by Rex Burns
“Yeah, well, you better hustle, though. These dudes don’t stay set up for long in one place.”
When he telephoned his information to Johnston, the sergeant had the same reaction as Gabe. “It sounds too good to be true.”
“Eso vale su precio..”
“What?”
“It’s cheap at the price.”
“I guess it is. But what about manpower? Hansen and Ashcroft are already putting in twenty, thirty hours overtime, and we sure as hell don’t want to fumble the ball up in Nederland. Even for this. Maybe we should let the Springs handle it.”
They could just turn it over to D.E.A. or to the Pikes Peak regional drug unit. But Ernie trusted Wager; he had been a good C.I. in the past, and to turn the case over to another unit would toss Ernie away. “You really want that?”
“No. It’s your tip and you got the right to be in on it.”
And that gave O.C.D. a right to the credit, too. “I’ve been sitting on my tail for two weeks wasting the taxpayer’s money. If this is as cut-and-dried as it sounds, it shouldn’t take long.”
“Let me ask the inspector. I’ll get back to you.”
It took less than five minutes. “The inspector’s hot to go, Gabe; it seems somebody up in D.E.A. told the Denver office to cool it about the Rietman thing and to work—what was the word?—amicably? Anyway, to cooperate fully with the local agencies.”
“We kiss and make up?”
“That’s it. The inspector’s asking D.E.A. to get a foursquare deposition from L.A. He wants to see how sincere they are. As soon as it’s here, they’ll pick up a warrant and send an agent over.”
“Good. I’ll call back.” Wager began to feel like a cop again, and it was good.
Hansen called just before supper. “One of my C.I.s tried to set you up with Bruce the Juice, but the son of a bitch is cagey. He won’t meet you unless my man comes along.”
“So?”
“Well, my C.I. says no.”
“Your C.I. said ‘no’!”
“Yeah, Gabe. I’m sorry.”
Sorry, shit. That C.I. might be in Hansen’s stable, but by God Wager needed him. “Can I talk to your man?”
“You really want him that bad?”
He wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t so. “I do.”
“He’ll probably want me to come along.”
“Where can we meet? Tonight.”
“I’ll call back.”
Hansen wasn’t happy, and that was too God damned bad. But he called anyway, just as Wager was rinsing the few supper dishes and stacking them in the dishwasher with the breakfast stuff. “Suppose we see you over at Forty-second and York at ten.”
It was as good a place as any—a mixture of residential and commercial, where cars parked along dark streets wouldn’t draw attention. “Fine.”
Wager’s sedan was there before the hour, the radio pack under the front seat quietly monitoring the action of Denver’s District 1. A few minutes after ten, Hansen came up on the primary channel: “Two-one-two, what’s your ten-twenty?”
“East of York on Forty-second,” said Wager.
“Ten-seventy-seven in five minutes.”
“O.K.”
He slumped in the seat to lower his profile against the dim glow of a streetlight and the glaring lights of busy York street; within the five minutes, he saw Hansen’s pale blue Plymouth swing off York and cruise past, the circle of a face turned toward his car. Wager clicked his transmit button twice and the blue car wheeled around in front of a low brick building marked “GORDON’S BOOKS, WHOLESALE ONLY.” It pulled up behind him, and the lights were turned off. Wager got out and walked to Hansen’s car.
The detective’s face lifted from the dark window. “Hi, Gabe. This is Larry.” Wager nodded at the shadowy figure across the seat. “He said he’d hear what you had to say.”
“That’s real nice.” Wager smelled cheap, sweet bourbon on Larry’s breath. The profile showed a round skull with straight hair slicked back to curl in a little feathery ledge at the thin nape. He was new to Wager.
“Roger here tells me you want to lay one on the Juice.”
“No. On his suppliers.”
“I don’t know, man. I never had much to do with the Juice.”
“Just tell him your regular contact ran out and you’ve got a heavy customer to supply.”
“I don’t know. It might look funny.”
“It’ll look a hell of a lot funnier if I go pop this Juice and say you were the one who put me on him.”
