Farnsworth Score (17 page)

Manny came back a step or two. “Like what?”

Bruce’s arm wagged him closer. “Come here, man! Like, it’s important.” He grinned and waited until Baca and Farnsworth were seated again. The curious faces at the next table finally turned away.

“Well?”

“Well, the word I get’s there’s a fucking narc in town.”

Wager sipped at his beer. In the darkness beneath the table, his heel began jiggling nervously.

“Where’d you get this word?” asked Baca.

“Where? Down in Denver. I got some connections that say we got a narc up here.” Brace grinned at each in turn. “And they’re setting up a raid soon. Ain’t that a rush?”

“When? What else did you hear?”

“Cool it, Gabe! Cool—no need to get your balls in an uproar.”

Farnsworth glanced around the tavern’s crowded tables, dwelling on a face here and there. “What did you hear about the raid?”

“I just heard there was going to be some action soon.”

“When?”

“Man, I don’t know. Like, narcs don’t talk to me.” He giggled. “And I don’t want them to.”

“Jesus, Dick. What do you think? Should we put the deal off?”

“You can’t put it off, Dick. I already told the sergeant when, and he’s got things set. He ain’t gonna try it twice.”

“But if it’s a bad time …”

“When wouldn’t it be a bad time!” Wager muted his anger. “It’s just that we do it now or not at all. That’s the choice we’ve got.”

“Jesus, Dick.”

“Look.” Wager tapped the table gently. “Let’s go ahead like we planned. If something pops between now and then, we can still call it off. If not, we go ahead.”

Farnsworth, staring at the tabletop, nodded. “Yeah. No sense blowing our cool over shit like him.” He jabbed a thumb at the smiling Bruce. “What do you think, Manny?”

“Well. Jesus.”

“It’s now or never, Manolito. Shit or get off the pot.”

His glasses flashed as his head jerked to stare at Wager. “Let’s go see Flint!”

Wager let them get through the door before leaning toward Bruce. “Where did you get your word?”

“Jeez, you’re uptight, Gabe. Here.” His grimy fingers probed deep into the vest pocket of his filthy army jacket and came out with a red capsule. He blew off a plume of lint and held it out. “Have a red, man—hee-hee, a redman! It’ll smooth things out.”

“Who have you been talking to, Bruce?”

“Just around. I mean I got contacts, too. Maybe I ain’t as big as you are now, Mr. Taco-Sacko, but I can still swing some deals. Me and Jo-Jo, we do all right. And we’re gonna do better! I can get some stuff that even old Farns can’t come up with.”

“Like what?”

“It’s the greatest. Ever hear of MDA?”

“I’ve heard. Where are you getting it?”

“No, man, no way. You screwed old Bruce once, but not again. This is my bag, and if you want it, you got to come through me. But I’ll give my old buddy a special price. I can undersell anybody in M, yeah, D, wow, A!”

“Let’s go outside, Bruce.”

“Naw, it’s nice here. Noisy but nice. That’s a nice fire. You don’t want this?” He held up the capsule, then popped it in his mouth and washed it down with Wager’s beer.

“Outside, Bruce, or I’ll break your fucking fingers.”

“Oww! Hey, man, that’s not cool!” The sunburned faces at the neighboring table swung toward them again. Wager let go of his fingers. “Man, you’re coming on like a fucking narc. Maybe you’re the fucking narc.”

“Bruce—listen good, you cross-eyed son of a bitch.”

“I’m listening.”

“You say that one more time and I’ll waste you.”

“Hey, man, I was only joking.”

“You don’t joke about shit like that.”

“Sure, Gabe! It was just a joke. You mad? Don’t be mad; it ain’t cool.”

“If I hear you call me a narc again, you’re dead.”

“Sure, Gabe!”

“Here.” He pushed the beer over to Bruce and signaled for another pitcher. “Drink up—it’s all yours. But no more jokes.”

“Right. No more jokes. But Jesus, you really hurt my fingers.”

It was usually a forty-minute run down the canyon. Wager made it in twenty-five, halting the hot car beside a phone booth on the west edge of Boulder where a half-dozen motels tried to hide beneath low trees. Sergeant Johnston’s wife answered and said, “Just a minute.” In the brief wait, he heard the television quack something fatuous about the pro score roundup.

“Detective Sergeant Johnston here.”

“Ed, I want a suspect picked up as soon as possible, by plainclothes officers who have no ties with any narc units.” He gave the sergeant a description of Bruce the Juice.

