Endangered Species (20 page)

Max strolled up to Wager’s unmarked cruiser and leaned to the window. “I appreciate this, Gabe.”

“No problem.”

The entrance to the apartment building was an arch of brown brick pinched between plate-glass display windows. On one side was an unpainted-furniture store, on the other an upholstery shop. A picket of iron bars protected the goods shown in each set of windows, but the building’s entry door had a broken pane of glass. If you wanted to, you could reach through and open the handle from the inside. They didn’t have to, because it was unlocked.

Max led the way up the steep stairway. His large shadow covered Wager and blotted out the steps. “How’d everything go in Steamboat?”

“The suspect wasn’t there. We talked to a friend of his.”

“Any leads?”

“Not much.”

“Too bad.”

The hallway was almost lit by two dim bulbs hanging naked from porcelain sockets. At the far end, an unlit sign over the window said
FIRE ESCAPE
. Max had to use his penlight to read the faded apartment numbers stenciled on the scarred doors.

“Place smells like a urinal,” he said.

The water blisters in the baseboard paint said it might be.

“Here we are.” Max loosened his revolver in its belt holster; Wager took out his pistol and moved against the wall down the hallway. Standing to one side of the door, Max knocked and waited. The muffled sound of
ranchera
music came through a wall from somewhere and mingled with the stilted voices of a loud television from somewhere else. Max knocked again.

“Yeah—who’s it?” The murmur hovered just beyond the door.

Max’s voice was equally discreet. “Police, Mr. Quintana. We’d like to talk to you.”

A long silence. Max tilted his head. “Break it down?”

“Got a warrant?” asked Wager.

“No.”

“Let him hide his stash. He can’t go anywhere.”

A few seconds later, a chain rattled, and a pair of dead bolts clicked back. Quintana opened the door halfway. As his mug shots pictured, the youth had long dark hair pulled back tight against his skull into a ponytail, and a sharp bend in his nose showed where it had been broken. Both shoulders, bare and heavy in the sleeveless black muscle shirt, bore tattoos. He looked a lot older than his seventeen years and already moved with the bulky stiffness of a man. “What you people want with me?”

Wager didn’t like him. He didn’t like the way Quintana tried to act tough, and he didn’t like the way the kid sneered when he spoke. He especially didn’t like the idea of wasting time to cajole scum like this when, in the back of his mind, he could still see that towering plume of poisoned smoke. “We want to talk about Ray Moralez.”

“Fuck him, man. He got what he deserved.”

Wager, weapon back in its holster, shoved past Quintana.

“Hey, man, I didn’t say you could come in.”

“You don’t want to talk in the hall, Roy. Stinks worse than your apartment.”

Max came in, too, and closed the door behind him. The three men crowded the small space. A sagging plaid sofa against one wall faced a portable television against the other. Littered with newspaper, a coffee table took up the center of the room. Through a doorway, Wager could see part of a rumpled bed that filled the other room. The bathroom was probably off that. There was no kitchen, but a two-burner hot plate sat on the windowsill and gave the room a lingering odor of scorched something.

“How’d you people know where I was at?”

“You have friends, Roy. People looking out for you,” said Wager.

“What’s that mean?”

“They know it’s good you talk to us. They know it’ll save you all sorts of trouble later on.”

“Like what kind of trouble you think I can’t handle?”

“For one thing, I don’t think you can handle an accessory-to-murder charge. For another, I don’t think you can handle Flaco Martínez.” Wager smiled. “And I know goddamn well you can’t handle me.”

“Take it easy, Gabe. Mr. Quintana wants to cooperate.”

Want was going to have damn little to do with it. But Wager stifled the urge to make that clear. Instead, he turned to be sure no one was hiding in the other rooms. Quintana watched suspiciously. “You people ain’t showed me no warrant. There’s not nothing you people can bust me for!”

“We’re not here to bust you, Mr. Quintana.” Max smiled. “We just want to talk with you. We’d like your cooperation in a murder investigation.”

“Yeah?” Quintana turned on the television and flopped on the couch to stare at the machine. “I don’t feel like cooperating.”

Wager wrapped the electric cord around the toe of his shoe and yanked it from the socket. Then he propped his foot on the couch’s wobbly arm. “We hear Flaco killed Ray Moralez.”

