Endangered Species (7 page)

“That a son or daughter you have?”

“Daughter. Why?”

“You need your job, Arnie. You don’t want any cops talking to your supervisor—you know how bureaucrats are. Always worried about public image.”

They heard another vehicle pull to the curb, followed by the slam of car doors and loud, excited voices. Trujillo stepped into the darker shadow of the tree. “What the fuck you want, man? I told you I don’t wear colors no more.”

“But they talk to you, Arnie. You’re
un viejo
—they got a problem they want to talk over, they come see you, a few others. Pay attention to what you say. Just like an uncle.”

Trujillo watched the carload of people head for the church annex, the stacked heels on the men’s shoes cracking loud against the pavement. “So I maybe tell a couple people you’re looking for Flaco Martínez. That all you want?”

“That, and they tell us where he is. We don’t want any crap starting up between the Tapatíos and the Gallos.”

“What’s the Gallos got to do with it?”

“That’s one of the things we want to know,” Wager said. “We heard Flaco was trying to work some kind of deal with them.”

“I don’t know nothing about that.”

“But somebody in Los Tapatíos would know.”

“You’re asking a lot, man.”

“You got a daughter who lives here now. Four, five years, she’s going to be riding her tricycle up and down these streets, Arnie. Another five, six years, she’s going to be wearing lipstick. You want to think about what that means.”

Trujillo didn’t answer. Finally, he said, “We’ll see,” and started to turn away.

“One thing more, Arnie. …” The man paused. “That house over on Wyandot that burned down last night—you ever hear of any action there?”

Trujillo shook his head. “I didn’t even know about a fire over there.”

Wager told him the street number. “Ask around—see if any of your people know about anything going down at that address.”

Back in the automobile, Max drummed large fingers on the steering wheel. “You know anybody in the Gallos, Gabe?”

“Just to talk at, not to talk with.”

They pulled away from the lengthening lines of cars parked at the curbs. “If they didn’t have a hand in it, they might help spot Flaco. He’s not one of their boys.”

Wager shook his head. “If they do have a deal going, they want him clear.” Wager smiled. “I think you and Fullerton will have to work real close on this one.”

Max sighed.

They had just turned off Colfax between the sprawling levels of the
Rocky Mountain News
building and the gray stone walls of the U.S. Mint when Max’s radio popped with his number. “Homicide detective needed at the Blue Moon Bar and Grill, 2145 Larimer.”

“On my way.” Max replaced the handset in its car charger. “Crap.” He was the homicide detective on duty tonight, and the Blue Moon was a familiar call. Both he and Wager had spent a lot of time there since it opened, five or six years before. “Want me to drop you at the parking lot?”

“No, I’ll go along. I got nothing better to do.” Elizabeth had said she’d be home by now, but Wager doubted that she was. Those committee meetings went on forever, because every mouth there believed it had to be heard at least twice.

Max didn’t argue with Wager. If it was the usual stabbing, there could be twenty or thirty witnesses to interview. Two of them could do the job faster, and perhaps he’d get home in time to shave before returning to work in the morning.

A familiar cluster of emergency lights flickered in front of the bar’s blue neon sign. Across Larimer, a handful of street people, equally familiar, stared. In front of them, a uniformed arm waved traffic past. A television van had already arrived, and its camera lights hollowed out a spot of white glare for a reporter. She took a moment to run a comb through her hair before taking the microphone and speaking earnestly into the camera lens. Wager spotted Gargan talking to a patrolman and writing rapidly in a notebook.

The glow of street lights spread up the brick faces of the old nineteenth-century commercial buildings, making them seem to lean forward to watch the commotion below. But the tall, narrow windows were blank and empty at this time of night, and except for the officials and nonofficials standing around staring, so was the rest of upper Larimer Street. Max flipped down the car’s visor to show its paper, and the traffic cop nodded and stepped aside to let their car pull to the curb. They parked between a blue-and-white and the high orange-and-white box of the ambulance. Wager went quickly into the entrance before Gargan could notice him. The responding officers had the building secured, and as Max and Wager entered, the forensic team’s unmarked vehicle arrived behind them.

“Hello, Floyd.” Wager nodded to the aproned man who leaned his elbows on the bar. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see this one, either?”

