Free Angle of Attack by Rex Burns

forward. “He was found with his burglary tools on him, so we might have gotten him on intent, but the D.A. didn’t want to waste time pushing for it. Covino had taken nothing—opened no cash drawers or safes—so the strongest charge was breaking and entering. We suspected he had accomplices, but he was the only one we caught; and he wouldn’t name anyone else.” The thought suddenly landed in Franconi’s eyes. “Wasn’t that the name of the latest homicide victim? Any relation?”
    “Younger brother. First name Frank or Frankie.”
    He stroked his mustache a moment or two more. “I don’t recall that name. Only Gerald’s.”
    “Do you remember anything about the bust?”
    “Yes, indeed! It was almost comic. The uniformed officers received a ten-ninety, silent type, at approximately 3:45 A.M. It was at a drugstore on the north side of town off the I-25 and Thirty-eighth Avenue intersection. The exact location escapes me, but it’ll be in Covino’s trial record. I was on graveyard and of course responded, too. When I arrived, the patrolmen had been there perhaps two or three minutes ahead of me, having come up without lights or siren. They found the front door still locked and one of them was looking for a way to the back of the store. Let’s see … one of the officers was McBride—Pat McBride. I can’t remember the other’s name. It was this other one who was looking for a way to the back entrance. But the building was one of these long series of stores side by side, so of course there was no immediate access to the rear of that particular store,” Franconi explained carefully.
    Wager took a deep breath and forced a patient smile and nodded. Franconi was going to make a fine lawyer.
    “I picked him up and we swung around the corner and came down the alley. At that time of night, we naturally made some noise driving up, and fully expected to see the suspect or suspects running down the alley, so I had my high beams on. And remember, the patrolmen had already rattled the front door, so that anyone inside must have known an alarm had gone off and that officers were on the scene. But no one was visible. We stopped and tried the back door and found it open. Later investigation revealed that the dead bolt had been picked and the snap lock had been slipped by a piece of plastic. We thought we were too late, but in we went, anyway; I covered while the uniformed officer entered, and then he covered for me. We stood on each side of the doorway for a few seconds to let our eyes adjust, and then began moving through the stockroom toward the front of the store. We couldn’t find the light switch, of course, so the officer whose name I can’t recall was shining his flashlight around as we went forward. Still nothing—no sound of anyone running, no heavy breathing, no scurrying around. We reached the main part of the store and by the streetlights coming through the front window could see the pharmacy station on the left. The cash register was near the door, and so the two of us started down the left side toward the pharmacy and then we were going to sweep the cash register area and unlock the front door for McBride. All this time, we were keeping our eyes wide open in case someone was still in there and bolted for the back. We didn’t really expect that—as I’ve said, we had made enough noise to scare off an army. Anyway, we made it past the pharmacy, and since none of the drawers behind the counter were pulled out, we again thought the thief had been scared off. When we drew near the register, we could see that the cash drawer was closed, but it was approximately then that we smelled him.”
    “Smelled him?”
    “Drunk as a skunk and twice as fragrant. Apparently, he had passed out before he could rifle the cash register, and there he lay sound asleep and soaking wet, with an empty bourbon bottle in his hand and a puddle of booze deep enough to drown in. Kentucky Royal, it was—foul-smelling