Farnsworth Score (7 page)

“Did they give you names?”

“You ready for this? Bruce the Juice Hornbacher, and Big Mac.”

“Jesus. All we need now is a bottle of ketchup. Can I meet one of your people?”

A pause. “I guess so.”

The hesitation was understandable—a detective’s C.I.s were his private property. “A phone call from either one would be O.K.”

“Why don’t I just have one of them set it up? All he has to do is tell Bruce the Juice you’re interested. Hell, you don’t even have to see my people for that.”

That would be even better. “Tell them to make a meet as soon as they can.”

“What do you want to buy?”

“Oh, something easy. LSD—five hundred hits. Tell them I’ll go as high as two hundred for it.”

“That’s better than market price.”

“Yeah, it’s government scale. Tell him to make it as soon as he can.”

Another day passed; Wager moved restlessly from his small balcony to the faintly echoing living room and back to the balcony. Near noon, he telephoned Sergeant Johnston because there was no one else to telephone.

“What have you got, Gabe?”

“Nothing. The place’s tight as a cherry.”

“Pot? Speed?”

“Not a thing. I’m trying to get one of Hansen’s C.I.s to put me in touch with somebody up there.”

“Do you think the C.I. will keep his mouth shut?”

“He’d better. Besides, he won’t know much.”

“Just don’t get sacked.”

“Right, Ed.”

“Oh, Suzy’s got a message—hang on.”

A moment later she picked up another extension. “Gabe? There’s somebody in Colorado Springs who’s been calling every day.”

He read her the number by his telephone. “Is that the one?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll get on it.” He dialed long distance and charged the call to the O.C.D. office number. The cautious mumble answered, “Hello?”

“This is Gabe.”

“Say—you left me sitting on my ass for a long time!”

“I’ve been out of town, Ernie.”

“Yeah, well you know I don’t work with nobody else but you, man, and there’s this big operation that’s been going on I heard about.”

Some snitches felt safer working with an agent from out of town; Ernie was one of them. “What operation?”

“I heard about some people who got a big lab set up—a whole fucking factory for turning out MDA.”

This was a liquid hallucinogenic dropped, like LSD, on blotter tabs or sugar cubes or even dough balls or chewing gum. But such a big operation was puzzling, “I haven’t heard about much of that crap around here.”

“They don’t sell locally—that’s their cover. They ship it out to the Coast. Like to L.A., San Diego, San Jose. They got good cover: it’s Petroleum Chemical Supply. That way they can order the chemicals to make the stuff, and nobody knows. They’re even in the phone book—look it up, man.”

Sometimes it happened this way, but not very damned often; he took notes as he talked. “How did you get the word?”

“I got a friend came in from L.A. He’s a real vision freak: mushrooms, peyote, chemicals, the whole bag. He knows about these dudes from out there. He says they have quality merchandise.”

“Is this friend reliable?”

“You know me, Gabe. I wouldn’t call you on bullshit.”

Not always, that was true. “Have you seen any of it?”

“No way, man, and I don’t want to. I got to watch my local reputation. You hear about that guy they found shot down here? The word’s out he was, you know, an informant.”

“I heard.” If Ernie didn’t have direct knowledge of the factory, that made the tip hearsay—he’d need something more solid for a valid search warrant. No matter who they caught or what they found, if they didn’t have a good search warrant, any lawyer could suppress the evidence at the advisement stage. And no evidence meant no case. “Is your friend still in town?”

“He was when you called the first time. That’s why I couldn’t talk. But he’s split now, back to L.A. I couldn’t get aholt of you, man!”

“Do you have his address?”

“Listen, don’t tie me in on this! You ain’t forgot our deal?”

“No, I ain’t forgot. But I need direct evidence for a search warrant. No warrant, no juice; no juice for us, no bread for you.”

He could hear quiet breathing. Finally Ernie whispered, “All right. But, man, you got to get to him without saying who tipped you; I mean, he’s my friend, you know?”

“He won’t hear your name. He maybe won’t have to come back here. All we need for a probable cause warrant is a deposition from a witness, and we can handle that through the officers out there.”

“Yeah, well, you better hustle, though. These dudes don’t stay set up for long in one place.”

When he telephoned his information to Johnston, the sergeant had the same reaction as Gabe. “It sounds too good to be true.”

“Eso vale su precio..”

“What?”

“It’s cheap at the price.”

