Angle of Attack Read Online Free Page A

Gracie,” said the mother wearily. “Not now; please, not today.”
    The young woman stood quickly. “You through with those cups?”
    “Yes, ma’am.” They set them gingerly on the tray and she left with the quick, stiff strides of anger.
    Mrs. Covino closed her eyes and rocked to and fro, talking in a low voice to no one in particular. “Some of it was Gerry’s fault. But not all. What can anybody do with kids? No father; you can’t pick their friends for them; you can’t be on them every minute of the day … Gerry wasn’t a bad boy. He was so afraid when they sent him to the reformatory that time. ‘Mama,’ he said, ‘Mama, I don’t know if I’ll make it.’ But what could I do? They just took him. He was caught stealing a car—it was the first time, and he swore to me it wasn’t even his idea. It was the ones he ran around with. But they weren’t caught. They weren’t the ones sent to the reformatory. Almost a year, and when he came out, he wasn’t my Gerry any more. He wasn’t anybody’s anything any more.” The tears started again, as much for the living dead as for the newly dead.
    “Mama, they don’t want to hear that.” The daughter stood in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed tightly on her chest. “They got their files and their records. They know all about Gerry in their files.”
    “We know he has a second conviction,” Wager told her.
    “Sure! He ain’t Anglo, is he? That means guilty, right?” She glared at Wager, daring him to say no. “And don’t you go trying to make Frankie out like that. If Gerry did something wrong, it was because he never had a chance. Nobody gave him a break. But Frankie wasn’t that way. Now why don’t you two just go on out of here!”
    In their car, Wager pulled a very deep breath, then asked Max, “Well? What do you think?”
    “I sometimes think this is a shitty job.”
    There was nothing new in that. “Miss Gracie feels the same way.”
    “Yeah,” said Axton. “She and her people have inherited a lot of hatred. More than she knows how to get rid of.”
    “Maybe it’s a crutch. She’s as ugly as a goddam totem pole.”
    “For God’s sake, Gabe—these people have a right to feel resentment! Anybody would.”
    “They have better things to resent than us. They can try resenting the sons of bitches that bring us down on them.”
    “Maybe it’s not that easy. I mean, it’s her own brother in the pen, and cops helped put him there. Now another brother’s dead, and two cops come around making more implications. I’ll bet if some kid from Cherry Hills or the Polo Grounds steals a car, he won’t be sent to the reformatory. The judge will give him a tut-tut and a big bad frown. And a free ride home.”
    But Wager knew a lot of Hispanos who took everything that was thrown at them and never whined. They minded their own business, they worked hard, they moved up. And then they were envied and hated by people like Gracie, for whom hatred was life because they could not leave old hurts behind. “They should both be sent up,” said Wager. “At least we got one of the little bastards.”
    Axton’s head wagged from side to side. “And these are your own people!”
    Wager almost replied. The angry words pushed against his clamped teeth to tell Axton that “his” people were cops and cops only. Not the criminals, not the civilians, not the goddamned activists who would rather see a cop than a hood lying in his own blood. But he did not say it. Fancy words and explanations and excuses were for the world’s lawyers, not its cops; cops had to do their duty, not just talk about it. “Well, right now, amigo , one of ‘my’ people is in the morgue. And I have a strong feeling that the rest of ‘my’ people either didn’t tell all or didn’t know all there was to tell us.”
    The large man squeaked some air between his teeth in a faint whistle. “Yeah. Kids sure as hell don’t tell their parents