The Ragman's Memory Read online

  Across several of the documents littering the desktop, the name “Paul” was written in Magic Marker. It was, by all appearances, the project manager’s operations center, located not practically in one of the modest trailers by the property fence far below, but ostentatiously, high inside the building he was overseeing. By the assortment of folding guest chairs and dirty cups, I guessed Paul Hennessy had been entertaining his party here when Willy and I had overheard them.

  Which revealed another small connection to Milo Douglas, much like the cup full of free pens. As best as I could figure, this room was directly beneath where Milo had camped out.

  A small point in itself, perhaps, but to me, one coincidence too many.

  15

  J.P. WAS IN AND OUT OF MILO’S luxury suite within the hour I’d stated to Paul Hennessy. Having made no similar claims concerning Willy and me, however, the two of us took our time checking out the rest of the complex, not leaving until well into the afternoon. Our results, unfortunately, didn’t match the effort. Apart from what J.P. had tucked away into a variety of envelopes and recorded on film, we came away empty-handed.

  This included a second surreptitious visit to Hennessy’s office, where I had J.P. conduct a fast but careful survey, hoping his specialized training might help him see something I’d missed. It didn’t. While he did find hair and fiber samples aplenty, we both knew too many people had been through the place to give them any relevance.

  My fallback strategy, therefore, became the paper trail I’d assigned to Ron the day before. To find out how he was faring, I had Willy drop me off at the office building of Justin Willette, investment counselor and CPA, next door to the public library.

  The address was representative of Brattleboro’s frugal solution to an expanding business district. Once an overtaxed, poorly maintained Greek Revival mansion, with a full, deep, wraparound porch, it had been remodeled to house five separate businesses. The only external sign of this potentially destructive invasion, however, was a new, eye-catching, multihued coat of paint.

  Willette’s offices were on the second floor front, and his own inner sanctum was dominated by a large dining room table in the center of the floor. It was seated here that I found both Willette and Ron Klesczewski, side by side before a spread-out heap of manuals, Xeroxes, faxes, reports, and minutes, all generated by or for the small battalion of committees, commissions, and boards that Gene Lacaille had gradually conquered on his way to obtaining the various permits for his convention center dream.

  Justin Willette was small, rotund, totally bald, and equipped with a pair of glasses so thick, they looked like the bottoms of Coke bottles. He was one of an unsung group of citizens who routinely lent the department their expertise. Not a flashy man, he had done well wearing his two professional hats and had come to my attention through Gail, who’d regularly benefited from his abilities.

  Right now, however, both he and Ron were looking a little worn, and I realized without asking that they’d probably taken their task overly to heart, spending more hours than I cared to know about pursuing it. The overtime on what technically remained a low-flying case was going to be a sticky item to defend, especially with NeverTom at the head of the current fiscal clamp-down. Maybe that, however, was why I really didn’t give a damn.

  As I sat down opposite them both, Justin pushed his glasses high up on his forehead, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Ah, I was wondering when you might appear, seeking words of wisdom.”

  Ron smiled apologetically. “I may have pushed Justin beyond recovery.”

  Willette dropped his heavy glasses back in place. “Nonsense. It’s been a fascinating glimpse into how the system works. I never knew there were so many ways for subjective influences to bear fruit.”

  I smiled at the wording. Justin could be as flowery as he was short. “Meaning what? Corruption?”

  He waved his stubby hands in the air before him. “No, no—not at all, or at least not obviously. I’m talking about situations where certain people made choices from among several options, but always to the benefit of the project.”

  “Someone got to them?” I tried again.

  Willette made a painful expression, indicating I’d missed again.

  Ron explained. “It’s not that cut-and-dried. It’s been a little like planning a trip, and then figuring out all the various ways to get from one place to another. We found a few obstacles—Mary Wallis and her group, for instance, or aesthetic concerns that had to be addressed, like how the complex would look from the interstate. But each time an obstacle cropped up, it was avoided—after only a token bit of maneuvering.”

  “So it’s the maneuvering that’s got you worried,” I finally understood.

  “Exactly,” Willette said, satisfied at last.

  “You’ve identified all these trouble spots?”

  “Well,” Ron answered slowly, “all we could see. This only gives you the official view of things. Most of these people are fully aware when they’re on the record. There’s a lot that has to be going on behind the scenes.”

  An obvious solution occurred to me. “Would it help to talk to someone who knows both the players and the process?”

  Willette tilted his head to one side, considering the point. “Sure. It might tell us who went against their own past principles.”

  I reached for the telephone.

  · · ·

  Gail met us in the reception area and led us down a hallway to a small conference room. “Derby’s willing to cut me loose for a half hour or so, but that’s it. He’s starting to wonder if you’ll ever have anything to prosecute.”

  I squeezed her arm as she pulled out a chair. “Tell him it’s in the bag.”

  She gave me a dour look.

  Justin Willette began with a short speech on what we were after. Gail listened without interruption, smiling occasionally at his enthusiastic body language. At the end, she merely asked, “Okay—what or who do you have problems with?”

