Ground Money (7 page)

“Did he say anything? Did Sam fight or challenge him or anything?”

“Not according to Molly. He just stepped out and swung and Sam went down, and Robert Smith ran off in that direction, west, across the street and into that alley over there.”

“Anybody go after him?”

“Hell, they could hardly stand up. Anyway, they turned him over and saw he’d been stabbed, and the bartender called the police. Meantime, Molly’s got this pitcher of beer and she’s crying and yelling for Sam to get up, and pouring it over him like this.” The shadow of his arm dipped to the still figure. In the background, black uniforms not quite invisible in the pale of the street lamps, the man-and-wife team of the Cadaver Removal Service waited to be called forward. Behind them, a news photographer kneeled to take a long-range picture of the scene and the police; and Gargan, crime reporter for the
Post
, stepped over the fluorescent tape and aimed toward Wager.

“Stay outside, Gargan. You know the rules.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Wager. What happened?”

He took the reporter’s arm and led him away from Max and the uniformed officer. “Your basic barroom stabbing.” At least the television people weren’t here screwing up the scene by shoving and scuffling to get closest and to interview witnesses before the police got to them. Their crews went home at midnight, but Gargan made up for them.

“Now stand over here till we get through.”

“What is he, an Indian?”

“That’s right. We’ll tell you all about it when we get our investigation completed.”

“Sure you will, Wager. I’ve heard that one before. Hey, Max—what’s the story?”

Max lifted a hand but stood where he was with the still-talking officer; Wager tapped Gargan’s bony chest with a finger. “Stay out of the way. Period.”

“‘Period’? Jesus, Wager, you almost sound like you can read.”

“Nobody can read your stuff.” He turned back to Max, ignoring the drawn-out haa-haa that Gargan threw after him. Wager could not remember the beginnings of his feud with the reporter, and in fact the beginnings were no longer important; Gargan was simply a shit.

Max was asking the officer, “Is the bartender still around?”

“Yeah. Inside there cleaning up. He didn’t see the stabbing, but he verified that Sam and Robert had been picking at each other earlier.”

“He’s sober?”

“About the only one.”

“OK, thanks. Write up what you’ve got and we’ll take statements from the witnesses.”

They tried to, anyway. The bartender, in a practiced way, told them what he had seen and then asked if he could close up and go home. “The wife’ll be worried. She don’t sleep good until I get home.”

They let him.

Molly said she didn’t have a home now that Sam was dead, and she wished she was dead too, and that if Wager couldn’t give her something to drink would he at least shut up and let her go to sleep.

“This Robert Smith, Molly, you want us to get him, don’t you? Molly, do you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“You want us to get the guy that stabbed Sam, don’t you? Where does Robert Smith live, Molly?”

“Don’t know.”

“What about friends? Do you know any of his friends? Molly?”

“She’s out again, Gabe. Let’s take her in to sleep it off. She can tell her story in the morning.”

“Max—hey, Max, how about telling me what’s going on? Is that a witness? Did she stab him? Come on, Max, good police relations with the fourth estate, right?”

It took almost half an hour to book Molly into the detention center with an isolation hold on her. The turnkey promised she’d have a bath and breakfast and be able—if not willing—to talk to the duty officers tomorrow. The rest of the paperwork, including the responding officers’ reports, took another hour to finish, package up, and leave in the tray to be combined with the lab reports when they came down tomorrow. Max finally talked to Gargan while Wager finished the cover letter for the captain to read in the morning, and the two men wearily rode the elevators to the main floor and walked out into the thinning summer night. This was one of the worst times, when the coffee tasted like sour water, the long hours piled like stones on weary shoulders, and a vacation didn’t sound so bad after all. Above them, gaining outline against the sky, office towers rose toward a coming dawn; at the buildings’ feet, darkness still filled the streets and alleys and covered whatever hole Robert Smith had found to crawl into. Down those alleys cruised police cars, their lights probing the corners, and within a few hours the day shift would begin to gather the facts of Robert Smith’s life: where he came from, what he was doing in Denver, where he lived and worked, who his friends were, and where he might have run. He would be found. Then the statements and paperwork and laboratory reports and testimony would all be pulled together for his day in court. And Wager and Max would log another couple of hours of unpaid overtime.

