Endangered Species (6 page)

“Can you tell me what he looked like?”

He shrugged. “Brown hair, brown eyes. A lot taller than me—I’m five eight. Slender. Healthy-looking, you know. Not skinny. No beard or mustache.”

“Did anyone else live there?”

“Sometimes—guests, maybe. I don’t remember any mail for other names at that address, but I did see other people there sometimes.”

“Can you describe them?”

He shook his head. “Not really. I saw a girl get the mail from the box a few days ago.” He explained, “I deliver one side of the block and then go down the other. She was on the porch taking the letters from the mailbox when I came back down.”

“Can you describe her at all?”

“Young. Nice legs. She was wearing these white shorts cut real high and had on a top that showed her middle. Light hair, light brown, maybe dark blond. Straight. Down past her shoulders in back.”

“Did you see her face?”

“No.” He gazed away toward the room’s corner and smiled. “What I did see looked good. Nice tan all over.”

If she was the same one, her tan was a lot darker now. “Do you remember anyone else who stayed there?”

“I didn’t really see them. I’d come up on the porch and put the letters in the box, and I’d see some shadows on the other side of the screen door. Sometimes Marshall would come out and hand me a letter or take the mail. Most of the time I’d leave it in the box.”

“Do you remember any of the addresses? Where Marshall’s mail came from, where he was sending it to?”

Another shake of the head. “He got a few packages—small ones, you know. I think some of them were from L.A., but I couldn’t swear to that. Some magazines. Where he sent stuff to, I can’t remember. What I do is take the outgoing and put it all together until I get back here. Then I sort it. So I wouldn’t know which was his unless I read the return addresses. And, man, I got too much work for that.”

The mailman’s pledge talked about rain and snow and dark of night; fire was another thing. “Did you have any deliveries for that address today?”

He looked through a small stack of undeliverable mail. “Just some third-class stuff to ‘Occupant’ and this catalogue.” Morris handed over a magazine-size mailer for survival gear and war surplus equipment. “Nothing first class.”

“Will you give me a call if anything comes in?”

“Sure. But if it’s first class, I think you got to have a warrant to open it. You know, federal regulations.”

Wager didn’t know, but he could guess. He asked, “Would you be willing to come down to police headquarters and work with the artist?”

Morris wasn’t all that willing. “When? And how long’s it going to take?”

“It won’t take long,” Wager lied. “We could do it now. I’ll drive you down and bring you right back.”

The man glanced at the wall clock. “See what the super says.”

The super said yes, and Wager escorted the man downtown. Like a lot of civilians, once he got settled in the car he started asking questions about police work and telling war stories about cops he’d known and crimes he’d heard about. He was still talking as they glided down the ramp and past the security gate.

“Jeez—you guys park right under the police building?”

“Yeah.” Wager pulled into a slot near the elevators. In the dim light on the other side of the cavernous garage, a metal clanging drew the mailman’s attention to a passageway fenced in heavy wire mesh. A pair of prisoners in county orange were being guided by a sheriff’s officer to the lockup.

“That’s the jail? Right over there?”

“That’s one of them.” He steered the man’s elbow. “This way, Mr. Morris.”

They rose up to the third floor, and Wager led the mailman down the gray carpet of the hallway past display cases holding homemade weapons, police badges from different eras of Denver history, photographs of past chiefs, samples of banned substances. “Here we are.”

“Here” was a small, windowless interview room, slightly more comfortable than the ones used for prisoners. At least the table and chairs weren’t bolted to the floor and there was no two-way mirror set into the wall. Larry Westover, the identikit specialist on duty, had already set up; a blank of ovals and a stack of transparencies sat on the gray table. Westover came in a few minutes later, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “Hi, Mr. Morris. You want some coffee? Gabe?”

