Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 10/01/12

by Dell Magazines

  Max was off the radar. He'd surface or not. I couldn't force the issue. Which left me with Carmody. Why had he made the meet himself? It had been a trap. The next question wasn't any easier. What was he buying?

  "You think it's smart?" Kinsella asked her. "Thibault's a loose cannon."

  "Let's hope so," Jean said.

  "You figure he might draw Max Quinn out from cover?"

  "Depends how hungry Max is," she said. "You heard what Jack said, Max has a lot of anger bottled up inside. Angry guys get careless."

  "You can't take that to the bank," Kinsella said.

  "I want a full-court press on Max," Jean said. "Talk to the States, find the assistant AG who prosecuted the Disciples case, get on the horn with Frank Dugan. Were the Feds involved, interstate trafficking? DEA, ATF, whoever."

  "I thought you already talked to Dugan," he said.

  "I was blowing smoke up Jack's ass," she said. "Get him to go outside the loop. He's got other arrows in his quiver."

  "Carmody."

  "We're dead zero. This was a contract hit. The trigger is in St. Louis, by now, or Afghanistan."

  "Carmody is the primary. He was the target."

  Jean shook her head. "Carmody was collateral damage," she said. "We need to turn Max Quinn inside out. He set Jack up to take that meet."

  "I think you're going at this backwards," Kinsella said.

  "This whole thing is ass-backwards," Jean said. "We're not seeing the forest for the trees."

  Just because they'd put me in chancery with Dugan didn't mean I was deaf, dumb, and blind. Frank had a friend at Treasury named Dottie DiNapoli, and she owed me one. I phoned her office.

  "Jack," she said, when I got through to her. She sounded genuinely pleased to hear from me, but she knew enough to know I wanted something. "You calling in that marker?" she asked.

  "I need a line on a guy named Evans Carmody," I told her.

  "Spelled like it sounds?" She was taking notes.

  "He got shot down by Fenway the other night," I said. "The cops are turning over every rock."

  "And they found you under one of them?" she asked, but with a smile in her voice.

  I told her how I'd turned the job down when Max and Carmody had offered it to me.

  "And you're trying to learn, what, exactly?"

  "One of the detectives assigned to the case told me Carmody had serious gravitational pull. He was an inside guy."

  "You thinking he was mobbed up?"

  "One way or another," I said.

  "That covers a multitude of sins," Dottie said.

  "Can you run a trace for me?" I meant OCD, the Organized Crime Database. If the guy was dirty, they'd have a paper trail on him.

  "I find something, that doesn't mean I can give it to you," she said.

  "Understood, but right now I've got a handful of nothing."

  "You talk to Dugan?"

  "Frank's off-limits," I said.

  That got her interest, as I knew it would.

  "The way I figure it, Major Crimes wants me to do the heavy lifting," I said. "I'm their stalking horse."

  "And you want them off your back."

  "Honest truth? They'd better be watching my back."

  "Who's the lead investigator?"

  I gave her Jean Weinstock's name.

  "You want me to put my oar in the water?"

  "The waters are troubled enough," I said. "You'd be better off limiting your exposure."

  "Your lips to God's ears," Dottie said, and hung up.

  One down, I thought. Dottie would either do what she could for me, or she'd become suddenly unavailable.

  The next step was a little trickier.

  I couldn't use the phone. I could only put the word out on the street that I wanted a sit-down with Johnny Vig.

  Jean knew she wasn't pushing hard enough. There was too much urgency. She couldn't depend on Thibault. Jack was a slender reed. They had feelers out on Carmody, they had feelers out on Max Quinn, but so far the response had been boilerplate. Nobody was talking. Jean thought that was interesting, even if it was unproductive. It meant somebody had something to hide. Max and Carmody in bed together added up to a hot potato.

  Then she got the call from Frank Dugan.

  "What the Christ is going on?" he asked her.

  Not a lot of collegial chitchat, Jean noticed. "I have an active homicide, Lieutenant," she said.

  "I appreciate that," Dugan said. "Why am I taking incoming on this?"

  "I'm sorry?"

