The Dark Root Read online

  The Dark Root

  Archer Mayor

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10

  11 · 12 · 13 · 14 · 15 · 16 · 17 · 18 · 19 · 20

  21 · 22 · 23 · 24 · 25 · 26 · 27 · 28 · 29 · 30

  Excerpt

  Biography

  Bibliography

  Author's Note

  THE SUBJECT MATTER ADDRESSED in The Dark Root came from a conversation I had with an intelligence officer with the Vermont State Police. In response to my question about what he feared most in his forecast of crimes-to-come (he was an intel officer, after all, and thus paid to look ahead,) he startled me by answering, “Asian crime.”

  The book, as you will shortly discover, starts out with a traffic stop, with the officer involved discovering several Asian males in a car, all of whom have just met, and have not even exchanged names. My informant was in fact that officer. I have related his encounter more or less intact, with a couple of artistic flourishes, but made pains to keep the sense of quiet menace that he felt from these polite, accommodating, but very reserved gentlemen. They turned out to be a team of hit men, assembled for a single job that was completed the next night in Montreal.

  That tale started me on a research trip involving up to 50 interviews and a trip to Montreal’s Chinatown, and which introduced me to a world of alien smuggling, home invasions, and gang warfare, among other topics. It was both fascinating and disturbing, as I hope you will soon discover.

  1

  “M-80, O-45.”

  It was late, cold, and the streets had been quiet for hours, giving the tension in the caller’s voice a chilling element of dread. I paused on my way to the wall-mounted mail slots as the night dispatcher leaned forward and depressed the transmit button with his thumb.

  “80.” Charley Davis kept his voice flat, only his narrowed eyes betraying his concentration. Every call was a potential crisis, and the police dispatcher was the crucial linchpin.

  “I’m on a vehicle stop—for speeding—above mile-marker nine, northbound. Three adult males. Dark-blue Chevy Nova, Pennsylvania plates.” O-45—Marshall Smith—recited the registration slowly, so Charley could enter it into the terminal before him.

  Waiting for the computer to respond, Charley keyed the mike again. “45 from 80. You want some company?”

  The response was instantaneous. “10-4 on that.”

  Immediately, the other two patrol units spoke up from where they’d been eavesdropping out in the cold winter darkness, eager after a long, slow day.

  “M-80, O-32. I’m on Vernon near Cotton Mill.”

  “M-80, O-60. It’ll take me about eight minutes from West B.”

  I silently pointed to myself before Charley could answer either one. Mile-marker 9 was on Interstate 91, a few hundred feet above Exit 2—only two minutes away from where we were standing. He nodded and let everyone know simultaneously. “45 from M-80. O-3’s on his way. Two-minute ETA.”

  It was cold enough to make the snow creak underfoot in the parking lot. The patrol car’s engine moaned before kicking over and the seat was hard as stone beneath me. As I swung onto Grove Street, heading quickly for the interstate, I fiddled with the small, cranky video camera mounted to the dash, slapping it once to make the image on the tiny screen settle down.

  It was nearly midnight on a Wednesday in the middle of January. A few hours earlier, a snowstorm had been cleared from Brattleboro’s major roads. All of which made a speed stop of three males on the interstate more than a mere anomaly. It was sharply out of place—enough to put any cop’s suspicious nature on alert.

  I didn’t play the lights or siren. For one thing, there was nobody around to warn off the streets; but I also knew what tactical mode Smith would be adopting. Blinding the occupants of the car ahead with both his “take-down” lights and spotlights, he would slam his door twice—making them think there were two of him—and he would circle around to the back of his cruiser, approaching the car from its right rear, away from his own lights and from an angle the occupants wouldn’t be expecting. While they were craning their necks to see him coming up on the left—and possibly hiding weapons or contraband out of his sight to their right—he would be watching them unobserved, in the dark, before finally knocking on the passenger window with his flashlight and lighting them up. It was a safer approach than the standard one, but it also could make everyone involved as jumpy as hell.

