Killing Zone (25 page)

“By God, if I ever have any time off, I’d like to come up here with Nancy,” said Stubbs.

It was something Wager and Jo had planned to do, too, but they never got around to it. He found a space at the end of a straggling line of cars near the creek and pulled in. “Let’s get this over with.”

“You’ve got no romance in your soul, do you, Gabe?” Stubbs said it in a joking tone, willing to forgive and forget the argument over Wolfard.

Wager glanced at him and then nodded at the door that gaped in a plain stucco wall and had two steps that led down to the slanting sidewalk. “That’s the bar.” In one of the two cramped windows, pink neon spelled
BUDWEISER
, and unlit above the door a faded tin sign displayed four aces fanned out just under the dark second-floor windows. Lined up at the high curb in front of the bar, rear wheels nudging the worn concrete, a row of gleaming choppers waited.

Stubbs gave up trying to be Mr. Congeniality. “Fine. Let’s do it.” He got out and eyed the motorcycles. “Looks like about twenty of them.” Then, “And two of us.”

Wager nodded. They paused to let a string of cars wind down-canyon toward Denver, then crossed the street.

The two or three small houses turned into shops, to the right of the tavern, were dark except for one that had its display window lit to show awkwardly crafted coffee cups. They looked as if they would slosh over their rims when you tried to drink from them, but that just seemed to make the price higher. To the left, across the town’s other street that led up toward Red Rocks, a Mexican restaurant glowed under a battery of outside floodlights, and its large plate-glass windows were filled with silhouettes moving back and forth in front of white neon bar lights. Another distant roar echoed from the canyon walls and they heard a series of climactic chords and an amplified voice shout something unintelligible.

A pair of young tourists came quickly out of the tavern, their half-frightened expressions changing to awareness as they noticed the line of motorcycles. The boy looked back over his shoulder once and then, trying to hide his fear and embarrassment, spat at the building’s blank wall.

Stubbs hesitated, to check his holster, then fell in step behind Wager. Even in the twilight, the doorway seemed dark, and it took a moment or two for Wager’s eyes to adjust to the faint light from the bar. The only other light seemed to be a dull moonglow from overhead bulbs turned low on a rheostat, and from the red of cigarettes at the tables. In the back, partitioned off from the barroom by a plywood wall, the smoky glare of a pool table spilled into the hallway, and he could hear the crack of a cue ball break rack, followed by a laughing voice, “Shit, look at that fucker drop!”

There was no sense pretending they weren’t cops; already the low talk had faded until the only noise was the pool game and a hoarse voice that sang happily from a speaker about the joys of eating crawdads and making love to Cajun women. His vision clearing against the dim light, Wager strolled past the tables of silent, bearded faces that looked back with surprise and suspicion. The record ended in a clatter of guitars and drums and sudden blankness.

“They don’t have their women with them.” Stubbs’s voice muttered at Wager’s shoulder.

“How can you tell?”

“Well, the women have bigger mustaches.”

The absence of women meant a business meeting or possibly a war council, possibly something in response to the challenge from the Uhuru Warriors. At a table near the door to the poolroom, Wager saw a swelling mound of hairy darkness that looked familiar, and he headed that way, his back feeling the silent interest from the other tables. “Hello, Sonny.”

The large man grunted something, his breath a cadenced, pumping sound in the silence. From the corner of his eye, Wager saw the bartender nervously work his way to the nearest end of the counter, his bar apron a wad of cloth in his hands. Stubbs turned to keep casual watch on the rest of the room.

“Is Big Nose around?”

“You’re out of your jurisdiction, Wager.”

“Who said anything about a bust? What about Leon? Or Two Fingers?”

“What you want with them?”

Wager smiled. “Friendly conversation. Nothing heavy.”

Sonny, his neckless head turning on his shoulders like an owl’s, bobbed his chin at the man sitting beside him. That one stood to stare at Wager and tug the fringe on the leather vest that rode over his T-shirt. Then he strolled toward the sound of the pool game. The clatter of the balls fell silent and the vest came back and sat down without a word.

Sonny said, “In back.”