  Willette leaned across the table and laid several sheets of paper before her. “There are three we are questioning. First, when Gene Lacaille brought his initial proposal to the town planner, there was a lot of enthusiasm. Gene was well liked, there was a perceived need to counter Burlington’s domination of the conventioneering market, and the land, which Gene already owned, was commercially zoned and bracketed on both sides by shopping malls and stores. It seemed a natural fit. The town planner invited the site-plan committee, and Lacaille bent over backward to accommodate them. Through the committee, the fire chief got his hydrants, Public Works chose where the sewers would be, and Tony Brandt called the shots on traffic layout. Of course, the fact that three of the other members of the committee also sat on the planning commission wasn’t missed by anyone. The summation reports were glowing, so Gene started out fast and well backed.”

  Willette interrupted himself as he came across a separate sheet of paper. “Okay, this is a little off the track, but it did trigger the first of our concerns. All this early enthusiasm was purposefully low-key. No one wanted to alert any potential opposition too soon. But Lou Adelman, as director of community development, was tipped off. He came up with the idea of a town loan for the project, financed with state money. There’s no indication Gene Lacaille had anything to do with that, which made Ron and me a little curious about how it happened.”

  Gail was already shaking her head. “That’s pretty standard. Once the town planner and the site-plan committee sign onto something, the right people are lined up. Tom Chambers made it very clear from the start he was in favor of the project, and would pull every string he could to help it pass, even before he got on the board of selectmen. By the time the idea of a state-financed town loan was first announced in the paper—with public meeting notices and all the rest—he and his brother and several others, with Adelman in the lead, had already been working on the idea for months. I also doubt Gene was quite as ignorant as it looks. He’s got a bit of the politician in him,
too.

  “Go to Adelman for the details… And to the Bank of Brattleboro as well—they were scrambling to be part of the deal, but looking for all the help they could get. This was too big a bite for B of B to take in the first place—one of the Boston or New York banks would’ve been a more natural choice, but you know local pride… So I’m sure they all played a part in the two million from the state. But all that’s not unusual.”

  “Isn’t Gene and NeverTom playing footsie a little unlikely,” I asked, “given the bad blood between their families?”

  “For one thing, the bad blood was between their fathers. The sons never had much to do with one another. For another, who do you think owns the land abutting Lacaille’s property? By having Lacaille take all the risks on the project, the Chambers brothers stood to make a fortune.”

  “By now,” Willette resumed, “Gene Lacaille is pressing ahead for permits.” He shuffled the papers before Gail. “Since they all knew they had zoning problems the planning commission wouldn’t accept, the project was next taken to the zoning board of adjustment.”

  Gail interrupted briefly. “That fits the low-profile approach. Few members of the public know or care what goes on at the ZBA—it’s too technical and boring. So if you’re expecting opposition, it’s best to get all your obvious problems ruled on before you hit the commission, which is more in the public eye. I remember the newspaper played a key role here, too, which is why Gene cozied up to Stan Katz early on. When they went to the ZBA, it was noted in the paper, but with no fanfare or editorials. Katz was soft-pedaling to favor the project’s passage—not that you’d ever get him to admit it, of course.”

  “Okay,” Willette continued, “as zoning administrator, Eddy Knox conducts an investigation into how the proposal might conflict with the various by-laws and restrictions of record. He discovers, among lesser problems, that for a building that size, there isn’t enough land left over to meet both landscaping and parking requirements. One or both have to be scaled down. The wording of his report was the second concern that caught our attention. Reading between the lines, you can clearly see where he softens his own findings by citing earlier exceptions in other projects, some of them not even in Brattleboro, and generally bends over backward to stress how minimally he thinks the project steps over the line.”

  Gail frowned. “That, I’d look into. Eddy’s a picky, black-and-white guy. I was still a selectman back then, and although we weren’t part of the process early on, I remember seeing that report, and thinking that for a negative finding it was awfully rosy. But I was for the project, too, in the end, so I didn’t think much about it. Lacaille had a good track record, the Bank of Brattleboro was backing it, the state was making positive noises about funds for the town loan. I went with the flow like everyone else. But thinking back, the tone of that report was artificially upbeat.”

  Willette’s enthusiasm grew as his suspicions found support. “Right, right, and Rob Garfield, the ZBA head, used that upbeat tone to sell the granting of the variances. That hit us, too, although not hard enough to qualify as a red light. It seemed pretty handy that Garfield was right there being so supportive, especially given his relationship with Knox.”

  “I agree,” Gail said. “The two of them have never gotten along. I even asked Eddy once how he could work with a ZBA head he didn’t like. He told me he needed the job, and that as long as he kept his reports straight and narrow, Garfield would never have the ammunition to get him fired. Unfortunately for your theory, Garfield was gung-ho for the project from the start, so he didn’t need to be bought off.”

