Blood Line (8 page)

The article went on to describe Julio’s job at DIA as well as the death of his father. Then it mentioned Wager’s shock and anger at the irony of a murder in his own family, and worried about the possibility that a police officer’s desire for personal revenge might distract him from solving the murders of other, less well connected citizens such as the late John Erle Hocks, a case to which Wager had been assigned. This victim’s alleged killer or killers were still unapprehended, and reputedly Hocks’s death was the start of a gang war. It ended with the statement that apparently no one in Denver, not even a minion of the law, was isolated from the flood of alleged gang violence that was flaming almost uncontrolled through the metropolitan area. A trailer line said, “Tomorrow: The Possibility of Open Gang Warfare Erupting in Denver.”

Wager guessed that if Big Ron didn’t start one soon, Gargan would have to.

He made the call from a public telephone outside a Burger King on East Colfax. As he listened to the ring, his eyes, of their own will, focused on the scar in the brick wall where a glancing bullet had chipped out a shallow hole. It was a ragged oblong about two and a half inches at the widest and maybe a quarter-inch deep—the bullet had knocked off the brick’s glossy surface to leave its grainy insides open to the weather. The Anthony shooting, six—five?—years ago: a stickup gone wrong and two dead. The rough surface of the broken brick was now almost as grimy as the smoother brick around it, and you had to know what you were looking for to spot it. Wager figured it said something about his job that he remembered where so many of the city’s scars were. And maybe something about his life, too. Which, by God, Gargan for all his fancy words didn’t know one damn thing about.

A bored-sounding voice finally answered, and Wager asked for Fat Willy.

“Who wants him?”

Always the same question in the same slow drawl, and, even before noon on a Monday, the clack of pool balls in the background. Probably a game still in progress from last Saturday night. “Gabe.”

“I see if he’s around.”

A minute or two later came the lurching wheeze of Willy’s voice. “Heyo, my man.”

“How much you pay your secretary to be a bartender, too?”

“He get a little something, just like everybody else.” A half-grunted chuckle. “Everybody want something, even you, or you wouldn’t be talking now.”

“You got that right. I need some information.”

“Right now? What’s so important you got to interrupt my morning coffee?”

“It’s not morning, Willy. It’s almost eleven. And I’m looking for a killer.”

“Shit, when ain’t you? And when you gonna start catching some?”

“Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, Willy.”

“I don’t read the papers, my man, just the racing form. I got my own ways of finding things out. And I bet you calling right now from a donut shop, ain’t you?”

“Close—a Burger King. I want to know what you’ve got on Big Ron Tipton.”

A few wheezing breaths as the heavy man thought. “That be about the kid got shot? The one over near the old Stapleton projects?” Fat Willy was telling Wager that he did, indeed, know what went down in his neighborhood.

“John Erle Hocks, yeah. Thirteen years old.”

“Um.” Breath. “That Big Ron is a mean nigger, all right. Crazy-like, you know?” Another breath and Wager could sense the man feeling his way, trying to discover what the event might mean for him without letting Wager or anyone else know what was or wasn’t important about it. Life, for Fat Willy, was a poker game. “What you after with him?”

“I hear John Erle was one of his runners. I want to know if that’s why he was shot.”

“One of Big Ron’s runners? He don’t have runners. He works by hisself. Least, that’s what I hear.”

“I’d like to find that out for sure, Willy.”

“Uh-huh. You mean maybe Big Ron trying to expand his business, like?”

“Or if someone’s moving in on him.”

“Either way, could be bad news all around.”

“Something else; I want people to know I’m asking around about him.”

“Folks hear that, they gonna be careful about doing business with him. Big Ron ain’t going to like that.”

“Tough shit.”

“Um.” In the background another clack of pool balls at the break, followed by a high-pitched laugh. “I see what I can do. And Wager—”

“Yeah?”

“Like I say, everybody get a little something, right?”

“I deal fair, Willy.”

“Uh-huh.”

H
IS NEXT CALL
was via his radio. The Vice and Narcotics people would be straggling into the office about now, catching up on their paperwork before meeting with the SWAT teams to set up tonight’s festivities. Walt Adamo, who had been in Wager’s class at the police academy and who had been miffed when Wager made detective sergeant and he didn’t, had finally been promoted and found a home in V & N. It wasn’t, to Wager’s way of thinking, equal to the Homicide section; but then not much was.

