Killing Zone (7 page)

Fitch led them from the stale air of the wide hallway with its gleaming walls of polished stone. Past the closed and dark doors of the members’ offices, he hesitated. “You’re telling me he was killed by a political enemy?”

“No, we’re not,” said Wager. “We don’t know who he was killed by. We’re just trying to get as much information on the man as we can.”

“Politics gets pretty hot around here sometimes.” The glasses aimed at Stubbs. “But there’s nobody who’d go killing anybody over it. Their reputation, maybe—ha. But certainly not the man himself.”

“I understand that, Mr. Fitch. And that’s not my meaning.”

“Just want to make that clear. A whisper in these halls is heard a long way, and a wrong word can do a lot of damage.” He opened a glass-paneled door that said
CHIEF OF STAFF
and led them into the office whose single window seemed to dwarf the small space. Through the opening, Wager glimpsed a gray stone wing of the same building. “I sure wouldn’t want it getting around that the police insinuated things about City Council.”

Although the budget was the responsibility of the mayor’s office, the council had approval of that budget. Including the police line. Fitch made certain the two detectives remembered that, and Stubbs understood and looked worried.

“Did you see him at all yesterday?” Wager asked.

“Once in the morning, once in the afternoon.” The man’s eyes were guarded by puffy flesh that had squinted against tobacco smoke and the glare of fluorescent lights far more than against the sun. “We had three committee meetings here yesterday—Health and Social Services; Recreation; and Zoning. He’s on the last two. He might have spent some time in the council offices, too, but I didn’t see him.”

“Did he show up for work every day?”

“Unless they have their district offices here, council members don’t come around except for meetings. Thank God.”

“How many committees was Green on?”

“Councilman Green,” Fitch corrected him, “was on five standing committees and had several special assignments.”

“Five?” Stubbs glanced up from his notebook. “How many committees are there?”

“Twelve. Got to have twelve so each councilman gets to chair a committee. Thirteen councilmen, twelve committees. The council president chairs the council meetings and sits on all the committees.” Fitch added, “Gets paid more for it, too.”

“Whether the city needs twelve committees or not?” asked Wager.

Fitch didn’t smile. “They’re all busy committees, Officer.”

“Can you list his committees for us?” Stubbs asked.

The man rustled through a tray of papers and pulled out a blue-and-white brochure labeled
DENVER CITY COUNCIL: COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS
. “This is part of the press packet. It has this year’s members and their committees and special assignments.”

Green was vice chairman of the Downtown Denver Development Committee, and a member of the committees on Recreation and Culture; Housing, Community, and Economic Development; and Transportation. He chaired the Zoning, Planning, and Land-Use Committee. His special assignments included liaison with the County Corrections Board, the Downtown Area Planning and Steering Committee, and Urban Drainage and Flood Control. “Why are so many council members on the Transportation Committee?”

“That’s Stapleton Airport—there’s a lot of receptions and trips for council members from the airlines. All official business, of course.”

Wager grunted. “He didn’t have a desk here? Any place he would keep papers?”

“No. He has a district office. Over on Colorado Boulevard. The address is in that brochure.”

“Who appoints his replacement?” asked Stubbs.

“Nobody. It’s by special election, and it’ll be very interesting.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, for one thing, it’s got to take place inside sixty days, by law. So the candidate who can get organized fastest has the best chance. That takes backing—money, people, contacts. You know who has that kind of organization ready to go right now?”

Wager didn’t.

“The mayor! His honor himself. But the current council’s run by people opposing his downtown development plan. Green was against it, you know. So he’s not likely to help out somebody in that camp, and my guess is he’s already for a candidate who’ll vote his way for election support. Yessir”—Fitch’s hair bounced once and his eyes lit with a gleam of icy laughter—“it’ll be real interesting.”

FRIDAY, 13 JUNE, 1021 Hours

Green’s district headquarters was in a line of single-story shops facing the crowded lanes of Colorado Boulevard. Flanked by shoe repairs on one side and a barber shop on the other, a wide blue-and-white sign in the plate-glass window said HORACE GREEN, YOUR CITY COUNCILMAN, and underneath that,
DISTRICT HEADQUARTERS
. Another sign dangling in the glass of the recessed doorway said
OPEN. COME IN
. They did.

