The Dark Root Page 29

  “I know that, Mr. Lee—you supplied the cover only. Did this man have a name?”

  “I was not told it. I did not want to know.”

  “How ’bout the van? Was it always the same? A delivery truck, maybe carrying legitimate supplies as well?”

  “No—that was the old way, and the way it is now. In between, Vu used a camping van. Blue… And a black top. It had a painting on its side, of the mountains and a setting sun. Very colorful.”

  “Did you ever see the license plate?”

  “No.”

  “Did you get the impression that its driver made stops all over the state—like a delivery boy?”

  “I do not know.”

  “One last question. When Vu’s gang took over Da Wang’s territory—right after your home invasion—did you discuss what was happening with any other restaurant owners? Were any other owners forced to join like you?”

  “I never discussed it, but I know it happened to others.”

  “Who?”

  “I do not know. They told me it was so—the people who worked for Vu.”

  “How ’bout your friends in other restaurants? You must keep in touch, compare prices or whatever…”

  But he was shaking his head. “We never talk about the Dark Root. It is not wise.”

  I glanced back at Spinney, who tilted his head slightly to one side. We both knew we’d gotten all we could hope to get.

  We opened our doors and got out. I leaned back in before slamming mine shut. “Thanks, Mr. Lee. Go back to work and try not to worry. We’ll do everything possible to get Amy back.”

  · · ·

  “That must’ve filled him with confidence,” Spinney said as we retraced our route down the Old Guilford Road.

  I was in a sour mood, despite the lead we’d been provided. “Can’t do what he won’t do for himself.”

  But Spinney was feeling expansive. “Considering where they come from, and what they’ve been through, it doesn’t surprise me they don’t cozy right up to us.”

  “Lots of people don’t cozy up to us. That doesn’t mean they roll over and play dead. She’s his own daughter, for Christ’s sake.” I reached South Main Street and drove to the cemetery where Dennis was buried. There I pulled over and dialed Dan Flynn’s number on the mobile phone. I understood the source of my rage. Amy Lee was someone who up till now had been spared the exploitation and cruelty we were rallying against, and in short order I’d seen her terrorized, assaulted, humiliated, and now kidnapped. Spinney was right about Thomas Lee—he’d been conditioned to react the way he had. But it wasn’t in my nature to stand by and hope for the best.

  “Got a hot one,” I told Frazier when he got on the line. “Put a statewide BOL out on a blue van, black top, with a setting-sun-behind-the-mountains scene painted on the side—probably out-of-state plates. If we’re lucky, that’s the runner connecting all or some of Truong’s properties.”

  “No shit.”

  “Right.” I hung up and turned to Spinney, aware of the staggered rows of monuments beyond him—and the one, now along with Amy Lee, that stood as an icon for what was driving me on. “I don’t argue with what you’re saying, Les. I’ve just never been where nobody—not the community, not the victims, not the casual observers—will let us in. I know they have their reasons, but I’m on target with this thing, and it makes me nuts they won’t let us set things right.”

  · · ·

  I spent the rest of the day at the Municipal Building, while Spinney went off to touch base with his state police buddies at their West Brattleboro barracks. I caught up on the local gossip, shuffled the paperwork enough to make it look disturbed, and found out what my squad had been up to. But my heart wasn’t in it, and I had a hard time concentrating. Despite the frustration I’d voiced to Spinney earlier, I’d been bitten by Thomas Lee’s misery and wanted desperately to make good my pledge to return his daughter safely. And somehow, I wanted to prove also that the system I’d worked for my entire adult life was a fundamentally fair and decent thing, despite its many flaws.

  Relief came later that night, with the bleating of my pager coming for once as a blessing.

  Flynn picked up my return call on the first ring. “We found the van. Outside a motel in Springfield. The driver’s checked in, I guess for the night. We got a plainclothes unit sitting on it. I don’t know where he’s headed or what he’s up to.”

  “But it is a single Asian male driving it, right?”

  “Yup, and with Mass. plates. If I was a betting man, I’d say we just got lucky. I’m not, of course,” he added, after a slight pause. “You want us to tag him tomorrow? See where he leads us?”

