser to stare at their license plate before easing up to the truck. “You fellows having any trouble?”

  Wager stepped down from the warmth of the cab and showed his identification. “We’re waiting for a call from Denver telling us our suspect’s on his way.”

  “Oh—sorry. The guy in the gas station was suspicious. Can our office help out?”

  “We’ll just wait here for the call.”

  “Well, if you want any help …”

  “You’ll hear us asking.”

  Near noon the phone rang. Sergeant Johnston’s voice came through on a good connection this time: “I been calling the last half hour, but the goddam line was busy!”

  “A lot of tourists have been using the phone.”

  “For Christ’s sake, you should have put up a sign saying it was out of order.”

  “I didn’t think of it. What do you have?”

  “Rafael and one Chicano male in his mid-twenties left the Rare Things at eleven-twenty-five. They drove to an apartment at 3422 Kalamath and picked up a 1972 Pontiac Le Mans, tan, license AF 1306. The second unit’s with them now, driving a 1972 Impala, white over green, license BC 7508. They’re on their way.”

  “Got it. We’ll move to the rendezvous.”

  Denby leaned over his shoulder as he hung up. “That it?”

  “Yeah.” Wager flipped through the pages of his Alvarez journal. “They’re driving Henry’s Le Mans.”

  Billy looked at his watch. “Figure an hour?”

  “Time for a quick lunch—unless you want me to cook up some canned chop suey.”

  “Tell you what: I’ll buy you lunch if you promise not to cook.”

  After eating, they moved the truck to the wide pull-off that opened to a view of the distant Academy buildings glinting among dark pines on the foothills. The traffic on I-25 was light but steady: numbers of tractor-trailers blasting past and gearing down for the weigh station just up the road, cars whistling on the long decline into Colorado Springs from Monument Hill. At 1:35, a thin, terse voice came through the police frequency calling Wager’s number. “We’re on I-25 approaching the checkpoint. Acknowledge.”

  “Read you. Come up on two.”

  A few minutes later, the unmarked car passed and they pulled in behind it. “I didn’t see any tan Le Mans,” said Billy.

  “Me either. I hope they didn’t screw things up.”

  Billy keyed the transmit button: “We’re behind you.”

  The same voice came in on a strong signal over channel 2: “We see you behind us. The suspects are three cars ahead, a 1974 Caddy El Dorado, black, Colorado license AN 2538.”

  “We heard they were driving a tan Pontiac Le Mans.”

  “They were. And then they switched again in the parking lot at Cinderella City. I didn’t see them move any luggage; somebody else must have set it up this morning.”

  “A brand-new El Dorado! That son of a bitch likes to ride in style.” Billy braced the glasses on his knee and peered through the windshield. “There it is—two men, license AN 2538. Man, I hope we can keep up with them.”

  Wager transmitted: “We have them now. Turn off whenever you want to.”

  “Roger. And good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  The highway south from Colorado Springs skirted the edge of Fort Carson, and the only things breaking the monotony of rolling grassy hills were occasional tank hulls burned black from target practice. Then the road started its long tilts uphill and down across the prairie and the dry washes, and it was safe to let the Cadillac become a glittering black dot miles down the pavement. Wager pulled up close again as they neared Pueblo, but the black car stayed on the freeway arcing through and over the town, past the slag heaps and towering chimneys of the steel mills, and back onto the emptiness of the prairie. They made one stop at a roadside park, Wager slowing to ease the truck into a distant slot as the two men from the Cadillac went into the concrete bathroom.

  “Man, I wish they’d hurry!” Denby danced up and down beside the truck and tried to stay out of the cold wind that flattened the stiff buffalo grass. Finally, the black car pulled onto the highway and Denby raced for the toilet.

  “You think we’ll have snow?” Billy studied the thick layer of high clouds that made the westering sun a pale circle.

  “It sure feels like it.”

  “Maybe it’ll slow the bastard down.”