“What’s the charge?”

“Hell, I don’t know—jaywalking, polluting the landscape, loud and smelly breathing. Just get him off the streets fast.”

“We got to have a charge, Gabe.”

“Well goddamn it think of one—you’re a sergeant! Arrest the bastard on suspicion of being a bastard.”

“Say, is something wrong?”

“Bruce the Juice just told Farnsworth that there’s a narc up in Nederland and that a raid’s planned soon. Is somebody else working up there? Is there another goddam agent fucking around up there?”

“Not that I know of. There’s not supposed to be, but it could happen. Where did this Bruce get his information?”

“I don’t know. He’s too stoned to come across. And I can’t goddamned well look too interested, can I?” He’d already risked too much with Bruce. Best just to bury him until after tomorrow.

“Right, Gabe, right—we’ll get him on suspicion of burglary. Hell, we can hold him seventy-two hours on a felony charge. Say, it’s still on for tomorrow, isn’t it?”

“So far. Unless Bruce scares them away. We’ll find out in the morning. Can you bust him real quiet? He’s got to disappear without making any more waves.”

“I’ll get right on it.”

“One more thing, Ed—if there’s no other agency involved up there, where do you think Bruce got his information?”

The television music in the background rose to a familiar theme, brass and drums thumping out a call to football. “We had to inform the Nederland and Boulder authorities. Maybe one of them leaked.”

“Maybe so. Maybe not.”

“How many people know you’re up there?”

“One too goddam many.” He hung up.

Since it was Sunday, Rietman, with his seniority, did not work weekends. Wager had to wait until the next morning to talk with him.

“It’ll only take a minute, Rietman.”

“All right.” He radioed his dispatcher the code for officer busy and not on radio. “What’s so important now?”

The street was filled with bundled Christmas shoppers and the insistent clangor of a Salvation Army bell. “Let’s go around the corner.” He led the officer to an unused doorway drifted with blown trash. “Somebody put out the word that there’s a narc up in Nederland.”

“So?”

“We got somebody up there. That somebody could get blown away because of the leak. You’re one of the few people who knew we were going after Farnsworth again.”

“Just a fucking minute, Wager. I didn’t blow nobody’s cover!”

Wager looked into the angry eyes. “If I find out it was you, the word goes out about it. I won’t waste time with no S.I.B. shit.”

No investigation, no hearing, no fair trial, no plea—just Wager quietly telling Rietman’s fellow officers that the patrolman had tipped a criminal about an agent’s cover.

“Wager—Gabe—I swear to God I didn’t do it!”

“We’ll find out.”

“It was somebody else!”

Back in his car, Wager watched Rietman’s blue-and-white cruiser head slowly through the Christmas traffic toward Colfax. Maybe Rietman did it, maybe he didn’t. If so, this should scare him into silence at least until after tonight. If not, Wager could apologize later. Right now, it was Gabe’s own ass, and he worried about that first.

There was one more possibility and he wanted to take care of it. At the O.C.D. office, Hansen’s name was logged in under “On Pager.” He told Suzy to page him. Hansen telephoned in five minutes.

“Rog? This is Gabe. Somebody spilled information about our man up in the hills. If it was that whoreson Larry, he’d better learn to keep his mouth closed or I’m coming down on him. Can you get that word to him?”

“I can tell him. I don’t think it was, though. He knows how to keep quiet.”

“Just tell him what I said, Rog. And tell him so he believes it; I’ll find out if it was him.”

“Sure, Gabe.” There was a note of weariness in Hansen’s voice, but that was too damned bad.

Then he called Farnsworth. Little Pedro said “Hello,” and called his father.

“How do you feel about it, Dick?”

“I guess it’s O.K.—we haven’t heard of anything going down, but nobody seems to know where the hell Bruce got to. Manny and me’ve been looking all over for him. Even Jo-Jo don’t know where he is.”

“He’s probably somewhere stoned. He can’t leave that shit alone any more.”

“Yeah. I sure as hell don’t like dealers who get hooked; they’re too easy to turn. Well, come on up—I’ll take you out to the place and see what you think of it.”

“See you at three.”

