Chapter 25… The Thirty-First Reunion
Monica leaned over and said quietly, “Ducky?”
“Yes dear.”
“Al is staring at me again.”
“He can’t help it, dear. He thinks you’re gorgeous, and sexy, and brilliant, and frankly so do I.” Being obvious about it, he kissed her just to let Al know who she was with. “You can make him stop, you know.”
“How?” Monica asked. Ducky whispered something in her ear and she smiled wickedly. “Good idea,” she said as she took a healthy gulp of her gin and tonic. “Watch this.”
Sitting next to her, Sally said, “Where is she going?”
“Just watch,” Ducky replied. “This oughta be good.”
The table of revelers watched as Monica marched bravely across the floor to where Al was leaning up against the bar. Chest out, she said something to him and pointed at it with both index fingers. Even from across the room it was easy to detect Al’s face turning eight shades of red as he put his hands up in denial and attempted to back away, knocking his drink over in the process. Mission accomplished, Monica came back and bowed to the applause.
“What did you say to him?” Sally asked as she snickered into her beer.
“I said, ‘I notice you’ve been checking them out, Al, so what d’ya think? Real or fake?’”
“You guys are bad,” said Fish. “Very bad. Where did Harry and Denise go?”
The drinks were flowing and the fun was echoing as the brothers gathered once again inside Slick’s, but it was a different sort of reunion this time, bittersweet, with the possibility that there was more bitter than sweet in the situation. The summer had passed in fits and starts since that awful Memorial Day, mostly due to the ongoing investigation into what had happened at 91 Clifton Street that caused five people to die that day.
Yes, there were five, the fifth person being the man no one could identify, the man who was found a few yards away from a black BMW sedan parked in a wooded thicket near Jerry’s Pond, which was adjacent to Russell Field. There was no wallet or ID on the body, and the car was parked so that whoever had been driving it had a direct view of the Hutchinson house. Some binoculars were found inside the car, but nothing else except the dead guy’s fingerprints. That was three months ago and now it was Labor Day weekend, and neither Fish nor Harry volunteered the fact that the deceased was the same man that had been introduced to them as Brendan Phillips at Hutch’s wake. Harry was also quite sure it was the same man who had forced him off the road back in Point Pleasant, as well as being the same man who had tracked him to this very same spot on the night of May 20th when he, Ducky, Fish, and Fighting Al had gathered in this same room to discuss their plan for tracking down Hutch’s killer. Harry had almost put a bullet in him from Indigo’s .45 that night, and clearly someone had done the job a week later, but no one knew who that someone was, supposedly.
“What makes you think I was there?” Fighting Al had said when he was questioned by Detective Lopez of the Cambridge police two days after what had been labeled in the media as the Memorial Day Massacre. “I have no idea how the scumbag died. Maybe it was an accident or something.”
“Yeah, or something,” Lopez said sarcastically. “Richard Swan is your friend, right? I think you guys call him Ducky.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So he says you were at the scene that day. He says further that two other guys were with you who weren’t fraternity brothers. Maybe one of them knows something about how the guy in the car died.”
“I think Ducky must be mistaken,” Al maintained. “Did he actually see me that morning? I think I was at the beach that day, as I recall.”
“The beach,” said Lopez. “And I’m sure you’re going to tell me that you were all alone—at the beach.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I was alone, doing some surf casting at the Cape.”
“You weren’t on Clifton Street with these two so-called friends?”
“What friends? Did anyone see these friends you keep talking about?”
Lopez knew when he was being stonewalled. “It’s a known fact that you’ve represented some members of the Mazzone syndicate in Springfield, Mister Fiorello. Could these friends of yours perhaps be associated with your clients’ business?”
“Everyone has a right to counsel, Detective, and my clients run a legitimate meat packing business. Now, unless you can produce an eye witness that puts me at the scene of this horrible event, I need to get back to Springfield. I’m afraid Ducky’s memory is playing tricks on him. He’s not as young as he used to be, you know. By the way, about the dead guy, was he one of the scumbag terrorists they wrote about in the paper?” No one was able to put Fighting Al or his friends at the scene, and half the bullets that were recovered from the gun battle were never matched up to weapons found there, including the two bullets that killed the driver of the BMW.
Once the laughter stopped after Monica had turned Fighting Al into a tower of Jello, Fish got up and called for quiet. “I’ve got something to announce,” he said shyly, “but before I do has anyone seen Harry and Denise? I’d like them to hear this.” No one responded, so Fish shrugged and said, “Sally and I have decided to get married.”