Only the balding man’s eyes moved as he shifted them to Wager. “Too busy working.”

A dozen or so customers had been herded to the far end of the long, narrow room. They sat around tables with that fuzzy wariness of people who had sobered too quickly. An impassive officer stood guard over them, rocking slightly from heel to toe.

Max talked to the patrolman who had answered the call; Wager walked around the body sprawled on its back in a large smear of blood that had spread across the wooden floor in clotted pools. The medical examiner was just finishing his work. He dropped the stethoscope into his bag and stripped off the rubber gloves. Then he carefully folded the square of oilcloth he liked to use for a kneeling pad to protect his trousers. Job done, he nodded busily to Wager—”All yours, Officer”—and hustled out past the uniform guarding the door.

The victim was Hispanic or Native American, possibly in his forties, though the dirt on his face and the lack of light made it hard to tell. Wager glanced at the bartender. “Turn up the lights, Floyd.”

“They’re up. That’s as far as they go. You know that.”

The old-fashioned pressed-tin ceiling was high, and a line of unshaded bulbs dangled down the center of it on a row of wires. Most of the room’s light came from the pale neon running behind the bar, and Wager guessed that the dimness, with the help of booze, covered a lot of blemishes in the decor and the patrons, both. He reached under the dead man’s hip and, with two fingers, lifted out a bent and shiny leather wallet that, like the man’s clothes, had seen a lot of wear. Most of the scratched plastic windows were empty. One held the grinning face of a girl, about ten, whose black hair was parted like a curtain and tucked behind large ears. It looked like a school photograph. Behind that was a South Dakota driver’s license whose picture identified the victim as James Littletree. His home address was a rural route number in Wanblee, S.D. Wager jotted down the information and then counted the bills in the money pocket—seven dollars. He stuffed the wallet back into the stiff cloth of the man’s jeans and looked up to catch Floyd’s eyes sliding away.

Wager started with the bartender and with the routine questions. “Do you know the victim?”

“No. He’s been in here a couple times. But I don’t know his name.”

The answers, too, were routine. As he went through the litany, Wager tried to remember how many murders the bar had seen. Most had been closed out. Two, neither of which were Wager’s, were still open—the suspects were Mexican nationals who apparently ran back across the border. “What’s this make in three years, Floyd? Eight? Nine?”

“How the shit do I know, Wager? I don’t keep count.”

“I think this is nine, Floyd. Your bar’s a hazard to the community’s health.”

The bartender rubbed a finger across a large mole on his cheek. “It ain’t my whiskey kills them, Wager. And I can’t do a goddamn thing about what they bring in from the street.”

“Is that what this was? A fight from the street?”

The man’s lips tightened. He’d let something slip. “I don’t know.”

A muffled clatter of equipment said tonight’s forensics team was setting up. Wager glanced around to see Hawkins aim his video camera. A few moments later, a bright gleam pulled the sprawled victim out of the bar’s dim light as the police photographer on duty began recording the body and its environment. The videotapes were expensive to make and bulky to store, but the DA preferred them to still shots; they were a hell of a lot more effective in jury trials. Hawkins’s voice was a low murmur as he talked into the hooded microphone and identified each shot. Max had moved from the uniformed officer to one of the witnesses, who seemed eager to tell what he’d seen and downright pleased at being asked first. Max nodded as he took notes.

Wager turned back to the bartender. “Last week it was a brawl, week before that we had complaints about people getting beat up in the alley out back. Floyd, this bullshit has to come to a screeching halt, or you’re going to lose your license.”

“So talk to my lawyer.”

They both knew it was an empty threat. One hearing had already been dismissed, and the liquor board wasn’t about to start another one so soon; they weren’t worried about a Larimer Street bar whose only neighbors were vacant or closed commercial buildings.

“Besides, I pay my taxes. Which pays your salary.”

“And the city spends ten times your taxes investigating homicides in this place. Any idea who killed him?”

The answer didn’t come from Floyd; he hated cops and didn’t care if Wager saw it. Max put the story together from the other patrons in the bar. They knew the victim only as James; he’d started coming in regularly three, four weeks before, and they thought he crashed at the mission up on Thirty-fourth Street. Yesterday he had an argument with an Anglo kid. Fudd something or other—that’s the only name anybody heard. Tonight this Fudd comes in really steamed, and he and James start shoving at each other. Money, said one of the women; she’d heard Fudd telling James he’d better pay back what he owed. James told him to fuck off, and Fudd cut him. Just like that. James swung at the kid and the kid came up under him with a knife and James went down. The kid ran out.

