by Rex Burns
“Hello, Rog,” said Wager.
Hansen started. “Gabe? Good Lord, I can’t get used to the way you look. Say, you got some goodies! Do you know Liz? Liz Miller—Gabe Wager. He’s one of the best agents in the O.C.D.”
Wager nodded to the girl, whose smile was a little too tight and forced; it seemed to fit her need for sleep. “Pleased to meet you,” he said shortly; he did not like high-strung broads.
“Got time for some coffee? Liz and me are going for a cup.”
Wager shook his head and pushed the evidence envelope across the counter to the young woman, who logged it in. He turned to Hansen, “I would like to talk to you for a minute.”
They stepped a few feet down the hall, and leaned against the tan walls out of the way of the corridor traffic. “I want you to drop the word that there’s a Mr. Taco doing business.”
“Who’s that?”
“Me.”
“Ha. That’s a good one—I didn’t know you made jokes. What kind of word do you want out?”
“Ask a few people if they know anything about Mr. Taco. Say, ‘I hear he’s dealing, I want to know something about him.’ That’s all. Ask Fat Willy, ask your snitches; have them ask around, too.” The name, the question, the assumption would spread like oil through the drug community; in a week or two, Mr. Taco would be a fact; in a month, some snitch would swear he could set him up for a buy and bust.
“Any specialty?”
“No. And don’t be too specific. Just the name’s enough.”
“It sure is. Say, are you onto something?”
“Just a foot in the door. There’s still a long way to go.”
Wager let another week pass before he set up a third buy from Bruce, this time heroin and mescaline. And another week for a fourth. And another for a fifth. Between buys, he went through the motions with the paperwork that never stopped and that Suzy seemed to think was important enough to place in the center of his desk. Wager wondered if, when he died, he’d crawl into his coffin, and there—in the middle of the satin cushion—would be a pile of papers with Suzy’s note, “Gabe, please rush.”
Sergeant Johnston looked more and more worried each time Wager submitted a receipt for the week’s buy. “This is over nine thousand dollars, Gabe. I hope to God we reach the end zone soon.”
“First and ten, do it again.”
“What?”
“It’s only the first quarter of play, Ed. Don’t get tight now, or you might fumble the game away.”
“What game?”
“The Farnsworth game, Ed.”
“Oh. Ha-ha.”
“I want another civilian vehicle, too. Make it a Duster or something like that. Metallic green’s a nice color.”
“What the hell do you want with another car? That truck’s only two months old!”
“I’m a successful dealer—I’m rich.” He looked at the figures in his small notebook. “In these five weeks, I would’ve made twenty-two thousand dollars’ profit. I can afford a new car.”
“Maybe you can, but I don’t know if the department can.” He picked up the telephone. “The Inspector had better decide this one.”
The answer was yes. “White upholstery,” Wager said as he left. “It goes real good with metallic green. Mr. Taco is moving up in the world; he’s now un chulo grande.”
“Mr. Taco?” Sergeant Johnston’s pencil paused over the vehicle request form. “Chulo?”
“It’s all part of the game, Ed.”
“Yeah? Well, you ain’t getting a new car unless we can find one in the police lot. The inspector says. And you’re by God going to earn it, too—I’m putting you on routine surveillance when you’re not chasing Farnsworth. We’re so goddam short-handed that we’re paying more in overtime than in straight wages.”
Another week went by, this one faster; and Wager was glad to pass the time as part of routine surveillance teams scattered on different cases across the city. Some officers would bitch about it, but Gabe felt more at home slumped in a car seat and listening to the police frequencies than he did prowling around his apartment. At least the taxpayer was getting something for his money, and it made the time pass quicker.
He made two or three runs up to Nederland to dawdle over a beer in the Timber Line. Occasional figures associated with Farnsworth drifted in and out, and once Flint nodded briefly at him. Finally, Bruce the Juice came in followed by a boy about the same age who was even thinner.
“Hey, man, what’s happening? What are you doing up this way?”
Wager wagged a hand and pushed a chair with his foot. “I like this place; I didn’t know it was your turf.”
“Home is where the heart is. Jo-Jo, this is Gabe, the dude I told you about. He’s been doing a lot of heavy business with me.”
