by Rex Burns
“I thought we had them on a class-three felony.”
“Yeah; well, the Springs D.A. offered them a deal.”
“I see. What about Rietman? Did you get anything yet?” Johnston had started following the paper trails that Rietman, like everyone else, left through a community.
Ed said, “Score, zip. If he has a second bank account, it’s either in another name or not around his neighborhood.”
“He wouldn’t use a bank near home. He knows our procedures.”
“And his charge accounts are routine, no big purchases. I found nothing unusual in his spending habits. But we won’t have access to his tax files until sometime next spring.”
“Any recent trips?”
“Not that we could find out. So far, he’s Mr. Clean.”
“Or Mr. Smooth.”
“He probably stashed the stuff until it cools off. He’s under no pressure to sell it.”
“Maybe.” And maybe not. Motive: money. Who needs money? People who want things or who are in debt. Rietman didn’t seem to want anything. “Did you check his credit rating? Has he made any early payments?”
“Nope. And he’s never missed a payment. Besides, that would be in his official file.”
True enough; officers in debt were officers in trouble. “Medical expenses? Girl friend?”
Johnston shook his head. “There’s no indication he’s ever been caught off sides in his life.”
“Just one.”
“Yeah. One.”
It really didn’t fit, and the rough edges irritated Wager’s mind. Yet why would Farnsworth lie unless he was testing Wager? And why should he test him even after Wager had been let in to the dealing? “Do you have a list of Rietman’s old snitches?”
“What for?”
“If he hasn’t moved that junk yet, he’s going to sooner or later. And he’s sure as hell not going on the street himself.”
“You mean he might be using one of his snitches to market it?”
“He has to do it somehow.”
“You’re right.” Johnston unlocked one of the long drawers of a filing cabinet. “Yeah—they’re here.” He stopped and looked up at Wager. “But the inspector said he didn’t want to do anything until after we’ve had a shot at Farnsworth.”
“Who’s doing anything? We just want to know if any of the snitches are in fat city all of a sudden.”
“Oh. I guess that’d be O.K.” He handed Wager the file. “He didn’t have time to build up much of a stable.”
Gabe copied the three entries and their telephone numbers. The first, Louis’s, he thought sounded familiar. The other two were new: Paddy-O and Ritchie. “Anybody working these people now?”
“Not in our squad.” Ed ran his fingers through the thinning red hair. “You know, Gabe, I don’t know …”
“Do I know you don’t know what?”
“I don’t know if you should even ask around about these C.I.s. You got too much yardage to lose right now.”
“If he hasn’t moved that junk yet, we’ve still got a chance to catch it. Or if he’s doing it now, we can stop it. Or if he’s already done it, his middleman might be thinking of leaving town. Besides, I want that son of a bitch a hell of a lot more than I want Farnsworth.”
“Me, too, Gabe. But the inspector says something else. Nope—you stay off these guys. I’ll check with the inspector when he gets in. In the meantime, just don’t even go near these guys.”
Without a duces tecum subpoena, Wager couldn’t go through the telephone company’s records for the addresses of the snitches’ numbers; without the sergeant’s approval, he couldn’t get the duces tecum. Gabe smiled. “Bueno—I’ll just sit con mis manos en el seno.”
Or almost with his hands in his lap; at his desk, he dialed Fat Willy’s office number.
The bartender answered as usual when Wager asked if Fat Willy was there. “Maybe he is, maybe he ain’t. Who wants him?”
“Gabe.”
“I’ll ask around.”
A moment later, Fat Willy breathed heavily at his ear: “I was feeling maybe you was a dead greaser by now.”
“It’s nice to know you’ve been thinking of me, Willy. How are you and Hansen getting along?”
“We gets along. You want to know about my health and love life, too?”
“I know you’ve got a lot of both—and they’re going to last a long time because you are going to help me out.”
“Sure, baby! You cut me off, and that’s the way it stays.”
“Business is business, Willy. Don’t take it personal. Now listen up, I got something I want you to do.”
“I ain’t listening. And I ain’t doing.”