“Hey, what’s this shit? Hansen, you told me this guy just wanted to talk about things!”
“Cool it, Gabe. We can work something out.”
Who the hell was in whose stable? “I need that contact, Rog. It is God damned important.”
“I know, I know. Look, Larry, you’ll be covered by Bruce the Juice, right? Gabe doesn’t even want the guy—he’s not big enough. He just wants to use him for an in.”
“Yeah, well, Bruce’ll remember who brought him in, too. I mean the Juice ain’t dumb, you know.” The voice dropped slightly: “Besides, I don’t dig getting hassled, you know what I mean? I don’t have to put up with that shit—I don’t owe him shit, or anybody else.”
Wager leaned forward to get a good view of the thin face.
“What are you looking at?”
Wager smiled widely. “You. People always need favors sooner or later, and I want to remember you good when you need a favor. I want to remember you said you didn’t owe anybody anything.”
“Hey, now … Hey, now …”
“Come on, Gabe, just let me talk to him!”
“Larry, you maybe don’t owe me nothing, but I can fix it so you’ll look over your shoulder every time you goddam jaywalk. I can fix it so you can’t goddam take a piss without breaking some law.”
“Hey, now!”
“Come on, Gabe!”
“I’ll wait in my car for two minutes, Larry. Either the deal goes down or you do.”
It took less than a minute. Hansen, a shadow in the streetlight, bent to Wager’s window. “He’s a good C.I., Gabe, and he’s mine.”
“One cop’s C.I. is another cop’s crook—you know that. And they’d better.”
“But he’s still a human being, Gabe, and goddamn it, you didn’t need to lean on him to make him do it. He just likes to mouth off a little. I could have talked him into it.”
“He’s scum. If you don’t step on scum, it steps on you. When is he taking me up to Nederland?”
“Jesus, Gabe.” Hansen’s shadow slowly shook its head. “He’ll call Bruce. It’ll be sometime this weekend.”
“Good.”
Both calls came two days later: Hansen telephoning for his snitch (“Larry’s still a little pissed off—he, ah, wanted me to let you know the meet’s set”), and Sergeant Johnston saying the deposition had arrived and the warrant was being made out. “Kickoff’s in three hours.”
It was 2 P.M. now. “I’m supposed to be in Boulder at nine.”
Johnston thought it over. “You don’t have to be in on this—it’s up to you.”
“I’d like to—I’m tired of just farting around. Suppose me and the D.E.A. people go down and look over the place now and you bring the warrant when it’s ready?”
“No, we have to get a lab tech, too. We’d better all go together.” Johnston also sounded tired of just sitting. “I’ll try to hurry things up. Come on over to the office and we’ll leave as soon as possible.”
A little more than two hours later, as Wager and Johnston walked past the inspector’s door on the way to their car, Sonnenberg called out, “Are you going to the Springs now?”
“Yes, sir,” Johnston answered. “D.E.A. said the warrant’s on its way down, and Gabe has to be in Boulder tonight. We’re going over to the lab and pick up Mrs. Nelson now.”
Sonnenberg reached for his coat. “Give me your keys—I’ll drive. I’m damned tired of just sitting around this office.”
“Yo
u, sir?”
“Is something wrong with that?”
“No, sir, but …” Sergeant Johnston shut up.
They stopped at the police laboratory and the sergeant went in for Mrs. Nelson. A squarely built woman in a dark pants suit, she smiled shyly at Wager and Sonnenberg as Johnston introduced them. “Is there room for my kit back here?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Wager, grunting to lift the red toolbox across the seat.
“All set?” asked Sonnenberg, and had the car rolling before Johnston had shut his door. The car filled with cigar smoke as the inspector leaned it through the Sixth Avenue interchange onto I-25 South. “It’s a beautiful day for a bust! We should have brought Suzy. Has she ever participated in field operations?”
“No, sir, but—”
“Well, next time something like this happens, let’s get her out. It’s good for morale.”
“Yes, sir,” said Johnston. “I’ll try to set something up.”