  Dugan cooled down. "Bring me up to speed," he said.

  She did.

  "Forensics?" he asked.

  She gave him what they had.

  "Why is Jack Thibault part of it?"

  She told him that too.

  "I apologize," Dugan said.

  Jean felt bold enough to ask him a question. "You figure I can trust Jack?"

  "He's never sold me short," Dugan said.

  "What do you know about his relationship with Max Quinn?"

  "More than you need to hear."

  "I've got time," Jean said.

  Johnny Vigorino. They called him Johnny Vig, the vig being shorthand for vigorish, interest on a short-term loan. Johnny was muscle for the Provenzano family, a capo. He was as cold as fish caught fresh off the boat.

  We met in the North End, on Hanover Street, what they'd once called Little Italy. It was still, but diluted, or translated. Yuppie money had turned it into a Potemkin Village.

  "You did me a service," Johnny said. "I admit that."

  "I don't want something you can't give me," I said.

  Johnny shrugged. "Ask," he said.

  "Guy got whacked in the Back Bay, night before last," I said to him. "Two center body, one in the head. Boston PD sees it as a professional shooter."

  Johnny said nothing.

  "Dead guy's name was Carmody."

  Johnny still said nothing.

  "If it was a mob hit, it would have to be sanctioned out of Providence," I said.

  He nodded. "Good calzones, in Providence. Up the hill, by the college there. I wouldn't know from a hit."

  I was still trying to come up with the right question.

  "No, is the answer," Johnny said.

  "You don't know a guy named Carmody?"

  "Didn't say that," Johnny told me. "I said, we didn't kill him."

  The high-tech corridor along Route 128 was known as the Silicon Valley of the East. Along with the big software engineering companies and the smaller start-ups, a whole subset of support activity trawled in their wake like pilot fish, translation agencies, courier services, private security operations. Max Quinn had been a contractor with an outfit calling itself Global Reach.

  It was a three-room suite of offices above a Pizza Hut, in a strip mall in North Reading. Its reach looked to extend to about next Wednesday afternoon, Jean thought. She went upstairs with Kinsella.

  "Hey, buddy," Teddy Benziger said to Kinsella, getting up from behind his desk. They shook hands, and Kinsella introduced him to Jean. Like a lot of guys in his line of work, Benziger was an ex-cop, after a career twenty with the States, and like a lot of other guys, he and Kinsella went back. Jean knew to let Kinsella take the lead. She was the senior, but Benziger was an old boy from the brown-shoe days.

  "Max Quinn," Kinsella said.

  Benziger nodded. "Good man," he said. He glanced at Jean. "Kind of guy you'd want covering you, you were in the heavy."

  She said nothing.

  "What was he working on, last you knew?" Kinsella asked.

  "Bunch called Control Dynamics. You know the folk wisdom. Couple of pencil-necks start out in their mom's garage, like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Come up with something original, sell the patent, go public. These days, they employ some three hundred people here in Massachusetts, couple of hundred in New Mexico, contracts with Sandia labs. The actual manufacturing is outsourced. Would have put us on the map, Max landed them."

  "What do they do?"

&n
bsp; "Who the hell knows, and who the hell cares? The economy's in the toilet, these guys are making money hand over fist."

  "I'm sorry," Jean said, "you don't know what their product actually is?"

  Benziger looked at her. "Computer modeling of complex polycarbonate structures," he said. "You take me for a complete moron, Detective?"

  Jean smiled. "I stand corrected," she said to him.

  "Max have a contact name?" Kinsella asked Benziger.

  Benziger looked uncomfortable.

  "What?" Kinsella asked.

  "I should have been more careful," Benziger admitted.

  "Is it possible we discern the lineaments of a story?" Jean asked Kinsella.

  "Max was my point man," Benziger said.

  "It was his commission, he closed the deal," Kinsella said.

  Benziger nodded. "I gave him enough rope," he agreed.

  "So, you never had a verified contact at Control Dynamics," Jean said. "You left it up to Max."

  "I knew he'd watch my back," Benziger said.

  "Documentation?"

  "I've got no paper trail, not even e-mails," Benziger said.