“And you ain’t going to get any action when Hansen turns your jacket back over to me.”
The black’s voice dropped so that only an angry rumble came through the earpiece. “This nigger ain’t working for no spies no more.” The line clicked dead.
Wager went down the list to the next number. Again it was answered by a female voice he did not recognize. “Is Doc there?”
“Who’re you?”
“Gabe.”
“Just a minute.”
“Gabe, baby! Long time no! Hey, where you been, man? Hey, baby, I really been swinging since you been away.”
“That’s fine, Doc. Listen, there’s something I want you to do.”
“Sure, man—any time. Hey, this Hansen cat’s all right. He don’t miss nothing. You put me on a good man, baby.”
“Doc—listen up.”
“I am! That’s what I’m doing, man. Lay it on me: I’m all ears.”
“I want you to find out who’s been heavy in coke in the last four months.”
The line was silent. Doc wasn’t all jive turkey. “Funny you should ask.”
“Why?”
“There’s been a lot of snort around. Good stuff, too, but it’s thinning out now.”
“Around since when?”
“Since this fall!”
“Any names?”
“Just a minute.” A palm clamped down over Doc’s mouthpiece for a moment. “O.K., Wager—I sent the ginch for a pack of cigarettes. What she don’t know, she can’t say, can she?”
“Names, Doc.”
“Names. There’s a bunch of new ones—people gonna sell what people want to buy. But there’s one I heard about who’s supposed to be really big.”
“Well?”
“Well, I ain’t heard that he deals in coke, but the word is he can get anything anybody wants. And all they want.”
“The name, Doc.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you—it’s Mr. Taco.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Well, can I help it if that’s his name? So he’s a Chicano or something. They do a little dealing, you know. His name’s all over the street and he’s really big. I tipped Hansen on it but he ain’t come up with nothing yet.”
“I’ll let Hansen handle it, then. Any other names?”
“It’s got to be coke?”
“And within the last four months.”
Another silence. “No. Not just coke and not just in the last four months. I can’t think of nobody that fits that.”
“How about Louis, Paddy-O, or Ritchie?”
“What Louis? There’s three or four Louises around. Paddy-O’s a dude come in six, eight months ago. He’s small shit. He ain’t handling nothing but a little grass. He’s one of these guys that thinks he’s bigger than he is, you know?”
“I know.”
“Ritchie—I know a couple Ritchies, too, but none tied in with coke.”
“Do you have phone numbers for your Louises or Ritchies?”
“Yeah, a couple. You want them? Hang on.”
Doc’s voice came back, “Here’s the Louises: 394-7198, 727-6365. Ritchie’s is 355-3735.”
“That second one, what Louis is that?”
“That’s Louis Sloane. But he ain’t much of nothing, neither.”
Slo
ane, Louis. Wager now remembered the small-time hustler: white male, mid-thirties, a little dope, a stable of a couple of whores, a habit to support. “No sudden spending? No wheeling around?”
“Sloane? Shit, no! He’s hustling anything he can get a line on, and he’s so goddam hungry it’s even funny to watch him boogie. Naw, he ain’t into anything big. Hell, he uses almost everything he gets. That’s why he can’t get ahead.”
“One more thing, Doc.”
“Lay it on me.”
“Don’t tell anyone I’ve been asking. Keep it just between you and me.”
“Not even Hansen?”
“No one.”
“That sounds like something heavy going down.”
“It could be. If you hear anything about coke in the last four months, give me a call at the O.C.D. It’s a lot of coke—if you’re in on it, you can make yourself a bundle. But it’s got to be with me only.”
“Hey, baby, cool, and I hear you.”
Wager tried several more numbers from the little book of informants’ coded addresses. The answers were the same: there was more cocaine around, but none of the C.I.s knew anyone who had recently unloaded a large quantity of it. A mysterious dealer may be handling it—this Mr. Taco—but the C.I.s did not know much more about him than the name.