  “Yeah, but I want to use a plane, too—Al Hammond’s got one down here. He can stay up for six hours at a time. That way, your boys only need to get close every once in a while. If this character is making the rounds, he’s going to be cruising all over the place. I don’t want him wondering what all those dark-green Caprices are doing hanging onto his ass.”

  “Hey—we got sportier models. I like the plane, though. Who do you want where?”

  “If Hammond’s available, I’ll go with him in the air. We could put Spinney in charge of three or four rotating cars, and connect us all with closed-frequency radios.”

  Al Hammond was a tall and laconic sheriff in the old mold, who knew everyone necessary to ensure his hold on his job, and yet who ran enough of a hands-off operation that his men were imbued with the self reliance that makes for a good department. But Al was no mere paper shuffler. He’d been a police officer all his life, all over the state, and at one time or another had done business, it seemed, with every other cop in Vermont. He was so unflappable as to appear lethargic at times, a misperception that had cost many a crook or fledgling defense lawyer dearly.

  We sat together in the predawn darkness, on the edge of the all but empty Springfield airport, in the cockpit of his small Cessna—a single-engine, high-winged four-seater equipped with long-distance fuel tanks. We had flown here earlier from the grass field in Dummerston, where he normally kept the plane. Not a man much given to idle chatter, he’d been content to sit in silence ever since we’d arrived a half-hour earlier, watching the eastern horizon’s slow-motion appearance as it was touched by the sun’s first glimmerings. That was fine with me. I’d taken advantage of the quiet to catch a long-awaited nap.

  “Good morning, sports fans.” Spinney’s obnoxiously cheery voice came over the portable radio in my lap like some metal-toned jack-in-the-box.

  I opened my eyes and brought the radio to my mouth. “You better have more than that.”

  Al laughed quietly beside me.

  “I have a stirring from an early riser.”

  “Recognize him from any of our mug shots?”

  “Yup, but not one of the ones with a name under it. You people took it in Bratt.”

  That made it pretty likely he was connected to Truong. “What’s he up to?”

  “Crossed the street for breakfast about fifteen minutes ago. I thought I’d let you sleep in.”

  “Lester hasn’t changed much,” Al murmured.

  “Al says you’re still a pain in the ass.”

  There was a brief burst of laughter before the radio went dead.

  “Nice boy,” Al said softly, the white of his hair beginning to gleam in the dawn light.

  The radio came to life again five minutes later. “Zulu from Tango One. You might want to start your engines.”

  Spinney had become official—the serious work was about to begin. We were Zulu—reflecting the aircraft’s official handle of N-for-November 4265 Z-for-Zulu—the tail cars were Tango One through Four.

  “Where’s he headed?” I asked, foregoing the formalities.

  “North on 91.”

  Al began calmly hitting switches on the equipment-packed console before him. Springfield’s airport was a “noncontrolled” facility, meaning there was no control tower, and no personnel to man one. We taxied silently to the
foot of the field like the only dancers in a dimly lit ballroom, and Al turned up the engine speed in preparation for takeoff. We both put on sound-deadening headsets, plugged into both the plane’s radio and the portable in my lap. The headsets had mouthpieces that hung on wire brackets directly before our lips.

  Al keyed the airplane’s mike button three times to electronically light up the runway, and announced to any other pilots who might be flying nearby, “Cessna November 4265 Zulu departing Springfield for the northwest.” He then turned up the throttle and eased off on the brakes.

  Moments later, I called Spinney. “Tango One from Zulu. We’re in the air.”

  “Roger that.” Hammond took the plane up about four thousand feet, cut back on the power, and began lazily floating above the interstate.

  “What’s your 20, Tango One?” I asked.

  “’Bout ten miles north of the exit.”

  Without comment, Al straightened us out, ran along the pale cement ribbon far below for a couple of minutes, and then cut back his speed again. The black roof of the van was as clear as if it had been marked with a bull’s-eye.

  “Okay, Tango One, you can lay back. We’re in visual contact.”

