Endangered Species (11 page)

One by one the section’s detectives checked out for the day. Ross, as usual, was the first. He was one of the detectives that chose to join the police union, and his rules didn’t allow him to work overtime without compensation. But leaving early was something else. He ignored Wager just as Wager, who had never joined the union, ignored him. Ross’s partner, Devereaux, said, “Call it a day, Gabe,” and waved as he left. Golding started to tell him something more about aroma therapy but stopped when Wager stared at him. Max, thumbing the final report on the previous night’s stabbing at the Blue Moon, paused by Wager’s desk.

“Here it is—wrapped up. It’s all Kolagny’s now.”

“He’ll plea-bargain.”

“You kidding? Three eyewitnesses saw Fudd knife the victim.”

“Only three? Hell, Kolagny’ll probably drop the charges for lack of evidence.”

Max waved good night. “He’s not that bad, Gabe.”

Wager shrugged. Assistant DA Kolagny preferred guilty pleas, and if he couldn’t get those, plea bargaining. Trial was a last resort, in order, he said, to save the taxpayers’ money. Wager thought it was because the man knew he was a lousy trial lawyer.

The tweedle of his telephone drew his hand. “Homicide. Detective Wager.”

“This is Elaine from Mr. McClinton’s office. I have the printout of all calls charged to that number on Wyandot, Detective Wager. There aren’t many. You want me to read them to you?”

He did. The three outgoing calls were to a number in San Diego. Two incoming calls were charged from numbers in Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco. Other calls went to Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and Estes Park, Colorado. She had looked up the two Colorado numbers—the Estes Park number was a Holiday Inn. The one in Steamboat Springs belonged to a Charles Pipkin on Rural Route 7. Wager thanked the woman and asked her to fax him a copy of the printout.

West Coast offices were still open. Wager called the detective divisions in San Diego, San Francisco, and Portland to ask for names and addresses on the telephone numbers. That information might be waiting for him in the morning, if a couple of detectives out there felt like making phone calls. The Steamboat Springs number rang without answer, and Wager turned to the contact file, scanning the computer unsuccessfully for Pipkin’s name. A call to the Routt County sheriff’s office told him that the person who could help him was gone for the day, but she’d be in at eight
A.M.
tomorrow.

It was dinnertime; his stomach told him that. His burning eyes told him he’d been working long enough. The phone message from Elizabeth told him that she would meet him at Racine’s. He was being told a lot of things, and most of it crap. He was shrugging on his coat when the phone rang again. Muffling a curse, he answered, “Homicide. Detective Wager.”

Wager didn’t recognize the voice at first. “I got something for you.”

Then he knew who it was. “All right, Arnie. I’m listening.”

The noises behind the voice were of traffic and the sporadic clang of a pneumatic bell; Wager guessed the man was calling from a public telephone at a gas station. “I heard the same thing you did—you know, about Flaco and Ray Moralez.”

“Anybody witness it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then where’s the story coming from?”

Trujillo was silent a moment. Somewhere beyond the clang of the bell, a siren wailed thinly. “I don’t know, man. And I don’t know if I can find that out. It’s just what the people are saying.”

“I need something I can use in court.” There was no answer. Wager asked, “Anybody saying where he is?”

“He’s still in town. I heard that much. But he’s keeping away from the Tapatíos—they want him bad. They’re after his ass, man.”

“What about the Gallos? He getting any help from them?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.
Un broder
I talked to said the Gallos is laughing, man. If they are, it could turn into some bad shit between them and the Tapatíos.”

“That’s what we want to stop, Arnie. You read about that little girl who got hit with a stray bullet last week?”

“Yeah ….”

“We want Flaco before anybody else gets hurt. And we’ll need witnesses too.”

“
Chale!
Nobody wants a snitch jacket, man.”

“Nobody’s going to get one—Flaco’s a one-shot deal.”

“That’s for true?”

“I say it.” Arnie was talking about himself as much as anyone else, and Wager wanted to reassure him. The proof of that reassurance might be somewhere in a hazy and unformed future; Wager might need to use the man again. But he wanted to do his best to make it voluntary on Arnie’s part, because talking to cops about the gangs was a high-risk game.

