Gatekeeper Page 10

  "Till I heard you were running things."

  "He send you to me?" he asked dubiously.

  Bill opened his mouth, but Sam answered, "No. He told us to drop dead. We found out about you from one of his people."

  The smile widened. "And how did you do that?"

  "The same way we got up here. I showed him my tits."

  Johnny Rivera laughed. "Tits and brains both. Come on in."

  He turned on his heel, leaving the doorway empty. Bill and Sam glanced at their escort, got nothing from him, and followed Rivera's invitation, stepping into a moderately clean, large, furnished room—half living room, half office—where every window was blocked by a steel plate reaching halfway up its length, permitting only a view of the sky from a standing position—a compromise that allowed sunlight but not sniper bullets.

  "Have a seat," Rivera offered, settling into a beat-up armchair.

  Bill and Sam shared a couch opposite him.

  "I hear you've come to help me set up my new business."

  Sam glanced around until she saw the intercom on a small side table. Very efficient.

  "We've got something to offer, yeah," Sam answered him.

  "And what would that be?"

  Sam jerked a thumb at Bill Dancer. "His contacts, my business savvy, and our skin color."

  Rivera narrowed his eyes as Bill shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Sam smiled. "You're a good lookin' guy, but you're the wrong color for the whitest state in the whole country. You want to pull this off, you're going to have to fly under the radar—have someone who'll blend in."

  "Who says I haven't already pulled it off?"

  Sam waved her hand around the room. "This what you call the big time? If it is, we're in the wrong place."

  "Pretty full of yourself."

  "I'm full of potential," Sam answered. "I'm also full of being treated like a piece of meat who's going to end up with nothing at the end. I'm full of the assholes making promises and delivering jack, and I'm full up to here"—she touched her forehead—"with other people's bullshit. I can be an asset to you. You want to blow that off and miss out on a golden opportunity, fine. It's a free country. But I'm making my move, and I'd like to make it with you."

  She worried that last line might've been a little hokey and watched his expression as if he were a drama critic.

  But he was fascinated. The women in this line of work rarely looked and spoke like Greta Novak, and he knew for a fact that she was right about the skin color issue. Profiling or not, cops in Vermont took a very close look at nonwhites traveling their roads with out-of-state plates.

  Johnny Rivera gave her an approving nod. "Okay That all sounds pretty good. What's your plan?"

  "For years, Vermont's heroin pipeline has started here, gone through Brattleboro, hung a left just below Springfield, and ended up in Rutland. That's where I'll go. I know you're there already, trying to keep the locals in line. I also know you're not having much luck."

  "Says who?" he asked, obviously irritated.

  She took the plunge, blindfolded, but kept her exact wording carefully vague. "Says the guy hanging from the bridge. Real subtle way to quietly infiltrate a town. You know who the chick was they found dead in that motel room?"

  She paused to force him to ask, "Who?"

  "The daughter of a bigwig politician, that's who—a guy who gives shit-loads of money to the governor. If you did have anybody working for you up there, you can bet your ass they'll either be in the slammer soon or as far from Rutland as a tank of gas will take 'em. The heat's on, Johnny—you got people all around you down here looking to knock you off, and now you have your little start-up operation staring straight down the shit hole. You don't think you need help, fine. But I think you're wrong."

  It was the perfect time for Rivera to throw them out in a fit of bluster, or at least let Sam know that she was blowing pure smoke. Of course, she wasn't sure she wasn't. She had no idea how the deaths of James Hollowell and Sharon Lapierre were connected to Rivera, if at all, much less anything about Rivera's Rutland operation.

  Which made his response all the more satisfying. "How do I know you won't just rip me off?"

  "You try me out," she told him, sitting back against the cushions. "After all, how do I know I can trust you? We need to do a little business first. See if we like it."

  Her tone of voice with these last words was purposefully ambiguous, letting him wonder if she might not be interested in more than just a business relationship.