Morris wanted some; Gabe didn’t—he knew what it tasted like. Westover brought in a Styrofoam cup for the civilian and nodded Wager out of the room. The sketching had to be done without other faces for the witness to see; otherwise, the picture began to look like whoever was in the room. Westover positioned himself just behind Morris’s shoulder and pulled a sheet of blank ovals toward the mailman. As Wager left, he heard Westover’s familiar litany. “OK, Mr. Morris, now here’s what we’re going to do, and don’t be afraid to make corrections as we go along …”

Wager, back at his own desk until Westover was finished with the witness, added what little he had learned to the file of the unknown victim and started a summary report for Chief Doyle. A lot depended on what the pathologist found, and despite Doc Hefley’s sharp tongue, Wager was grateful that he had Hefley instead of the part-timer the hospital used to bring in when business piled up. One of that guy’s cases was being challenged in court for sloppy work, and a whole series of homicide convictions where his testimony had been used were suddenly very shaky. In fact, Wager bet lawyers’ phones all over Denver began to ring when that story came out in the Canon City papers.

As he finished Bulldog Doyle’s report, Wager had a hunch. He dialed Vice and Narcotics and Lieutenant O’Brien. The shift commander’s secretary told him O’Brien was at a meeting but Sergeant Politzky was in.

“Fine. Let me talk to him, please.” It wasn’t fine. Anyone who called was a captive audience for Politzky’s comedy routines. But Wager had no choice.

“Gabe! Is it true homicide detectives are called stiff dicks? Ha!”

The sergeant thought of himself as a comedian and was his own best laugh track. Wager thought of him as something else. He gave Politzky the Wyandot address and asked if there was any narcotics trafficking there.

“Narcotics trafficking! Do you mean someone might actually deal in banned substances? What is this world coming to?”

“If I knew, I’d step off.”

“Hey, that’s pretty good, Gabe—I like that. Naw, that address doesn’t ring a jingle with me. There’s some activity in that area, but it’s not what we call a known address. But the dopers don’t mail us a postcard when they change addresses, do they? Ha. Let me ask around when the people get here, OK? Our people work creeps while others sleep—ha.”

Most of the V and N detectives worked nights and hadn’t yet reported in. Wager thanked the sergeant and hung up before Politzky could try another joke. He made a note to call back if he didn’t hear tomorrow; like his jokes, Politzky often promised more than he delivered.

His next call was to Elizabeth. She didn’t answer her home number, so he tried her office and found her working late. “I have a reception for the Downtown Boosters, Gabe. I should be home by nine, if that’s not too late for dinner.”

Elizabeth was one of the most active council members and one of the most effective. She did a conscientious job and had the respect of a lot of staff members and citizens. Because of that, she was something of an outsider on the council. It was, Wager knew, not unusual for a person—a woman especially—who did good work to be a threat to those who gave less and took more from their office. But despite being the junior member, she hadn’t been intimidated, and that was one of the things he admired about her. Another one was the fact that the pace of her official life made it impossible for her to complain about his. “I’ll have to give you a call. Max wants a little help tonight.”

“I understand, Gabe. By the way, was that another homicide this morning?” She took pride in and worried about her city and used the crime rate as an indicator of its health.

“It could be—homicide and arson. But all the reports aren’t in yet.”

A sigh. “Well, give me a call when you can.”

He promised he would. “I’ll come by if it’s not too late.” There were other things he liked about her too, but they had nothing to do with her official capabilities.

Such as that slightly husky note that appeared in her voice now and then. “It won’t be too late whenever.”

When Morris was brought back to Wager’s desk, it was long after six and the Crimes Against Persons offices were relatively quiet.

“Mr. Morris did a fine job, Gabe!” Westover slapped down a Xerox of the composite drawing. “Good job, Mr. Morris—I mean that.”

What Westover meant was that it took a hell of a lot more time than it should have and he didn’t want the civilian to go away mad.

Wager, too, smiled. “This looks real fine, Mr. Morris.”

“Well, I tried to remember everything about the guy. It sure looks like what I remember.”

The face gazing from the page was a long oval with a high hairline and eyes whose tops seemed arched a bit more than usual. The ears were small and tucked against the skull; the lips were slightly puckered and the upper lip thin against an almost pouty lower one.

“No marks or scars?”

“Not that I remember. But this is what he looks like.” Morris glanced at the wall clock over the notice board. “Can I use a phone? I got to let my wife know where I am.”

Wager shoved his across the glass-topped desk. “Tell her I’m taking you back right now.”

