Angle of Attack (18 page)

He gestured at a corner tavern whose plaster wall was still painted with a faded 7-Up sign, the last remnant of the neighborhood grocery store that had preceded the bar. An equally faded sign in the window facing Larimer said “Aquí hablamos Español.” “I want to ask you a few questions. Something’s come up, and maybe you can help me out.”

The shoulders of the old man’s coat, square and fragile as if draped on a wire hanger, rose and fell. “Maybe; we’ll see.” He followed Wager into the bar and they found a pair of empty stools at the far end of the counter, away from the wailing jukebox. Wager ordered two draws. A newer sign in the middle of the oily mirror behind the bar said “We Support the Boycott. No Coors.” People had signs for everything; not arguments or discussions, just signs.

“What’s this help you want?”

“Remember that name you gave me? Frank Covino?” asked Wager.

“I read in the paper what happened to him.”

“Now his brother’s been killed down in Cañon City.”

“Killed? When?”

“He was stabbed sometime this morning. He died around ten o’clock.”

The gnarled knuckles on Tony-O’s hands made the bones of his fingers look thin and brittle as they slid up and down the lines of the small beer glass. “I didn’t hear about that. That’s too bad.”

“Maybe there was a tie-in.”

“Like what?”

“I really don’t know. I don’t have the whole story on the stabbing, but the coincidence is enough to make me wonder.”

Tony-O’s white head bobbed silent agreement. “So what do you want from me?”

“I need to know where you got your information on Frank Covino. It’s all over town now, but you were the first one I heard it from. I need to trace it down, Tony-O.”

The knotty fingers rasped over the gray bristles speckling the sagging flesh under his chin. “You need.” It did not come out like a question.

“That’s right. I need.” And there was no apology in Wager’s voice.

Tony-O’s eyes beneath the lids with their net of deep wrinkles glided his way, and Wager felt the old man probe this harder tone as he rolled a cigarette on his tongue and poked it into the corner of his mouth with his fist. “I guess I can tell you. But I don’t know what good it’ll do you.”

“Why?”

“The guy that told me ain’t in town no more.”

“Where’d he go?”

“He said he was going back to L.A.”

“What’s his name?”

“Chavez. Bernie Chavez. Know him?”

Wager knew half a hundred Chavezes, a few who had numbers following their names and a lot without; but “Bernie” didn’t fit any of them. “Does he have a record?”

Tony-O shrugged and sipped his beer. “Maybe. He’s been around. He’s an old guy like me—all washed up.”

Wager jotted the name in the little green notebook. Bernie Chavez in L.A. There shouldn’t be more than five thousand of them, but he didn’t have anything better to put in his notebook.

“How did he know about this? Why’d he tell you?”

“He told me because he wanted to. Not because I asked him. You know what I mean?”

“I wouldn’t be bothering you if it wasn’t really important, Tony-O.”

“Yeah. Well, I was over at Centennial watching the quarter horses, and Bernie sees me in the two-dollar line. He’s one of them from the old days, before he moved out to L.A. He comes back every now and then.” Another slow sip. “He come up and wanted to borrow some bucks, so sure, I let him.”

Wager could see it in his imagination: this Bernie Chavez spotting the old man and giving him the “Hey—Tony-O!” routine, asking, “Do you remember …?” and saying, “Jefe, I remember when you …” And Tony-O eating it like candy, even up to the part where Bernie drops his voice to a whisper and says, “Jefe, I got a good tip on this one, but nothing to lay down. I mean, it’s just two bucks and it’s against a sure thing …” And, as in the old days, the
jefe
tosses him the bills like they were nothing.

“Did his horse come in?” asked Wager.

He took a long drink, then said disgustedly, “Yeah, it did. At about thirty to one. He wanted me to bet it, but I was too smart to listen to him. I think mine’s still looking for the finish line.” He rinsed his tongue with another swallow and dragged thumb and forefinger along the deep lines at the sides of his mouth. “So then this big winner wants to buy me a drink. To make me feel better for not listening to him, you know? And that’s when he told me.”

“Do you remember what he said exactly?”

Frowning, the old man stared across the bar top somewhere toward the tequilas and cheap bourbons lined up in front of the mirror. “Not exactly, no. We started talking about the old days again and Bernie said something about how the wops took over Denver and how the Scorvellis had a habit of killing people in their own family. Which was something none of us ever did.”