The rest of the morning dragged like a snake with a hernia. Wager did what paperwork had collected on his desk and dumped it on Suzy to polish up. Sergeant Johnston popped in to say something about moving into the last period of play as he and Sonnenberg left for the Federal Center and the armory. Ashcroft whipped through in a flurry of affidavits to give Wager a “long time no see”; Hansen did not come back to the office. At around eleven, Wager went for an early lunch at the Frontier, where Rosie did not recognize him until he spoke. Finally, he was back in his apartment trying to read a paperback history of the British commandos in World War II. The picture on the cover was more exciting than the story, which was filled with places, dates, the names of battles and roads, and the names of captains and majors and colonels. He wondered if British enlisted men ever did anything but also serve gallantly.

Giving up, he strode from one side of the room to the other, at last stopping to survey the empty plaster wall behind the two canvas chairs. It did need something to give it life; Billy had been right. And Wager had just the thing. Though it wasn’t that pretty picture of the Maroon Belles, maybe it was as good. Rummaging through his closet, he found it and wiped off the dust with a soft rag, weighing its balance, whipping it through a series of maneuvers, which his arm surprised him by remembering: his N.C.O.’s sword. It’s black-and-gold handle was chipped here and there and missing an occasional screw, but the straight, dagger like blade still held its chrome finish, and the scabbard’s scratches only made it look more efficient. Etched down the blade were the interlaced letters “United States Marines,” and in a blank spot near the hilt “G. V. Wager.” He’d always wanted to hang it somewhere, though Lorraine said she couldn’t find the right spot. Now, by God, right smack in the middle of that long, empty wall. Not that he cared much about the Marine Corps any more, but he did like swords and pistols. He took his time, measuring, taping, first here, then there, finally driving the small nails and bending them up to clamp the blade and scabbard. Billy would like to see that.

He had also told Billy he was going to Nederland.

Shit, no! You didn’t even think something like that! Billy was his friend; Billy was his ex-partner!

He stepped back and concentrated on the sword, trying to drive the ugly thought away.

But Billington was someone else who knew, and Wager was a cop, and he couldn’t help thinking like one. Billy just wouldn’t do it. That was all.

The wall still looked a little empty, the sword a little dwarfed by the expanse of vacant plaster. Not Billy. It was wrong even to think that, and Wager knew it absolutely. And Wager hated the son of a bitch who had done it, not because it threatened to ruin the Farnsworth case or because it might mean Wager’s life, but because it made him think things like that about someone like Billy. His ex-partner had covered his back too many times; he knew Billy wouldn’t do it.

“H
OLY
C
HRIST AND
the Blessed Stigmata—all those goddam guns! My back is killing me.”

“I didn’t know you were a Catholic,” said Wager.

“I’m not,” said Sergeant Johnston. “My father was. How’d you know?”

“I’m still a detective.”

“Oh.” Johnston geared down the sluggish truck for a series of jolting railroad tracks, then slowly picked up speed again. “You know, you’re a funny guy, Gabe. Kind of like a split end way out there by yourself. I mean you’re part of the team—don’t get me wrong—but you take Ashcroft or Hansen, they’re all lined up over the ball. You’re out there by yourself.”

If Wager wanted to go to confession, he’d find a priest. “Are the surveillance teams still there?”

“What? Oh.” Johnston craned around to study the rear-view mirrors. “Yeah. God, I hope nothing goes wrong. We’ll all end up in Leavenworth.”

“We’d have good company—governors, Cabinet members, judges.”

“But we’d be locked up a hell of a lot longer than them.”

True enough; he and Ed weren’t governors, Cabinet members, judges. Wager glanced again at his watch; they had an hour to get through the tail end of the quitting-time traffic that still clogged Kipling Street with lines of brake lights flashing in the murky winter evening. He had met Farnsworth in mid-afternoon, handing him the small Christmas package. “For Pedrocito. He can open it early if he wants to.”

“Hey, Gabe, that’s real nice. The little guy’s really hyped about Christmas this year.”

“You’d better enjoy it. Kids don’t stay that way very long.”

“I know.” He casually tossed the red-and-green package onto the cowhide couch. “The sergeant’s all set? I’m getting high about this deal. You know, this is really big-time shit if we pull it off.”

“He’s loading the truck now, I guess.”

“Great. Let’s go look at the meet. See if you think it’s all right.”

It was an hour’s ride down through Boulder and along the Foothills Highway, with its inevitable stretches of wind-drifted snow mashed into sheet ice. At Golden, Farnsworth turned east on Forty-fourth Avenue past the concrete blocks of the Coors factory and the string of box and tank cars that always stood waiting. “It’s just up here—this storage lot.” A narrow dirt road led to a side entry in a high slat fence. The compound inside was littered with rusting pipe, large cable spools, stacks of snowy two-by-fours warping slowly.