Wager raised his eyebrows.
“No problem, Gabe. Jo-Jo’s one of us, man. He’s a brother.”
Wager grinned lazily. “Let’s us brothers have a drink. This here country boy ain’t been so fat and happy since it rained in West Texas.”
“Cool,” said Jo-Jo, and lifted a hand for the bartender. In profile, his narrow face reminded Gabe of a hatchet, forehead and chin slanted back from the pointed tip of his nose. “If Juice ever drops you, let me know. I got a pipeline, too.”
Wager looked from one to the other. “I hope you brothers get along O.K.”
“Aw, yeah, man,” Bruce said, laughing. “No hassles—we don’t need to fight over customers. If I ever can’t cover you, Jo-Jo will. This is a good town. Up here, we got no heavies and no shit, you know?”
“And no cops?”
Bruce laughed again. “One marshal, who don’t know his ass from his elbow. The sweat comes from the outside—D.E.A. and shit like that.”
“Yeah,” said Jo-Jo. “Like that son of a bitch Chandler.”
“Hey, I warned everybody about that dude, didn’t I?” Bruce was annoyed now. “Didn’t I say he smelled like a fucking narc the first time I ever saw him?”
Jo-Jo drained his drink and signaled for another round. “You did—and I kiss your ass for that. You sure did. Too goddam bad Farnsworth didn’t believe you.”
“Farns was lucky.”
“What happened?” asked Wager.
“Well,” Jo-Jo said, “I guess old Farns thought he was going to rip off this dude Chandler. We all thought he was with the Mafia or something, and—”
“I didn’t! I said he was a narc.”
“Yeah, anyway, it turned out funny as shit: the dude ran a buy and bust on Farnsworth, and Farns ran a scam on him. The fuzz had to let him go because they bought lactose instead of dope. But it sure as hell blew Chandler out of here. And Goldberg, too—he left the state; he said he had diarrhea for a week after the bust.”
“Good riddance,” Bruce said. “He was full of crap anyway.”
“Does this Farnsworth usually rip people off like that?” Wager asked.
“He never has us,” said Bruce. “I never heard of anything like it before. But maybe he smelled something about this deal. Hell, I told him and everybody else right off that Chandler was a narc.”
Jo-Jo pushed his sweating glass in a wet circle on the plank table. “I’ll tell you this: if Farnsworth ever does get busted, it will leave one hell of a hole around here. Somebody’s going to have to fill it.”
“Whoa, man,” Bruce said. “Let’s keep it civilized. We’re all doing all right.”
“I only said ‘if,’ Juice.” Jo-Jo raised his hand for another round, and Wager traded his half-empty glass of beer for a full cold one.
It had to come sooner or later, and after half a dozen drinks, Jo-Jo, by now twisting his tongue with difficulty around his words, leaned across the table. “Hey, Gabe, old amigo, I got some fine stuff in the truck outside. You want to shoot up?”
“No,” said Wager. “No, I don’t. I burned out four years ago, and I don’t want to go back. I’m clean and I want to stay clean.”
“So now you deal?”
“Tha
t’s where the money is. It sure as hell ain’t in using.”
“Come on, man, just a little pop. It’s really smooth stuff.”
Wager shook his head.
“Come on, Gabe—we’ll hold your hand. Get a new set of wings; it’s free, babe!”
“Don’t lean on me, Jo-Jo. I can’t handle it. Look.” He folded his cuff back and showed them the scar of a childhood boil, now a shiny dime of hard flesh inside his forearm. “I had a crater there—and all I did for two years was pour junk in it. Once is enough, so just don’t lean all over me, O.K.?”
“Hey, cool it, brother. Jo-Jo was only being polite. We just chip a little in a social way, you know? Nothing heavy—grass, coke, the stuff that won’t get you, and maybe a pop now and then. Hell, none of it’s as bad as goddam booze. But if it ain’t your bag, that’s cool—no hassles up here.”
Jo-Jo leaned back in his chair, thin lips pressed together in a tight crack. “We don’t like hassles. But we ain’t afraid of them.”
“Cool it, Jo-Jo.”