Max got a description of the suspect and relayed it to the dispatcher. A minute or two later, the description came over Max’s radio pack on an APB to all districts. Now the task was to identify Fudd, his friends, his usual hangouts. And then to track him down.

“You never heard of this Fudd?” Wager asked the bartender.

“You got it, Wager.”

On the way up to the mission, Wager said, “I’m getting sick and tired of Floyd and that place of his.”

“Yeah.” Max pulled into a no parking zone in front of the mission. Half a dozen men lounged against the old red brick of the converted warehouse. As the two men parked and got out, the loungers fell silent and looked away, not meeting the cops’ eyes. “But he’ll never lose his license. Even if he gets cited, his lawyer’ll scream due process for the next ten years.”

Wager nodded.

“Talk to your girlfriend about it, Gabe. See what city council can do.”

“I don’t tell her what to do, she doesn’t tell me what to do.”

“Hey, just a suggestion!” Max added, “I wish me and Francine had that arrangement.”

If the bar had been in a residential area, there would be a chance to pull its license. But in an all-commercial district, the only complainants were the police who had a mess to clean up every few weeks. Besides, the citizens on the licensing board, reluctant to interfere with taxpaying businesses, also liked to keep the Larimer Street bums in their own zone.

The mission’s night manager, a recovered alcoholic whose face showed a lot of old scars and breaks, nodded when Max asked about James Littletree.

“I just heard he got stabbed. You gentlemen are looking for Fudd now?”

“You also hear Fudd did it?”

The thin man nodded again. His voice had a kind of burned-out calmness to it. “That’s what’s on the street. Fudd stays here sometimes too. That’s not his real name. I don’t know what his real name is. It’s just what he’s called.” He added, “He never caused any trouble here. He’s just a kid—kind of slow in the head.”

Wager grunted. “He was fast enough with a knife.”

The manager picked at a callus under one of his twisted fingers. “Wasn’t no need for it. Wasn’t no need for any of it.”

There was no need for a hell of a lot of the things Wager saw, but he wasn’t going to get sentimental about it. He asked the man for a more complete description of the suspect and about the places where he might be. One was the Denargo market area, about a dozen blocks away. There, the Burlington Northern, Rio Grande, and Union Pacific tracks came together and led north into Adams County and points beyond. “He talked a lot about the trains. He knows the routes and all.”

While Max interviewed the night manager, Wager borrowed his GE radio pack and alerted the District One patrols and neighboring police agencies. In his mind’s eye, he saw the blue-and-whites swing into the dark river bottom where the tangle of steel tracks gleamed red and green in the railroad lights. Spotlights would flicker across the undercarriages of boxcars, transients nesting in cardboard shacks would be rousted, train crews questioned. Wager’s guess was that they wouldn’t find the kid before morning, but the call came as he and Max left the mission, headed for the Denargo area: a man matching the suspect’s description had been picked up in the railroad yards north of the city line by an Adams County sheriff’s officer and was being transported downtown. Max yawned widely and looked at his watch. “God, it’s after one o’clock. I’ll book him tonight and do the positive IDs tomorrow. Might even get a couple hours sleep.”

Wager, too, yawned as the excitement of the hunt suddenly evaporated and the weariness caught up. It was far too late now to go by Elizabeth’s, but it wasn’t the first time it had happened. Probably wouldn’t be the last. She would understand—long meetings and last-minute changes occurred in her line of work too. Yawning again, he made a half-hearted effort to add up the day’s hours. He’d been called out on the Jane Doe at four this morning, and another three hours would see four
A.M
. again. He thought he remembered grabbing dinner somewhere, but he couldn’t swear to it. Now this long day was ending with a routine bit of mayhem, a routine bust, a routine corpse waiting for a hole in potter’s field. With tonight’s booking, another, far longer routine would start: the legal grind that would give the guilty man his fair trial before locking him away. As he had read somewhere, “the wheels of justice grind slow but exceeding fine”—but even the wheels wear away, in time.