  My role was to be discreet—available if needed, invisible if not—so that no overly sensitive motorist could later claim we’d been ganging up. I therefore cut my lights once I got on the interstate and coasted to a silent stop behind Smith’s cruiser a hundred yards farther up. As expected, he was crouching shy of the Nova’s right-rear window, talking to the passenger in the back, his eyes on all three occupants.

  “O-3 is 10-23,” I muttered into the radio, letting everyone, including Smith, know I’d arrived. I adjusted the video camera’s lens to cover the whole scene, hit the record button, and got out of the car, being careful not to slam the door. I positioned myself between the guardrail and the cruiser, just shy of where the dazzling take-down lights blistered out ahead. All around us, the snow-smothered banks and trees and the wide, empty road shimmered in the phosphorescent blue and white flashes of the electronic strobes.

  Marshall Smith, his head wreathed in the vapor from his breath, backed away from the stopped car and came toward me, a driver’s license in his gloved hand. “Thanks for coming, Lieutenant. You’re up late.”

  I kept my eyes on the dark outlines of three heads furtively conferring. “Catching up on paperwork. What’ve you got?”

  He stepped around me and opened his own passenger door, reaching in for the radio mike. “Nothing too bad yet—I clocked them going eighty-five—but they give me the creeps.” He paused to read the license to Dispatch.

  “How so?” I asked.

  “The rear passenger fits the profile to a T—talks too much, lots of body language, nervous as hell. They’re all pretty tense, and it’s not because of the ticket… They’re Asians,” he added as an afterthought, although I knew that detail had been at the top of his list.

  Charley’s voice came over the radio, “Dark-blue Chevy Nova, 1990, registered to Diep, Edward.” He gave an address in Philadelphia that matched the one on the license in Smith’s hand. “Pennsylvania says it’s valid.”

  Marshall frowned and lapsed from his usually strict radio protocol. “Thanks, Charley.” His eyes strayed uncertainly to the source of his concern.

  “You want them out of the car?” I prompted.

  He nodded and reached in for a clipboard. “Yeah—let’s see if they’ll play.”

  He returned to the car and tapped on the rear window to make them roll it back down. I could hear him reciting the particulars of a “consent search”—that the registrant was being asked to agree to a search of the vehicle of his own free will, and that he had the right to refuse such a request, either now or at any time during said search.

  I couldn’t hear the response, but the front passenger door opened.

  It amazes me how many people go along with this procedure, knowing full well what they’re carrying in a car. Dozens of successful busts for drugs, guns, illegal aliens, or alcohol have sprung from consent searches, all of which would have been impossible except for the intimidating power of the uniform—an influence defense attorneys invariably strive to drive home in court later.

  The cause of Smith’s uneasiness became obvious as the first man unfolded from the passenger side of the car. In the arrhythmic strobe lights, his face—smooth, emotionless, almost pretty—lacked any show of humanity. His features, though clearly Asian, paled against an aura of p
ure menace.

  Maybe my shock was greater because of Marshall’s description of the chatty, high-strung rear passenger. The thin, mocking smile of the man before me, his look of utter contempt, reminded me of a spoiled child coolly torturing a small pet. His eyes, seemingly unaffected by the lights, took me in as if I were the one on center stage, and he the observer from the shadows.

  Smith asked him with immaculate politeness if he’d mind being frisked for weapons.

  Without removing his eyes from mine, the man unbuttoned his overcoat and disdainfully lifted his arms to the sides in what was obviously a practiced gesture. Instinctively, I made sure I wasn’t standing between him and the hidden camera behind me. Smith checked him quickly but thoroughly and sent him back to stand with me.

  “How are you tonight?” I asked without introduction or apology.

  The smile widened slightly and he nodded silently.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Truong Van Loc.” The voice was soft and smooth, like the face, and equally devoid of feeling.

  “You have any identification, Mr. Loc?”

