The Dark Root Read online

  Dahlin turned to me. “Why don’t you join Spinney and work down both sides of the balcony? I’ll wait here for the backup. Shouldn’t be more’n three or four minutes. The patrolmen can either start working the east wing or stay put by their entrance. Your call. You’re running this show.”

  That was a sensitive technicality that routinely gave feds their resented reputation. I started moving in Spinney’s direction, playing down her last comment. “Sounds good. They’re already inside—might as well keep ’em coming.”

  I joined Spinney, climbing two steps at a time, and took the balcony across from his.

  The two balconies were about ten feet wide, bordered by a waist-high, ornate railing to the inside, and a string of shops opposite, lined up like a row of fancy New Orleans apartments. I removed my gun from its holster and walked with my hand hidden under my jacket, as if protecting something from the rain—an image my soggy appearance made blatantly ludicrous. I tried to ignore the loud squelching from my shoes.

  Each one of the shops had large interior windows, making them comparatively simple to check inside without actually entering. At every door, my badge displayed in my free hand, I inquired of each salesperson if they’d seen a soaking-wet Asian male recently. This process was less nerve-wracking than it could have been, because I was also checking for the same kind of wet footprints I was leaving behind me. It seemed reasonable that where there were no prints, there was also no Michael Vu. Assuming he hadn’t taken his shoes off.

  Shop by shop, Spinney and I worked our way up the line, keeping track of each other visually, and of Heather Dahlin below.

  Until I saw the glimmer of water on the floor.

  I was standing opposite a clothing store filled with racks blocking my view of the interior. I stood quietly for a few moments, watching for movements, or reactions from the few shoppers inside. I couldn’t see a clerk at the register near the door.

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw Spinney looking over at me. I gestured at the store, and then at my feet and the trail I’d left. He nodded and moved up so he was facing the store’s front door, albeit across the chasm.

  He didn’t quite make it. There was a sudden flurry of movement near the counter, and Michael Vu—his long black hair plastered to his face—appeared from a small storage closet just behind the register, his arm wrapped around the neck of a terrified young woman, whose hands gripped his forearm in a struggle for more air. He wrestled her out onto the balcony, staring for a moment at both Spinney and me. In his free hand was a switchblade.

  I held my breath. Hostage situations were unpredictable, dangerous, and volatile and only rarely ended up as happily as on TV.

  I showed my gun, as did Spinney. “Let her go, Michael,” I said, loudly enough to attract Dahlin’s attention from below. In the corner of my eye, I could see her bringing the radio up to her mouth.

  “Fuck you,” Vu shouted back. “You go away or she dies.”

  “We’re staying put, Michael, and more cops are on the way. Killing her will do nothing for you.”

  He looked around wildly, as if expecting a marine division to appear out of the blue. “I won’t be killing her.You will.”

  “Look,” I said. “We don’t even have a warrant for your arrest. We want to have a talk with you—that’s all.”

  He began shaking, swinging the woman before him like a rag doll. “Oh, sure. Right. A little conversation. That’s bullshit, man. You think I’m a dumb fuck?”

  Suddenly, he arched his back, lifting the girl’s feet off the ground, and shouted, “Well, I’m not.” He pushed her over the railing and bolted down the length of the balcony.

  The girl screamed and grappled at thin air as her body cantilevered over the top of the railing. Only as she was dropping into free-fall did one leg instinctively hook onto the rail and leave her momentarily hanging like a clumsy acrobat. I got to her just as her leg slid free, and snagged her ankle with my left hand. Despite her small size, the sudden weight pulled me to my knees, hammering the railing into my armpit. I gasped in pain, focusing all my strength on not letting her go. I rose slowly to my feet and began hauling the girl toward me, using her leg like a rope. Moments later, several startled shoppers began helping me pull her to safety.

  At the far end of the mall’s long corridor, with Spinney close on his heels, Vu reached the bottom of the steps. Seeing Dahlin sprinting toward him, he whirled around to his left and disappeared under the distant staircase.