“I guess it is. But what about manpower? Hansen and Ashcroft are already putting in twenty, thirty hours overtime, and we sure as hell don’t want to fumble the ball up in Nederland. Even for this. Maybe we should let the Springs handle it.”

They could just turn it over to D.E.A. or to the Pikes Peak regional drug unit. But Ernie trusted Wager; he had been a good C.I. in the past, and to turn the case over to another unit would toss Ernie away. “You really want that?”

“No. It’s your tip and you got the right to be in on it.”

And that gave O.C.D. a right to the credit, too. “I’ve been sitting on my tail for two weeks wasting the taxpayer’s money. If this is as cut-and-dried as it sounds, it shouldn’t take long.”

“Let me ask the inspector. I’ll get back to you.”

It took less than five minutes. “The inspector’s hot to go, Gabe; it seems somebody up in D.E.A. told the Denver office to cool it about the Rietman thing and to work—what was the word?—amicably? Anyway, to cooperate fully with the local agencies.”

“We kiss and make up?”

“That’s it. The inspector’s asking D.E.A. to get a foursquare deposition from L.A. He wants to see how sincere they are. As soon as it’s here, they’ll pick up a warrant and send an agent over.”

“Good. I’ll call back.” Wager began to feel like a cop again, and it was good.

Hansen called just before supper. “One of my C.I.s tried to set you up with Bruce the Juice, but the son of a bitch is cagey. He won’t meet you unless my man comes along.”

“So?”

“Well, my C.I. says no.”

“Your C.I. said ‘no’!”

“Yeah, Gabe. I’m sorry.”

Sorry, shit. That C.I. might be in Hansen’s stable, but by God Wager needed him. “Can I talk to your man?”

“You really want him that bad?”

He wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t so. “I do.”

“He’ll probably want me to come along.”

“Where can we meet? Tonight.”

“I’ll call back.”

Hansen wasn’t happy, and that was too God damned bad. But he called anyway, just as Wager was rinsing the few supper dishes and stacking them in the dishwasher with the breakfast stuff. “Suppose we see you over at Forty-second and York at ten.”

It was as good a place as any—a mixture of residential and commercial, where cars parked along dark streets wouldn’t draw attention. “Fine.”

Wager’s sedan was there before the hour, the radio pack under the front seat quietly monitoring the action of Denver’s District 1. A few minutes after ten, Hansen came up on the primary channel: “Two-one-two, what’s your ten-twenty?”

“East of York on Forty-second,” said Wager.

“Ten-seventy-seven in five minutes.”

“O.K.”

He slumped in the seat to lower his profile against the dim glow of a streetlight and the glaring lights of busy York street; within the five minutes, he saw Hansen’s pale blue Plymouth swing off York and cruise past, the circle of a face turned toward his car. Wager clicked his transmit button twice and the blue car wheeled around in front of a low brick building marked “
GORDON’S BOOKS, WHOLESALE ONLY
.” It pulled up behind him, and the lights were turned off. Wager got out and walked to Hansen’s car.

The detective’s face lifted from the dark window. “Hi, Gabe. This is Larry.” Wager nodded at the shadowy figure across the seat. “He said he’d hear what you had to say.”

“That’s real nice.” Wager smelled cheap, sweet bourbon on Larry’s breath. The profile showed a round skull with straight hair slicked back to curl in a little feathery ledge at the thin nape. He was new to Wager.

“Roger here tells me you want to lay one on the Juice.”

“No. On his suppliers.”

“I don’t know, man. I never had much to do with the Juice.”

“Just tell him your regular contact ran out and you’ve got a heavy customer to supply.”

“I don’t know. It might look funny.”

“It’ll look a hell of a lot funnier if I go pop this Juice and say you were the one who put me on him.”

“Hey, what’s this shit? Hansen, you told me this guy just wanted to talk about things!”

“Cool it, Gabe. We can work something out.”

Who the hell was in whose stable? “I need that contact, Rog. It is God damned important.”

“I know, I know. Look, Larry, you’ll be covered by Bruce the Juice, right? Gabe doesn’t even want the guy—he’s not big enough. He just wants to use him for an in.”

“Yeah, well, Bruce’ll remember who brought him in, too. I mean the Juice ain’t dumb, you know.” The voice dropped slightly: “Besides, I don’t dig getting hassled, you know what I mean? I don’t have to put up with that shit—I don’t owe him shit, or anybody else.”

