Angle of Attack Read Free Page A

nasal area and through the brain. The shot widened out in the brain and emerged near the top of the skull. Back here.” His hand patted a spot on the top of his head near the little tonsure of thinning hair.
    “The weapon used was a shotgun?” asked Wager.
    “Double-aught buck. The doc found seven of the pellets inside the brain and we found a few more in the alley. This supports the idea that he was killed right there. The lividity and rigor fit, too, so it’s pretty definite.”
    “A shotgun. That won’t help much,” said Max. “Smooth bores don’t leave much identification.”
    “Not without the shell; that’s right. We’re still looking around for evidence, but don’t keep your hopes up.” Baird pushed the photographs apart to find those that gave the long-range views of the crime site. “We couldn’t find any footprints or fingerprints that were worth a damn, except yours, Max. You left a beautiful set on this wall here.”
    “It’s when I took his wallet.”
    “Whatever. There were no tire tracks that meant anything, either; there’s too much vehicular traffic around the site during the day. So that’s the sum of it—about five pounds of nothing. No leads at all. We did take samples of the environment. Bring us a suspect and we’ll try to match his clothes to the environment.”
    “Sure,” said Wager. “A suspect. We couldn’t even find any eyewitnesses.”
    “You’ve been a great help, Fred.”
    “Always glad, Max.” Baird stood. “Next time, pick a better corpse. I’ll get the complete autopsy report up to you sometime tomorrow.”
    “Was the identification positive?” asked Wager.
    “Right. Fingerprints match the driver’s license applica­tion. It’s Frank Arnold Covino. Got his address?”
    Wager nodded and also stood. “Let’s get that over with,” he said to Max.
    The Covino address was on Quivas Street, a gently rundown neighborhood that once had been Italian and was now becoming Hispanic. One or two Italian restaurants still remained, the biggest being a rambling wooden house with a giant neon sign: “Pagliacci’s.” Half a block farther was a Mexican restaurant, and graffiti covered the cracked stucco walls of the remaining stores: “Chicano Power,” “Viva FALN,” and “Libre Puerto Rico.” Axton glanced at the sprayed slogans as they passed. “Did I tell you I’m taking bagpipe lessons?”
    “What the hell for?”
    “It’s part of my heritage—I’m a Scot.”
    Wager looked to see if he was joking, but the large face remained placid. “You going to wear one of those little dresses?”
    Axton winced. “It’s not a dress, Wager. It’s a kilt. And yes, I’m buying one. I had to order it from San Francisco.”
    “I hope you’ve got cute legs.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with ethnic pride! I like to see it—there should be more of it. I like the variety we’ve got in this city. Hell, you Chicanos are always talking up your Mexican roots, so there’s no reason why a Scot can’t. Or an Eskimo, or a Greek.”
    “I’m Hispano.”
    “What’s the difference?”
    “Plenty.”
    “There; see? I didn’t know that. If you took more interest in your cultural heritage, people would know the difference between Chicanos and Hispanos.”
    “I don’t give a damn whether they do or not.”
    “Well, I’m as proud to be a Scot as somebody else is to be Chicano. Highland, too.”
    There was a big difference between being something and saying you were something, and it seemed to Wager that these days everybody was claiming identification with some group or another. Maybe they needed it—even Max. But not Wager; he had discovered a long time ago that he held within himself all that he would ever need, and it kind of surprised him that someone as big as Axton felt the need for more identity.
    Finding the house number, Wager wordlessly slipped the car into a no-parking zone. In the nine or ten months he had been in homicide, he and Axton had gotten along