“Anybody here?” Stubbs wandered past the well-worn leatherette chairs and couches that formed a kind of lobby separated from the back by a plywood partition painted pale green. Wager recognized it as the same uneasy color that decorated so many of the city’s office walls. On a small table a glass-covered coffee warmer steamed slightly and a stack of Styrofoam cups stood ready. Above it, offering approval to whatever voter poured himself a free cup, the familiar face smiled down from a large poster that said
ELECT GREEN
. Across the room on another table stood small piles of brochures and handouts, and a stack of frayed magazines. A rack held today’s newspapers and a series of government information pamphlets, the kind with small type and long columns of print and no pictures. These looked fresh and unthumbed.

Stubbs came back from sticking his head through an open doorway in the partition. “The place is empty.”

“Try the bathroom?”

The desk in the back office was littered in a kind of chaos that reflected haste and a lot of different jobs to do. Here and there a neater pile of memos or receipts stood like islands in the wash of loose papers, as if someone made periodic attempts at organization. A multiline telephone sat silent amid strewn pamphlets; and, within easy reach of the swivel chair, a large calendar tacked to the wall held scrawled notes in the white squares for each day of the month. Wager began to read the cramped writing.

Stubbs came back from the small hallway that led to the bathroom and rear entry. “Nobody.”

In the square for Wednesday, the eleventh, Wager found “Recep—Vitaco 7-9,” “PDC,” “Call Dengren/Collins,” and a list of half-a-dozen first names with times behind them. It was far more detailed than the few entries in the leather-bound appointment book they had received from Hannah Green’s mother. The only notes in that had been the long-scheduled meetings of council and the routine dates that could be projected a year or so in advance: quarterly tax payments due, birthdays, anniversaries. Wager guessed that the leather appointment book had been a Christmas present and Green had dutifully made entries in it to show the giver how useful it was. But his real schedule was kept on this cluttered calendar.

“Can I help you gentlemen?”

In the office doorway, a bakery box sagging in her hands, stood a large woman whose hair was clipped into a billowing Afro designed, Wager guessed, to make her wide face seem smaller. She was in her thirties and wore a neat, pale-blue suit that had a band of new black silk pinned around the left sleeve. “Something you gentlemen want here?”

Stubbs showed his badge. “We’re police officers. Do you work here?”

“Yes. I’m Julia Wilfong, the councilman’s administrative assistant.” She set the box on a corner of the desk and slowly tore the paper tape that sealed it. “I went out for some doughnuts. I keep expecting people to come by to pay their respects. But so far nobody’s come.”

Her manners had a formality that emphasized her self-possession—as if, Wager thought, she was one of those people who had been through enough to fully understand her own weaknesses and strengths. “Have you worked for Councilman Green long?”

“Ever since he was elected.”

That would be over two years ago, when Green ran a campaign against the incumbent who had been accused of accepting bribes for awarding city contracts. Though nothing had ever been proven, the rumors were enough to turn the election. “Can you tell us when you saw the councilman on Wednesday?”

“Once in the morning and then that afternoon. He came in as always, about eight or so, and we went over the day’s schedule. Then he met with some constituents. That afternoon we had the Zoning Committee meeting. He’s committee chairman and I take the minutes.”

“What was his schedule for Wednesday?”

She told him, pointing to the calendar and explaining its abbreviations. In addition to routine committee work, meetings, and functions, he had a dozen-or-so visitors to talk to.

“Is that usual?”

“A few more than some mornings, but not that unusual. People are always after something.”

“Any idea what they wanted to see him about?”

“Of course. They all check with me first—I’m the administrative assistant. Most of the time I can help them out and they don’t have to bother the councilman. Some of them want to anyway, though. Sometimes the councilman himself has to do it.”

“What about these names? What did they want?”

Wilfong took a pair of glasses from her purse, the kind with large round lenses that dwarfed her face and seemed to weigh on her nose. “This first one here, Rollo, that’s Rollo Agnew. He wants a permit to rent out part of his house.” She explained, “The zoning says no multifamily dwellings.”