Wager and Stubbs were greeted with the same silence from a row of bodies lounging beyond the glow of the pool table. Their legs and feet caught the light, frayed and dirt-stained jeans that showed the heavy soles of boots, some with thick metal toe-guards, others narrower like snubbed cowboy boots and with raked heels.

“Hello, Big Nose.” Wager made out the familiar face in the lineup. “It’s been a while.”

“Could have been longer, Wager. What’s that following you?”

“Detective Stubbs, meet Jerome Davis, a.k.a. Big Nose Smith. I’m sure you’ve seen his publicity photos.”

Neither man offered to shake hands.

Big Nose’s beard showed streaks of gray at the chin, and his long hair, pulled back into a ponytail, was also streaked. Beside him, Leon Oakland showed his years in the deep lines that creased his cheeks above the clipped beard. “Leon, I believe you’re getting bald.”

“What the fuck you want here, Wager?”

“I want you to tell me you didn’t have anything to do with the murder of Councilman Green.”

“Oh yeah? We offed him. We did it and we’re glad.” Laughter ran like a mutter along the row of watching men.

“Want to say that after I read you
Miranda
?”

“Fuck you. I wish we had killed the nigger.” The voice from a seated figure drew another laugh. “Maybe we’ll go after the next one.”

“What’s your name?” asked Stubbs.

“What’s it to you?”

“His name’s Two Fingers Marshall. That’s because the rest of them are shoved up his ass,” said Wager. He turned to Big Nose. “The word on the street’s that you people killed Green.”

Smith shrugged, the gesture making the chrome badges on his denim jacket catch the light. “Maybe we did, maybe we didn’t. That’s your problem, ain’t it?”

Wager shook his head. “No, amigo, it’s yours. We’ll be all over you like stink on shit until we find out one way or the other. You won’t be able to peddle an ounce of pot without somebody busting you.”

“Fucking chili bean talks big, don’t he?”

“Does your p.o. know you’re consorting with known criminals, Two Fingers? You just sit quiet and maybe I won’t jerk your chain.”

Smith scratched thoughtfully somewhere up under the ragged hair that came down to his collarbone. “If you had something on us, Wager—if you even thought we did it—you wouldn’t be here talking about it. Just what the hell do you want?”

“Green’s killer.”

“You think we’ll help you? You think that?” asked Smith.

“That or take the heat.” He added, “A lot of it, because somebody keeps pointing the finger at you. As long as they do, we’ll keep looking.”

“Yeah? We’ll give them the finger back—and you, too: Here’s the finger.”

“Marshall, you better keep what fingers you’ve got.”

“Shut up,” said Smith over his shoulder to the seated figure. “I’m thinking.”

Wager let Big Nose scratch in meditative silence. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered the man when he had been some fifteen years younger. Smith, then known by his real name of Jerome Davis, had stomped and permanently crippled a teenager who accidentally backed his car into one of the gang’s motorcycles. Wager, then in uniform, had busted him and watched as the man, grinning, was set free by a court that thought Wager’s justification for arresting the scumbag wasn’t sufficient; the charges were never even heard. That he got away with it was a boost to Big Nose’s rise in the gang. Ironically, the case had been a help to Wager, too: It brought home the awareness that a good cop didn’t just get arrests, he got convictions—no matter how silly the court made the rules of the game. Since then, Wager had followed Big Nose’s rise in the gang and his occasional falls in court as he’d made his way from the early juvenile arrests to involvement in murder. In a way, they were matching each other’s careers.

Smith finally looked up, his stomach bulging softly against the stained T-shirt that shone under the open denim jacket. “We didn’t do it, Wager. I don’t know who did, but it wasn’t none of our people.” He added, “I’d of heard about it and I ain’t.”

“You want me to take your word for that?”

A note of anger tinged his voice. “What the hell else you got? I can’t fucking prove we didn’t do something we didn’t do.”

“Cops and dumb—they go together like niggers and tennis shoes,” said Marshall.

“Have you heard anything about who did do it?”

“No.” Smith shook his head slowly. “Not a word anywhere.” He looked up, his blue eyes catching the dim light from under heavy eyebrows. “But we been asking around; I want to know who the hell’s fingering us for it. Nothing. Nobody’s come up with nothing.”

“Have you heard from the Uhuru Warriors?”