  I expected the usual fumbling for a wallet, but this man knew he was under no such obligation, not legally. His hands stayed still by his sides. “No. And my last name is Truong. Loc is my first name. We do it the other way around.”

  “Where you from?”

  “California.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Oakland.”

  “Where in Oakland?”

  He didn’t answer, but turned slightly to look back at Smith frisking the second man to emerge—shorter, older, with a pockmarked face and a worried expression—the driver, Edward Diep. Even in the cold, I could see the sweat on his forehead. His eyes shifted from spot to spot, looking for cover, for solace.

  “Your friend doesn’t look very happy.”

  Truong Van Loc shrugged. “Bad horoscope this morning.”

  “What’s his name?”

  For the first time, Truong hesitated slightly. “We call him Jimmy—it’s a nickname,” he finally answered.

  I seriously doubted that, but before I could challenge him, Smith finished with the driver and sent him back to join us. I suddenly wished I had one of the other patrol units here as well, so that all three men could be interviewed separately. I stopped the driver with my hand and turned to Truong, trying to keep my voice low enough that Diep—or Jimmy—couldn’t hear it over the engine next to us. “Where were you all headed?” I resumed.

  “North.”

  “Canada?”

  “Montreal.” Truong retreated to the cruiser’s trunk, forcing me to either speak louder or turn my back entirely on the newcomer.

  Frustrated, I reversed myself instead, abruptly facing Diep. “Your buddy tells me you have a nickname.”

  Diep’s eyes widened and flitted between the two of us. His mouth opened.

  “Tell him, Jimmy.” Truong’s voice floated over my shoulder, easy and cold, suddenly closer, making the name a threat.

  Diep looked like he’d prefer to have a coronary. “Me good guy,” he finally blurted, his voice rapid and heavily accented.

  “How long you lived in Philadelphia, Mr. Diep?”

  He nodded. “Yes, yes.”

  Smith glanced over to me. I pointed at his last customer, now emerging from the back seat of the Nova, and made it clear Smith should talk to him privately. I didn’t want Truong pulling the rug out from under me twice.

  “So what’s the attraction in Montreal?”

  “Friends.” Truong’s smile was becoming strained. Diep merely nodded in agreement.

  “How many days are you planning to be there?”

  “Three or four.”

  “You go up there a lot?”

  “Some.”

  We stood in silence for a moment, watching Smith talk to the third man, whom he’d intuitively turned around so he couldn’t see his companions. It was a dicey moment—a small gap where the grantor of a consent search could reverse his approval, given enough time to think—and I worried that Truong Van Loc would shortly put it to Edward Diep to do exactly that.

  “Where you from originally, Mr. Truong?” I asked, hoping to steer his mind to other matters.

  “Vietnam.” His eyes didn’t shift from Smith.

  I moved slightly to block his view, putting my back to both Smith and Diep—not the safest position, but worth the risk. Despite the apparent inanity of the conversation, I felt I’d embarked on a mental chess game that deserved my full attention. “That must’ve been tough, leaving your own country.”

  Refocusing on me, the sardonic smile returned. But I got him to react, which gave me a momentary advantage. “It wasn’t my country anymore,” he murmured.

  “Was it hard getting out?”

  The cold, blank eyes widened, and he further opened up. “They can make magazine stories and movies, but none of you will know.” It was the longest sentence I’d gotten out of him so far, and it betrayed a passion—and a hesitancy with the language—that he’d been keeping to himself.

  “Did you leave your family behind?”

  Smith finished with the last passenger and sent him back toward us—I could hear him muttering excitedly to Diep—but I had Truong on a small roll now, and I didn’t want to give him up.

  “My brother come with me.”

  “The others didn’t make it?”

  He shook his head, his eyes straying off into the distance. “They stayed.”

  “Is your brother in California?”

  Again, I’d caught him off guard. His face hardened. “He is dead.”

  “How?”