“I’ll call you back,” Arnie said.

Wager hung up and dialed Max’s number. Francine answered, and when she heard who it was, her voice got short and testy. “Just a minute, please.”

A moment later, Max picked up an extension. “What’s up, partner?”

“Francine’s blood pressure, for one thing. She’s not happy I called.”

The big man’s voice was embarrassed. “She’s not mad, Gabe. It’s just … well, I was on duty last night. She wants me home tonight.”

Which was one of the reasons Wager shied at the word “marriage.” “I heard from Arnie.” He told Max what the man had said.

“All right, Gabe! I’ll start shaking some people tomorrow. Thanks, man!”

“I promised Arnie nobody gets a snitch jacket on this one.”

Max had the same reluctance about the promise that Wager had felt. “Well, sure, I’ll do what I can, Gabe. But if a witness turns up ….”

“Then we have to figure a way to handle it, Max. I gave Arnie my word.”

“All right, all right. I hear you.”

Wager hung up the telephone and rubbed his eyes again. The rumble of his empty stomach was loud in the quiet office. He finally slid his name across the location board to
OFF DUTY.
The civilian night clerk at the Crimes Against Persons desk smiled good night and turned back to the television set mounted in a corner of the office.

It was almost eight o’clock when he finally met Elizabeth at the restaurant just off Speer. They both liked it for the same reasons: good food, fair prices, and a slim chance of seeing someone who wanted to talk business.

“Your hardworking councilperson has been rewarded with another of those famous freebies, Gabe. Interested?” She swirled the clear liquid in the martini glass just under her nose and smiled at him. In the dim light, her eyes and lips and hair formed a pattern of dark that contrasted with the clear gleam of her face, and Wager couldn’t help thinking of the way she looked in the bedroom’s faint light.

He sipped at the foam on his beer. “It’s probably not the kind of freebie I’m thinking of. …”

“Nope—not that. It’s a pair of tickets to the Nuggets game Friday night. The owners want a big crowd to get the season started, so they’re giving passes to everybody, from the city council to the Cub Scouts.” A sardonic twist to her lips. “It’s the council’s duty to support our fair city’s professional sports franchises.”

“You mean like building the baseball stadium with public money only?”

That was still a sore point with Elizabeth. The publicized agreement between the club owners and the city said the stadium profits and costs would be shared between the private and public sectors. That was so the electorate would support the bond issue. The private agreement explained what was meant by “sharing”: all stadium profits to the club, all stadium costs to the taxpayers. She’d fought against it, but it had been a battle she’d lost because too many people had been bought. “Our municipal government said they’d give anything to make Denver a major-league city.”

“Yeah—and, boy, didn’t they! Tell you the truth, I like Triple A better. Costs a hell of a lot less, the baseball’s as good, and the players even talk to the fans.”

“Unfortunately, the local boosters didn’t think Denver should live or die by the Broncos alone.” She smiled, “Come on—it should be a fun evening.”

“The best I can do is try, Liz.”

His tone cut through the relaxation she was feeling, and he was sorry to see that. “Is it that knifing?” she asked. “The one at the Blue Moon?”

He shook his head. “We got the perp on that one. This is an arson that’s turning into a homicide with a lot of loose ends.”

She held herself back from asking more questions about an open case. In the half-year they had been dating, she had learned that Wager didn’t like to talk directly about cases that weren’t closed. He might make oblique comments, statements that didn’t seem to have any point, as he worked through knots in the skein of evidence, but he didn’t like to present the details to her in a direct manner. It made it seem too much like a finished report, he said, and a finished report left no room for those faint nudges and suspicions that came when the details wouldn’t quite fall into place by themselves. Those feelings were the difference between a half-assed job and one that got to the truth.

“There’s also a case I’m helping Max with. And a problem with one of my snitches who’s just out of the can. You name it, there’s a lot of crap flying.”

The waiter finally came with their entrées. Elizabeth finished her martini and cut into the side of fish hiding under a thin sauce. “Things get so hectic, don’t they? Sometimes it seems as if the world’s spinning faster and faster and no one’s in control.”

