Angle of Attack (28 page)

Tony-O squinted against the hot glare at Wager, the wrinkles of his face a net of lines that seemed on the verge of smiling or frowning, of looking stern, or kindly, or calm. But no definite expression came through. “You going to serve a warrant?”

Wager said nothing.

Tony-O’s mouth stretched into a tight smile. “You can’t do that, can you, Wager? If you had any evidence, you wouldn’t be sitting here talking about it. You got nothing but guesses—and they’re all wrong. Every goddamned one of them I deny, and you just try to prove any different! I know you, Wager; I know you inside and out, and like they say, it’s not the size of your tool, it’s how you use it.
Buenas tardes, hijo mio
—you’re trespassing on my porch!”

In the near distance over the awakening rush of late-afternoon traffic, a fire siren wailed into a high note. George stopped bouncing and cocked his head. “Station Five!” he said. “There goes Station Five.”

P
OLLY
A
XTON’S NICE
dinner was a disaster. The four of them sat at a small, candlelit table, Max and his wife, Wager, and—across from him—a girl named Kathy. In her late twenties, she was, as Polly had whispered to Wager when he arrived, a very sweet girl. And, Wager had to admit, she was. A bit smaller in the chest than he liked them, though she had a nicely proportioned body and, as if measured to fit, was an inch or so shorter than Wager himself. Her face had regular features that, with a smile, were almost pretty. If she was looking for a husband, she didn’t seem anxious about it; in those moments when a repeated question or remark from Polly pulled Wager from one of his long silences, he found Kathy half smiling at him as if he were another person caught in a summer shower without an umbrella.

As the candles grew shorter and the dinner grew longer, Polly’s conversation went through three stages; and the casserole, something she was very proud of, cooled on the plate in front of a brooding Wager. First she spoke with quick excitement and eagerness about Kathy’s fascinating job as a trade journal editor and about Wager’s fascinating career in the organized crime unit. Then she began asking questions concerning the things Wager and Kathy might talk together about—hiking, music, books, sports. Neither was interested in a comparison of classical versus popular bagpipe music, and for some perverse reason Max didn’t want to pursue that topic, either. Finally, she lapsed into an apologetic and forced chatter with Kathy and her husband, which was ended only when Kathy said, “I’ll help you clear the table,” and the two of them disappeared into the kitchen with the relief of nervous laughter.

Max, completely unaware of his wife’s anxiety, stretched and pushed back from the table as he stifled a yawn and led Wager into the living room for an after-dinner drink. From some far corner of the house, a television set murmured, and Axton’s daughter, hands full of dirty paper plates, peeked shyly into the living room on her way to the kitchen. Axton handed Wager a small glass of Drambuie and poured one for himself. “Nice girl, Kathy—a cousin of one of Polly’s friends at church.”

“Things have fallen into place on the Frank Covino murder,” said Wager.

Axton stopped pouring. “You found Bernie Chavez?”

“There is no Bernie Chavez.”

Max turned back to the bar and slowly plinked ice cubes into a glass for his wife. “Then where did Tony-O get the information he gave you?”

Wager didn’t reply immediately; instead, he touched his lips to the liqueur. Then, as if repeating something he had recently read and still could not quite believe, he placed each word precisely, like chips of glass in a mosaic, and told Max all about it.

Max considered for a long time before he finally spoke. “This Arnie Alquist—the one who worked for Information Resources. He was going to be Tony-O’s plant in the confidential section?”

“Yes. I figure he and Tom Nihisi came up with the idea. But they needed someone with marketing contacts, so Nihisi went to Tony-O. Or else Tony-O ran across Nihisi God-knows-where and found out about Alquist at about the same time that he learned about Dominick and Information Resources; the old man knows a lot of different people, and they all talk to him. Either way, things fell together for him, and Tony-O saw a chance to get back on top.”

Axton whistled in a quiet, ragged way between his teeth. “And that’s why Tony-O told you about Frank—he’d heard just enough somewhere to link Covino to the Marco Scorvelli killing. But Gerald was in jail and he couldn’t get to him, so he had to settle for that poor son of a bitch Frank.”

“Maybe he thought Frank really did it. Whichever, his purpose was to aim me at Dominick.”