  But I’d taken him further than he wanted to go. He blinked once, scowled at me, and growled something incomprehensible over my shoulder at his companions, who instantly ceased their chatter. I stepped away so I could see all three of them. The last one was the youngest—in his teens or early twenties—more excited and nervous than Diep, but with Truong’s shark-dead eyes. The backs of his hands had tattoos peeking out from under the cuffs of his coat—a frequent, if unreliable, sign of gang membership.

  I spoke louder to include the other two. “You’re lucky you didn’t come through here a few hours ago—we had a pretty good storm.”

  The young man gave me a dismissive look, his hands flitting about his waist, as if looking for someplace to rest. “You don’t know shit, man: We get worse snow than you all the time. This shit is nothing.”

  Truong hissed a single word. The young man shook his head like a startled, angry horse, and clammed up.

  “What’s your name?” I asked him.

  “I already told the other guy.” His accent, unlike those of the other two, came straight from American television.

  “Now you can tell me.”

  “Henry Lam. And I don’t have no ID.”

  “Lieutenant?”

  I glanced over at Smith, who was backing out of the car. “Wait here,” I told the three men. “One of us will be right back.”

  Keeping my eyes on them, I met Smith halfway to the Nova. “What’s up?”

  “When I was looking around the back seat, a panel fell open under the bench. There’s nothing behind it, but it’s pretty obvious what it’s for.”

  I borrowed his flashlight and traded places with him. Squatting down, I could clearly see what Smith had discovered. A hinged panel lay flat on the floorboards, revealing a cavity about two feet deep, running the entire length of the seat. I lay on my stomach and slid forward until my head was almost inside the compartment, but moving the flashlight around, I couldn’t find a trace of anything suspicious.

  I finished Smith’s search of the interior for him, removed the keys from the ignition, and walked to the car’s trunk, pointedly not asking permission for this expansion of the search, as was standard. But the trunk, aside from the spare tire, was blatantly empty—no rags, no soda cans, no excess tools, none of the usual debris we all end up carrying around for no discernible reason. There was also no
luggage. In fact, for a five-year-old private vehicle, this car was about as aseptic as a rental unit. Even the glove box had been meticulously emptied.

  I closed the trunk, checked the engine compartment purely for the sake of thoroughness, and then returned to the now-shivering, sullen, and silent little group under Smith’s watchful eye.

  I dropped the keys into Edward Diep’s hand. “If you’d return to your car and wait just a few minutes more, we’ll process your paperwork. Feel free to restart the engine and crank up the heater. Thanks for your cooperation.”

  All three of them shuffled by. Truong Van Loc paused a moment to look me in the eye—the mocking, superior expression back in place. “No luck?”

  I resisted the bait. “Have a nice evening.”

  I turned off the video camera in my cruiser and sat next to Smith as he filled out the speeding ticket and sent the Nova on its way north. Finally, he slid back in behind the wheel, stored his clipboard, cleared with Dispatch, and let out a sigh.

  “What did you get out of the kid?” I asked.

  “Mostly a lot of ‘shit this’ and ‘shit that.’ But for a guy who talked like a bad movie, I had the feeling he’d cut my guts out for the thrill of it. Still, compared to the one you were talking to, he was a charmer. They gave me the creeps. Sorry I bothered you for nothing.”

  “Don’t apologize. After you stopped them, did you talk much with the driver?”

  “Diep? Yeah. I gave him the usual lines, and he fed me the usual ‘who, me?’”

  “In fluent English?”

  He raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Fluent enough.”

  I nodded, half to myself. “Figures. Where did Henry Lam say he was from?”

  “Boston.”

  “One from Boston, one from Philly, one from Oakland, California. Did Lam say they were headed for Montreal?”

  “Yeah—for the day.”

  “My guy said three or four days—with no luggage. Visiting friends?”

  Smith shook his head. “Business.”

  “So much for getting their stories straight. The nasty-looking one didn’t even know Diep’s name.”