  "I sell you some shit at a discount, you stick it in your veins, and I never see you again? Great plan," he said, although she sensed it was more ritual than a challenge.

  She arched her eyebrow at him, willing to keep playing. "I'm going through all this for an ounce of horse? Get real. Tell me straight, Johnny: Do you use the product?"

  He looked at her in surprise. "I'm no junkie."

  "Well, I'm not, either. That puts us above almost everybody else in the game. This is about money, and I'm ready to make some."

  There was a lull in the conversation as Rivera turned in his chair and gazed out the top half of one of his armored windows. Sam felt like she'd just pitched a truck full of used cars to the man.

  Finally, he turned back to them and pointed at Bill Dancer, whose grasp of all this was still undergoing development. "What about him? He your boyfriend?"

  Sam laughed. "He'd like to be."

  Bill looked confused as his face turned bright red.

  "But he's better as my contact man," she continued, being more truthful than Rivera knew. "Been at this for years. Got a good little black book. I can put the moves on people, get them working together, but he's my passport."

  Rivera nodded, paused a moment, and then said, "Okay. We give it a shot. I sell you some junk, you show me your stuff."

  * * *

  Two hours later, Joe picked up his office phone. "Hello?"

  "It's Sam. I'm in. You can tell the task force and everybody else that Johnny Rivera has a new Vermont operative, and I'm it."

  Gunther could almost see the shine in her eyes from her tone of voice. "Sam, slow down. What the hell've you been up to? Where are you?"

  "Holyoke. I didn't want you to say no, so I just went ahead and did it. Rivera's having me run a test flight—which'll cost us two thousand bucks, by the way—but I'm pretty sure he's hooked."

  Gunther grimaced as he stared out across the empty office. He hated the way this was going—had hated it from that first meeting with Allard. Every corner, it seemed, was producing people bent on pulling the rug out from under him. Politicians were dictating policy, Gail had fallen into some outer orbit, and now Sammie was setting up an undercover operation without clearance or consultation. It seemed everyone he knew was going maverick.

  It was time to catch up, to apply a little steadiness, and to mold into something of value the bits and pieces he'd been handed.

  "Nice work, Sam," he said to keep her in good spirits, even though he had no clue who Johnny Rivera was. "Come on in so we can put it all together."

  Chapter 9

  "I've been following Dave, putting him under surveillance, going through his room—like I was getting ready to arrest him."

  Susan Spinney put her things down on the kitchen table and sat opposite her husband. It was late. She'd just returned from the hospital and had found him sitting in the glow of a single lamp, staring into an empty coffee cup as if it held an oracle's solution.

  "Why?" she asked quietly, a chill settling in her chest. "What's going on?"

  "That call I got from the PD, when I had to pick Dave up? I told you it was just an open container bust and that I'd talk to him. Well, it wasn't, and I didn't. I mean, I asked him if he knew what he'd done wrong, and he said he did, and I asked him if he'd do it again, and he said he wouldn't. And that was it. Got us both off the hook. But there was more. Stuff I didn't tell you."

  He paused. She resisted pounding the tab
letop to get his attention, asking calmly instead, "What stuff?"

  "The driver was a loser named Craig Steidle. He had some pot on him as well, and when the cops drove up, it looked like he was about to score some crack off a local hooker who hangs out near the Pearl Street walkway."

  Susan felt her irritation growing. Despite Lester's profession, she'd always felt she was the family cop, having to enforce the rules and mete out the punishment. Being the bad guy while he came off as the Dad from central casting.

  "And you figured you wouldn't tell me for what reason?" she asked, unable to disguise her anger.

  He continued addressing the coffee cup. "I don't know, Sue. I'm sorry. It wasn't 'cause I was trying to duck the issue. I searched his room when no one was here, I staked him out when he was at the Sherman place last night. I can't get it out of my head."

  "You staked him out? What the hell does that mean? What's he been doing?"

  Spinney finally met her eyes. "Nothing—not that I know of. That's what I realized last night—why I quit and came back home. I saw I was losing it over this."