Wager leaned forward to get a good view of the thin face.

“What are you looking at?”

Wager smiled widely. “You. People always need favors sooner or later, and I want to remember you good when you need a favor. I want to remember you said you didn’t owe anybody anything.”

“Hey, now … Hey, now …”

“Come on, Gabe, just let me talk to him!”

“Larry, you maybe don’t owe me nothing, but I can fix it so you’ll look over your shoulder every time you goddam jaywalk. I can fix it so you can’t goddam take a piss without breaking some law.”

“Hey, now!”

“Come on, Gabe!”

“I’ll wait in my car for two minutes, Larry. Either the deal goes down or you do.”

It took less than a minute. Hansen, a shadow in the streetlight, bent to Wager’s window. “He’s a good C.I., Gabe, and he’s mine.”

“One cop’s C.I. is another cop’s crook—you know that. And they’d better.”

“But he’s still a human being, Gabe, and goddamn it, you didn’t need to lean on him to make him do it. He just likes to mouth off a little. I could have talked him into it.”

“He’s scum. If you don’t step on scum, it steps on you. When is he taking me up to Nederland?”

“Jesus, Gabe.” Hansen’s shadow slowly shook its head. “He’ll call Bruce. It’ll be sometime this weekend.”

“Good.”

Both calls came two days later: Hansen telephoning for his snitch (“Larry’s still a little pissed off—he, ah, wanted me to let you know the meet’s set”), and Sergeant Johnston saying the deposition had arrived and the warrant was being made out. “Kickoff’s in three hours.”

It was 2
P.M.
now. “I’m supposed to be in Boulder at nine.”

Johnston thought it over. “You don’t have to be in on this—it’s up to you.”

“I’d like to—I’m tired of just farting around. Suppose me and the D.E.A. people go down and look over the place now and you bring the warrant when it’s ready?”

“No, we have to get a lab tech, too. We’d better all go together.” Johnston also sounded tired of just sitting. “I’ll try to hurry things up. Come on over to the office and we’ll leave as soon as possible.”

A little more than two hours later, as Wager and Johnston walked past the inspector’s door on the way to their car, Sonnenberg called out, “Are you going to the Springs now?”

“Yes, sir,” Johnston answered. “D.E.A. said the warrant’s on its way down, and Gabe has to be in Boulder tonight. We’re going over to the lab and pick up Mrs. Nelson now.”

Sonnenberg reached for his coat. “Give me your keys—I’ll drive. I’m damned tired of just sitting around this office.”

“You, sir?”

“Is something wrong with that?”

“No, sir, but …” Sergeant Johnston shut up.

They stopped at the police laboratory and the sergeant went in for Mrs. Nelson. A squarely built woman in a dark pants suit, she smiled shyly at Wager and Sonnenberg as Johnston introduced them. “Is there room for my kit back here?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Wager, grunting to lift the red toolbox across the seat.

“All set?” asked Sonnenberg, and had the car rolling before Johnston had shut his door. The car filled with cigar smoke as the inspector leaned it through the Sixth Avenue interchange onto I-25 South. “It’s a beautiful day for a bust! We should have brought Suzy. Has she ever participated in field operations?”

“No, sir, but—”

“Well, next time something like this happens, let’s get her out. It’s good for morale.”

“Yes, sir,” said Johnston. “I’ll try to set something up.”

The inspector made it sound like a picnic instead of business; Wager didn’t think he should take it so casually. He had noticed it before: when a tip came too easily, everybody seemed to think it was a goddam picnic.

“How are you doing with Farnsworth, Gabe?”

He told him.

“It’s really that closed up there?”

“Yes, sir.”

The inspector frowned and drove in silence. “Keep at it for a while, anyway. God knows we could use you here, but Farnsworth would be a big feather in our cap.”

As if Wager didn’t know. “Yes, sir.”

They began to clear the underpasses of downtown. Over the lowering banks of the freeway, clusters of raw and treeless apartments, condominiums, sprawling split-level houses gradually thinned into gray-green clumps of sagebrush and the yellowing buffalo grass of late summer.

“Where did D.E.A. say they would meet us?”

“At Fillmore Street, sir.”

“Did they say who they were sending?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I hope they’re there. I don’t want to wait all day for them.”

“Yes, sir.”

The inspector radioed the Highway Patrol to clear his passage, then set the speedometer needle on ninety. “Great day for a bust!”