“Take it easy, Max.”

“Good night, Gabe.”

“Did Tom get down to Walsenburg to see his sons?” Jo sipped a glass of white wine with her seafood; she had already put in her eight hours and was unwinding.

Wager, going on duty, washed his supper down with a cup of coffee. “I don’t know. I talked to him a couple of weeks ago, but not since.”

It was difficult to meet Jo; she was on a day schedule and getting ready for work while he slept behind the tightly drawn shades of his apartment. But they managed an occasional dinner in the two hours between their shifts. Now they sat at a corner table in a restaurant crowded with young office workers meeting friends for drinks or an early dinner while the afternoon rush hour passed them by.

“That was a good weekend.” She smiled in that quiet, almost secret way that had become a sort of code between them.

It had indeed been a good weekend, and Wager answered her smile, admiring her slightly high cheekbones and the way they tilted the corners of her eyes to match that gentle smile. “Maybe we should do it again.”

“Too bad you have to go to work tonight. We could reminisce.”

That would be good, too. “I’ve been thinking of taking a vacation.”

“You what? What was that word?”

He knew she’d give him some heat. “You heard me. If I don’t take the time, I’ll lose it. That’s what you told me.”

“Hey, that’s not my fault. It’s department policy.”

“Right, well, I’ve been thinking about it.” And Chief Doyle had left a memo on his desk reminding him that he had ninety days in which to apply for his vacation and compensatory time. After that date he would receive the gratitude of Denver’s citizenry for his contribution and start again from zero. “How much time do you have coming?”

“Is that an invitation?”

“Well, sure. Do you think I’d go on one of those damned things alone?”

“Since it’s the first I’ve heard of it, I don’t know what to think.”

“Look, you’ve been yelling about a vacation. I assumed it was because you wanted to take yours with me. Wasn’t it?”

“I have not been yelling!”

“You sound like you want to now.”

“You’re damned right I do.” Her fork stabbed a shrimp curled in the rice. “And with good reason.”

“What are you getting mad at? It’s what you wanted—a vacation. Now all of a sudden you don’t want to go?”

“Look, Wager, in the first place, I did not yell at you about a vacation. If you want to take one, fine. If not, that’s fine too. It’s your decision. In the second place, you’re taking it for granted that I plan my life around yours. I don’t. I earn my own money, I pay my own way, I’ve got my own life. If you want me to do something with you, you can ask me. Maybe I will and maybe I won’t—but that’ll be my decision to make. Not yours. I used to let a man tell me what to do, and I’m not about to start that again.”

“I’m not trying to tell you what to do. We talked about this earlier, and I thought it was something you wanted. So I assumed—and with good reason—that you wanted to go on a vacation with me. Now what—you want me to send you a written invitation?”

“Yes, I want an invitation. That’s a lot better than being dragged along without being asked. But mostly I want you to take this vacation for your own sake. If you want it, take it. If not, don’t take it for my sake—I don’t want to be blamed for it.”

“Is that what you think? That the vacation’s some kind of sacrifice?”

“Isn’t it? Isn’t that what you’ve been feeling? That’s what it sounds like.” She mimicked him: ‘“If I don’t take the time I’ll lose it—that’s what you told me.’ ‘You’ve been yelling about a vacation.’”

He considered that. “Well, a little, maybe. I wouldn’t have wanted a vacation at all if you hadn’t said something. But here’s what you haven’t thought about, Officer know-it-all Fabrizio: we had a good weekend. I really enjoyed being up in the mountains with you. And I’d like to do more of it. So I wanted to take our vacations together. And I thought that was what you wanted. Now is it or isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Then what the hell is all this fuss about?”

Jo sighed and closed her eyes a moment. “It’s about style, Gabe. Yours. Sometimes it’s like you have blinders on. You’re going to get from point A to point B no matter what it costs you or anyone else, and to hell with anything or anybody who gets in your way.”

He believed he understood what she was saying, but it didn’t sound all that bad to him. “Anybody who’s not stubborn better not be a cop. I’m a cop.”