  Susan furrowed her brow, trying to sort it out. "Les, for crying out loud. You were losing it because you thought maybe Dave was getting into stuff like crack cocaine? What's not to lose? Do you think he's been doing this for long? What did you find in his room?"

  Lester was already shaking his head. "Nothing, and I have nothing to make me think he's done anything other than hang out with the wrong kids."

  Susan sat back in her chair and looped one arm over its back rail. "No shit. I feel like wringing his neck."

  Lester said barely audibly, "I felt like wringing my own neck."

  Susan sighed with exasperation and stood up, looking for something to occupy her hands. She poured some water into a cup and placed it in the microwave. "Jesus, Les. Sometimes I can't believe you. How the hell do you figure that? That this is somehow your fault? Or are you including me, too?" She punched the micro wave's keypad angrily, setting it to humming.

  Lester reacted instantly, straightening and waving his hands in protest. "No, no. That's not what I meant. It's not a fault thing. Not exactly. I just meant . . . It's just that when you think your own child has made that big a mistake, you gotta wonder." He paused before adding, "It started me thinking about my dad and what happened to him—how it affected me. I don't know. Maybe it's like what they say about how you're going to act in a crisis—you never know till it happens."

  He passed a hand across his face. "Christ, I shot a man last year when he sicced that dog on me and Joe." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that. But this time . . ."

  Susan sat back down across from him and took up his hand, her frustration quieted by the anxiety in his voice. She knew what he carried from his childhood, and had watched him deal with it—very well for the most part—from the first day he'd become a father himself. "Les, you're muddling it all up. You carry so much around inside, never letting anyone see what's going on, I'm not surprised you get confused sometimes. This is not rocket science." She smiled suddenly. "We just corner the little bastard and beat the crap out of him."

  Lester stared at his wife for a split second before they both burst out laughing. It was a tension breaker, of course, and typical of her abilities in that department. It was partly what made her a good nurse. Nevertheless, through the laughter, they watched one another carefully.

  * * *

  Joe entered the conference room late, having gotten stuck behind a truck on the road from Brattleboro to Rutland. He was in the modern brick building on Wales Street housing both the sheriff's office and the police department. Sitting around the table were representatives of both those agencies, Rick McCall, the VSP sergeant in charge of the Southern Vermont Drug Task Force, and Mara Coven, the task force prosecutor. He knew them all, thankfully—some better than others—from his decades on the job. In the center of the large table, pointedly angled so Joe could read it upon crossing the threshold, was a copy of the Rutland Herald with the headline "Gov Declares War on Heroin."

  "Sorry I'm late," he apologized, pulling out a chair. He'd seen the Brattleboro paper's treatment of the same news earlier, noting with relief that Bill Allard had apparently done his job. Despite the headline, Reynolds had "declared war" only at the very end of his statement, after specifying that the opening salvos would take place in Rutland. Sharon Lapierre's death was also revealed, as an overdose only and not in connection to Hollowell. Her fate was simply described as accidental, the investigation as ongoing, and the family—"close political allies of the governor"—as grieving. Apparently reversing his initial strategy, Reynolds was up-front about Lapierre's death being a major catalyst in his decision—a move no doubt designed to beat his political opponents to the punch. Most interesting to Gunther, however, was that the VBI was mentioned but once in the article as a support unit only.

  So far, his struggle to maintain discretion—and therefore acceptance—was working. Today would be the acid test.

  "I just got here myself," Mara Coven admitted, "and when I walked in, they were all talking motorcycles. Don't let them tell you otherwise."

  "She cranked up the volume there," McCall protested. "Saying Harleys aren't worth a damn. Jeez, Louise."

  They laughed and traded a few more barbs as Joe pulled out a chair. At least the mood was looking good, he thought.

