Angle of Attack (7 page)

“I heard.” Willy had been as far south as Pueblo, Colorado, where he was busted once for hustling a crap game in somebody else’s protected territory. But he acted as if he’d been whipped, worn chains, and branded; to Wager it was as bad as the Return to Aztlán preached by some of the Chicano kids, and just as wearisome. It seemed to be a fear of standing naked without the masks of the past; it seemed that a whole generation of people was trying to cash in on what their forebears had survived. “Willy, if you get something for me, I’ll get something for you. But I don’t know how much. It’s not like I’m begging you to dangle your fat ass in the wind; just keep your ears open.”

“I ain’t fat! I am big, my man, and don’t you try leaning all over me, Wager. You are too small to lean on me.”

“I can pop you like a cockroach, Willy. A fat one. You want to try me?”

The answer came in a sullen mumble. “One of these mornings, you gonna get out of bed dead.”

Wager only smiled and waited.

Willy shoved his half-empty glass away with long, shiny fingernails that looked delicate and out of place on his thick hands. “I’ll listen, Wager. And if I hear something, I might tell you. Only if the price is right—because it sure as hell ain’t gonna be for love.”

Among the four or five names left on the list of Frank Covino’s friends, Wager finally found one who told him a little more.

“Yeah, I was supposed to go to the movie with him, but I got a call to work at the last minute.” Peter A. Cruz, twenty, friend of the deceased, interviewed at his home at 3212 Wyandot, City-County Denver.

“Where do you work, Mr. Cruz?”

“At the Bahia restaurant. I’m a busboy. Last Sunday was supposed to be my night off, but one of the other guys called in sick and I had to cover. Maybe if that hadn’t happened, Frankie’d be alive now. Or I’d be dead, too.”

“You were a good friend of Frank?”

“Yeah, sure. There’s a bunch of us went through school together. We see each other a lot—well, maybe not as much as we used to, but still a lot.”

“Is the Bahia a good place to work? You make good money there?”

The young man’s alert eyes were set widely apart, and they said that was a strange question. “It’s O.K. Next year, I ought to make waiter. Waiters got to serve liquor and I ain’t twenty-one yet. I’ll get some decent money then.”

“But you don’t make much now?”

“Maybe sixty-five a week. If I wasn’t living at home, I couldn’t get by. But it’ll be O.K. when I make waiter. I’m learning the trade, like.”

“Did Frank ever lend you any money?”

“Frankie? Naw. Where would he get it? He made more than me, sure, but not that much more. And he gave part of it to his mother, anyway.”

“Tell me what happened on Sunday.”

Cruz shrugged. “There’s not much to tell. He gave me a call around five and asked if I wanted to see a flick. Said he’d be by about seven or eight. Then the restaurant called about six-thirty and told me to come down. So I tried to call Frankie and tell him, but he’d already left. I told Mom to tell him I had to work when he came by. Next I heard, he was dead. It’s really too bad.”

“What movie were you planning on seeing?”

“
Star Wars
. We seen it before, but it’s worth seeing again. That space stuff is something. Really profound, you know? Frankie liked it a lot—all the computers and robots. He was always reading this science fiction, really heavy stuff. That’s what he wanted to go into—space electronics or something like that.”

“Where’s it playing?”

“It was down at Cinema One, but I don’t know if it’s still there.”

“Did Frank have any special girl friend?” There were a few females on the list, but so far none seemed to be deeply involved with the victim, and all had denied receiving any expensive gifts or money from him.

“A
novia?
Naw. That was something his mom was always getting on him about: ‘When you getting married?’ ‘Don’t you meet any nice girls at college?’” Cruz laughed. “My mom does the same thing, but I tell her I’m too young to die. I mean … Well … you know what I mean. Poor Frankie.”

“But Frank dated girls?”

“Sure! Hey, he wasn’t queer or anything like that. He just didn’t find nobody to get serious about. He was like me, man, a Catholic. You stay married a long time when you’re a Catholic, so why rush it? That’s what I tell
mi angustiosa
.”

Angustiosa
. Wager recognized the word as slang for “mother.” “Are you going to college, too?”

“What for? There’s already too many college people running around that can’t get a job. Hell, a waiter at a good restaurant, he can make as much—more!—than a lot of people with college degrees.”

“Do you have any idea why somebody might want Frank dead?”