“That phrase covers a multitude of sins.”

“Gargan said that once.”

“The reporter?”

“Yeah. Only he was talking about police shakedowns and payoffs. A very funny guy.”

“Well, I’m talking about us. Sometimes I think we excuse things in ourselves by saying ‘I’m a cop,’ as if that explained it all.”

This time he didn’t understand. “What things?”

“A hardness, maybe. A cynicism. An aggressiveness. And an increasing isolation from the very thing we swear to serve and protect.”

A cop could afford to talk that way if all she dealt with was records. But it was different on the street. There, a cop who was seen as soft caused more trouble than he prevented because people would try to get away with more. You didn’t have to go out and beat on skulls twice a day; but unless it was clear you were willing to, there was no respect from the street. And the street never gave anybody anything for free. “My style with you is too cynical and aggressive? Is that what you’re telling me?”

The glint of humor in those golden eyes. “There is some of that, Officer Wager; there certainly is.” Then the humor went away. “But what I think I mean is how easily we can cut each other off. Both of us. We have our jobs and so we don’t really need each other—or anyone else. When you think about it, that’s a little frightening. It’s like our world is distant from everyone else’s, and within that world, we’re each distant from the other.”

Yes. As Wager had learned from age sixteen on, every man died alone. When you accepted that fact, a lot of others followed, including the knowledge that every man lived alone, too. And that was something else Lorraine had not been able to stand. “You want to walk a beat holding hands?”

“Now you’re really trying to be cynical—and dense. You know that’s not what I mean.”

“Maybe, maybe not. What I do know is this, Jo: a man who puts on that uniform better not count on anybody to help him who’s not in uniform. And a lot of times, you can’t count on them, either. You’d better believe you’re out there alone. You start believing you’re not … well, that’s when you get in trouble.”

“I know that, Gabe. But that’s the street, and this isn’t. It’s the carrying over of that attitude into our feelings for each other that’s frightening. Two minutes ago you could easily have told me to go to hell and walked out, and I wouldn’t have said a thing to stop you. Just like,” she added, “the other night. For no reason we argued and then we split and it could have stayed that way. I didn’t want it, but I was willing to let it happen.”

“I didn’t want it either. I called you up later, didn’t I?”

She laughed. “And gave me an ultimatum: beer or fear. I really like you, Gabe. I have fun with you—when you let yourself have fun—and you’re good to sleep with. No, don’t start acting nervous and tough; I’m not looking for a husband. I don’t even want to use the word ‘love.’ But I like you very much, and I wouldn’t want to be without you. Yet these moments come when I could shrug you off, and that’s what frightens me—I wonder if I’m becoming an isolated function instead of a person.”

“And you think that’s what’s happened to me?”

“Sometimes, yes.”

Maybe it had. God knew that sounded like what Lorraine used to say in one way or another, that Wager was a cop and nothing else—and she wanted something more. “You know, one of the reasons I don’t like vacations is that when I get back, my timing’s off. It takes a couple tours to feel like I fit in again—to be able to see things with my skin as well as my eyes. What I’m trying to say is, yes, I do feel like a function, and it doesn’t bother me. What the hell, it’s what I’m paid for; it’s who I am. What I am is who I am. And when I function well, I feel good. Everything else comes second.”

“Everything?”

He nodded, not really wanting to say the word, but not willing to lie, either. “Yes.”

“We’re a lot worse off than I thought.”

“So we enjoy what we’ve got while we’ve got it.”

It was her turn to nod as she stared at the unfinished plate on the red-and-white cloth. Then, with a shrug, she glanced at her watch. “It’s almost seven. You’ll be late.”

“Right.” Wager signaled for the check, trying to hide the relief he felt at seeing an end to this conversation, one that forced him to poke into areas of self that he preferred to leave sleeping.

In the parking lot, Wager held open the door to his Trans-Am for Jo. She hesitated before sliding in. “Are you sure you want to spend this vacation together? Are you sure it might not commit you to more than you’re ready for?”

A touch of bitterness in that? Wager almost said he felt safe enough, but that sounded harsher than he meant. “We’ll see what happens,” he said. “You might decide you don’t want a damn thing to do with me.”