The inspector made it sound like a picnic instead of business; Wager didn’t think he should take it so casually. He had noticed it before: when a tip came too easily, everybody seemed to think it was a goddam picnic.
“How are you doing with Farnsworth, Gabe?”
He told him.
“It’s really that closed up there?”
“Yes, sir.”
The inspector frowned and drove in silence. “Keep at it for a while, anyway. God knows we could use you here, but Farnsworth would be a big feather in our cap.”
As if Wager didn’t know. “Yes, sir.”
They began to clear the underpasses of downtown. Over the lowering banks of the freeway, clusters of raw and treeless apartments, condominiums, sprawling split-level houses gradually thinned into gray-green clumps of sagebrush and the yellowing buffalo grass of late summer.
“Where did D.E.A. say they would meet us?”
“At Fillmore Street, sir.”
“Did they say who they were sending?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, I hope they’re there. I don’t want to wait all day for them.”
“Yes, sir.”
The inspector radioed the Highway Patrol to clear his passage, then set the speedometer needle on ninety. “Great day for a bust!”
From the back seat, Wager saw the muscles in Sergeant Johnston’s neck tense; and despite the smile in his own mind at the sergeant’s fear, he had to force himself to look relaxed for Mrs. Nelson. She was wide-eyed enough without seeing anxiety in him. If he had been driving, he would have been relaxed; but, like a lot of trained drivers, he never trusted anyone else behind the wheel, and that unease was compounded by an embarrassment that came with hearing the inspector chatter like an excited rookie. An inspector’s place was at his desk where he gave orders, asked hard questions, and kept the politicians off your back. Excitement just wasn’t professional.
The D.E.A. had not yet made it to the rendezvous; and during the half-hour they had to wait, the inspector asked twice, “Where are they?” and Sergeant Johnston answered twice, “I don’t know, sir.” It was a stupid question and a stupid answer, and everybody, including Mrs. Nelson, knew it. Wager began to wish he hadn’t come along. At last, a car whose absence of color or ornament marked it as official twisted down the off-ramp and pulled into the parking area behind a gas station where they sat. One of two men stepped out of the car. Wager didn’t recognize either agent, though Sonnenberg did: “That’s Petersen, assistant to the regional director. It looks as if they wanted to have seniority over us. It’ll make him overjoyed to see me.” Sonnenberg got out and shook hands. Wager, Johnston, and the lab tech waited while the men smiled at each other and then Sonnenberg introduced them to Petersen. Finally all the preliminaries were over.
“We’ve got the warrant, Inspector Sonnenberg. Do you want to follow us over?”
“Sergeant Johnston knows the town. Why don’t we lead, Agent Petersen?”
Only the slightest hesitation. “Fine, Inspector.” D.E.A. was cooperating amicably with local agencies.
Johnston, a map of Colorado Springs spread on his knees, guided the inspector east to Academy Boulevard and then south toward the municipal airport. They entered one of those light-industrial areas made up of sprawling one-story buildings and fenced storage yards. This late in the afternoon, the streets were drained of cars, and only an occasional tiny home not yet bought for business purposes brought any life to the area. Sonnenberg swung once around an almost windowless cinder-block building squatting on a corner. A chain-link fence marked the bare back yard; a black-and-white sign over the door said, “PETROLEUM CHEMICAL SUPPLY.” The inspector keyed his transmitter: “Can you cover the rear of the building? I’ll put one of my people on the yard side and one on the street side.”
Wager felt better; the silly excitement of the ride down had been replaced by the calm, slow voice that came when the inspector was really concentrating on a case.
“My man will be back there. I’ll see you at the front door.”
Petersen would be amicable, but he wouldn’t surrender. The D.E.A. vehicle turned out of sight. Sonnenberg glanced at Wager. “You cover this side. Ed, you take the yard side. Mrs. Nelson, you just sit tight in the car.”
Wager nodded and slid out of the vehicle. This wall of the gray building had only two windows, both closed and high off the ground. He placed himself at the corner nearest the front door in case the inspector and Petersen needed a quick backup; the D.E.A. vehicle returned and the two cars swung quickly into the shallow parking area at the building’s front. “Check in” came over his radio, and he waited his turn: “Two-one-two, set.”
