Authors: Rex Burns
It was good when you and your partner could think together like that. It was like family. Better than family, from Wager’s point of view, because the jealousies and secrets, the old regrets and newly twisted affections, the family memories and family jokes, did not tangle things up. It was a much cleaner and more precise bond of shared labor, a bond one wasn’t just born to but which one chose. “It doesn’t shut off any possibilities, anyway. Can you call your friend Al back and get a full report on Greenlee’s prison record? Whose cell he shares. What gang he runs with or any recent changes of behavior.”
Max picked up the telephone and dialed again.
Wager sorted through another half inch of paper work, pausing to read carefully an F.B.I. report forwarded to him through Baird in the laboratory. The fingerprints on the calling card of Victor Galen belonged to one Vittorio Galente, who was described as a figure active in organized crime, generally associated with operations in and around the Chicago area. Apparently, whatever expansion plans Dominick Scorvelli had, they involved closer links to Chicago through the white-haired man with the neat homburg and the flat black eyes. That tidbit meant nothing now, but later it might; Wager filed it in memory.
“Allen will send Greenlee’s record this morning, and the courier should have it here late today or tomorrow,” Max said when he hung up the receiver. “Al’s really not sold on the idea of a planned hit. He says fights happen all the time down there, and this just looks like another black and Chicano run-in.”
“If I wanted to cover a hit, that’s exactly what I’d make it seem like.” And besides, there was a lot less paper work if the killing was explained as being racially motivated instead of a conspiracy.
“Yeah,” said Max. “You’re right. I think we should have looked a little harder at Gerald when we had him. I think we screwed up.”
“It’s not ‘we,’ Max. It’s ‘me.’ I screwed up.”
“Hold it, partner—I’ve got a brain, too. And I didn’t use it.”
However Max wanted it. Though in his heart, Wager knew that if fault lay anywhere, it was with him alone. Wager should have thought out all the angles—should have looked ahead and asked for protective custody for Gerald. With the mere possibility of someone like Scorvelli mixed up in the case, Wager should have done a hell of a lot more than he did. It wasn’t the first time he had screwed up, and probably wouldn’t be the last; but it always felt newly bad when it happened. “You know who we have to go see?”
Max knew and winced at the thought. “Lord, I hate facing that Covino girl again.”
The small house with its half pillars of brick had not changed a bit. There was still an odor of sadness about it, even from the street, which made the silence and dark of its windows seem more intense than the other houses on the block. Wager had noticed that before: somehow, when you were sent to a house of bad luck, you knew which one it was even before you read the address. There was something in the waiting stillness, something in the light—as if the house and small yard around it were listening. Not that they would offer any reply—but they were suddenly, and quietly, listening.
The daughter answered their knock, standing wordless behind the screen door with its scattered small patches of newer screen and a small puff of cotton pinned in the center to scare away flies.
“We’re sorry to have to come back, Miss Covino,” said Max.
Wager saw that she was picking through a dozen replies like a kid fingering stones, trying to find the one that would hurt most.
“You attack the dead. Now you kill the living. You don’t want to leave us anything, do you?”
Axton’s throat rumbled nervously. “We’re still trying to learn who killed Frank. We’re trying everything we can, even things that aren’t likely, because we have nothing else to try.”
“So that’s why you got Gerry killed? You were ‘trying’ things?”
“He was killed in a fight with another inmate, Miss Covino,” said Wager. “As far as we know, there’s no connection between that and Frank’s death.”
“Oh? Then what the hell are you doing here? You just come by to say you’re sorry about Gerry? You’re not going to ask any questions about Gerry and Frankie, that so?”
No, that wasn’t so. And grope as he might, Wager could not find a phrase that would make things sound nice. Things weren’t nice—they hurt, and there was no path long enough to work around the edges of all that hurt. He would have to go through it. “As far as we know, there’s no connection. But there may be, and that’s why we’re here. You’re right about that.” But Wager could not yet admit to her that he had anything to do with Gerald’s death. “We have to find out if there’s a connection,” he finished lamely.
Grace Covino’s wet eyes narrowed and she gave a tight little smile that was no smile at all. “You tell Mama that. You come right on in and you tell that to Mama!”
