Angle of Attack (9 page)

“That’s really something!” said Axton.

Sonnenberg said with emphasis, “It is. And we don’t want anything to shake him out of that position. Anything!”

“It’s not a takeover of somebody’s territory?” asked Wager.

“No. From Dominick’s point of view, that’s the beauty of it. The move won’t cause any territorial disputes because so far nobody else has thought of it. And he’s not about to let the idea out until the last minute, when the whole operation is set up and can be activated without opening doors for someone else to move in. He promised our man that he’ll be—and these are Dominick’s words—‘in on the ground floor of a major new operation, a very big operation.’ It’s supposed to happen soon, but only Dominick knows when. Our man thinks Dominick’s waiting to make sure of some out-of-town negotiations before he says go. At any rate, Dominick passed the word that nobody in his organization is supposed to stir up anything without his personal approval.”

“When did this word go out?”

“Perhaps a month ago. So you see why I’m not inclined to lay your homicide at Dominick’s door.”

“Unless it was an emergency. Unless Covino somehow found out something about Marco’s death.” But, Wager wondered, how in the hell would a straight kid like Frank Covino learn anything about the Scorvellis?

Sonnenberg puffed out another stream of yellow-white smoke. “I suppose that is a possibility. I suppose you will have to consider that angle. But you can see what it will mean for us if we get our own man promoted to a lieutenant in Dominick’s organization. If we can penetrate that far, we stand a good chance of getting Dominick himself, a good chance of flushing a big wad of filth down the toilet. And by God, I’d like that!”

Axton let out a long breath. “Jesus. It’s like a pile of toothpicks. We can’t wiggle one without shaking the whole mess.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t want any wiggles at all. At the present time, anyway. And you realize that if you do find your killer, it won’t be Dominick himself. He doesn’t do his own work, even on his brother. Our only chance to nail someone as big as Dominick is through a conspiracy charge, and this is the best opportunity we have ever had.”

“Jesus,” said Axton again. “That really puts Gabe and me between a rock and a hard place, Inspector. The Bulldog’s going to want to know why we’re not chasing down that Scorvelli rumor, and you don’t want us near the guy.”

“I know Chief Doyle,” said Sonnenberg. “And of course there’s absolutely no question about his reliability. But, Wager, you know as well as I do that the greater the number of people who know something about an operation, the greater the chance is for a leak. It may be unintentional, but all it takes is a hint or a careless word; and the Scorvellis have ears everywhere—clerks, janitors, perhaps even some officers. The Scorvellis pay well for information, and this item would be worth a very great deal.”

What Sonnenberg said was true, and Wager went along with it. From the last estimate he had seen, the Scorvelli organization had a payroll half the size of the police department’s. Tax free. They could—and did—buy people wherever they needed them. “I suppose we could keep searching for other leads for a while, and the chief wouldn’t get uptight about it. For a few days, anyway. But what you’re asking for is anything from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. I don’t see how we could stall for that long if Scorvelli’s name keeps popping up.”

“I’ve tried to explain the necessity of it.”

Wager said, “Let me ask you, Inspector: What’s the first thing that happens whenever there’s a gang killing?”

Sonnenberg studied the ash of his cigar. “You mean it’s routine to pull in a Scorvelli for questioning?”

“Yessir.” It was just as routine to let him go again, too, but Wager didn’t like to admit that. “And if Tony-O heard that rumor about the Covino kid and Marco, there’s a good chance Scorvelli picked up on it. After all, Covino ended up dead, didn’t he?”

Sonnenberg shifted his study from the cigar to Wager, and the sharp angles of his face drew closer in a frown. “So despite what I’ve told you, you want to pursue this rumor? Despite the strong probability that the rumor’s false, you still want to step in and stomp around?”

“What I’m saying is, if we don’t follow the routine of picking him up, he might want to know why. And if, on top of that, he’s heard that rumor, it would tell him that we’re holding off for some reason. He’d begin sniffing for something rotten somewhere, and that would really put your man’s tail in a crack.”