“Not a one. He was a real good guy—the kind you have over for Sunday dinner with your family. Maybe one or two people didn’t like him so much. Hell, you go through life, you can’t help making some enemies if you got any
talangos
at all—I’ve learned that! But Frankie?” The youth shook his head. “He liked most people and they liked him. And nobody didn’t like him so much they wanted to kill him.”

Wager’s next stop was the Cinema One, a neighborhood theater that made its living by showing the big hits a lot later and a little cheaper than the major theaters downtown. He stood out of the thick snow and under the radiant heat above the open glass doors to the lobby, waiting until the last couple in the short line bought tickets. Then he held his badge up to the glass window at the startled bleached blonde in the ticket booth. “Were you on duty Sunday night, miss?”

“Yes, sir.”

He slid a photocopy of Covino’s picture under the ticket window. “Do you remember seeing this man?”

She frowned at the picture. “I don’t know. He looks kind of familiar. But lots of times I don’t even look at people’s faces any more.”

“Was the same doorman on duty?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can I talk to him a minute?”

She looked worried and scratched at the dark roots of her hair. “I guess you can go in. I guess Mr. Paxton won’t mind. I hope not.”

“I’ll only be a minute.”

The doorman, a sallow kid in his late teens with a maroon uniform and freshly squeezed pimples to match, had been watching him suspiciously. “Yes, sir?”

Wager showed him his badge and the photograph. “Did you happen to see this man come in or leave last Sunday night?”

The kid held the picture and looked at it first from one angle, then from another, up close and then out at arm’s length. Through the curtained entry to the auditorium came the quavering violin sounds of tension and pursuit. Another bleached blonde, perhaps the younger sister of the ticket girl, yawned behind the candy and popcorn counter. “I’m not sure, Officer,” the kid said slowly. “He looks like a guy I saw. He was standing in line to buy a ticket and some guy came up and said something to him and they left.”

“What’d this other man look like?”

“Well, he had his back to me; I couldn’t point him out in a line-up. And I didn’t really notice either one until they left. It was a long line—you know how Sunday nights are when we got a big bill. And if this is the suspect”—he tapped the picture—“then he was only two or three back from the ticket window when they left. That’s how come I noticed him—he waited all that time in line and then went off when he got near the window.” He added confidentially, “I’m supposed to kind of keep an eye on the ticket window in case of a stickup so I can identify the criminal. We haven’t had one yet, but I’m ready.”

“Was this person who spoke to him tall or short?”

“Kind of short. Maybe a little shorter than you.”

“Did he have a beard? Was he wearing any jewelry or anything that would make you notice him?”

“Like I said, I only saw him from the back … excuse me.” He reached past Wager to say “Thank you” and take the tickets of a middle-aged couple coming in. “I was busy collecting,” he said to Wager, “and I just looked up to see this man say something and then the two of them left. I don’t even know where the other guy came from.”

“Any idea about his age?”

“No.”

The kid would be a real asset in case of a stickup. “Was he noticeably fat or skinny?”

“I guess thin. It’s hard to say because he had a coat on, but his shoulders didn’t look too wide.”

“What color was the coat?”

“Light. Maybe gray or tan, something like that. And long. I mean below the knees. That was something a little different—I noticed that,” he said with a pleased smile.

“Color of hair?”

“Right—that was something else I noticed! He had a hat on, one of these black things—a beret. I couldn’t see his hair, but you don’t see too many hats like that around any more. There used to be a lot of Brown Berets, but this one was black.”

“What color was his neck?”

He thought back. “Light—it was a white guy.”

“How long did they talk?”

“I’m not sure. A minute, maybe. I tore a couple tickets and when I looked up again, they were walking off.” He couldn’t hold it back any longer. “What’s this guy done? The suspect in the picture?”

“He’s a homicide victim.”

“Jeez!”

“Did the man in the coat walk in any special way? Have a limp or anything?”

“Not that I noticed. They went off pretty fast.”

“Can I have your name?”

“Sure. What for?”

“In case I have to come back to verify some of these facts.”

“Oh. Bill Paxton. I’m here all the time; my dad runs the place.”

The boy didn’t seem overjoyed about working for his father. “Can you tell me what time the show started last Sunday?”

“Like always—shorts at seven-twenty, feature at seven thirty-five.”

Wager took a business card from his wallet. “Here’s my name and number. If you think of anything else—no matter how small it might seem—call and ask for me or leave a message, O.K.? Think it over real well—you just might have seen the man who killed this kid.”

“Jeez!”

