Angle of Attack Read Free Page B

better than Wager had expected. The big man was as steady as one of the mountains squatting on the western horizon, and Wager had begun to trust him. Axton put his trust in Wager, too. With time and care, it could turn out to be the kind of partnership every cop would like to have but too few did; though it would be all too easy to snuff out the understanding and trust necessary to it. That was something Wager wanted to keep in mind at times like this, when Axton struck him as a little bit weird. He turned off the car’s motor. “You ready for it?”
    “Nope,” said Axton. “But what choice do we have?”
    The old house was similar to the rest on the block, dark-red brick with a small front porch held up by square pillars of half brick and half white wood; a second floor was cramped under the sloping green roof, a low, flat dormer over the white trim of its window. The yard had fewer worn spots and more early crocuses along the foundation than did the ones on either side, and from somewhere around back came the thin crowing of a young rooster, a sound that Wager hadn’t heard in a long time. The lady who answered their knock was in her fifties, short, thick-bodied; beneath the cropped gray hair, her eyes were red-rimmed.
    “Yes?”
    “Are you the mother or a relative of Frank Arnold Covino?”
    “No. I’m a neighbor. Mrs. Covino’s inside.” She did not move from the doorway.
    Wager showed his identification and badge. “We need to ask Mrs. Covino some questions about her son.”
    “It’s a bad time.”
    “It’s never a good time, ma’am,” said Axton. “But the faster we can get our information, the better our chances are of finding the people that did it.”
    For a moment more, she didn’t move; then, “Come in.” She led them through the living room to a tiny formal parlor. On a shelf opposite the door was a small madonna with two red prayer candles at her feet. Three women sat on the maroon sofa; Mrs. Covino was apparently the one in the center. The thin light from the curtained window made the lines on her wide forehead and cheeks deeper, and her graying hair lay straight down her back, as it probably had since the telephone call early this morning. The pain in the room was so thick that Wager felt as if he were wading through a cold current, and like the crowing of the rooster, the feeling brought the distant memory of other parlors and other dead.
    “They’re policemen, Alice,” said the woman with the short hair.
    “Mrs. Covino? Can we talk to you?” asked Wager.
    The woman nodded silently, tugging the collar of her robe closer to her neck.
    “Do you have any idea who would want to do this?”
    Mrs. Covino’s broad face sagged and she pressed a wad of handkerchief under her nose to stifle the whining moan; it was a long two minutes before she could breathe evenly, her loud sighs gradually shuddering into long, labored breaths.
    “Tell them,” she said to no one. “Tell them he was a good boy. No trouble. Never.”
    One of the women on the sofa, younger than the others, stroked Mrs. Covino’s hand and glared at Wager. “Haven’t you people done enough to her through Gerry? Now you got to start on Frank, too?”
    “Gracie …” Mrs. Covino sucked another deep breath loud and flat past her stuffy nose.
    “Mrs. Covino’s daughter,” explained the woman with short hair. “Frank’s sister.”
    “Detective Wager, miss.”
    “Detective Axton. We’re sorry to have to be here, ma’am.”
    “Tell them we got some coffee, Gracie,” said Mrs. Covino. “Get these gentlemen a cup of coffee.”
    “I’ll do it, Grace. You stay here with your mother.” The fourth woman, silent until now, rose and went into the kitchen.
    “Can you tell us something about Frank, Mrs. Covino? Who some of his friends are? If he had any enemies? If there’s someone who might know why it happened?”
    “Why? I ask God in heaven why! There is no why! Tell them, Gracie—tell them he was a good boy and