  Confused about where he’d gone, I too now gave chase, pounding down the stairs, slipping in my wet shoes, and swung around the same corner to discover a glass-door exit, discreetly placed next to the bathrooms. It was just swinging shut after Dahlin’s passage.

  Outside, to my right, I could see the three of them sprinting toward the Mascoma River, whose waters here ran faster, deeper, and more dangerously than where I’d entered them below the S-curves.

  I started after them, my eye on Michael Vu, who was sliding down the bank to the water’s edge, just ahead of the others. As he was about to plunge into the rapids and risk a ride toward the Connecticut River, he stopped abruptly and sat down hard. Beyond him, high on the opposite shore, I saw the familiar black shape of the car that had screeched to a stop in the mall’s parking lot earlier, now pulling away fast, tires smoking, the sounds of its departure masked by the roar of the water.

  By the time I got to the river’s edge, both Dahlin and Spinney were on either side of Michael Vu, looking perplexed. Spinney had turned to face the vast parking lot across from us, looking at where the black car had just been.

  Dahlin was crouching near Vu, blocking my sight of him. “What the hell happened?” I shouted over the sound of the rapids.

  She moved aside, barking orders into her radio, and I saw that Michael Vu wasn’t really sitting on the bank—he was lying on it, flat on his back. And decorating his chest—right over his heart—was a large bullet hole.

  23

  I DID MAKE IT TO GAIL'S OFF-CAMPUS APARTMENT, long after she’d gone to bed. While my anticipation of our reunion had been altered by Michael Vu’s murder, the need for her company was as real as before. Only now, I wanted a place to think, and someone to hear me out.

  She took it all in stride. She got back into bed, propped her head up against the pillows, and watched me pace the darkened room as I described the day’s events. It was a sign of our friendship that my unannounced arrival, the late hour, and the restless mood I was in were all dismissed without comment.

  “Why do you think Vu was killed? And who did it?” she asked after I’d finished.

  I paused by the window and looked out onto the silent street below. “The reasonable explanation is that somebody didn’t want him talking to us. But since we weren’t able to get a unit across the river fast enough to catch that black car, we may never know. Spinney was still running the mop-up when I left, trying to find witnesses. The New Hampshire State Police came in with a forensics team. But I don’t think they’ll find anything… We went back to the two restaurants Vu had visited. In both cases, he’d made a halfhearted attempt to extort some cash. He didn’t get much chance to put the screws to them at either place, of course, but I doubt he would’ve gotten much anyway. Once they heard he was dead, both owners seemed pretty unconcerned—as if they knew he was flying solo and that any threat had died with him.”

  “So Truong put the word out?”

  “Somebody did. Vu didn’t do anything for Truong’s—or ‘Sonny’s’—PR in Brattleboro. As far as we can tell, that whole operation’s collapsed. Sammie told me this afternoon that things seem pretty much back to normal. It’s possible Vu was targeted because of that failure. Our showing up probably just speeded things up a bit. If Vu knew a contract was out on him, cutting a deal with us might’ve sounded pretty appealing.”

  “Isn’t it a pretty big coincidence that both you and a hit man appeared at the same place at the same time? And how did he know where Vu would run to so he could get off that
perfect shot?”

  I settled into an armchair opposite the window and propped my feet on the sill before me. “It wasn’t necessarily a coincidence. We heard about Vu through our own grapevine, and theirs is a hell of a lot more sophisticated. The miracle is we saw him alive at all. That’s what makes me think he was being doubly skittish, on the run from both sides. As for the shooter, after he saw us in pursuit, he had to back off; but he knew that Vu would either be caught by us in the mall, or would run for the river. Those were his only two options.”

  Gail let out a small sigh. “So Truong had him killed.”

  “Maybe.”

  She looked up at me quietly for a moment. “You don’t think so?”

  I gave a half-shrug. “He could’ve done it—he’s cold enough for it. But the FBI found out that when he was fresh off the boat, he had a little brother he doted on—paid for his upkeep, his education… Bent over backwards to make sure he flew straight. All financed with money he got working his way up through the gangs. The kicker is, after he’d built up a grubstake, he went straight, too—started running a legitimate business. A few years ago, the kid was killed as an innocent bystander in a gang shooting.”