  Harsh and cold, Greenhorn Mountain swung slowly past in the west, and at Walsenburg they picked up the Spanish Peaks looking close and sharp in the winter light. It began to snow just north of Trinidad, and by the time they gassed up and began the climb to Raton Pass, they had to turn on their lights in the grayness of snow and early dusk. Denby was driving now, hunching over the wheel and clenching his teeth as the truck edged awkwardly this way and that on the ice patches that began to glint on the highway.

  “Can you see him up ahead?” asked Billy.

  “Hell, I’m too busy to look!”

  Wager, in the camper, climbed up to the small window at the front of the cabin. “I see some tail-lights—two sets—a mile or so up the road.”

  “Can you go a little faster?”

  “Jesus, Billy, this thing’s already sliding around.”

  They rode in tense silence as the wet snow began to make thick white streaks through the headlights.

  “You think they’ll drive all night?” Billy unwrapped a chocolate bar and passed it around.

  “I think we’d better get closer to them.”

  “I’m doing what I can, Wager!”

  “You want me to drive awhile?” asked Billy.

  Denby stomped the gas pedal, making the rear of the truck twist sharply sideways. “No. I’ll do it.”

  They crossed the pass and began to gain going downhill; Denby’s hands clutched at the swaying wheel and his foot patted the brake pedal lightly.

  “Is that them?” Billington pointed out faint red lights.

  After a few minutes, Denby said, “No. That’s a Ford.”

  The truck roared past the snow-crusted car, the other driver a pale, tense glimmer in the headlights’ glow.

  “Gabe, go up and see if you can spot them.”

  “The window’s covered with snow. I can’t see out.”

  “Goddam, goddam. All we have to do is lose the bastard. How fast are we going?”

  Denby glanced quickly at the speedometer and then back to the highway, the sides of which were almost invisible under the snow. “Sixty … too goddam fast for this pile of crap.”

  “Keep on it. There’s some more tail-lights.”

  Slowly they drew closer through the curtain of falling snow. Billy balanced the binoculars and squinted through them. “OK, OK—that’s them. Slow down some.”

  The truck lurched as Denby yanked his foot off the gas and sighed deeply, his shoulders sagging with relief. “Son of a bitch! I don’t want to do that again soon.”

  They followed the Cadillac’s red lights along sweeping turns throug
h the high valleys of northeast New Mexico, losing them for a frantic five minutes as they merged with other lights nearing Santa Fe.

  “There—that gas station!” Wager pointed to the roadside where the empty Cadillac sat getting gas from a pump. “Pull in between the car and the building; I have an idea.”

  Denby eased the creaking vehicle across the snow-wet concrete between the sedan and the small office. “Trade places with Billy—take a minute or two to stretch.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Fix it so we can see him.” Wager opened the back door to peek through the door hinge. Both men were in the gas-station office talking to the attendant. Wager quickly hopped out and, swinging hard with a can of chow mein, split one of the tail-light lenses. He tugged out a ragged piece of red plastic and darted back to the truck. “OK, let’s go.”

  Billy pulled the truck back into the traffic. “I think you just broke the law.”

  Wager studied the dent in the chow-mein label. “They don’t make cans like they used to.”

  A few minutes later, they sighted the black car on the highway behind them, and they slowed to let it pass. The white glare of the naked bulb made it easy to spot the car and they dropped farther back in traffic.

  “He’s heading for Albuquerque.”

  “Probably stopped to find out the road conditions.”

  Early-evening traffic crowded the freeway between Santa Fe and Albuquerque; the snow was mixed with rain and beginning to freeze on the pavement. Occasionally they flashed past the winking blue light of a sand truck, but more often the slush froze in an icy sheet that kept Billy whistling half-tunes through his teeth as he twitched the wheel back and forth.

  “Can you still see them?”

  “No. Hey, upstairs!” He beat on the cab wall until Denby answered with a groggy “What?”