  “Okay,” Willette continued, his spirit undampened. “Now the ball ends up in the planning commission’s lap.” Once again, he shuffled some papers, bringing the relevant ones to the top. “By this time, months have passed, and Mary Wallis has organized her opposition, generating letters to the editor, disrupting commission meetings, circulating leaflets and holding rallies, and getting other groups interested. A couple of selectmen begin to wobble in public statements, and the commission is feeling the heat. On the other hand, Tom Chambers, Lou Adelman, Harold Matson of the B of B, and most of the business community are screaming about jobs and commercial vitality and how the convention center will help put the town on the map.”

  He paused briefly. “That’s when the fight over landscaping hit the fan, exposing the commission’s famous quirkiness with a vengeance. Despite the ZBA having granted all the necessary variances, including how much landscaping Gene Lacaille had to supply—to the exact number and type of trees and shrubs—the commission, using its own mandated criterion on landscaping, began talking about the ‘feel’ of the project—how it looked from the interstate, how the color might jar with the fall foliage, how the architecture looked harsh against the skyline.”

  Willette riffled through a thick wad of minutes. “Back and forth it went, with Gene trying to come up with affordable compromises, and the commission seeming to change its mind with every shift in the political wind.”

  He extracted a single stapled sheaf. “Until this meeting, where Ned Fallows, who’d been all but invisible from the start, suddenly stepped to center stage and came down hard on Gene’s side. Given Ned’s influence on the commission, that did the trick. Even with Mary Wallis screaming from the sidelines, the project was okayed. It went to the selectmen, who quickly passed it three to two, and then Lacaille delivered it to the Act 250 district coordinator, who reviewed it in record time. The final approval was given by the Act 250 board a year and a half after the idea was first proposed to the town planner.”

  Gail was looking confused. “Who is it you’re worried about here? Ned Fallows or the district coordinator?”

  Willette was momentarily silent, knowing of Gail’s deep affection for Fallows. It was Ron who spoke, for the first time since we’d entered the room. “I’m afraid we think it’s Ned. Tracking the arguments on the aesthetics angle, there’s no explanation why he suddenly backed this project so hard. The minutes of this meeting show him almost browbeating the other members. And his influence didn’t just sway the commission—the selectmen mentioned it as well, when they took their vote later on. Ned made the difference.”

  There was a stillness in the room as the three of us watched Gail, who sat rigidly still, staring sightlessly at the clutter of documents before her.

  When she moved at last, it was to stare directly at me, her eyes narrowed and her face flushed. “I was the swing vote on the select board. I backed Gene because of Ned… You better be damn sure about this, Joe. Don’t… Fuck it up.”

  She stood stiffly and took in the others. “Are we done?”

  Following his flamboyant presentation, Willette looked suddenly pale and stunned at its startling outcome. “Yes… Of course. Thank you.”

  Gail turned and left the room.

  “I didn’t realize… I mean, I knew they were friends—” Willette began.

  “Ned Fallows was the main reason Gail entered politics,” I explained. “He was like a godfather to her—the person who taught her to think beyond her own self-interest. If we find he was dirty, it’s going to take a terrible toll on her.”

  Willette began mournfully gathering his paperwork together. “I should have stressed there might be nothing to all this. These are just things that caught my eye—peculiarities. They may not mean anything.”

  “She knows that,” I soothed him. “People have a bad day, it can influence their vote. The system doesn’t work like a machine.”

  But the words hung in the air like off notes. We all knew what I’d said was only superficially true—integrity was supposed to iron out one’s daily mood swings, and usually did.

  Gail was not at her desk as I escorted the others out of the SA’s office. She returned ten minutes later, her hair brushed and her face fresh from having cold water splashed over it. She glanced at me sitting on the windowsill of the reception area, waiting, but went directly to her chair. Luckily, the secretary was temporarily out, allowing
us some privacy.

  “We’ll treat him with kid gloves, Gail. He’s my friend, too. And Justin wanted you to know that what they found might mean nothing at all.”

  Her voice was tightly under control. “I’m not an idiot.”

  “You’ve already jumped to a conclusion.”

  She looked at me, furious. “Don’t preach. I’m not in the mood. We both know goddamn well something’s wrong. I should’ve known it back then—it’s not like those meetings were behind closed doors. It’s just that the suddenness of Ned’s decision got lost in the shuffle. So much was going on… ”

  It was mere weeks after Gene Lacaille’s project met final approval that Gail had been raped, her world transformed by pain, guilt, and anger. Ned Fallows had resigned his seat on the planning commission at around the same time and had left town immediately afterward. Gail hadn’t been in contact with him since. It was remorse, I knew, as much as his possible corruption, that was tearing at her now—that in his time of need, she hadn’t been available.

  And there was resentment, too, aimed at a potentially fallen idol. In a time when she was rebuilding herself from the ground up, driving herself through eighteen-hour days, denying the costs of an unbearable workload, she didn’t need to discover that one of her heroes might have clay feet—or that the man she lived with was about to investigate him.

  I crossed the room and took her hand. She didn’t look up to meet my eyes. “Gail, I know this hurts. I’ll handle it myself—go up and see him today. We’ve got to hope for the best.”