Quintana shrugged, still staring at the dark TV screen.

“We hear he did it because he wants the Tapatíos’ territory.”

Another shrug.

“And he wants the Tapatíos’ territory so he can start pushing shit he brings up from Albuquerque.”

“You know so much, why don’t you know where he is?”

“And this pinche—un achichincle por los Puñales allá en Albuquerque—he comes up here to take over the Gallos.”

“What?”

“Think about it,
chingón
. First, he knocks off one of the Tapatíos so he can look like
un matacúas
. Then he gets you Gallos to take over the Tapatíos’ turf—says he’ll make it worth your trouble, right? Then he sets up business in your territory. You think after all that he’s going to step back and let some
cagadillo
like you run things?” Wager shook his head and grinned. “You, man, you’ll be on the street pushing dope; Flaco, he’ll tell you how much to move, give you ten, maybe fifteen percent, and take the rest. And he’ll sit on his ass and watch you
sonzos
sweat the narcs.”

That scenario was a little different from the one Quintana had pictured. Wager had his full attention.

Max was a large tree bending slightly forward. “We’re from Homicide, Mr. Quintana. We don’t care what you people are planning unless it makes work for us. Right now, Flaco’s our business—nothing else.”

“We’re going to get him, Roy. Along with anybody who helps him. That’s what we call an accessory to the crime—
cómplice al crimen
. Murder is a class one felony, and anybody who helps Flaco could end up doing ten years, all because that
zurrón
wants to take over Los Gallos.”

The sharp odor of sweaty armpits spread through the room to swamp the charred smell from the stained hot plate. Wager wanted to open the window and let the cool night air sweep in. But too much depended on him standing over Quintana and waiting as if he had the whole night for an answer. He clamped his nose against the mingled odors and stared down at the youth. The tattoo on his left shoulder showed a spread eagle and the name Charlene. The blue letters, shaky and amateur, started large and then grew smaller as the tattooer had run out of space on the back of Quintana’s arm. Like, Wager thought, the promise of Quintana’s life: starting big and ending next to nothing.

“He’s moved from his Thirty-eighth Avenue place,” said Max quietly. “But we know he’s still in town. Where is he, Mr. Quintana?”

“I don’t know where he’s holed up at.”

“How do you get in touch with him?” Wager asked.

Quintana hesitated.

“Has he crashed with any of the Gallos?”

“No, man. Most of
mis compadres
, they live with their
familias
.” His lips twisted in a sneer as his chin included the cramped apartment. “Me, I’m fucking emancipated—my old man, he emancipated me when I was fifteen, man, and I been on my own ever since.”

Wager had heard sadder stories. “So how do you talk business with him?”

Silence.

“Roy, you want to act like
un zopenco
, we’re not going to waste any more time. You want that
cabrón
to take over the Gallos, you got it—it’ll be your choice and your ass. Now, this is the last time I ask you, and then we’re out of here, because we got things to do: how do you get in touch with Flaco when you want him?”

The thick shoulders rose and fell. “Through Sol Atilano. He lives over on Mariposa Street. Somebody needs to talk to Flaco, they go by Sol’s and he makes a phone call. A couple minutes later, Flaco calls back to make sure everything’s cool with Sol. You know—he calls back and if it ain’t square, Sol pretends he don’t know who’s calling or something. If it is square, he sets up a time. Then Sol takes them to the meet.” Another half sneer. “Fucker thinks he’s smart—thinks he can’t get set up that way.”

“Atilano calls from his own phone?”

Quintana nodded.

“Can you set up a meet with Flaco?”

“Hey, man, don’t use me for no
araña
.”

“Don’t worry, Roy. What we do is tap Sol’s phone. You ask for a meet with Flaco, Sol calls him up, we find out where he calls to and pick him up there. The only way anybody’s going to know who tipped us is if you tell them.”

It took a little convincing, but Quintana finally agreed to it, and Wager said he’d let the man know when the phone tap was set up. On the way back to the Admin Building, Max shook his head. “You really think we have enough for a phone tap, Gabe?”

It wouldn’t be easy. The courts weren’t happy about phone taps in the first place, and Flaco’s rap sheet wasn’t heavy. And the only link between Flaco and a felony was rumor. “If we don’t, we’ll tail Quintana.”