This time, Mrs. Covino was not in the tiny parlor waiting for them. Wager stood with Axton beside him, looming even bigger against the formal, close walls and ceiling and the crowd of overstuffed chairs and knickknacks, the small bookcase with its thinly gilded collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, the shelf with the madonna and the pictures and now three prayer candles glowing redly in their glasses. When Mrs. Covino entered, it was with the unseeing numbness of shock, the unnatural coldness of wearied but not exhausted anguish.
Max apologized again, but Mrs. Covino, gray hair combed and black dress neat with the touch of someone else’s care, did not seem to hear him. She stood a long minute staring at the row of pictures and the candles, and, with a quivering breath, sat slowly on the heavy sofa. Grace Covino stood beside her, hand on her mother’s rounded shoulder, and glared at them.
“Ma’am,” said Axton, “is there anything more at all that you can tell us about Frank’s death? Anything that might help explain Gerald’s?”
Her voice, level and almost girlishly thin, prickled the skin at the back of Wager’s neck. “You killed him.”
“What?”
“You killed him.”
“Why do you say that, Mrs. Covino?” Max asked gently.
“Gerry told me. He knew it was going to happen. He knew what you did to him.”
“When?”
“He wrote a letter. When it came, I didn’t even know the handwriting. We never wrote much, and I didn’t even know my own son’s handwriting.”
“Can we see his letter, ma’am?”
“Gracie …”
The girl came back a moment later and handed Axton the envelope. The paper inside held a few penciled lines, and Wager could see a couple of wrinkled spots on the well-folded sheet, spots that had dried. Axton held it so Wager could also read.
Dear Mom
I heard about Frankys death and I am sorry for you and him.
He was a good boy and did not deserve what he got. The cop
who told me said some other things to which has me worried.
If some thing happens to me in this place go see Pete Zamora.
You remember him. Tell him what has happened and show him
this letter.
Con amor y siempre su hijo, Gerry
There was no date on the letter. “When did this come, Mrs. Covino?” asked Wager.
Grace answered, “Three days ago. Two days before it happened.”
A stray hair on Mrs. Covino’s head quivered. “Now my family has no man. First Frankie. Then Gerry. And Gracie’s not married.”
“Did you go see this Pete Zamora?”
“I went,” said Grace. “Yesterday afternoon.”
“What did Zamora say?”
“I don’t have to tell you. Whatever Gerry did, he paid for it.”
“Why not tell us, Miss Covino?” Max urged. “We really are trying to find out who killed your brother.”
The girl studied his face and then said angrily, “He gave me forty-five hundred dollars. Zamora and me went to a bank and he handed me forty-five hundred dollars. He said Gerry left it with him in case something like this happened.” Her jaw pushed out, and in that gesture Wager saw a dim reflection of her brother’s last interview in prison.
There was a long silence as Wager and Axton weighed the implication of the money. “Where is it now?”
“I’ve got it safe. Mama don’t want it, but we can use it to pay for all the funerals. I guess you’d like to take the money, too, wouldn’t you?”
The state’s tax collector might be interested, but not Wager. “Your money’s none of my business, Miss Covino. Unless it gets in the way of our investigation. Can you give me this Pete Zamora’s address?”
“All he did was hold my brother’s money for him.”
“That’s not against the law. But we’ve got to talk to him. You understand that, Miss Covino?”
She seemed to, but it still took time to get her words out. “He’s got a wrecking yard on the south side. Near Mississippi and Mariposa. It’s called Pete’s.”
Wager caught Axton’s eye for any other questions and the big man’s head shook slightly before he said, “Thank you very much for your help, ma’am. And we’re sorry all this has happened.”
Mrs. Covino said, “Gracie …” and murmured something that only the girl could hear.
“What’s that, ma’am?” asked Wager.
“She wants to know,” said Gracie, “why you had to get Gerry killed. She wants to know why you had to do that.”
It was Axton’s turn to drive; he headed the sedan south on Federal Avenue and, for the first dozen blocks, neither man said anything. Finally, “Gerald’s death wasn’t our fault.”
“That’s right,” said Wager.