Wager sat at his desk in silence and stared across the shallow bowl of the city toward the distant ranges of peaks. Apparently, Rietman hadn’t sold off the stuff in big lots. And he had not made any trips, either. And he wasn’t spending. Neither were his snitches—though Wager would like to see for himself just to be sure. The cocaine that was on the street didn’t seem to come from him. So it must be stashed somewhere, Rietman just forgetting about it until it was absolutely safe to bring it out. And why not? It was as good as money in the bank— better, in fact, since its value went up with inflation instead of down. And that would fit with what Wager was beginning to see as Rietman’s character: self-controlled, methodical, far-sighted, patient. He could have been a God damned good cop.
Suzy stood at his elbow and cleared her throat. Wager, pulled out of thought, looked up with surprise.
“Would you—ah—think you might want to see some of my shots?”
“Shots?” It took a moment or two before he remembered. “Photographs! Sure, por supuesto, Suzy. You have some here?”
She placed an official manila folder on his desk and opened it. “There are a few I took.” Her voice was shy. “They’re not, you know, great, but I like them.”
Wager looked through the black-and-white pictures. Half a dozen were of birds (“That’s my parakeet”) and dogs (“That’s my dog, Herman”), and the rest were street scenes: corners with a single blurred figure striding quickly out of sight, bus stops with three or four people slouching apart and staring blankly away from each other, a streetlamp showing an empty pool of gray light against solid black. They all said “lonely,” and Wager did not want to see what they said. Loneliness was the sea everyone swam in; he did not need these pictures to tell him that. And it was depressing to see one so young as Suzy already learning it. Somehow it seemed she should have been spared that knowledge for a while. “Those are real nice pictures, Suzy. You’ve got a real talent.”
Her face reddened as she quickly gathered the photographs together. “It’s fun—it’s something to do.”
“Well, they really are nice.”
Sergeant Johnston strode from the inspector’s office. “Gabe? On those snitches we were talking about, the inspector says absolutely not. We lay off until you-know-who is in the bag.”
Wager stretched and pushed away from his desk. “Then I guess I’d better get back up to Nederland.”
CHAPTER 8
FOR A WEEK, Wager’s hints and nudges were ignored by Farnsworth; Chandler had burned the man shy of dealing with anyone new, even with Gabriel Villanueva.
“I have this amigo,” Gabe told Ramona, “who can get a pilot and an airplane any time we need it. And the guy’s flown the border half a dozen times.”
She curled her legs up on the cowhide couch and sipped at a cup of coffee. In the cabin’s steamy bathroom, Peter splashed and wheezed a rubber duck.
“So now you can have your own business?”
“I wish it was that easy. This kind of deal takes a hell of a lot more bread than I got. He’s not going to fly unless it’s really worth his time.”
“Like how much?”
“A lot of K’s. The pilot wants insurance in case he goes down—he wants fifty thousand in escrow, and then you have to add the cost of the dope and the operation to that.”
“That could go as high as a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty thousand!”
“Well, the fifty comes back after the flight. But it’s still a hell of a lot bigger than I can handle by myself.”
Farnsworth kicked open the door and dumped a load of firewood in the corner. “Goddam—the frost is on the pumpkin tonight!” He held his red fingers to the shimmering Franklin stove. “Did Gabe tell you about the airplane?”
“He’s telling me. ¿Que piensas tú?”
“How’s our cash reserve?”
“We could handle it O.K.,” said Ramona. “But I don’t know if we should. Maybe after we’ve seen this pilot make a run.
Farnsworth combed a flake of bark out of his wiry hair and flipped it at the dog stretched behind the stove. “Yeah. After that Chandler thing, I’d just as soon keep a low profile.”
“¡Ya lo creo!” Wager said. “But it’s a real good deal, and once I turned over my share of the load and opened a new cash flow, I’d take the other stuff off your hands. You wouldn’t have to tie up your money for more than a week or so.”
Ramona sipped her coffee; Farnsworth kneaded his fingers together and popped open a bottle of Tecate beer. “It sounds good”—he shook his head—“but things have been cool so far. Maybe it’s better if I just stick to what I’m doing.”
“Sure,” said Wager. “It was just an idea.” The son of a bitch.