  A long silence filled the air.

  “That means he couldn’t have killed Vu?” she asked quietly.

  “No… It means he’s a lot more complicated than your run-of-the-mill wise guy. Killing a screwup like Vu is something Vu himself might’ve done. I’m not so sure about Truong anymore.”

  · · ·

  The persistent chirp of my pager cut through my dreams like a chain-saw.

  Gail’s voice was slurred and startled. “What the hell’s that? A smoke alarm?”

  I kicked off the covers, acutely conscious of the nagging bleating, and of how it might penetrate to the adjoining apartments. Three hours earlier, all talked out, I’d finally yielded to Gail’s invitation to join her in bed and had been enjoying the first deep sleep I’d had in weeks.

  “It’s Frazier’s damn beeper. His way and Flynn’s of keeping in touch.”

  Gail laughed as I tore through my pants, trying to locate my belt in its folds. “How intimate. Compliment them on their timing.”

  I finally found it, killed the sound, and turned on the light to read its display. “You got a phone?” I asked irritably.

  I dialed the number on the pager.

  “Where are you?” came Frazier’s voice, answering, I was pretty sure, from a mobile phone.

  “South Royalton.”

  “You better get up to Burlington. There’s been a shooting. Three dead. A drive-by of a residence by two cars with automatic weapons. They’ve got one guy in custody. It’s an Asian-on-Asian deal. I’m trying to keep the shooter isolated till you get here, but the locals would like the jurisdictional details cleared up fast.”

  “I’ll be there as quick as I can.”

  · · ·

  I stood beside Frazier and a lieutenant from the Burlington police, looking through the one-way glass at a young Asian male, pacing like a caged cat from one side of the interrogation room to the other. He had long, expensively cut hair, an assortment of gold jewelry, designer clothes, and was sweating profusely. He might have been seventeen years old, stretching it.

  “What do you have on him?” I asked of the lieutenant.

  “Name’s Vinh Thanh Chau—sixteen. No priors so far. We’re still checking.”

  “I called Montreal,” Frazier added. “He’s one of a Vietnamese gang that works mostly for Da Wang. He’s been nailed for petty theft, pimping, attempted extortion—apparently not very good at his job.”

  “Ever do time?”

  Frazier shook his head. “Too young.”

  The lieutenant gave the Bureau man—a “feebie” to municipal cops—a sour look for upstaging him, and resumed his narrative. “He was in the second car. It smashed up about half a mile from the shooting—missed a curve. The others got away. We found three automatic weapons in the car and two handguns.”

  “A Glock?”

  “Nope—Beretta and a Colt—nine-millimeter and thirty-eight special.”

  “He say anything?”

  The sour look returned. “I wouldn’t know.”

  I turned and faced him. “Walt tell you about the task force?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it’s got more local people on it than not, so we’ll make sure the municipal cops aren’t left out in the cold. I did want first crack at this guy, but if it looks like you can throw a bigger book at him than we can, he’s all yours. We won’t make any deals without your agreement, and whatever we learn, you learn. Fair enough?”

  The lieutenant didn’t answer directly, no doubt knowing my background, and considering me a traitor to local autonomy. “Witness to the crash said he came out of the back seat. Survivors at the scene said that’s where a lot of the firepower came from, too. He likes to be called ‘Chewy.’”

  “Do we know if anyone died from his shots specifically?”

  “Hard to tell.”

  “He been Mirandized?”

  “Yeah.”

  I patted his shoulder as I walked toward the door leading to the interrogation room. “Okay—thanks.”

  Vinh Thanh Chau stopped his prowling when I crossed the threshold. He struck a pose, feet apart, hands on his hips, and gave me a look of wilting superiority.

  I gazed at him for a moment. “Chewy? That your name?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  “Mine’s Gunther. I’m a Deputy U.S. MarshaI. Have a seat.”