  “You got it.”

  · · ·

  The surveillance of the camper van went on for the entire day. In the towns, where traffic was heavier, Al handed it over to Spinney and his rotation of four cars; in the countryside, where any vehicle hanging back would’ve stuck out, the roles were reversed. Only once, halfway to Burlington, during a two-hour lunch stop by the van driver, did we land to refuel and stretch our legs. And during the whole process, the van did what we’d hoped it would—stopping at Asian-owned restaurants, laundries, nightclubs, and rooming houses in Springfield, Ludlow, Lebanon, Woodstock, West Fairlee, St. Johnsbury, Montpelier, and places in between—slowly but surely working its way toward Burlington. At every stop, Spinney reported to Dan Flynn, who consulted his records and then contacted Walt Frazier, who in turn checked his.

  Town after town, the unwitting driver caused the wires and airwaves to hum in his wake. Each business he called on prompted a look into the owner’s past criminal history, his financial records, and immigrant status. Name by name, Flynn and Frazier put together family histories, found out how many properties were owned by whom, identified whatever links connected the players, and found out if any of them were on file with the DEA, ATF, the Secret Service, INS, the Border Patrol, Customs, the IRS, Interpol, any state agencies from here to California, the Québec and Ontario Provincial Police, the Toronto Police and the MUC, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and of course the FBI.

  My job, however, involved little of that. For hours, I sat high above the state I was born and brought up in, lost in its comforting contours. Looking down across the spectacularly broken land—the rounded pastures and deep-cut gullies, the streams and lakes and forested mountains—all washed in the verdure that had given the state its name—I felt a return of the inner calm I longed for, and which recent events had so riled.

  I took the time to reflect on the losses I’d been refusing to acknowledge, to bury the dead and make a grudging peace with my mistakes. But while that helped to a certain extent, it also allowed me to focus on one of the truly innocent victims of this whole bloody mess. Surrounded by some of the most beautiful landscapes this country has to offer, my mind’s eye could only see the troubled face of Amy Lee.

  By late afternoon, when the van pulled out of Burlington and headed toward St. Albans, we thought we’d connected all but one of the dots north of Springfield, and that St. Albans would likely be the last stop. There, however, we were in for a surprise.

  Spinney was once again in the lead car. “Zulu from Tango One. I don’t think he’s heading for the barn like we thought. He just cut across the interstate on 105, toward Enosburg. You boys handle that?”

  Our anonymous van driver had proven a gregarious type, staying for long periods at several of his stops, apparently mixing a little chitchat with business. Twice, the surveillance cars had been able to park close enough to observe him through binoculars, eating or drinking with his contacts and obviously enjoying himself. That had also been the case in St. Albans, where he’d had an early supper, and where we’d assumed he would spend the night.

  Spinney’s question to us, however, was less concerned with a long day running to overtime. All of us were acutely aware of the failing light, and with the adjustments our strategy would have to undergo. It was Al Hammond’s call to make.

  I looked over at him and raised my eyebrows, causing him to speak for one of the rare times all day. “Night doesn’t bother me any.”

  I waited for more, got nothing, and asked Spinney if he’d copied that direct. I could hear the smile in his response. “I guess if he can do it, so can we.”

  Route 105 runs along the Vermont-Canadian border, zigzagging from town to town, almost touching the boundary at a couple of points. From Enosburg Falls to East Berkshire to Richford, the gently rolling, sparsely populated land is utterly dominated by the looming presence of Jay Peak to the east, toward which we were flying. In contrast to the soft hills and shallow valleys below, rapidly vanishing into the gloom of the encroaching darkness, Jay stood like a white-topped tidal wave—huge, expansive, vaguely threatening—glowing in the day’s sole remaining light.