9/21

2007

M
AX PULLED THEIR
unmarked car to the curb, and he and Wager sat for a couple of minutes looking at the dim street. Behind them, busy Sixth Avenue was a constant flicker of light and noise. Ahead, Elati Street stretched almost empty in the darkness. On each side, one- and two-story houses sat behind silent patches of lawn, heavily curtained windows making a faint glow. Occasionally, a car cruised through the shadows of heavy trees and under the pale orange glare of street lights. The call from the Oceanside PD had come in: no Elizabeth Marshall there who had a son in Colorado. But Max had had better luck with the Albuquerque police. Flaco Martínez’s local rap sheet listed burglary, possession of a controlled substance, and receiving stolen goods—the familiar pattern of a small-time druggie. He’d had two falls, the last resulting in a couple of years in medium security. “The guy said Flaco was a wannabe with the Puñales, Gabe. He might have been in with them on some little crap but never was a real member of the gang.”

“Why’s he up here?”

“Guy didn’t know.”

“Flaco’s not wanted for anything down there?”

“Flaco’s not wanted at all down there. Guy said we were welcome to him.”

In the rearview mirror, they watched a car pull off Sixth Avenue and nose out a parking place along the dark curbs. Then shadows of men, women, and children wandered across the street toward the well-lit annex nestled against the tall darkness of the Catholic church.

“Gargan talk to you yet?” asked Wager.

“Yeah. Wasn’t much I could tell him: ‘We’re working on a lead.’”

“He wants to make it into a goddamn gang war.”

“He might get his wish if Flaco’s working with the Gallos.”

“Yeah.”

Maybe Flaco had come up to Denver to expand the Puñales’s trading territory. Gangs from L.A.—Crips, Bloods, 357 Crips—held the same idea and had been setting up in the mostly black northeast side of town. If Flaco was so hot to be tighter with the Puñales, that might be a way to do it: deliver a new market to them, especially if he could base it in the Gallos’ newly expanded territory. It would also explain Flaco’s bragging about contacts in New Mexico who could provide dope.

“Gabe—hey, Gabe!” Max jerked a thumb at a low-slung Chevrolet that rumbled slowly past in the far lane. “There goes Arnie Trujillo.”

Trujillo, a longtime member of the Tapatíos, was now one of the gang’s older leaders. A few years ago, his was a name familiar in the police department for being at the scene of various gang fights. Wager hadn’t heard much lately about the man. “He’s parking.”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

The two detectives watched the metallic-purple car glide to a halt down the street. A man and a woman got out, the woman holding a shawl-wrapped baby. They paused in the glare of passing headlights before crossing to the church. Max and Wager stepped out of the gloom of a low-branched tree. “Hello, Arnie,” said Max. “How’s things?”

The man’s face, a dim blur of dark eyes and mustache, scowled. His woman held the baby tighter and fell back a step or two. “Things was all right until I seen you.”

Wager nodded to the woman. “Buenas noches, señora. Queremos hablar con su marido, por favor.”

The woman didn’t answer but looked at Trujillo. He bobbed his head toward the church, and she left. Trujillo watched her for a moment, then glanced around the dim street and its scattering of closed doors, its windows glowing yellow behind pulled shades. With a rise and fall of shoulders, he asked, “What you people want?”

Wager said, “We hear Flaco Martínez was the one shot Ray Moralez. We’re looking for him.”

“What’s that to me, man?”

“You’re still with the Tapatíos, right?”

“Wrong. I retired. I got a family now. A job, a family—responsibilities, you know?”

It was a familiar pattern. As gang members got older, some moved up in the power structure, some retired to the straight life, and some retired to the penitentiaries. A lot of those came back with grander dreams than a neighborhood gang could serve. “But they still talk to you, right?”

Arnie, short and stocky, could have been Wager’s cousin. Maybe, given the neighborhood’s tangle of intermarriages and legal and illegal births, he was. The man shook his head. “Not about business, man. That’s the rule: you leave it, you’re out of it.
Fin
.”

“Where you work now, Arnie?”

“The city. For the street department.” A glimmer of teeth beneath the dim line of his mustache. “I’m a civil servant. Like you.”

“They know you got a record?”

“Hey, I got nothing heavy, man. All my shit’s juvenile crap. They seen my jacket. I passed a test and everything, so don’t hand me no shit, Wager.”