  "For a smart guy, you were pretty dumb," Jean said.

  "No," he said. "I believed in somebody who never played me false. You ever have a guy you believed in lie to you?"

  She had, but she didn't want to get into it with Benziger, or anybody else. "First question," she said to him. "What does Control Dynamics have that's worth selling?"

  "Proprietary information."

  Jean shrugged. "Obviously," she said. "But what is it?"

  "I don't know," Benziger said.

  "Second question," she said. "Where do we find Max Quinn?"

  "I don't know that either."

  "You'll call us if you learn anything."

  Benziger nodded.

  They left.

  "We've got more than we had before," Kinsella said, down in the parking lot.

  "Industrial espionage?" Jean asked.

  "Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck," Kinsella said.

  "Here's my question," she said. "Why is Max working for a low-rent unit like this? And why would a high-end corporation like Control Dynamics come to a guy who's working out of a pizza franchise?"

  "Maybe they didn't come to him."

  "Somebody who worked for them did," Jean said. The whole looked bigger than the sum of its parts.

  "Surprised to hear from me, Jack?"

  I knew his voice. At least he was alive. "After what happened to your client, I figured you might be at the bottom of Boston Harbor wearing cinder block shoes," I said.

  "Wishing won't make it so," Max said.

  "We need to talk. And you need to talk to the cops."

  "I talk to the cops, I'm dead meat. That's why I'm talking to you."

  "What's your offer?"

  "Same as the last time."

  "Last time didn't turn out so well."

  "This time you're not walking down a dark alley."

  "What was Carmody doing, if not walking down a dark alley?" I asked him.

  "Carmody was trying to broker a buy," he said.

  "Not a sale?"

  "Jack, shut up and listen," Max said. "There's a manila envelope under the front seat of your car. Carmody died for it. You need to get me off the dime."

  "Who do I take it to?"

  "You figure it out," Max said, and hung up.

  There was something Benjamin Franklin once said. Three men can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

  "Detective Weinstock? Frank Dugan."

  They shook hands. She introduced Kinsella.

  Dugan introduced the woman he'd brought with him. "Dottie DiNapoli, ATF," he said. Jean could tell the Treasury agent was already sizing her up. Maybe it was a girl thing.

  DiNapoli handed Jean a folder. "The file on Evans Carmody, your murder victim," she said. The folder was awfully thin.

  Jean laid it on her desk, unopened.

  DiNapoli smiled. "Redacted," she said.

  "You going to show us the dirty pictures?" Kinsella asked.

  "Carmody was a macher," DiNapoli said. "The kind of guy you go to, you want the wheels greased. Not a lobbyist, not a bagman, a negotiator. He knew who to talk to, he knew where the bodies were buried."

  "Who was he working for?" Jean asked.

  "He was a freelancer," Dottie said. "But."

  It sounded like an extremely large but was coming.

  "He had an undisclosed relationship with DARPA."

  "Which is what?" Jean asked.

  "Department of Defense," Kinsella said. "It's a black budget R and D outfit, works out of the basement of the Pentagon. Data mining, terrorist profiles, procurement of generally weird technologies." He looked at DiNapoli. "Correct me if I'm wrong about this," he said.

  "Some of them might have practical applications," she said.

  "Let's get to the bottom line," Jean said.

  "I don't have one."

  "Sure you do," Kinsella said. "You've been trying your best not to tell us Carmody was a spook. This has spy crap written all over it. So, where are FBI and CIA, you haven't put them in the loop?"

  "Nothing probative," DiNapoli said to him.

  Kinsella had a sharp answer ready, but Jean held up her hand. "Enough," she said to both of them. She looked at Dugan.

  "Anything to add, Lieutenant?" she asked him.

  Science was never my strong suit. Tony was the one who'd fooled around with a chemistry set when he was a kid, and almost blown up the kitchen drain. Our dad had given Tony a verbal hiding, but you could tell the old man could hardly keep a straight face doing it. He thought it was funny as hell.

  I went over to the rink in the afternoon. It was about time for practice. The kids were all suited up, ready for their time on the ice.