“He sure did it. We ran after him.” Axton’s large head wagged slowly from side to side. “Lord God, did we run after him!”

Wager gazed through the half-pulled drapes of the living room’s picture window toward the night beyond. From the kitchen, Polly’s high-pitched voice had gradually dropped to a calmer murmur and there were occasional giggles of woman laughter as she and Kathy talked and cleaned dishes. Tony-O had told Wager he could read him like a book, and the old man was right; he gave Wager just enough to start him off, then sat back to watch a real professional go to work. A cop who took a lot of pride in doing things the right way—who spent his life tracing out leads that other cops would ignore. Which is what made a few other cops only almost as good as Wager—and what made Wager think it was all worth the effort. Tony-O had used that. That, and the old times. Remember the old days, a little sympathy for the old
jefe
; how about a beer at the old Frontier and a stroll down memory lane. Used. No better than one of his own goddamned snitches; no better than Fat Willy or fawning Jesus.

The window glass threw back Wager’s dark outline against the bright reflection of the living room, and at the same time, his shadow let in the dim outside lights, revealed the dark behind the mirrored room. A paradox of light where there should be darkness, dark where there should be light. And the paradox that he had done his best work for the wrong reason—and only through accident had discovered it. If that was fate, then it was far more malignant than he had imagined, going beyond the distortion of external values—his marriage, his family, his history—which he had already given up on, to attack the only value that remained, the internal one that structured his relation with himself: his sense of serving well.

Axton had been whistling again, the tiny wavering tune noticeable only when he stopped. “Let’s go get that bastard, Gabe. Let’s go get him right now.”

“Fine. What do you use for evidence?”

“The kid at the movie theater—he saw Tony pick up Frank.”

“He saw a coat and hat. Not a face.”

Max poured straight soda water into a glass of ice and gulped at it, cracking a cube between his teeth so that its muffled splintering was loud in the room. “How about the bum, Whistles? He saw the car.” Then he answered his own question. “No—from what you told me, he’d never make it through cross-examination.” Snapping his fingers, Axton grinned, his heavy jaw pushing out like a sliding drawer. “Laboratory tests! Fred Baird said that if we found a suspect, he could match the clothing to the environment!”

“Tony-O lives about eight blocks from the crime scene, and he wanders all over that area. Any trace material would be easy to explain.”

Axton splintered another ice cube. “So every bit of it’s circumstantial.”

Which was the worst kind of evidence, especially in a murder trial, where jurors tended to be cautious. And there was something else, too: “Don’t forget Sonnenberg’s operation.”

“Yeah. There is that. And Tony-O won’t have trouble coming up with an alibi, either.”

Wager couldn’t stifle all the bitterness. “That’s right—he was a
jefe
; people will help him out.”

Polly and Kathy came in from the kitchen, Axton’s wife ready to try again with an eager, “Well, now! I hope you two haven’t been talking police business!”

Neither Wager nor Axton answered, their thoughts still chipping and prying on the rough fact of Tony-O.

“Would you boys like to challenge the girls in bridge?” Polly looked hard at her husband, who seemed to be gazing somewhere beyond his nose. “Scrabble?”

After a pause that seemed a lot longer than it was, Kathy patted Polly’s hand and said she had a very early conference in the morning and really had to go, that she enjoyed meeting Detective Wager and hoped they saw each other again sometime. Wager answered something, and a few minutes after Kathy left, Polly said an extravagantly polite good night to Wager and went to bed with a headache.

Axton poured himself another drink; Wager shook his head no to the lifted bottle. “You really are sure you want to do this?” the big man asked.

“I’m sure.”

“It’s a wrong move, partner.”

Wager didn’t bother to answer. There were a lot of rights and wrongs that traded places back and forth, and then there were a few that never changed. But not everyone held to the same few. What Wager chose, Max didn’t, and it wasn’t open to argument any more.

“You realize what can happen if anyone gets a whisper of this?”

“Yes.” Though that wasn’t something he worried about; that was simply a part of the landscape now.

“Both Marco and Frank will go on the statistics as unsolved cases, Gabe. Doyle won’t like that a bit.”

Wager’s silence told him where Doyle could shove his statistics.

Axton’s restraint finally cracked. “Wager, God damn it, how can you do it?”