It was almost nine now, and Wager was starting to feel the heavy hours of the long day press on his shoulders and stiffen the small of his back. Still, there was one more thread to tug before calling it a day: Gerald Covino’s arrest. He called in to the dispatcher for Detective Franconi’s location; the reply came that he was on Code Seven at an all-night truckers’ restaurant farther down on Wyandot, where the freeway ramps and railroad spurs looped in tangles around each other. Wager found him in the last booth, scraping egg yolk with a piece of toast and half listening to the crackle of his radio pack standing on the small table.

“Hi, Gabe. I heard you asking for me.” Mario Franconi, about Wager’s size, had on a navy-blue blazer with neat silver buttons that looked out of place against the simulated leather and greasy chrome of the restaurant. He wore a closely trimmed mustache in a thin line over his wide upper lip, and with the blazer, it made Wager think of a hotel manager or a jewelry salesman. But the man had a pretty good reputation as a burglary detective, and Wager tried not to hold against him the fact that Franconi was studying to be a lawyer.

He slid into the facing seat and shook hands. “I’m after some information on Gerald Edward Covino. You popped him about eight or ten months ago, remember?”

Franconi slid the egg yolk back and forth with a corner of toast for a second or two as he mentally thumbed through the arrest reports he carried in memory. “Covino. Yes, indeed. Burglary, but he bargained for breaking and entering. Yes, indeed. We had a four-square conviction on the lesser charge.” He dabbed gingerly at his mouth with a folded napkin, ran a finger along each side of the thin mustache, and neatly tugged his jacket sleeves up to loosen them before propping his elbows on the table and leaning forward. “He was found with his burglary tools on him, so we might have gotten him on intent, but the D.A. didn’t want to waste time pushing for it. Covino had taken nothing—opened no cash drawers or safes—so the strongest charge was breaking and entering. We suspected he had accomplices, but he was the only one we caught; and he wouldn’t name anyone else.” The thought suddenly landed in Franconi’s eyes. “Wasn’t that the name of the latest homicide victim? Any relation?”

“Younger brother. First name Frank or Frankie.”

He stroked his mustache a moment or two more. “I don’t recall that name. Only Gerald’s.”

“Do you remember anything about the bust?”

“Yes, indeed! It was almost comic. The uniformed officers received a ten-ninety, silent type, at approximately 3:45 A.M. It was at a drugstore on the north side of town off the I-25 and Thirty-eighth Avenue intersection. The exact location escapes me, but it’ll be in Covino’s trial record. I was on graveyard and of course responded, too. When I arrived, the patrolmen had been there perhaps two or three minutes ahead of me, having come up without lights or siren. They found the front door still locked and one of them was looking for a way to the back of the store. Let’s see … one of the officers was McBride—Pat McBride. I can’t remember the other’s name. It was this other one who was looking for a way to the back entrance. But the building was one of these long series of stores side by side, so of course there was no immediate access to the rear of that particular store,” Franconi explained carefully.

Wager took a deep breath and forced a patient smile and nodded. Franconi was going to make a fine lawyer.

“I picked him up and we swung around the corner and came down the alley. At that time of night, we naturally made some noise driving up, and fully expected to see the suspect or suspects running down the alley, so I had my high beams on. And remember, the patrolmen had already rattled the front door, so that anyone inside must have known an alarm had gone off and that officers were on the scene. But no one was visible. We stopped and tried the back door and found it open. Later investigation revealed that the dead bolt had been picked and the snap lock had been slipped by a piece of plastic. We thought we were too late, but in we went, anyway; I covered while the uniformed officer entered, and then he covered for me. We stood on each side of the doorway for a few seconds to let our eyes adjust, and then began moving through the stockroom toward the front of the store. We couldn’t find the light switch, of course, so the officer whose name I can’t recall was shining his flashlight around as we went forward. Still nothing—no sound of anyone running, no heavy breathing, no scurrying around. We reached the main part of the store and by the streetlights coming through the front window could see the pharmacy station on the left. The cash register was near the door, and so the two of us started down the left side toward the pharmacy and then we were going to sweep the cash register area and unlock the front door for McBride. All this time, we were keeping our eyes wide open in case someone was still in there and bolted for the back. We didn’t really expect that—as I’ve said, we had made enough noise to scare off an army. Anyway, we made it past the pharmacy, and since none of the drawers behind the counter were pulled out, we again thought the thief had been scared off. When we drew near the register, we could see that the cash drawer was closed, but it was approximately then that we smelled him.”