  I showed Tony the diagram Max Quinn had left for me. It was a pair of intersecting spirals, something like an hourglass, with a long equation of symbols and subscript underneath.

  Tony nodded. "Double helix," he said.

  "DNA?" I asked him.

  Tony shrugged. "Some kind of organic chemical compound, is my guess."

  The autistic kid, Adam, was standing at Tony's shoulder. Close, but not making actual contact, as if his skin were hot to the touch. He was obviously curious.

  Tony tipped the diagram so Adam could see it better.

  Adam leaned past Tony, awkwardly, and traced the pattern of the helix with his index finger. "Crazy eights," he said.

  I started to say something, but Tony caught my eye.

  Adam was giving the thing his full attention, as if he were memorizing it. His lips moved slightly, talking to himself.

  Tony and I waited, not wanting to break the spell.

  Adam straightened up, nodding in satisfaction. "It's a formula for polymer resin," he announced, very grave, measuring his words carefully, but I didn't hear any doubt in his voice.

  "Thermoplastic shape-memory." He gave me a wary look, knowing I probably didn't understand.

  "It's okay," Tony said to him. "Go ahead."

  "Like this, see?" Adam asked me. He picked up his goalie's mask and covered his face with it.

  "We're digging ourselves a hole," Jean's lieutenant told the other three people in his office. "All due respect, Ms. DiNapoli," he said to the ATF agent, "but you're hanging us all out to dry, you don't bring in the whole ragtag-and-bobtail, the FBI, for openers, or the Pacific Fleet, for all I care."

  "I don't have much to give the Bureau but speculation," she said.

  "What more do you need?"

  "Be nice to reel in Max Quinn," Dugan remarked.

  "It's an open homicide," Jean pointed out. "Which means it still belongs to MCD."

  "What do you say to that, Frank?" the lieutenant asked Dugan. "CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, they hold your feet to the fire, you want to tell them the series stays in the minors?"

  "Not if Treasury's got our back," Dugan said.

  "I can buy us twen
ty-four hours," Dottie told them.

  "Make or break?" Jean asked.

  "My career, not yours," Dottie said.

  "This case is forty-eight hours cold," the lieutenant said to her. "Another twenty-four, and nobody in this room will have a career worth saving."

  There was a knock on the door.

  "Come," the lieutenant called out.

  It was Kinsella, with Jack Thibault.

  The lieutenant waved them on in. "Well, at least we'll all hang together," he said.

  Jack glanced around. He nodded to Dottie and Dugan, and stepped over to Jean. "Heard from Max," he said, and handed her a manila envelope.

  Jean opened it, and slid something out. She put it down on the lieutenant's desk so everybody could have a look.

  Jack waited for them to study the schematic.

  "Okay," Jean said to him. "What is it?"

  Jack looked at Dottie. "Body armor," he said.

  "From the beginning, Jack," Dottie said.

  I told them about the near-genius kid Tony had playing on his hockey team, and how he was "gifted," but not handicapped by it.

  "A thirteen year old came up with this?" Dottie asked me.

  "I can read between the lines," I said.

  "He's got an active imagination," Jean Weinstock said.

  "He doesn't interact a lot," I explained. "He's solitary, he inhabits a world of his own. Hockey draws him out of his shell. But he's advanced placement, math and sciences, biology, chemistry, physics. He's taking calculus."

  "What the French call an idiot savant," Kinsella said.

  "He's not an idiot," I said.

  Kinsella held up a hand in apology. "It means a wise fool, an innocent."

  "Or a guy who can count cards in a casino," Dugan said.

  "He sees patterns," I said. "Mathematical, game theory, or physical games, like the way the puck moves on the ice."

  "I bet he's a bearcat at video games," the lieutenant said.

  "Non-linear," Dottie said.

  I thought of the way Adam had followed the helix with his finger, almost touching the page, as if absorbing it through his capillaries, or extrasensory perception.

  "Let's do linear," Jean Weinstock said to me. "How did you get this, Jack?"

  "Max left it under the seat of my car, then he called me on my cell."

  "No sit-down?"

  I shook my head. "He's scared to come out."