He also knew that most good cops would think the same way: that the job they were doing—V & N or whatever—was the most important one in the department. But Wager knew absolutely that his was. Evidence: There was no statute of limitations on murder. And it didn’t matter who was killed—John F. Kennedy or John Erle Hocks—it was the act itself, it was murder itself, that gave so much weight to the job he did. And maybe that was the real reason Gargan’s article was still rankling so much: Running through the reporter’s facts was the implication that, because a victim had been Wager’s relative, he would work harder to find the killer. A personal stake that called for effort he would not give to a victim he didn’t know. But Wager had never met a killer who required just ordinary effort, because murder was not just your ordinary crime—despite the familiarity corpses were gaining on television and in the newspapers. No homicide was run-of-the-mill. There were a lot of killers who were just plain dumb and careless, even more who did what they did out of an immense selfishness. There were some who were pure scum, and even a few he might have let himself feel sorry for after he had nailed them and they were convicted. But despite who they were or how they got that way, it was what they had done that counted with the law and especially with Wager; it was what they had done, not who they were or who they killed, that drove Wager to catch them.

The V & N secretary told Wager that Adamo had not yet checked in. She took his name and number and said she would leave a message he’d called, and when the phone rang Wager picked up the receiver expecting to hear Walt’s voice. But it was Golding.

“Gabe—did you see that story in the paper? The one about the Lucero shooting?”

“I saw it.”

“The reporter did a pretty good job, didn’t he? Maybe it’ll shake out some witness or something.”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah—well—listen. I just got a call from that reporter, Gargan’s his name. He wants to know what new stuff we have on the shooting. Has he talked to you anymore about the case?”

“I don’t tell Gargan much of anything, Maury. And we didn’t talk about the case in the first place.”

“He—ah—gave you a lot of space in that story he wrote. Like, you know, you’re the officer of record or something.”

“That much I told him; that I wasn’t. I said he should talk to you.”

“Yeah, well, he did. And he asked me all sorts of questions about you. About how you felt getting a cousin killed and what you were doing about it. Like if you were taking it personal, you know.”

“I read the story.”

“Yeah, well, I hope you didn’t mind my telling him. I didn’t know he was going to sort of focus on that.” Golding waited for Wager to tell him something more. When he didn’t Golding added, “Gargan’s a nice guy; he’s doing some more articles on city crime. But if he interviews you again, I don’t want to come out in the newspaper looking like a idiot, you know?”

That would take some effort, but Wager kept that comment to himself. “I’m not sure what you’re telling me, Maury.”

“Just if Gargan does come to you for any more information on the case, we make sure our stories check out together. You know, so we don’t tell him different things and sound like we don’t know our ass from our elbow on this.”

“We’ll do it this way: It’s your case, you be the one to talk with Gargan.”

“You sure that’s OK? After all, the Lucero kid was your cousin, and like Gargan says, that’s the human interest side of the story.”

“Believe me, it will not hurt my feelings.”

“That’s great, Gabe.” There was a brief pause, then Golding offered something in return. “Hey, did I tell you about this dentist I found up in Boulder—guy who practices holistic dentistry? It’s the latest in dental care. He says a person’s lifestyle choices affect dental health in a big way.”

“All right. I’ll choose to brush my teeth after every meal.”

“That’s not what this guy’s about. That’s important, sure, but this is your whole life—that’s what holistic means. The whole thing. He combines dental technology with folk medicine and orients your life to your teeth.”

“To my teeth?”

“Yeah! You ever consider how central to your well-being your teeth are? Even when you’re asleep. Ever grind your teeth in your sleep?”

“Maury—”

“I’m serious, Gabe. Do you?”

“I don’t know—I’m asleep.”

“There, see? You don’t even know whether you do or not. That’s a sign you don’t know how important teeth are to your entire holistic well-being.”

“Golding—”

“All right, all right. It’s your life. But you got to remember, Gabe, every moment you’re happy is a gift to the rest of humankind. And when you’re not happy, you take that gift away. You know what I mean?”