“Maybe Baca and Flint will go in with you. Ask Manny when he gets here.”
“Flint’s hot to buy his art store in Taos; he won’t want to risk nothing now. And Baca won’t have enough by himself. Hell, there’s no rush—that airplane’s good any time. If you change your mind, just let me know.”
“I don’t think I want any of it, Gabe. But thanks for the offer, man—I mean that.” He cocked an ear toward the door. “That sounds like Manny’s van now.” The dog grunted awake and plodded to the door, nails scratching on the wooden floor. From the distance came the grinding lurch of a vehicle threading the rutted road. In a few minutes, a metal door clapped to and the dog slowly wagged his tail.
“¡Manolo! ¿Que tal?” Farnsworth held open the inner door.
“Bien—hace mucho frio. You think we’ll get a little nieve? Hi, Ramona—Gabe.” He unwrapped from his sheepskin coat and leaned toward the stove. “Those your new wheels out there? And hey, dig those new shit-kickers! Man, you’re coming on like a real chulo!”
Wager smiled and stretched the new tooled boots in front of him. They fit even worse than the old ones, but he was supposed to be making money. “Business has been good.”
“What’d the car set you back?”
“Three and a half. But if you can’t enjoy the profits, what good’s the capitalist system?”
“Right on, hermano.” Baca stepped aside to let Ramona haul Pedro from the bath to a place near the dry heat of the stove where she rubbed him pink with a large towel.
“Say, you guys read about that son of a bitch down in Brownsville shooting them braceros?”
Manny’s van flew the red-and-black Aztec eagle flag of the United Farmworkers’ Union; Wager had often wondered if Baca ever met a bracero.
“The law won’t hassle that bastard,” said Farnsworth. “His taxes pay that sheriff. And the braceros don’t make enough to pay taxes.”
Baca snorted. “I bet I couldn’t take a piss in that county without gettin
g busted for littering. Goddam pigs! What do you think, Gabe?”
“Goddam pigs.”
“I’d like to plant a bomba under that son of a bitch. He wouldn’t shoot no more of the brothers!”
It promised to be another full evening of sparkling political analysis. Wager hoisted Peter to his shoulders and bounced the child around the living room before tossing him giggling onto the bed where Ramona tucked him in. When the light was out, Wager poured himself a beer and settled down for Baca’s lecture. Tonight it was the endurance of La Raza, because their blood was pure and their hearts were clean and God and gravity were on their side, and all Chicanos were brothers in the movement, and if the law had to be violated why shouldn’t it be, because that law had been used against the people instead of for them.
Wager tried to hide his yawn as he nodded agreement; he had heard it, he had heard it all. And there was some truth in it. But when the honest things that people felt were said by Baca’s mouth, those things grew dirty; Baca’s speeches rode on real hurts like an insult on pain.
The lecture lasted until past midnight, Ramona as usual listening instead of talking; Farnsworth agreeing more and more vehemently with every beer; Manny Baca’s voice building up into a familiar rhythm that made Wager suspect that he was using the three of them as a practice audience.
“You tell me, Gabe, if you and some Anglo go for the same job, you know who’ll get it, right?”
“White skin, step right in,” said Wager.
“That’s right! And qualifications don’t mean nothing!”
Wager knew these things that Baca fouled with his words; he had seen them a hell of a lot longer than this kid, had lived them, too: the obvious ones of lowest pay and first fired; the less obvious ones of sudden embarrassed smiles and quick silences; of unconsidered phrases, “Why don’t you handle it, Gabe? You’re their kind—you know them better than we do.” And Wager had passed the sergeant’s examination; but so had a lot of Anglos, and many of them went up while he was still a detective. If he let himself, he could find a label for it. But what counted most for him was not how the Anglo world or the Hispano world looked at him, but how he looked at himself. It was the job he did and knew he did well that was worth more than righting the ancient wrongs against Aztlan or wallowing in the complaints of pimply-faced kids who had not yet lived long enough to know what real pain was. A man did his job to his own standards without blaming Anglos or Chicanos or Spaniards or anybody else if he couldn’t do the work.