  “Is that window clear yet?”

  “Yeah, a corner of it.”

  “Use these—see if you can spot them.” He passed the glasses through the sliding window into the cooler air of the drafty camper.

  A minute or two later, Denby’s head hung down from the upper bunk. “They’re about six cars up and getting in the right lane. I think they’re looking for a place to stop.”

  “Keep your eye on them.”

  Billington changed lanes and slowed, and they waited word from Denby.

  “Right—there they go into the Silver Spur Motel. It’s up a block on the right.”

  “Speed up, Billy.”

  They flashed past the glare of the motel’s wet neon, and Wager had a quick glimpse of one figure opening the office door while the other stood in the shelter of the apron and stretched his arms high.

  “Take the next right and let’s give them a few minutes.”

  Waiting fifteen, they returned down the highway and backed the truck into a side street two blocks from the motel. With the glasses, they could see the Caddy now parked in slot 10. Wager put the 1000-millimeter lens on the camera and shot a picture. Billy rummaged in the cooler and lifted out a Coors. “Who said they wanted a beer?”

  Denby had the first watch, then Billy, and finally Wager. He was dusting the shells of a boiled egg out of his lap when he saw the Caddy’s exhaust begin to smoke in the morning light. “Let’s go”

  “Wait a goddam minute!” Billy clanked pots and drawers in the camper. “I still got some dishwater to get rid of!”

  “What the hell do you have to wash after boiling eggs?”

  Denby climbed into the rider’s seat and sleepily rubbed his nose with a handkerchief. “Jesus, it’s cold. At least the snow’s stopped. I wish I had some more coffee.”

  It gradually cleared and warmed as they went down New Mexico along the broad piñon-dotted valley between the San Andres Mountains and the Black Range. By one o’clock, when they arrived at Las Cruces, the cab windows were down and Denby was sneezing and cursing the dust. “Here”—Billy popped open another beer—”this’ll help settle the dust.”

  When they reached El Paso, Denby was asleep in the heat of the camper. Billy said, “Let him sleep,” and trained the glasses on the black Cadillac; its brake light flashed white in the traffic. “He’s going to that motel.”

  “Right.”

  A half-hour later, the Cadillac, with Rafael driving and alone, was on its way again, down between the crowded signs nearing the border and into the line across the Cordova Street Bridge. Billy, now driving, nosed the truck up to the bored Mexican official waving cars past.

  “Your destination, please?”

  “Juarez.”

  “You’re all United States citizens?” He peered at Wager.

  “Right—we’re down for a little, what do you call it, fiesta!”

  “Ha, fiesta! Bienvenido a México—welcome to Mexico.” His hand flapped them past.

  “Hey, Gabe, you’re right at home here!”

  In time he might be, and it was an odd double-self feeling to think that outwardly he would be indistinguishable from the swarms of brown-faced people moving, standing, talking on the dirty sidewalks and curbs. But instead of feeling comfortably invisible, he felt even more isolated, because inwardly he would never be like them. Inwardly, he felt as alien and touristy as the patches of white faces—nosy, nervous, gap-mouthed with laughter—moving across the band of darker Mexican faces. It was not home, and though he had not really thought too much about it one way or the other, he was still a little surprised at the distance between him as a Hispano and these Mexicans. And he wondered if the younger Chicano kids, for all they said, felt any more at home down south. He felt like just another tourist wandering in strange streets, and the streets themselves had a total lack of dignity that almost made him sick: a tinsel carnival of color, loud recorded mariachis, hooting vendors, grimy kids tugging at tourists’ sleeves, junky stores for junky customers, filth, hot smells, and—unending—the sense of humanity crowded too close to rub and spit and clutch without befouling each other. “Stick with Rafael—there he goes up there.”

  “I see him.”