  Similarly, Al and I were still bathed in the soft red glow to our back reflecting off the curved windshield and casting a pink wash on the map across my lap. And yet we were overflying a world soon to be as opaque as a black hole. Looking up at the orange-and-red-tinted clouds overhead, I suddenly felt vulnerable and alone, cast adrift from the lightness above, and yet abandoned by the very land I’d been receiving comfort from mere moments earlier. It was, I knew, only a metaphorical sensation, stimulated by too much stress and a lack of sleep, but it served as a reminder of what I was facing—and perhaps of my chances of success. Given what had happened to Benny Travers, just for the sake of a little gained turf, or what Dennis DeFlorio and Tony Brandt and Amy Lee had suffered in the name of “keeping face,” I began feeling like a tired swimmer in deep water, praying for a foothold.

  “Gets you lost in your thoughts, doesn’t it?”

  I looked up, startled at this intrusion coming over the headphones I’d forgotten I was wearing, and saw Al smiling beside me.

  “Prettiest time of the day, as far as I’m concerned—the one time I really do feel like a bird in this thing.”

  He dipped the plane slightly to my side and pointed across my chest at the now inky-black ground beneath us. “That’s him right there—the headlights.”

  I nodded without comment. Twisting further around in my seat, I could see the lights of Spinney’s four-car surveillance team, safely trailing several miles behind. I saw Jay Peak, now quite close and to our right, and played a small pen light across my map, surprised and a little embarrassed at how far we’d traveled while I’d been daydreaming.

  “We’re coming up on North Troy,” Al told me. “Newport’s just beyond.”

  Newport is Vermont’s biggest town this close to the border, so isolated from the rest of the state by the comparative emptiness of its surroundings that it’s almost become a Canadian extension. This illusion is heightened by Lake Memphremagog, a thirty-two-mile-long body of water that lies almost equally half in Vermont, half in Québec, and which provides a natural conduit to a well-populated and nearby neighbor.

  As we lazily came around the northern shoulder of Jay, now glistening with its summit-top red warning beacons, the pale expanse of the lake came into view, surprisingly long and flat in this mountainous, tree-choked setting. At its base, the scattered lights of Newport lay sprinkled about invitingly. Certainly it was attracting our friend in the van, whose tiny headlights were steadily drawn toward the downtown area.

  By now, although we were all in total darkness, there was enough traffic hovering around the town’s outskirts to make Spinney’s small convoy indistinguishable from
any other cars.

  “Tango One from Zulu. You better take over.”

  “I’ve got him in sight already.” Al put the plane into a gentle bank and slowly circled the lights below, as he had over a half-dozen other towns this long day, waiting to find out if the van was going to make a stop or keep on moving. I suspected the former, since I’d all but convinced myself that this entire part of the trip—straight from St. Albans and with no stops in between—had been to reach a particular goal.

  “This is Tango One. He’s pulled into a side street and parked next to a jewelry store.”

  “Can you bracket both ends of the street without showing yourselves?”

  “Workin’ on it now.”

  “Is there an airport nearby?” I asked Al.

  “Three miles south of here.”

  We circled a couple of more times. “Zulu from Tango One. He’s gone inside. We’re in pretty good position here—got all visible exits covered, and a view through the front window. Want us to get closer?”

  “Not yet. You have a car available to pick me up at the airport?”

  “That’s affirmative.”

  “Okay. That’s where I’m headed. Let’s just babysit this for a while. See what happens.”

  Hammond straightened us out toward the south and in a matter of minutes was making his approach to land.

  “You want me to stick around?” he asked as we taxied toward the parking area.

  “Actually, I’d like to ask an even bigger favor. We’ve been watching this guy play courier all day long, so we know he’s carrying something. If he plans to spend the night here, he’s going to want to stash the stuff somewhere safe. If that happens, I’d like a warrant so we can take a look.”

  “Want me to fly someone back to Burlington to meet the U.S. Attorney?”

  “If it comes to that, yeah.”

  Hammond shrugged. “No problem.”

  One of Spinney’s team, detailed from the state police’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations, showed up about ten minutes later and drove me back to town. Spinney was in his car, parked inconspicuously at a meter across the street from the Far East Jewelry Store. My driver dropped me off down the block, and I walked the rest of the way, ducking into Spinney’s passenger seat as unobtrusively as possible. I noticed as I did so that the dome light had been disconnected.