Angle of Attack Read Online Free Page B

everything. God knows, I didn’t.”
    It could be that, Wager agreed. It wouldn’t be the first time that a parent didn’t know—or was willfully ignorant. It was Wager’s theory that a lot of parents didn’t have the guts to ask questions of their own kids. “Somebody has to go down to Cañon City and have a talk with Gerald.”
    Axton stretched and pushed his big frame against the seat. “You want to do that? I’ll start on this list of friends.”
    “All right. You cover for me this afternoon. I’ll go down after lunch.” Wager turned the car across the Sixteenth Street viaduct toward headquarters, radioing a stolen car report on Frank Covino’s missing vehicle.
    He had read over the jacket on Gerald Edward Covino before making the three hour drive to the state penitentiary in Cañon City. In addition to his adult record, Covino had a juvenile sheet, mostly petty theft. It culminated in a tour in the reformatory at Buena Vista for grand theft, auto; the last adult conviction was for breaking and entering a place of business. That was the tumble that put him behind the walls at Cañon City. There were half a dozen contact cards on him, too, which revealed him to be a suspect in various burglaries and even a couple of armed robberies. None of those ever got as far as the courts, though of course the cards didn’t state why. But as Wager’s grandfather used to say, when you step on a thorn long enough, you know something’s there; to his sister, however, Gerald was just one more downtrodden victim of a racist capitalist materialist sexist society, and it was everybody’s fault except his.
    Wager steered the road-hot vehicle off Highway 50 to the parking lot of the prison. As usual, the pale stone walls and the gnawed-at granite of the hillside behind them spoke of eternal rock and dust and heat. No trees, no grass, no shrubbery that could shelter an escaping inmate; blank walls that gave clear fields of fire from the towers, and were surrounded by acres of crushed gravel. People had been crushing that gravel for a lot of years here, and Wager was damned satisfied that he had swept some of that garbage off the streets and stuffed it behind these walls.
    He showed his identification to the matron in the control center and filled out the request form, sliding it across the scratched and stained fiber tabletop to a turnkey.
    “You want to sit over there, Sarge? I’ll see if he’s in.”
    It was a tired joke and Wager didn’t smile back. He chose one of the sticky plastic couches of the reception area and waited to be called to an interview station. It was between visiting periods and the only other person in the room was a young black woman who smoked steadily and tried hard not to look worried. In about twenty minutes, the turnkey called him by name. “Station two, Sarge.”
    Gerald Covino was waiting when Wager entered the booth with its warning signs and bars and the thin Plexiglas barrier forming the line between inside and out. Gerald was in his late twenties, Wager knew, but the face that looked guardedly at him over the inside telephone had that stiff prison quality that could have been anywhere between twenty-five and forty.
    “I’m Detective Wager, Covino. Homicide Division, D.P.D. You heard about your brother?”
    “What about him?”
    So the sister who loved him so much had not bothered to telephone the news down yet. And the papers and television had not broadcast the name. “He was killed last night. Gang style.”
    “Frankie? You sure it was Frankie?”
    Wager gazed through the Plexiglas at the man’s bulging eyes and probed for the seam between sincere shock and expert lying. With this one, it would be hard to tell.
    “Do you have any idea why somebody might want your brother dead?”
    Covino, still chewing on the news, shook his head. His straight black hair swept back above his ears into a ponytail on his neck, and a thin scar ran through his upper lip to make a light line across the