Wager buried his mouth in the glass of beer. The two younger men watched him. He set the glass squarely back on its ring of water. “What’s the matter?”
“Well”—Jo-Jo sniffed and scrubbed under his nose with a grimy knuckle—“me and the Juice here, we been wondering who your customers are. You’ve handled a lot of stuff, Juice tells me. But I get around and I ain’t heard your name on the street anywhere.”
Wager held his flesh still against the prickly sensation that began to climb up the back of his neck. It wasn’t fear; it was anger. This pimply-faced son of a bitch was trying to come on like Billy Jack. “I’ve got my route and it’s growing.” He smiled, and added very quietly, “You looking to take away some of my action, brother?”
“Whoooeee! Juice, this dude’s hyped! Look, Pancho, this ain’t the first time you been up here. It’s a small town, you know? A stranger starts hanging around, the word gets out. Maybe you ain’t a narc. If you ain’t, the question is why the hell’ve you been hanging around up here?”
Leaning back in his chair, Wager tried to relax. If anything was coming, it wouldn’t be here in the bar. It would be later in a dark corner of the empty lot where his truck was sitting, or halfway down the canyon where the steep rock walls pushed the highway to the edge of the tumbling creek, or at a distant cabin where he’d be invited for a “party.” It could happen. But more likely they would just drop him as if he wore a sign around his neck: “DON’T TOUCH—NARC.” He would like it better if they tried something. A lot better. It would be a solid pleasure if Jo-Jo tried something. But even that was out: he remembered Rietman’s warning, “They got a thing against heavies.” So Wager stretched and looked relaxed and tried to bury his angry accent in a smile. “Because I don’t like street dealing. Life’s too short, man. Did you ever hear of Mr. Taco?”
“Yeah,” said Jo-Jo. “Maybe I heard the name around.”
“That’s me. I’ve been working only a couple months and already that name’s all over the street. How long do you think it would take for the fuzz to ring my bell if I used my own name?”
“No shit,” said Bruce. “You’re Mr. Taco, the big enchilada?”
Wager grinned wider. “The smiling sopapilla—that’s me.” He brought the chair legs down and leaned across the table, staring hard into Bruce the Juice’s eyes, knowing that if he didn’t get past this point, there was no way to go but home. “I’ve finally got some coin, and I’ve made a few contacts. Now I want to get off the street to where the real money is.”
CHAPTER 6
“YEAH, GABE, DINERO’S what it’s all about.” Richard Allen Farnsworth, twenty-eight, dark brown hair pulled tightly back into a stubby pigtail, face made up of two shiny brown eyes, a curving nose whose nostrils lifted slightly at the sides, and a spray of kinky black beard that ran from just under his eyes all the way down his neck. Right now, teeth showed in a smile that clutched the curved stem of a large pipe. A drowsy child, Peter, nodded gently on his rocking knee. “If it was just me and Ramona and Pedrocito, here, I’d quit tomorrow.” The pipe bobbed with a short laugh. “In fact, I almost quit when that son of a bitch Chandler did a number on me.” Farnsworth wagged his head, a sprig or two of curly hair tugging loose to wag with him.
“What happened?” Wager, heavy from eating too much and spongy from drinking more beer and wine than he was used to, eased first one way and then another on the creaking chair, trying to lift the weight of his own flesh from the wad of food in his stomach. The food, the wine, the sharp-sweet odor of marijuana lingering from Ramona’s after-dinner lid made the room bob and wag like Farnsworth’s hair and pipe and child; he wanted to reach out and quiet all the motion, to have a moment or two of stasis that would let him fully realize where he really was. But for this long moment, it all seemed like a dream, and Wager felt a jab of fear that he might simply get up and laugh and clap a hand to Farnsworth’s bony shoulder and say, “I’m a narc, too,” and then stand there grinning at Farnsworth’s wide eyes, grinning and waiting to wake up from the dream, the grin slowly draining in icy sweat as he would realize that it wasn’t a dream, that he really was in Farnsworth’s cabin far from the gritty streets of Denver, that he had really blown his cover.