The inspector spoke with increasing anger. “I disagree, Wager. I think you’ll arouse far greater suspicion by forcing it on his attention. But it’s obvious that you intend to con­tinue despite the danger you might cause a fellow officer. I hope that you still have enough sense of professional responsibility to keep what I’ve told you absolutely confidential. Because if you don’t … if my man gets hurt …” He jabbed the threats back in his mouth with his cigar and glared at the two homicide detectives.

If Wager had not noticed the distance between him and his old unit before, it was stark now.

Axton broke the tense silence. “Our interest is in the murder, Inspector. Most of what you’ve told us doesn’t bear on our case, so there’s no need for us to say anything about it.”

“See that you remember that.”

Wager drove.

“Is Sonnenberg always that way?” Max asked.

“If you’re working for him, he’s behind you. The bastard got sore when he saw I wasn’t still working for him.”

“Well, I don’t know as I ever want to work against him.”

“He’s wrong about Scorvelli.” Wager was still angry at Sonnenberg’s crack about professional responsibility; a lot of times that phrase meant “Do what I tell you,” and that was one of them. It was as though he believed Wager had used his past ties with the O.C.U. and then betrayed Sonnenberg when he had the information he wanted. Well, Wager thought, maybe he had leaned on his old relationship for the information; but that stuff about betrayal was nothing more than crap. Because Wager knew that Sonnenberg was wrong in his reading of Scorvelli. If the police did not question him as always about any professional hit within a five-hundred-mile radius, Scorvelli would grow more suspicious than he already was by habit.

“Where are we headed?”

“Back to the office. We need a probable cause warrant,” answered Wager.

“You still want to talk to Dominick?”

“Hell, yes.”

“Jesus. Today was the day I should have called in sick and practiced my bagpipes.”

The p.c. warrant was routine. The familiar Scorvelli name and the familiar phrase “known criminal activity” ensured a judge’s signature without a lot of questions. However, it still took time for the departmental clerk to find one free to sign; and while he and Axton waited in the homicide office, Wager called down to Baird in the police lab. “Did the autopsy on Sunday night’s shooting come in yet, Fred?”

“Wait one.” Wager, holding the telephone to his ear, nodded when Axton gestured to ask if he wanted more of the office’s hard, bitter coffee. “Right,” said Baird. “It came in this morning. It doesn’t change the cause of death; I’ll get it right up to you.”

A secretary brought it five minutes later. Wager untied the brown routing envelope and dumped out the Xeroxed sheets. His glass desktop was gritty from next door’s construction dust and the dirt constantly churned by the traffic two floors below, and the heavy sheets crackled slightly as they slid over the surface.

“Anything new?” Axton’s wide figure loomed at the corner of the desk.

“Not much.” The description of the wound was more detailed, the path of carnage ticked off by a list of parts mutilated and missing from inside the victim’s head. Lead pellets picked from the brain and various bones gave evidence supporting the shotgun theory. Not that it was needed; one look at the entry point and you knew what had done it. The analysis of body fluids revealed no drugs, no alcohol. The stomach contents showed he’d eaten about one to three hours before he was killed, and that was a little something. Wager thumbed back through his notebook to find his interview with Covino’s mother: before he left for the movie, they had finished supper at about six o’clock. Wager tapped the entry in his green notebook and held it for Axton to read.

“That puts the time of death at between seven and nine, Sunday night,” Axton said.

“Yes.” Wager skipped down to the conclusions section of the report and scanned through it. “And the doc says absolutely that the body wasn’t moved after it fell.”

Axton rubbed a thick finger down the line of his jaw to scratch at the bump of an ingrown whisker. “Seven to nine … The time fits what the kid at the movie told you.” Then a second thought came. “That’s pretty early, even for a deserted place like the warehouse district.”

A lot of winos prowled the loading docks, especially the fruit warehouses, looking for rotting oranges and grapefruits to mix with gasoline drained from pump hoses when they couldn’t find anything better to drink. A chance existed that some had been prowling that early.

“Detective Wager?” The office clerk, in her mid twenties, short and chesty like a pigeon in the starched blue shirt, handed him the probable cause warrant. “Chief Doyle said he’d like to see you before you go.”

“Oh, Lord,” muttered Axton.

“Thanks, Kay.” He waited until the squeak of her crepe-soled shoes was well down the hall before asking Max, “Any suggestions?”

“Yeah—you do the lying.”