That wasn’t entirely true, Wager remembered from neighborhood stories; but he didn’t interrupt.

“‘Like Marco’s getting killed,’ he said. And I said, ‘Everybody thought that was from the outside,’ and he said, ‘No,
hombre
. It was one of our people did it, but he was hired by Dominick to make it look like an outside job; Dominick wanted somebody who wouldn’t have no loyalties.’“ Another thoughtful sip of beer. “‘Where’d you get this?’ I said. ‘From a guy out in L.A. He had some trouble when Scorvelli was pushing the Ortegas out and he still keeps tabs on them wops.’“

“Did Chavez say who that was?”

“I figured if he wanted to tell me, he would have. So I didn’t ask. But he saw that I didn’t really buy his word, you know? So he says, ‘It was a kid done it—named Covino.’ ‘There’s a lot of Covinos,’ I said. ‘Try Frank,’ he said.’“

Wager gave the old man another half minute, but he added nothing. Tony-O drank his beer and stretched his thin upper lip with a silent belch, watched the bubbles rise through the yellow liquid and stroked the damp glass with thumb and forefinger.

“That’s all?” asked Wager.

“That’s all.”

One step back. All Wager had done was push the point of beginning one step back, and it was still out of sight. How many more steps would he have to push? “I still don’t see why this Chavez would be the one to hear it when nobody else did.”

Tony-O’s white head wagged. “He says he picked it up in L.A. That’s where the Ortegas went when they left here. That’s all I know.”

“What was he doing in Denver?”

“Playing the ponies when I saw him.”

“Did he have any other reason for being here? Family? Business? Anything that could give me a lead on him?”

The old man drained his beer and set the glass carefully on its ring of moisture. “He’s street people. I didn’t know him too good in the old days and I know him a hell of a lot less now. I don’t know what he was doing here. But I do know this: I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t said one damned thing to you. You really are starting to bug me with these questions.”

Wager ordered another round from the bartender, who checked glasses whenever the TV set glowed a commercial that did not have bouncy, smiling girls in short shorts. “
Estoy apurado
,
Jefe
,
y no tengo compadre ni padre
.” The saying—“I need help, Chief, and I don’t have a friend or a father”—came from so far out of Wager’s past that it brought with it the clean smell of fresh tortillas, the sunny rustle of cottonwood leaves beyond the cool of the back porch. It was a phrase supported by the truth of murmured childhood lore, that if you were ever really in trouble from something you couldn’t take to your parents or uncle or anybody, you could always go to Tony-O and whisper those words and he’d say, “I’m here.”

But that was when Tony-O’s shadow lay long through the barrio, and the barrio itself still had life. Now the old man’s already straight back stiffened slightly as if he heard a long-forgotten voice. Then it relaxed with a slight shrug and he said to the glass in front of him, “
No soy jefe
. Not any more. I can’t help you, Wager.”

“But I’ve got to ask the questions, Tony-O. It’ll be a big help if you try to answer them.”

“O.K., Gabe.”

They both sipped at their beers.

“Did this guy know anything about Gerald? Is there a possibility that he meant Frank’s brother did the hit?”

“The only Covino he named was Frank.” The knotted fingers tapped against the glass, their dry, hard flesh making a muffled
tink
. “He could of been wrong, yeah. Or whoever gave him the word could of had it screwed up.” He looked at Wager in the mirror. “Or maybe Scorvelli knew it wasn’t Frank but Gerald that did it, and had somebody down there slip him some iron.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Wager. But even if that made sense for part of it, Frank’s death was still a puzzle. Unless … “Have you heard any rumors about anyone making a move against the Scorvellis?”

“Like how?”

“Taking over their action. Bringing the Ortegas back, maybe.”

Tony-O’s face dipped toward the floor and he bit off a small white blob of disgusted spit, which dropped between his feet. “No. The Ortegas, they’re finished. There’s not enough of them left to do anything. The kids these days … bombings, marchings, singing goddam songs! No, I ain’t heard nothing like that.”

“Something’s got to explain Frank’s death. Maybe somebody with big ideas heard the same thing you did and tried to tell Scorvelli something by killing a Covino. But they got the wrong man.”