“Wouldn’t the city zoning office handle that?”

“They already told him no. That’s why he came to the councilman—to get the zoning changed.”

“Did Councilman Green help him?” asked Wager.

“He told him the exact same thing I told him: It’s a local zoning regulation and if the neighborhood wants to start renting out, they can petition for a change. Rollo just had to hear it from the councilman.”

“So he didn’t change the zoning for him?”

“No. Councilman Green wasn’t about to stir up that whole neighborhood for the likes of Rollo Agnew. He didn’t vote for him, anyway.”

The woman detailed the other names on the list of appointments: complaints about a dangerous intersection that the city had done nothing about, an elderly woman whose sidewalk assessment wouldn’t leave her with enough money for food, a bar owner whose liquor license was threatened with suspension, an ex-serviceman who wanted a job with the city. It was, as Wilfong said, a parade of people who wanted; Wager figured it was the kind of petitioning that every councilman heard, and none of it seemed serious enough to rate a bullet in the head. But the questions had to be asked.

“Did Councilman Green help all these people?”

“Most of them. And the ones he couldn’t help understood why—he was good that way. Even when they didn’t get a thing, they went out of here satisfied that somebody had listened to them. Even Rollo Agnew.”

“So you can think of no one who might have a grudge against him?” Stubbs asked.

“Enough to shoot him, you mean? No, sir! He was a good man and a good councilman, too. He stepped on some toes—you got to when you make decisions. But he was a good soul, Officer. A good one!”

Wager said, “Somebody didn’t like him.”

Wilfong slowly folded her glasses away. “I don’t see how it could be any black person. They respected Horace Green—they admired him.” Her dark eyes glanced at Wager, a flash of smoldering heat deep in them. “What about that telephone call to Mrs. Green? The one from the racist who threatened to kill more of us?”

“You’ve heard about that?”

“Everybody’s heard about it, Officer. Question is, what are you doing about it?”

“Mrs. Green has police protection,” said Wager. “And a lot of officers are working on the case, including us. Can you think of anyone at all who ever threatened Green or who might have disliked him enough to kill him?”

“Whoever made that phone call, that’s who. God knows, there are people like that around.” In her low-heeled shoes, she was almost as tall as Wager, and her angry eyes looked levelly into his. “And if that’s who it was, there’s going to be some real trouble.”

Stubbs said, “It could have been a crank call, Mrs. Wilfong.”

“It could. And that’s what I’ve been telling the people when they ask about it.” She began arranging the doughnuts neatly on a tray, using a paper napkin to protect them from her fingers. Then she unfolded another napkin and laid it precisely over the even rows. “But then again it might not have been.”

Like most black citizens, she didn’t want a riot, either. But the sting of old insult and anger lay close to the surface. “You made out the councilman’s schedule?”

“The important things. A councilman doesn’t have time to be bothered by all that paperwork. Once a day he either came by or called, and we went over the agenda for that day and the next.” A calendar sheet showed the day-by-day and hour-by-hour spaces for appointments. Most of them were filled. “Every Friday, we went over the next week’s calendar. That was the routine—the councilman wanted to make sure he didn’t miss anything important he had promised to attend.”

“Have you worked for other councilmen?” Wager asked.

“No.”

“And Green—Councilman Green—was in his first term?”

“That’s right. He was coming up for reelection next time.”

“He was planning to run again?”

“We hadn’t discussed that—it’s a bit early. But I’m sure he was.”

“You have any idea who’ll run for his seat?” asked Stubbs.

“No, I do not. The man is not even in his grave, Officer.”

“He wasn’t thinking of running for mayor?” asked Wager.

“No—that was just newspaper gossip. I don’t know where the newspapers get that bull. The mayor’s in the same party. You’re not going to have somebody in the same party run against a strong incumbent.” She spoke like a schoolteacher explaining the obvious to ignorant kids. Which, Wager reflected, wasn’t too far from the truth: they were ignorant of a lot of the city’s behind-the-scenes politics.