“Uh oh. You’re in the pilot’s seat, and you’re wondering if things are under control?”

“I don’t sit in that seat; I stand a long way behind it. But I suppose I’d feel better if I trusted the guy who’s there. And if I wasn’t trying to oversee so many other things to make sure they’re being done right. That’s one of the most frustrating things—I can no longer assume that people do in a capable manner what they’re paid to do.”

Wager could understand that. “Having trouble with the hospital budget?”

“Oh, Lord, yes!” She chewed and waved her fork for emphasis. “That’s a big one—that really is one of the big ones! And if I could spend all my time working on it, I might get something done. But there are so many other demands, and they just seem to increase …. As Daddy used to say, I feel like a one-armed paperhanger with the hives. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.”

He smiled at the woman across the small table. She seemed a point of intensity and life and ability in an empty waste of uncaring people. “But who could do better?”

She smiled back. “You sly bastard.”

“We do what we can, don’t we?” he asked.

She nodded. “And then some.” She twirled her wineglass and watched a film of pale liquid spin up its side. “And thank God you understand, Gabe.”

That was a reference to an ex-husband who had been jealous of Elizabeth’s having any interests outside the home. “There’s not much to understand. You’re doing what you want to and doing what you’re good at. I like to see able people doing good work.”

“Surprising how few people think that applies to a woman. Still”—she sipped—“I wish these times together didn’t seem so much like brief pauses between rounds.” Followed by that wide, slightly crooked smile that heightened the life in her eyes. “Then again, maybe we should go a few rounds—just you and me.”

Wager, too, grinned. “Two falls out of three.”

9/23

1023

I
T WAS MIDMORNING
when the replies from the West Coast finally began to come in. Wager was cruising District Four with Max, his eyes looking for Flaco Martínez but his mind on the Jane Doe, when the radio popped with his call number. The Crimes Against Persons clerk said one of the messages Wager was waiting for had arrived.

“Right. On my way.”

Max pulled the unmarked car around in a U-turn and headed downtown. “This is on that arson-homicide?”

“Yeah. Telephone records. May or may not be something.”

“Hope your luck’s better than mine.”

One of Max’s snitches had said he’d heard Flaco was hanging out in southwest Denver along Federal Boulevard, so the morning had been spent driving from one likely spot to another to get a lead on the fugitive. No one admitted seeing the man recently, but there were whispers that he was in the area—someone told someone they heard from someone that someone had spotted him. That kind of thing.

“Albuquerque said they’ll hold him if he shows up there.” Max steered the car past the security gate and down into the dim levels of the Administration Building’s parking garage.

“I think he’s still in town.”

“You mean because of this deal with the Tapatíos?”

Wager nodded. “If Flaco did kill Raimundo to show the Tapatíos what a stud he is, he’d lose it all by running away.”

They were both silent in the elevator. What Wager said made sense to Max, and he was once more going over the list of Flaco’s known associates in Denver, people who might risk hiding the man. Wager was mapping out steps on his own homicide case.

At his desk, he found two replies, one from Portland, the other from San Francisco. The San Francisco number had turned out to be a pay telephone at the airport; the Portland number was a Ramada Inn. But the detective in Oregon had gone out of his way to discover that on the night the call was made, the room was rented to a John Taylor, who gave his home address as 935 Jefferson Avenue, Richmond, Virginia. He’d paid cash for his room and listed his vehicle and license as a Ford Taurus, ZAC 338. “That’s a rental plate, Detective Wager. The car agency had the same name and address on their contract. He paid cash there too.”

“Thanks, Detective Yamamoto. If you ever need anything from Denver, give us a call and you’ve got it. Just ask for me.”

“Will do, Detective Wager.”

Yamamoto had done a good job, making more effort to check out Wager’s request than a lot of cops would do. Strange that he often found it easier to work with officers on the other end of long-distance telephone lines than with many of the people at the other end of the room. Maybe it was because when most cops were on the phone, they tended to stick to business. No crap from Ross about union membership, no aroma therapy bullshit from Golding.

He dialed the Steamboat Springs sheriff’s office to test his theory. A woman asked him to hold, and finally a man said hello. Wager told him what he wanted to know.