“Shit—those faggoty punks! They want stomping, by God they’ll get what they want!”

“Not this weekend they won’t—any of your people come near Five Points, and they’re going to eat county food for a long time. That’s from the chief.”

Smith said nothing.

The main business over, Wager turned to go.

“Wager?”

He looked back.

“How’d you know where to find us?”

“You people are popular, Big Nose. And hard to miss on those crummy machines. We asked Smokey; they told us.”

“Yeah?” A tinge of smugness at having their trips monitored by the Highway Patrol. “We got you cocksuckers worried, huh?”

“Not worried. We just like to know where the sewage is.”

SATURDAY, 14 JUNE, 2218 Hours

The dispatcher told them that Lieutenant Wolfard I was at the temporary command center which had been set up on Thirty-second Street. It was near enough to the troubled area for accurate information and quick response, but far enough away for security purposes.

“You think Big Nose was telling the truth?”

“I wouldn’t bet the house and farm on it,” said Wager. “But I think he was.” He steered the car down the long, sloping stretch of I-70 that led toward Denver, with its lights that spread as far as the horizon and clotted here and there into white glow. In the far distance, it was hard to tell where the ground lights ended and the stars began, not only because they looked about the same, but also because the glare from the freeway lights smothered the sky to make a tunnel floored by the strip of concrete with its dark patches of oil stain and the jostling traffic outside the windows. It was as if the city were built to force the eyes to the ground, to close off the heavens and shorten the reach of one’s yearning to objects advertised for sale in neon or in the white glare of billboards. It was a feeling of loss—of rediscovering the burden of his city—that Wager had not had since he and Jo would come back from one of their trips to the mountains. The brief escape from the city’s presence that had been hinted by the small town with its quiet twilight and the soothing sound of rushing water had stirred up those memories again, and with them the matching memories of returning. Only, at the time with Jo, he had not felt the smothering grip of the city as sharply as he felt it now. With her, the knowledge of what was waiting had been softened by a comfortable feeling of sharing it with someone. Now, there was no comfort, just the awareness of what was ahead.

“Yeah, I thought so, too.” Stubbs peered out the window at passing houses and shopping centers. “Wolfard won’t be happy about it.”

Wager cared less what made Wolfard happy.

2243 Hours

A cordon of police vehicles blocked access to the command center, and in the shadows, Wager made out a picket line of dark uniforms at strategic points, covering other avenues of approach. In the pulsing flicker of red-white-blue emergency lights, figures clustered in little groups listening to radios and waiting for the call that would set off whatever response they specialized in. Further down the street, a pair of ambulances sat in silence, an occasional cigarette glowing behind one of the dark windshields; across from them, a crew busily set up antenna and ran wire from a blank-walled communications van. Wager and Stubbs dangled their identification badges from their lapel pockets and nodded to those faces they knew as they made their way through groups of waiting police. Here and there, a low rumble of nervous laughter or a mutter of conversation, but most of the men were silent, watching, listening to the pop of radio transmissions. It was the same feeling of muted expectancy, of well-rehearsed alertness that preceded raids on dope factories or hideouts. But the magnitude of support forces and the distances to be scouted and defended reminded Wager of sorties in Korea, patrols that moved out from the line of departure when it was fully dark, to probe into no-man’s-land for the enemy patrols that groped toward them. It was a fragment of memory that made the familiar streets and brick buildings, the clusters of trees, and the front yards of hushed and curtained homes seem suddenly alien; it was an echo of feeling that pressed on the mind with the same gray weight as the routine wail of defense sirens, and as with that reminder, he felt a pang of new distance between him and the small houses huddled against the cold flicker of emergency lights. The empty litter of children’s toys on a worn front lawn—a rusty wagon tilted on its side, a tricycle, the fragile pattern of Popsicle sticks and scraps of wood built into a world for tiny cars and trucks to dig between—and the silent, waiting homes brought the sting of mutability.

“By God, we’re ready for ’em.” Stubbs gave a quick count to the units spread over the empty lot and surrounding streets. “I think every SWAT team in the metro area’s here.”

Wager thought so, too. He followed the black line of comwire toward the command post, estimating, like Stubbs, the firepower poised to react.