  Vinh’s eyes narrowed slightly, obviously surprised at the title. I settled into one of the chairs at the room’s central table.

  The teenager stood uncertainly for a moment, and then strutted over to a chair opposite mine, taking his time.

  I waited patiently before telling him, “Guess you got yourself into some trouble. Must be a little scary, boy your age.”

  His face darkened with anger. “I’m not scared. You grow up fast in the streets. I done stuff you can’t even dream about.”

  “Stuff you won’t do again for a long, long time.”

  He watched me silently, digesting my words.

  “You know the difference between a U.S. Marshal and a local cop?”

  He lifted his chin slightly. “Sure, I do.”

  “We enforce federal laws, and we do it with a lot more freedom than the locals. And once we nail somebody, we send him to a federal prison, like Leavenworth.”

  “I can take that,” he said, but I sensed a lack of wind in his sails.

  I got to my feet. “Good. Then I guess I can go home. You want to be the butt-fucked toy of some hairy con for the next thirty years, more power to you.”

  I moved toward the door. Vinh half rose in his seat, his eyes wide with surprise and a twinge of the fear I’d been hoping for. “Wait—that’s it?”

  I looked over my shoulder. “What do you mean?”

  “That’s all you’re going to ask me?”

  “Sure. What did you think?”

  “You make a deal. You’re supposed to deal.”

  I turned around completely to face him, my face incredulous. “A deal? For what? You were the triggerman in a fatal drive-by shooting. People saw you do it—we already have their statements. What can a kid like you offer me?”

  His voice rose a few notes. “Plenty. I know plenty.”

  I sighed and looked at my watch. “Chewy, you’re a street punk down on his luck. You’ve grabbed a purse or two, maybe thrown a brick through a window, tried to sell the services of some thirteen-year-old girl. You’ve got nothing to offer me.”

  “I work for Da Wang in Montreal. He’s like Al Capone—the biggest crook in the city. I know stuff he’s done.”

  I laughed at him. “Chewy—you pulling my chain here?”

  He was on his feet now, pleading. “No. I’m not shitting you. I got the goods on him, man.”

  I leaned forward slightly at the waist and said slowly and distinctly. “He�
�s in Canada, Chewy. I don’t give a fuck.”

  He came around from behind the table, all cool gone by now. “What do you need? I know other stuff, too. I been around. I can be useful.”

  I made a show of hesitating, as if trying to make up my mind. Finally, I shook my head. “I don’t see it. You’ve never even been in this country before. What could you know that would interest me?”

  His eyes grew round with astonishment. “Shit, man—there’s how I got here. I entered illegally. I can tell you how I did it.”

  I smiled. “It’s an unguarded border, for Christ’s sake.”

  “No. No. It’s organized. Da Wang does it all the time. He’s got a system for getting lots of people across. The Border Patrol doesn’t know anything about it.”

  I waved my hand dismissively. “They know more than you think. They know Da Wang’s been losing his shirt lately to a guy named Sonny—the one who whacked Da Wang’s snakehead not long ago.”

  Vinh was almost quivering with excitement. “But that’s why I’m here. Don’t you see? We were ordered across the border to mess up Sonny’s business. Hit him on his home base—make him lose face big time.”

  “You were ordered to blow holes in a building in the middle of the night? Why didn’t you throw toilet paper on the lawn, too? That would’ve really pissed him off.”

  Vinh pounded the table next to him in anger. “No. Shit, man, don’t you get it? We fucked up a little is all. This is going to be like a war. We’re like soldiers, man.”

  I shook my head and scratched the back of my neck, reluctantly returning to the table. “I don’t know, Chewy. Sounds a little far out. You better take me through it.”

  · · ·

  Spinney pulled his cardboard cup of hot soup out of the Burlington Police Department’s vending machine and sat next to me on the battered, coffee-stained sofa in a corner of the officers’ day room. The first paling of dawn was starting to light the windows.

  “I hear you got the little turkey to open up. Frazier was impressed.”