“We were following a lead on a homicide, like anybody else would do.”
“That’s right,” Wager said again. It was useless to talk about it; anything Max would say Wager had already thought of, and none of it fully answered the self-accusation he felt. It had not been wrong to dig for a link between Covino and the Scorvellis. A lead was a lead, and by God, cops chased after them. But Wager still felt the sourness of not having done enough when he felt that small tingle of suspicion at the end of his interview with Gerald. It would have taken only one telephone call to have Gerald reassigned to a more secure area. One call, and Wager had not done it. He had let the chance go by and it had cost Gerald his life. And—something Wager didn’t bother to explain to Max—it was less Grace Covino’s sorrow at losing another brother than Wager’s regret at losing a main figure in the case that affected him.
“What do you think about that forty-five hundred bucks?” asked Max.
“It could have been his Christmas account.”
“Right—and the little elves helped him save it. Do you remember what burglaries he confessed to when he was busted?”
Wager didn’t. He and Max would have to comb through the records and transcripts again to see if any or all of the stolen property added up to that much money. If it could not, then there remained that worrisome rumor about the Covinos and the Scorvellis; to kill Marco Scorvelli would be worth that much money. More, even. And if the case took a turn in that direction, then the self-accusation Wager felt would be truly justified, because his questioning of Dominick would have stirred fears about Gerald’s reliability. “The arresting officer, Franconi, said he was small-time as a burglar. But that doesn’t have to mean the forty-five hundred’s Scorvelli money,” Wager told himself as much as Axton.
It was Max’s turn to say, “That’s right.”
He turned off Federal onto Mississippi and drove down as far as the Colorado and Southern Railway tracks before slowing to look for the salvage yard. They found it, a steel-mesh fence laced with metal slats to block the public view of twisted and stripped car bodies; but the patches of rust and the scrawls of spray paint along the fence didn’t do much to help the beautification effort. Max pulled up beside a two-room box with the sign “Office” and a neighboring pen crowded with two wolf-like German shepherds whose rough coats looked wild and angry.
Inside the small building, a kid was trying to fit a slightly worn generator into a cardboard box; behind him on a board shelf flanked by out-of-date Pirelli calendars whose girls looked too good to be real, two radios squawked—one with country wails and electronic twangs, the other, a shortwave band, carrying queries and replies for parts from salvage yards all over the Southwest. As they entered, it asked for a 1968 Olds 98 left front fender, location and price to A & S Salvage, Alamogordo.
“Can I help you?” The kid, in oil-stained overalls, glanced up.
“We’re looking for Pete Zamora.”
It wasn’t the usual request for a Corvette transmission or a Kaiser grille; a little wrinkle came and went between his brows. “He’s in the yard, cutting. But customers aren’t allowed out there.”
Wager showed his badge. “Where in the yard?”
“Is this some kind of bust or something?”
“No. You expecting a bust?”
“No, man! It’s just that I only started working here yesterday. If something’s wrong, I don’t know anything about it.”
It wasn’t hard to figure why the kid was nervous; last month the Colorado Bureau of Investigation had broken a five-state ring whose members were using a Denver junkyard to take stolen automobiles apart. Sold piecemeal, a five-thousand-dollar car could be worth ten or fifteen thousand. Plus very low overhead for the chop shop. “You think something’s going on here?”
“No, man! Like, I’ve only been here two days.”
“Is business good?”
“Oh, yeah! We got twenty, twenty-five pieces to ship this morning, and that doesn’t count the walk-in trade.”
Wager peered around the room, cluttered with ripped-out dash instruments and an assortment of dusty hoses and belts dangling from wire hooks. “Where does Zamora keep his records?”
“In the back there, I guess.” He pointed through a door-less frame to the corner of a desk. “Maybe you should ask him.”
“That’s what we’re trying to do,” reminded Wager.
“Oh, yeah. This way.”
He led them past the police dogs, who neither barked nor growled, but became ominously still. “Man, talk about your junkyard dogs. They scare the hell out of me, and I work here. I think Pete feeds them a little gunpowder to make them crazy mean, you know?”
Wager had heard of people doing that. “Is that Zamora over there?”
“Yeah—just follow the hoses.”