  "Okay," McCall finally spoke up again. "Much as I'd like to debate this topic at length, I guess we're here to earn our living." He pointed at the newspaper. "Looks like with their usual leadership style, the politicians are leading from the rear, telling us stuff we've known about for years and promising the voters what we probably can't deliver. It also looks like they're pretending this whole heroin epidemic is centered here in Rutland, when we also know that Rutland's just a hot spot, like Burlington or Brattleboro or even around St. Johnsbury for that matter."

  "Except those places aren't where Sharon got whacked," Peter Bullis said softly. He was a short, square, muscular man, one half of Rutland's small but effective drug squad. An ex-task force member himself, he was a New York transplant and a true believer about the widening spread of drugs. One of the reasons he worked here instead of in the big city was that he thought—just maybe—that places like Vermont might have a chance in stemming a tide he'd seen drown his old hometown. The Rutland PD's drug team, now two years old, had been his idea, although Gunther had heard rumors that Bullis was beginning to despair. Vermont might have the opportunity to avert disaster, but the manpower and the money were lacking—the disadvantages of being one of the tiniest states in a country beset by this plague, standing last in line at the federal trough.

  "True," McCall agreed, "which brings us to why we're here. The way things have developed ever since we found Hollowell swinging from the bridge and Lapierre dead in his motel room, we're now facing three situations. The first I hope we can do something about, the second we might be able to do something about, and the third is a pure pipe dream."

  He paused for theatrical effect—always a bit of a ham—before explaining, "Of course, I mean the double murder as the first, putting a dent in the Rutland drug trade as the second, and ending drugs in Vermont as the third. Fortunately," and here he picked up the newspaper and held it up, "the governor put his mouth behind the second and only paid lip service to the third, so maybe—just maybe—we might have a chance."

  No one else said a word. Joe was biding his time before representing his agency's role in this whole scheme, waiting until he'd tested the waters some more.

  "When Sharon was killed," McCall went on, "we were told to call it an accidental and to throw Hollowell at the press to keep them busy. In the meantime, her old man went to the governor, who went to the commissioner of Public Safety, who went to my lieutenant, who, of course, went to me. That was predictable enough. At the same time, though, the governor apparently thought that we could do with a little help from the VBI, which explains our friend Joe being here, too." McCall bowed in Gunther's
direction. "Of course, we always appreciate extra manpower, but that makes for a pretty crowded playing field." Here he addressed the two Rutland agencies. "Especially when the home team's already been at it for a while."

  This was clearly Joe's prompt to jump in and explain his presence in concrete terms, except that an investigator from the sheriff's office, named Tom, spoke first. "If it's okay, I'd like to speak for the sheriff on that. Our office is ready and willing to supply equipment, manpower, intel, and material support whenever it's requested, but we're not here to get in the way. We're entirely support, straight down the line, unless you specifically ask us to be otherwise."

  Joe still didn't speak up. He could have ridden Tom's coat tails, saying much the same thing, but he was curious that McCall had used the VBI's presence to avoid explaining his own agency's role here—or why he was the one running this meeting. Technically, the task force's charter was much like VBI's. They ran their own investigations, but a certain diplomacy was expected when on someone else's turf. Like now. Joe sensed that privately, Rick McCall felt he was standing on thin ice.

  In the awkward pause following Tom's comments and Joe's silence, that issue obviously remained to be addressed.

  "That's great," McCall began, caught off guard. "Always good to hear. I guess that brings up a chain-of-command question we should probably kick around a little. In the past,without this kind of political pressure, we've always worked the Rutland drug cases through the PD, either by acting as backup or by letting them know we were operating in their backyard."

  Gunther glanced at Peter Bullis, expecting and getting the slight grimace he saw. It was no secret that while the task force probably intended to be as clear-cut in its arrangements as McCall had just described, the truth was often a bit more tangled. More than once, Joe knew, Bullis had felt muscled out of the way either by the task force's greater brawn or through the overly aggressive personalities of some of its members. It had never developed into any large bone of contention, but it allowed Gunther the comfort of not being seen as the only outsider, which was exactly what he'd been hoping for.