“No. Good-bye.”

He seemed to be hanging up on everybody this morning. Maybe, goddamn it if everybody would let him do his work, he would find some sweetness and light to give to the rest of humankind.

But it wasn’t sweetness and light that was on his mind when Adamo from V & N finally returned his call. “You know Big Ron Tipton, Walt?”

“I wish I didn’t. He kill somebody now?”

“Not that I know of.” Wager explained about John Erle.

“A territorial squabble?” Adamo knew the possibility was something to worry about. “Does Intelligence have anything on it?”

“Nothing yet. You heard anything?”

“No. Maybe that’s not why the kid was killed. I hope.”

“I’d like some heat put on Big Ron—enough to make him want to talk to me.”

“A little high-profile stuff be good enough? We’re wading through shit up to our chins right now. Won’t have a lot of time to develop anything much more than that for a couple of weeks.”

“That’ll be fine, Walt. Just enough so he knows I wasn’t blowing smoke.”

“You got it.” Adamo was still thinking gang war. “If you hear anything more about why that kid was killed, let me know, OK?”

Wager promised he would.

“High profile” was Walt’s shop talk for making an officer’s presence known to a suspect. It was a form of harassment usually just inside the law: park an obvious survey vehicle on the street near his house, cruise by favorite corners and addresses where he was known to do business, have the uniformed people stop him for jaywalking or littering, that kind of thing. That arranged, Wager checked the time and then took the elevator down to the basement garage where the duty cars waited. The senior counselor at Cole Middle School had finally located some of John Erle’s friends and promised to have them in his office over the noon hour for Wager to talk to.

The building was a smaller version of Julio’s high school: three stories of brick, this time dark red, whose sprawling wings were surrounded by asphalt that once might have been lawns. The paved areas had that grimy, tired look given by a lot of wear over a lot of years, and in the corners the wind had blown trash into little piles that gave a slightly ominous feel. It was as if the ghosts of boys who had gathered there in packs before school or during PE were still waiting to jump an isolated kid. The unyielding brick and asphalt, the sense of isolated corners and empty corridors where dark things could happen, the rows and rows of square windows that seemed to mask staring eyes, all brought back a feeling Wager had forgotten, and he could almost see himself in that first year of junior high school, a skinny runt who despite his name wasn’t one of the Anglos, and despite his skin wasn’t one of the Hispanics. And in the fights between the two, he had ended up battling both. That hadn’t left much time for what he was supposed to be learning from books and classes, and looking back on it, he guessed that was another of the reasons he finally gave up on high school: that lost year when studies had been outweighed by survival. Not that he’d cared enough about schoolwork to try and make it up, but that’s what the rigidity and grayness of this soiled building reminded him of. And the memory made the swarm of open-mouthed adolescent faces that filled the hallway seem half-familiar; among the gabbling swagger of many of the boys and the self-contained alertness of the budding girls he saw faces he almost recognized, and lives he could almost read.

He had a pretty good idea about the lives of the three kids sitting on hard chairs in the waiting room of the counselor’s office, too. They eyed him when he came in, a mixture of suspicion and curiosity half-masked by a show of worldly carelessness.

“Gentlemen,” Wager nodded.

Two nodded back. One just stared defensively.

Wager knocked on the door whose plastic name plate said Mr. Hoyer. A voice said “Come in,” and Wager did. Hoyer was a large man whose skin glistened with its own blackness. His thick hand wrapped around Wager’s in a brief, strong grip, and he nodded to one of the chairs placed in front of the desk. “The three boys are waiting for you.”

“I saw them. How well did you know Hocks?”

The man’s forehead wrinkled in a shrug, and Wager noted the glint of a scar leading into the short, graying hair. There were a few more tiny cuts in the puffy flesh beneath his eyes, like an ex-boxer might have. “I didn’t have any official contact with him; he was doing all right in his schoolwork, I hear—one of the better students, in fact. But I did ask around, and”—another shrug—“he had some money coming from somewhere. You know, talking big, flashing it around. Lord knows he didn’t get much from his mama, so it’s probably like you suspected—he was working the street for somebody.”