“Thanks.”

The Bulldog looked up from one of the numberless forms that pattered onto his desk like bird droppings and were just about as useful. Wager had heard the chief complain about them, but the man also seemed to find a deep pleasure in the process of itemizing, totaling, charting, and cross-referencing data. It was one of several reasons why Wager never thought seriously about straining for a gold badge. “Good morning, gentlemen. What’s your progress on that homicide?”

“Not a whole lot. The doc gave us the time and place of death, and we have a poor description of a possible suspect. That’s about it,” said Wager.

“I see you asked for a p.c. on Dominick Scorvelli.”

“Yessir. But it’s just routine more than anything.”

Doyle looked hard at Wager. “You did go over and talk to those people in O.C.U., didn’t you?”

“Yessir.”

“Well? Is this p.c. related to that?”

“Not really. They didn’t know of any possible link between Scorvelli and Covino.”

“Wager, are you giving me the straight skinny? I got the feeling you’re holding something back from me, and I sincerely hope that’s not the case.” Those thrusting lower teeth showed briefly in the way that had earned Doyle his nickname, and his voice rose. “I sincerely hope you remember who in the hell you are working for now.”

Axton’s voice rumbled in a nervous gargle. “Gabe and I went over together, Chief. Both of us. Inspector Sonnenberg provided us some—ah—updating on the Scorvelli organization. But none of it was—ah—pertinent to our case. At least, not so far. It may prove later—ah …” His voice faded out.

“What kind of ‘updating’?”

“Facts and figures, mostly. Operational information. That kind of thing,” said Axton.

“Is this information confidential?”

“Yes, sir,” said Axton and Wager together.

“Those people over there scream ‘confidential’ every time they break wind.” Doyle studied each of them; in the corner of his office, the Bulldog’s personal coffeemaker gave a muffled pop and hiss and a short, small dribble somewhere inside. “All right. Let’s leave it at that for now. But I want no question in your minds about where your loyalties lie. Do you understand me, Wager?”

“Yessir.”

“And I will not let the O.C.U. or anyone else put me in an embarrassing position by withholding information about my own goddamned cases. Is that clear?”

“Yessir.”

“And you’d better remember that your files and fitness reports are in homicide. I don’t give a tinker’s damn if Sonnenberg claims confidentiality or not. If there’s vital information concerning one of my cases, I want to know about it. If some other agency seeks priority over my department’s activities, that is my decision to grant. Not yours or anybody else’s but mine. You two got that?”

“Yessir.”

The blue, slightly bloodshot eyes fixed on Axton. “Don’t disappoint me, Max.”

“No, sir.”

Neither detective spoke as they entered the elevator, which moved jerkily downward. Wager was half angry about things he should have said when he had the chance and half puzzled over how someone like Doyle could make him act like a guilty schoolboy. Axton must have been feeling the same thing, because he finally whistled between his teeth and said, “It’s not like we were selling secrets to the goddam Russians.”

“Maybe Doyle and Sonnenberg are both rupturing themselves to be deputy chief.” The anger at Doyle was spreading to anger at himself: He was the one who had let Sonnenberg put him in this position; it was his own damned fault for giving a promise to Sonnenberg, and for not coming right out and telling Doyle that to start with. That had been a mistake, and Wager was not the kind to shrug off mistakes, his own or anyone else’s.

“If we screw up with Sonnenberg, we’ll never get anything out of him again.”

“That’s right,” said Wager.

“But if we screw up with Doyle, it’s going to be our fannies.”

“He needs us as much as we need him,” said Wager. “If he wants to come down on us, there are ways we can get even.”

“Sure—but that’s a shitty thing to have happen in any department. I’d hate to cause something like that.”

Axton was right; Wager had been in units that had gone sour with infighting and jealousies and favoritism, and the result was a total waste—waste of energy and effort, waste of purpose, waste of men and careers. “I guess we’ll have to keep them both happy while we go out and catch the bastard, won’t we?”

“Yeah. But, Gabe, let’s use a lot of couth, O.K.?”

“‘Smooth’ is the word.” The elevator doors pumped open on the ground floor as Wager’s radio popped his call numbers and the code that he had a message at the Motor Vehicle Division.