Zen Master said, “Like no one saw that coming.”
“Hey Fish, can you say yes dear!” Spike called out, and Sally greeted him with a one-finger salute.
There were congratulations all around and good times were being had by all, including Senator Wilcox who had made it up from D.C. for the event. The information that ADA Brimton had supplied him was tied up in a neat little bow and passed on to the FinCEN people at the Treasury Department, revealing the complex money laundering scheme being perpetrated inside First International Bank. It also revealed a sophisticated cyberterrorist cell that was operating above a halal butcher shop in northeast D.C. which had hacked into FIB’s system to manipulate tens of millions of black market dollars coming through the bank as payment for oil shipments from terrorist-controlled oil fields in Syria. In addition, the cell had set up an internet-based market for sophisticated weapons coming from underground factories in India and Mexico. Tushy said it was basically a Paypal setup for everything from guns, to missiles, and even planes and tanks, all tied to bank accounts all over the world. Evidently the weapon that killed Hutch wasn’t that hard to get.
The Gang of Six, as they’d come to be called—Zen Master, Doc, Bapple, Spike, Stokes, and Bones—were never even questioned by Detective Lopez basically because no one, including Detective Pruitt, had ever told him about their presence in North Cambridge that Memorial Day morning. She knew the brothers were communicating via an online conference call service, but given the fact that it was that conference call that saved her life that day, and given that they weren’t directly involved in any of the shooting, she didn’t see the need to say anything about them. It wasn’t that Lopez didn’t try to press her about who else might have been involved, but when he found out who the dead perps were and what they represented, he simply said to Pruitt, “Uh-huh... and that’s the story you’re going with?”
Pruitt responded by boring a hole into Lopez with her eyes and saying, “You asked me who else I saw that morning before the shooting started, and I’m telling you I didn’t see anyone besides the Curlanders when I entered the house—got it?”
Knowing that he’d possibly spotted some of the other brothers when Zen Master was picked up by Doc and Stokes at the top of Clifton Street, Lopez looked at her sideways and closed his notebook with the flip of the wrist. “I’m not real sure what you’re doing, Detective, but you’re part of my investigation now and my bullshit detector is ringing like a fire alarm.” Pruitt didn’t even blink. “Okay then,” said Lopez. “We’ll see what the others on the scene have to say.”
Harry, Denise, and Ducky didn’t fare as easily. To begin with, Lopez checked their cell phones as a matter of routine and discovered that on the morning of the incide
nt two of the phones, Mister Curlander’s and Mister Swan’s, showed that they were on a call at the exact same time with another number, which turned out to be the number for an online conference call service. Although Lopez thought about trying to get a search warrant to find out from the service what other phone numbers might have been part of that call, Curlander, his wife, and Swan were the only ones at the scene of the shooting. For anyone else, being on a conference call was not a crime and accessory charges were out of the question seeing as Pruitt and the Curlanders were the ones that were attacked. Lopez bagged the idea of trying to get the search warrant, and he never questioned Fish and Sally either.
However, unlawful possession of a firearm in Massachusetts was a crime, and a serious one, possibly requiring a mandatory minimum sentence of eighteen months in jail for anyone convicted of such. For Lopez, the key words here were mandatory and unlawful, and what constituted each. Both Curlander and his wife were licensed to carry in New Jersey, but that didn’t carry any weight in Massachusetts. As for Mister Swan, his wife was an ADA and she was licensed to carry, but that was probably not a good excuse for him being in possession of her weapon, even if she gave it to him for whatever reason. The fact that he’d emptied an entire magazine into something during the gun battle didn’t help his situation.
The big however for Lopez, however, was that if it wasn’t for these three otherwise mature, lawful, and competent individuals being in possession of those firearms, they and a Massachusetts State Police detective would be dead at the hands of a group of international terrorists who were being pursued by both the CIA and the Treasury Department. So far, his DA hadn’t pressed charges against anyone, but Lopez knew even the most sympathetic DA might not be able to look the other way when it involved mandatory gun charges, not it this state, and especially when dead people were involved. So far, no one was pushing him on the investigation and Lopez knew that for once everyone was hoping it would get bumped to the feds and the whole thing would be out of their hands. What the hell was taking them so long, he wondered.