“I ain’t heard nothing like that, either.” The thin shoulders wagged once. “Hell, it’s possible, though. There’s a lot that’s possible.”

“Have you told anyone else what you heard?”

“No. Just you. But if it’s all over town like you say, then Bernie must of told somebody else.”

Like every other theory, that might be the reason—or it might not. So far, every thread Wager pulled either snapped off or frayed short. And one was cut.

“Could be it was Scorvelli himself,” said Tony-O. “Could be that Bernie told the truth and Scorvelli heard it and measured Frank for a wooden overcoat. Then did the same for Gerald so there wouldn’t be no revenge. Or because he was afraid Frank told Gerald about the hit. Could be Scorvelli’s got some answers to that—maybe you should go sit on him awhile.”

That, too, made as much sense as everything else. But there was a good reason why Wager wouldn’t go running down that trail yet: Sonnenberg. “I’ve got too many ifs, Tony-O; what I need is hard information. Do you know anybody else around who might have a lead on this Bernie Chavez?”

“No.” This time the old man spoke quickly, and like the shadow of a fast, thin cloud across his mind, Wager faintly wondered if it was too quickly.

W
HEN
A
XTON ENTERED
the office the next morning, Wager first told him the latest on the case, then drew the day’s initial cup of coffee.

“Let me call down to Cañon City,” said Axton. “I know some people there, and maybe they’ll give us the scoop and save a long drive.”

He dialed and waited and then, as Wager handled the morning paper work, began asking questions of someone named Allen. “Right, Al, the one yesterday. It has a bearing on something we’re working with up here. Right. Sure, I’ll hang on.” He covered the mouthpiece with two broad fingers. “Al’s calling the officer in charge of the investigation,” he explained.

Wager nodded and focused on the stack of requests and queries, the bulletins, alerts, advisements, and warnings, the reports, statistical summaries, graphs, and diagrams that flowed in rivers and rivulets through the police routing system. Many were to be noted and shoved elsewhere, others to rest in homicide in various files and with varying degrees of permanence. Most would never be looked at again, but only a few could be thrown out immediately. When Max hung up at last, Wager was ready for him. “Well?”

“They’re calling it a local fight. Gerald and a black guy got into a squabble during a softball game the afternoon before, and the guard thinks they carried it over. They met the next morning and the other prisoners say Covino started it, and of course he’s not around to say he didn’t. Anyway, they tangled, and by the time the guard got there, Covino had a sharpened spoon handle in the heart.”

“What’s the black’s name?”

“Ronald Greenlee, a.k.a. Ali Uhuru.”

“Anybody mention Scorvelli’s name?”

“Christ, Gabe, I wouldn’t ask that!”

Wager would. But he let it pass—Axton was probably right not to talk the name around any more than they had already. “Any hints at all that it was a setup?”

“I asked him twice; he said no. Greenlee has been in for about four years on a murder conviction. About three months ago he was transferred out of maximum security into Covino’s cell block; and as far as past records show, there was never any connection between him and Covino. The fight seems to be the first time the two ever talked.”

“Do we have a jacket on Greenlee?”

“Yeah—they gave me his file number. Want to look at it?”

“Might as well.” Besides, it would delay a little longer the thing they had to do today, which had awakened Wager this morning with that weary feeling of wanting to drop this day out of the calendar.

Axton brought the jacket back from the Records Section and they started going down the column of entries that was the man’s life according to the law.

“Busy dude,” said Axton.

He had been. The juvenile record started at thirteen; they skipped over that. The adult record, which began at eighteen with an arrest for attempted rape, listed a conviction for robbery, another for assault—this one with intent—and finally first-degree murder with life imprisonment. That usually meant parole in six to ten years. Greenlee’s second known murder, that of Covino, would put off his parole a little longer. Nowhere in the official or unofficial entries was there any hint of a connection with either Scorvelli or Covino. But, Wager figured, if Scorvelli or anyone else wanted to arrange for Covino’s death, then Greenlee was a good choice for the job: violence-prone, little to lose, and—since the payoff would come through a third or even fourth party—no direct link at all to Scorvelli.

Axton was thinking along the same lines. “It doesn’t really help us one way or the other, does it?”