It was a nasty, smelly little job, like scraping shit from a shoe, but he would do it. “Easy.”

Axton lapsed into silence and pulled at his drink, the bare ice cubes making a high-pitched rattle as he set the glass down. “Gabe—partner—there’s no statute of limitations on homicide. Let the law work the way it should. Don’t do it this way.”

“Sonnenberg’s operation could take years to complete. This is the right way.”

“It is not, goddamn it. You’re a cop, and a good one. Good cops don’t create violence; they prevent it!”

“I’m not asking for help, Max.”

“Ah, shit.” Axton’s thick fingers wriggled as if the table he leaned on were burning to the touch. “You’re my partner, Gabe, and a good one. We work well together, and we both know how seldom that happens. But after this, I don’t know. I just don’t know if I can call somebody ‘partner’ who goes outside the law.”

Wager had not counted on losing that; but if that’s what it cost, then that, too, would be paid. The sooner the better. “I ought to be going. He’ll be there by now.”

“I said I’d back you up with Scorvelli.”

“I’ll go by myself. If something does leak out, you won’t know a thing about it.”

“I said I’d go.”

“Max, I don’t want you to. I don’t want you going with me any further.”

Axton looked at him for a long time and finally spoke without heat. “It’s the wrong move, Gabe. And you know Scorvelli won’t go for it; you’ll just be wasting your time.”

“Tell your wife the dinner was good and that I enjoyed meeting Kathy.”

“Sure.”

Wager parked across Federal Avenue from the Lake Como restaurant and walked toward the parking apron that surrounded the dumpy building. The curtained front door was open to the cool night, and as he pushed through, he smelled the warm odor of freshly brewed coffee.

The quiet talk and laughter faded, the lounging figures on bar stools and around the booths stiffened. Henry, wearing another denim leisure suit and a broad collar open at the neck, rose out of a booth, his glance checking the mirror behind the bar, which showed the empty doorway and its black curtain undisturbed. “What the hell you want, cop?”

Dominick was at his usual rear booth, cigar halfway to his mouth; Wet Dick stretched his head around the seat back and muttered “Shitbird” as Wager pressed the fingertips of both hands gently against Henry’s chest.

“Hey—”

“My business is with Dominick.”

Henry’s angry face started to say something.

“Don’t fuck up, Henry—better see what Dominick says.”

The young man glanced over his shoulder and Wager saw Scorvelli half nod. He shoved Henry’s awkwardly twisted body aside and went to the rear booth.

Scorvelli asked flatly, “What are you here for, Wager?”

“I’ve got some questions for you. Let’s go outside.”

“I want to see your warrant.”

“If I get a warrant, I’ll have to book you. That means hauling Counselor Freiberg out of bed and wasting a lot of time with paper work down at headquarters. You know how slow things can move on Sunday nights.”

“You got something to say, you can say it here.”

Wager shook his head. “What I have to say you might not want on your tape recorder.”

Scorvelli’s brown eyes, alert beneath his bushy eyebrows, blinked to hide surprise and a wary interest. “You got some kind of proposition for me?”

“Just a few questions that only you might want to hear.”

The bright eyes studied Wager’s, then Scorvelli scraped a feather of ash from his cigar and slid out of the booth. “Henry,” he said to the bodyguard, “you come along.”

“Yessir, Mr. Scorvelli.”

Dominick led Wager through the kitchen to the back door, pausing to let Henry go out first. After the bodyguard looked around briefly, Dominick ushered Wager into the dimmest corner of the parking lot. “You carrying a body plug, Wager?”

Without answering, Wager raised his arms. Henry roughly patted him down, searching for a transmitter, and then shook his head. “He’s got his piece is all, Mr. Scorvelli. You want me to take that?”

Scorvelli shook his head and Wager said, “Your turn.”

“What?”

“You want privacy—so do I, Scorvelli.” He quickly ran his hands over the older man’s body and legs. “Stand over there,” he told Henry. “This is grown-up talk.”

Henry did not move until Scorvelli nodded again. “All right, Wager. What’s these questions?”

“Suppose someone laid a murder at your door?”

“What murder?”

“Just a kid—just somebody who was wasted in order to frame you.”

“The law would protect the innocent, right? And justice would triumph.”