The Alvarez Journal: A Gabe Wager Novel by Burns Rex

Author:Burns, Rex [Burns, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781453248041
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

IT TOOK TWO more days before Wager could get out to the Clarkson address where Labelle had her meet. It was a one-way street jammed with two lanes of cars squeezing past bumper-to-bumper parking; at this end, tunneling beneath diseased elms soon to be stripped and burned, it led uphill toward the capitol building. Some of the big, old houses were still private residences, some had apartment-to-rent signs—all were a comfortable distance back from the traffic. Wager, as he walked across the lawn to the screen door of 1712, felt the tension sag from his shoulders in the same way that the buildings themselves showed a comfortable sagging line here and there. It was nice to find an area that lacked the raw rigidity of so many of the newer parts of Denver—an area that had trees big enough to shade the second story, that had large deep screened porches wrapped around the old-fashioned square windows, that had peeling white garages distant from the house across broad back yards, with here and there a tire swinging gently beneath a thick limb. It was the kind of neighborhood he had sneaked into as a boy and wished he could live in, a neighborhood that, despite the traffic and threat of blight, still breathed space and comfort and order.

On the surface.

But beneath—under the bark of the elm trees, in the shadows of the porches, behind the curtained windows, in the basement apartments crammed with five and sometimes ten runaway kids camping in filth, in the night’s blackness that filled the alleys and creaking empty garages—lay what brought him here now. And the tension began to come back as he pressed the button in the center of the rusting metal flower surrounding the doorbell.

A small Chicano opened the door and stared silently at him.

“Is your mama home, son?”

The wide black eyes peered a moment more; then the boy wheeled from the door and screamed, “Mama!” A moment or two later, his mother came: mid-twenties, beginning to spread from children and starchy diet, early prettiness already fading beneath the suspicion that was becoming a permanent frown on her face.

Wager showed his identification. “I’m running a state security check on a person who gave this address as a former place of residence. Would you mind answering a question or two about him?”

“Do I have to?”

Wager paused for effect. “Not right now, ma’am. But if we subpoena you we’ll have to ask you to appear in court. That’ll take more time.”

“Oh. Well, I’m busy enough as it is. What you want to know?”

“Can I have your name, please?”

“Lucille Trujillo. Who you looking for?”

“I’m not looking for anyone, Mrs. Trujillo; it’s a state security check on an applicant for a sensitive position. How long have you lived here, please?”

“Since 1969. What’s the name of the guy you’re after?”

“Raymond Billington.” Billy wouldn’t mind if he didn’t find out. “Did he live at this residence in 1967?”

“How do I know? I just told you we came here in 1969.

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