“Flaco could spot us—and Quintana could end up with his butt in a sling.”

Wager shrugged. “He wants to be the big boy on the block.”

“He’s just a kid, Gabe, and Flaco gave him a line. Quintana probably had no idea what the hell he was getting into.”

“So now he’ll find out.” Though it was true that Flaco couldn’t have pulled this scam on a gang made up mostly of adults. At best, they’d have laughed at him. At worst, he’d be chopped meat: Flaco the Taco.

As Elizabeth had promised, the light was left on for him. Wager tried to be quiet as he locked the front door and took off his shoes to move gently across the creaking floorboards of the silent house. In the refrigerator, he found a cold chicken leg sitting next to a can of beer, and he was finishing the snack when Elizabeth’s voice, drowsy and husky, said behind him, “See? I think of everything.”

“Guess what I’m thinking of?”

They held each other for a long moment, his hands sliding over the warm silk of her nightgown.

“I’ve been thinking of that too,” she said.

Wager buried his face in the soft curls of her hair and breathed deeply: a scent of soap, a tinge of perfume, that cozy, fragile aroma of sleep-warmed flesh. And through those soft things, the abrasive thought of Libeus King. He held tighter to Elizabeth and tried to push away the man’s name and the image of the arsenal and the things that were stored out there and the lingering vision of a charred and clenched corpse.

She leaned back, her farsightedness making her squint slightly as she looked up at him. “What’s the matter, Gabe?”

“Tired.” He smiled, “Glad to be here. Glad to be with you.”

She studied him a moment or two more, then tugged at his arm. “Come on. I’ll rub your back.”

“And I’ll rub your front.”

Small movements settled the hollows and swells of their bodies together, and hands and lips moved with comfortable and soothing familiarity as the room’s darkness became a sheltering refuge.

“That feels good.”

“Mmm.”

After a while she asked, “Any leads on the sniper?”

“Not that I heard about.” The tension had gone out of his body, and he felt her, too, settle more heavily against him.

“It’s hard to realize how much hatred and … cowardice would make someone do that.”

The cowardice had been human nature, and the hatred had been against the police in general. The sniper had no way of knowing which patrol car would answer the summons, and it had been Markowsky’s and Rosener’s bad luck to get the call. It could have been anyone on duty, and that randomness increased the anger that any cop felt when the uniform was assaulted.

“So much violence.” Elizabeth’s voice was quiet in the dark. “It’s as if people want to strike out against the things that seem to control them—to attack any authority, whether it’s there to help them or not.”

She assumed that the sniper attack was the reason for his worry, and Wager wasn’t sure he should tell her otherwise. Mallory had labeled the information confidential. But Denver was her city. As a councilperson, Elizabeth had both a right and a responsibility to know of threats to the welfare of her city. And, to tell a deeper truth, the knowledge bore down on Wager like a stifling weight. Maybe it would be lighter if shared. But then again, maybe not. More likely, it would weigh just as heavily on Elizabeth.

But she wouldn’t have been Elizabeth if she weren’t bright and sensitive: “It’s not just the sniper, is it?”

“Why do you say that?”

Against his chest, a shoulder lifted and fell. “It’s something I feel. There’s something you want to tell me but aren’t. What is it?”

It was Wager’s turn to shrug; she was also a very tenacious woman, who could pester like a burr in a sock, if she had a mind to. “The sniper’s bad enough,” he said. “Then there’s that arson and homicide.”

“What about it?”

He told her about Tillotson being an FBI snitch and the FBI interest in the case—hell, even Gargan knew that much.

She listened without interrupting him. When she finally spoke, the sleepiness was gone from her voice. “Has the FBI told you what the girl was doing for them?”

“Yes. But what Mallory’s told me is confidential.”

“So you’re not going to tell me.”

“I can’t, Elizabeth.”

The bed thumped sharply as she shifted her weight, and he could hear her stifle a hurt note in her voice with a councilperson’s official demand. “Does it have anything to do with the public welfare?”

“I can’t tell you that, either.”

“That’s a yes, isn’t it?”

Wager sighed. “That’s a yes.”

“Has the mayor been told about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“If so, he hasn’t mentioned anything to the council.”

“You don’t want to talk to anyone about this yet, Liz. Like I said, it’s confidential.”