Having had a little too much to drink and looking to bust chops, Spike called out, “Hey, where’s Harry?” Indeed, Harry seemed to be making himself scarce. For him, the celebration wasn’t much of one; Hutch would never be with them again and the revenge of having hunted down his killers didn’t turn out to be as satisfying as he had imagined. It was that, and the fact that ever since the incident he hadn’t been able to look Denise in the eye. She maintained that she was all right, that she did what she had to do, that he would have done the same thing—she’d used every cliché in the book and now she was trying to relieve him of his guilt, which only made it worse. He knew she wasn’t all right. He knew just by her breathing and her tossing and turning at night that she was haunted, and he cursed himself daily for having put her in that situation. Their love life had become nonexistent, and he’d found her sobbing more than once for no apparent reason. What had he done?
At the moment, he, Denise, and Suzanne were outside, a couple of blocks away from Slick’s up on Newberry Street adjacent to the very spot where Hutch’s Mercedes had been parked on the night he died. Suzanne shielded her eyes from the late afternoon sun that was blazing orange just above the rooftops of downtown Wallingham, looking from one direction to the other. Denise was holding her arm the way women do; Harry was looking into the sun, hoping the warm rays would dry the tears that had formed at the corners of his eyes. As if she knew, Suzanne stopped looking in different directions and said, “They were waiting for him over there. They knew he was going to the reunion and they closed in on him as he headed toward the bar.”
Harry looked at the layout of the street, how the buildings were aligned. Playing into Suzanne’s vision, he described a scene that was as real to both of them as if they’d actually been there with Hutch. “I think there had to be four of them,” he said, “possibly the same four we sent to hell on Memorial Day.” He visualized how it must have gone down. “I’ll bet they used the same van. Two of them were inside, waiting for him in case he got past the first two who went after him.”
“He saw them coming, didn’t he?” Suzanne asked. “He knew he was going to die, Harry. He knew it for several minutes before it actually happened. He knew he’d never see his family again. Can you imagine?” The tears that tracked down her face were like acid.
Organizing this second reunion as a tribute to Hutch had been a mistake, Harry thought to himself. Hutch wouldn’t have wanted it, and now he didn’t want it either. Taking Suzanne back inside Slick’s would only magnify the emptiness she felt, and it wouldn’t do much to help Denise either who would be pleased as punch, thank you, to never hear the words Zeta Chi again. As for himself, maybe he needed to get away from this particular scene for a while. On the one hand, he couldn’t help but feel that the bonds between the brothers were stronger than ever; on the other hand, he wondered if any of them would be upset if they never saw each other again. If it was the latter, that would be on him.
“Do you want to go back to the bar?” he asked neither woman in particular.
“I don’t feel much like celebrating,” Suzanne said. “Would you mind if I went back to my hotel room?”
“Of course not,” Harry replied. He gave Denise a look. “Honey, would you like to go with her?”
It didn’t take much convincing. “I would,” she said. “C’mon Suzanne, it’s a nice evening. We’ll walk.”
“I’d like that,” Suzanne said back to her. “I don’t think coming to Wallingham was a good thing for me to do.”
He should have known, thought Harry: too many bad memories they all could have done without. “I’ll be along soon,” he said to them. He kissed them both on the cheek and began making his way back to Slick’s. Moving stoically, his mind in a state of detachment, he shuffled down Newberry Street and shielded his eyes against the setting sun, focusing on the entrance to the bar as he crossed the street. There, he spotted someone looking at him, or maybe not, then yes, the guy was definitely watching him. Twenty paces later, Harry sees the guy step his way. Even with the sun stabbing his eyes, it only took a couple of seconds for the face to register as that of CIA Special Agent Breckenridge.
“What do you want?” Harry asked gruffly. He stopped walking when they got within a few feet of each other.
“Listen, I know you’re upset....” Breckenridge began.
“Upset? Is that what you call it?” Harry spat back. “Where the fuck were you that day?”
“By the time I got there it was all over. I couldn’t risk being at that scene and being questioned by anybody.”
“Right. So much for trying to protect me. I can’t believe I fell for that crap.”
Breckenridge just looked at his shoes. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m here, now?”
It was a good question but Harry said, “It doesn’t matter if I ask you or not. You’re going to try and manipulate me for your benefit just like you did last time, just like you did with Hutch.” He paused. “You got what you wanted.”
“That’s just it, Mister Curlander. We didn’t get what we wanted. You and your gang managed to kill off the only leads we had for tracking down those weapons and the stolen technology to make them. Those weapons are still out there, and if we don’t find them I’m afraid some very important people will die.”
Harry took a step forward and said, “The people inside this bar have already risked their lives for your benefit, Breckenridge. And they’re not gang members, they’re brothers.”
The Brothers Page 26