“Going in.”
The slam of the car doors was followed by quick steps in the gravel, making Wager aware of just how quiet the buildings and yards were. He rested his hand on the familiar .45 Star tucked out of sight under the tail of his sport coat and waited.
The inspector’s voice popped on the radio. “The front door’s locked and barred. Ed, do you or Gabe have access?”
“There’s a door over here,” said Johnston. “It’s got a window I can knock out.”
“Let me get around to cover you.”
“Ten-four.”
The shatter of glass, followed by more long minutes of silence. Finally, Sonnenberg radioed, “It’s empty. We’ll see you at the front door.”
Johnston let them in; a sharp chemical smell stung deep into Wager’s sinuses, and his shoes crackled loudly on the almost vacant concrete floor.
“I think we’ve got something!” The inspector’s voice bounced around a fiberboard partition along one wall. “Ed, get the technician in here.”
The sergeant brought her in; the embarrassment was gone and she walked quickly, leaning against the heavy pull of the toolbox. “This way, ma’am; I think we really scored.”
The working part of the laboratory was set on a long bench blocked from any accidental view through the windows. Spaced along the shelf were five glass beakers the size of basketballs; scattered here and there and stoppered with corks or covered with aluminum foil were smaller jars and beakers, all of which held liquids or powders. Among the scattered work gloves, paper towels, glass tubes, and stirring rods, hoses and clips led from one container to another.
“Sweet Jesus,” said Petersen. “I’ve never seen a lab this big!”
The technician studied the setup and then busily drew a sample from the last beaker filled with thick white powder; the liquid reagent slid into the test tube and she swirled it slightly, lifting the glass against the overhead light. “It colors, Inspector.”
“Ex-cel-lent! Is it MDA?”
“It’s of that family. I’ll have to run laboratory tests to determine the exact composition. But it’s enough for presumptive positive.”
“I’d like to send some down to our Dallas lab, too,” said Petersen.
“We got plenty,” said Johnston.
“Do you know what this stuff sells for?” The other D.E.A. man scratched
in the clipped hair of his head and stared at the beaker. “On the street, it’s three dollars a dose; and you figure maybe ten thousand doses to an ounce of pure powder. And there must be thirty pounds of shit—pardon me, ma’am—stuff in that one jug!”
Wager stared. Even wholesale, this shelf of goodies ran almost $200,000. And this was just one shipment. Of how many? “How long does it take to turn out a jar of the stuff?”
Mrs. Nelson glanced up from the evidence label she was filling in. “The way the process is set up, they can turn out thirty pounds every twelve hours.” She pointed her pencil at two other beakers filled with opaque liquid. “That’s going through the final stage now. After desiccation, each flask should produce about ten pounds of powder.”
Two hundred thousand dollars every twelve hours! “Wow,” said Wager, and he meant it. “That’s almost a day’s pay for an honest cop. And all tax-free.”
“There’s a tax,” said Sonnenberg. “I aim to tax these people ten or fifteen years. Agent Petersen, can you have your local man get out a John Doe warrant for the owners and/or operators of this establishment?”
“You bet I can.” He strode quickly to his car and its radio.
“By gosh, Gabe.” The inspector lit a fresh cigar, the odor of its tobacco resting sluggishly on the sharper chemical smell. “You’ve got your hands on a good C.I.—let’s give him top pay.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, thinking of Bruce the Juice and Larry. “I wish I had more like him.”
CHAPTER 5
THE MEET WITH Bruce the Juice took place in Boulder’s Chautauqua Park. It was the kind of area where the dark and narrow roads were lined with cars whose occupants—neckers, underage beer drinkers, dope dealers—could see any trouble coming across the grassy moonlit lawns. Larry was still sulking, but at least the whiskey smell was gone.
“I don’t know you after this, Officer Gabe whatever-your-name-is.”
“Don’t get my hopes up.”
“I just plain don’t like you, you know what I mean?”