  They closed up as much as the crowds of cars would let them, and followed the large black car as it turned in to a side street on which bars, shops, and lawyers’ offices soon gave way to small hotels and finally to a fringe of tin and egg-crate shacks and crumbling adobe walls.

  “Wow, what a smell!” Billy said. “Hey, Denby, did you brush your teeth this morning?”

  His muffled voice answered from the hot cab: “I brush my teeth every morning!”

  “Then it must be you, Gabe. Your Mexican’s starting to ooze out.”

  “You smell your upper lip.”

  The truck lurched off the rough pavement into a cloud of dust raised by the car ahead. Through the clatter and squeal of gear in the back, they heard Denby sneeze a dozen times.

  “He’s turning right.”

  The slum section suddenly gave way to larger houses, with more space between them and surrounded by thick stone walls topped by broken bottles stuck in concrete. As the road climbed a small rise and cars grew even scarcer in the clinging dust, Billy let the Cadillac move away. “I’m pretty sure I remember where he’s headed. We’re getting near Valdez’s place.” He gazed intently at the brightly trimmed houses rising over the peeling street walls. “Yeah, I remember for sure now. It should be up another turn and then off to the left. We’ll be able to see the house soon.”

  Reaching the turn, Billy pointed to the boxy house rising yellow-white in the late-afternoon glare. Like the others, it had iron grilles over the first-floor windows and trays of bright flowers along the second floor. The flowers and heat and glare made it hard to realize it was late October. Billy drove past the street, then swung the truck around in a rutted alley between two blank walls. They eased back down the slope until they could see the black car shimmering in the silent whiteness of the dirt road. Wager shot a few pictures with the 300-millimeter lens and they waited.

  At 5:17, Rafael came out; Billy and Wager ducked out of sight behind t
he dash while Denby, muffling sneezes and cursing the heat trapped by the baking tin roof of the camper, took pictures through the front window and told them what was happening.

  “He’s turning around and waiting. Here comes another car out of the driveway. A 1972 Buick Special, metallic blue, Mexican plates. A man’s driving, accompanied by a woman passenger. Stay low, here they come.”

  Wager heard the Caddy’s tires crunch through the dirt, followed by the Buick.

  “It’s Valdez,” he told Billy. “Valdez probably has the dope. He’ll cross it in his car and then transfer it to Rafael.”

  “You want to stay with them?”

  “Give them plenty of room.”

  The two cars went directly back to the Cordova Street Bridge Port of Entry. Denby could see over the line of cars between them as they queued up to cross. The Cadillac was held up for a quick search of the trunk and a look at Rafael’s identification; the Buick, two or three cars back, was greeted with a smile and a quick wave.

  “Christ, they didn’t even open the trunk!”

  “That’s his reward for being a snitch—all the heroin he can carry.”

  The customs inspector leaned to their window. “You’re all American citizens?” He gazed at Wager. “You got identification, sir?”

  The three showed their drivers’ licenses.

  “Anything to declare?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Would you open up the back, please?”

  “Hell,” whispered Denby through the cab window, “let’s show him our law-enforcement ID before we lose them.”

  “Sit tight. I can still see the Buick. And we better not take a chance on a leak—you going to tell him we’re following his buddy that he just waved past?”

  A few clumps and bumps in the camper; then the agent motioned them on.

  “The Buick turned right four blocks down.”

  “OK.” Billy swerved around a slow line of cars, ignoring the startled anger of horns. “They’ve gone to the motel.”

  The two cars were in the motel’s parking lot. Rafael and his rider came out of the line of rooms and led the Buick back downtown. They followed the white flash of the broken tail-light through the early-evening traffic to the Continental Bus Lines depot. There the cars pulled to the curb, and the woman got out of Valdez’s car and opened the trunk. Rafael carefully stayed out of sight of the package that his rider lifted out of the Buick’s trunk. The rider and the dope disappeared into the bus station. Valdez and the woman pulled away, and Rafael, after waiting a moment or two, headed back to his motel. The big meet was over.