He was too old for this, too old to take these games seriously; too old not to despise the phony world that made his face the friend of those his mind and heart called enemy; too old to let himself relax and enjoy a good meal and a laugh that was being paid for right now on street corners and in alleys and bars that Farnsworth or Ramona or little Peter would never even see. For now the phony was the real, but when that other world of his mind and heart pressed on him, he felt how slippery was the rock on which he pretended to stand.
“I was set up. Chandler came on like a big buyer from Detroit; sat right there in that chair you’re sitting in and smoked a few joints, drank booze, shot the shit with us just like a human being. He had a good rap, man. Smooth and a lot of laughs. Then he wanted a bigger buy than anyone else could handle.” The sprigs of wiry hair wagged again. “We thought he was a hit man with the Mafia—Charlie Flint found a gun in the glove compartment of his car and we thought he was a fucking hit man. It never crossed my mind that dude was wearing black boots.”
“Black boots?”
“Yeah—the sheriff’s officers all wear black boots. Uniform regulations. Even the undercover people wear them, because the S.O. doesn’t pay those poor bastards enough for two pairs of shoes.” He laughed and bobbed the child and sipped at the beer on the small table by his chair. It was Cerveza Tecate; Farnsworth drank only Mexican beer, as a protest against Yankee imperialism. “Those poor bastards got to want something more than money. They’re probably all maricons at heart; the boots, the guns, the uniforms—that’s the only cojones they’ve got.”
“Was Chandler a faggot?”
The pipe snorted a cloud of blue smoke that spread in a flat layer around the living room and slowly drifted toward the Franklin stove sitting out from one corner. From the kitchen came the rattle of dishes in water and the opening and closing of cabinets as Ramona put away the dinner things. “He probably got his jollies from little boys. He sure fooled me, though. I used to think I could smell a narc a mile away. Hombre, I been warned by el buen Dios, and as soon as we get enough bread together, that’s it.” He cocked his head at something that Wager didn’t hear but that Farnsworth—familiar with the noises and silences that surrounded his cabin—knew. “That sounds like them now.” A moment or two later, the German shepherd that roamed the yard around the small house began a deep bark. “Yeah, that’s them—up we go, Chico!” He handed the sleepy bundle of rubbery arms and fuzzy-warm pajamas to Wager. “Hold him a minute while I lock up the dog.”
It had taken Wager another month to ride this far on Bruce the Juice’s coattails; he had shaken hands first with one, then another, and then another dealer—or “businessman,” as the Juice liked to call them. As always, they had kept that distance and
caution of dealers who had enough trusted buyers so that they did not have to take chances. But Wager had not pushed; he moved slowly and kept Bruce’s account fat. After a while, he had a chair of his own at the Timber Line, and finally he had met Farnsworth.
“Hey, Farns—this here’s Gabe. I told you about him!” Bruce tried to sound cool, but Wager, half standing to shake hands with Farnsworth, heard excitement in the Juice’s voice. “Sit down, man! You still on that Mexican beer kick?”
Farnsworth’s eyes were dimly visible in the bar’s low light. He kept them on Wager. “Tecate.”
“I’ll get it for you, man. Sit down! I’ll be right back.”
“Bruce says you’re his best buyer.”
“He sells good stuff. I appreciate that.”
“How’s his price?”
Wager shrugged. “The Juice is fair. But, like anybody else, I’m always looking for a better deal. You onto any?”
“Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the market at the time.”
“It depends on how many middlemen there are, too.”
“What makes you think he’s not the source?”
“The way he hopped up when you came in? ¡Mierda, hombre! He’s a good kid and he’s on the make, but he doesn’t have the”—Wager groped for the word with his hands—“seriousness of somebody at the top. We say he no tiene huevos.”
For the first time, Farnsworth smiled, the cheeks clenching slightly above the line of his beard. He reached deep into one of the baggy pockets of his army field jacket and pulled out a huge yellow pipe that reminded Wager of the Sherlock Holmes movies. “I’ve got some friends who might cut your overhead.”
Bruce came back with the Mexican beer; his eyes flicked first at Farnsworth, then at Wager. “You guys getting it together O.K.?”
“Sure, Juice.” Farnsworth smiled and nodded thanks for the beer. “Salud y pesos.”
“Mucho de ambos,” answered Wager, and Farnsworth laughed.