by Archer Mayor
“How’s that going?” Kunkle asked lazily.
“Good. Haven’t found anything yet. He was obnoxious and ambitious—he didn’t hide the fact that he saw the sheriff’s job as a springboard, but so far—going over his past cases—he’s clean. Of course, that’s just gotten started, and the man was busy. Anyhow, we won’t have any problem finding you things to do.”
He rose and gestured toward the outer office. “All right. Then let me introduce you around and get you settled in. You’ll probably know half my crew anyhow, so I bet in a day or two, it’ll be like you were here from the start.”
Not that he actually believed a word of it. A small but potent headache was already telling him that much.
CHAPTER 12
Cathy Lawless added a stick of gum to the one in her mouth. Dave Beaubien glanced up from the radio receiver he was fine-tuning in his lap and took note. She was winding herself up, getting into role. Cathy was the most high-strung person he’d ever known—thin as a piano wire and just as tense—and one of the fastest nonstop talkers, too, which, given his own general stillness, made them quite the team.
But a good one. She’d made the comment that they were like Fred and Ginger—she could do everything he did, backward and in heels. Old joke, and he’d never seen her in anything but sneakers or boots, but there was truth to it, too. For all their contrasts—he was actually the one with the softer contours of a Ginger Rogers—they seemed to instinctively know what the other was thinking, or about to do.
And so he knew now that she was steeling herself for the encounter just ahead.
Of course, gum chewing wasn’t her only outlet. She was talking, as well, while staring out the passenger side window at the fishing boats at anchor, barely visible in the ambient light from the homes and businesses ringing the harbor. They were in a tiny port near Machias, some twenty-five miles shy of the Canadian border. She was preparing to meet one of her regular contacts, named Bob, who knew her only as Suzy, thought she was a doper transplant from Boston with lots of ready cash, and, least fortunately, also had a crush on her, despite her best efforts to redirect him.
“I mean, for Christ’s sake, what doesn’t he get? Not once have I led the son of a bitch on—no flirting, no boob-flashing, no batting my eyes. I make my buy, I get my intel, and I leave. It’s gonna blow him away when we finally decide he’s not worth the trouble and we shut him down. Can you imagine the look on his face? I half bet he’ll give me one of those ‘after all we meant to each other’ lines. You know what I mean?”
Dave knew better than to answer.
“The only saving grace is that he likes to meet outdoors, ’cause I tell you, if these things were held in some trailer in the woods, I wouldn’t do it, not even armed to the teeth and with ten of you as backup. Life’s too short to get what we get paid and be stared at by some creep who can barely keep his dick in his pants.”
She abruptly held up her hand, as if Dave had just given her grief. “I know, I know—totally against department policy. Don’t rub it in. I shouldn’t have opened that door. But what else was I gonna do? If I hadn’t let him search me that first time, he woulda made me as a cop. It was a rock and hard place kinda thing.”
She took her eyes off the scenery to look at him. “Jesus, Dave. You rebuilding that thing? It is gonna work, right?” She tapped the top of her head, where the tiny microphone was hidden in her hair.
Dave nodded, not looking up, and said, “Don’t.”
Cathy sighed and returned to her vigil. “I know this thing’s the cutting edge, but I miss the old-fashioned wires. This feels weird, like wearing nothing at all. Plus, I only have your word that it’ll work. How the hell do we know Bob won’t suddenly change the rules? He could take me into a basement and you’d be screwed, and I’d be up shit creek without a paddle.”
This time, Dave did react. “You wouldn’t go, and it’ll work.”
She turned on him and punched his shoulder. “I know that, Dave. It’s the principle of the thing. It just makes me feel naked.”
Dave flipped the device over in his hand, turned it on, ran a quick diagnostic, and nodded. “You aren’t. It’ll be fine—and we’ll all come running if something screws up,” he told her.
She frowned, the shoe suddenly on the other foot. “Hey, don’t go crazy, all right? Just listen to the conversation. If it sounds okay but then the sound drops off for some reason, don’t go ape on me. I can handle Bob, for God’s sake. He just wears me out, is all. It’s not like I couldn’t take him out with one kick in the balls. You all set?”
Dave opened his door. “Yup.” He quickly radioed the backup team parked a couple of blocks away, announced that he and Cathy were out of the vehicle and going active and that they should begin monitoring her mike.
Cathy stepped out of the van and breathed in the night air, cool and tinged with salt and oil and the faint smell of decay. She actually hailed from the Moosehead Lake region, far from the Maine coast, and hadn’t even seen salt water until she was in her teens. She’d never gotten used to the coast as a result, always feeling like a tourist. That was one of the reasons she told dealers that she was from Boston—to fill in the part of her that felt out of place.
She gave one last glance at her partner, who was patiently lingering by the rear of the van, waiting for her to move. They’d parked in the shadowy lot of the town church, with a narrow view of the harbor across the road. As she was meeting with Bob, Dave would stalk her from the darkness, listening in on her at all times, recording everything that was said.
“Good to go?” she reiterated.
He nodded.
She stepped free of the darkness and into the feeble glow of an overhead streetlight, and checked both ways before crossing the road. She needn’t have bothered. It was past midnight, and in a lobstering village whose business required people to get up at three A.M. to be on the water at dawn, there wasn’t much movement beyond the silent scurrying of a couple of cats.
The opposite side of the road bordered the water’s edge, with a broad, built-up swath of concrete and wooden wharves, docks, storage sheds, and equipment yards. All were cluttered with equipment arcane and familiar, prominent among them the ubiquitous stacks of lobster traps, lately made less photogenic through the widespread replacement of the wood-slatted traps of yore by the more practical, durable, but less appealing wire models.
Cathy walked with a haphazard, slovenly gait, contrary to her nature, in the hopes of presenting a vague, possibly strung-out demeanor. She and Bob had met initially through the conventions of the business—she the user, and he the slightly larger fish up the food chain, introduced by a dealer who could no longer supply her needs. The name of this game wasn’t busts so much as follow the prey upstream until a big enough specimen popped up.
Bob wasn’t that player. They’d now met three times, each time with Cathy increasing her demand; it was clear he was running shy of resources. He’d been hedging on the dates they could meet, and trying to get her to split her orders over time.
She also didn’t like him, which made his growing unimportance a relief. The first time they’d met—before she could stop him—he’d run his hands over her breasts, supposedly in search of a wire. She’d slapped his hands away and yelled at him—an inauspicious start she’d reluctantly worked to repair. As she’d said to Dave, she wasn’t paid enough to be felt up by losers like him.
She reached a dock stretching out from the end of a weather-beaten building the size of a large garage and swung out onto its time-darkened boards, her sneakers slapping against their surface. As she approached a small shed on the dock’s far end, the water’s black, slightly oily surface around her barely undulated in the lights from the retreating shore. Bob preferred this place for his meets because he said it made him feel safe—he could see in all directions.
She glanced around. In fact, you couldn’t see a goddamn thing, including the lurking Dave Beaubien. Walking out toward the middle of the blackened bay felt like
a one-way excursion down a gangplank.
“If you can hear me, Dave,” she said in a normal tone, still some distance from the shed, “make a noise.”
The single solid thump of a boot stomp sounded far behind her.
“Gotcha,” she answered. “Everything looks normal up ahead.”
The shed had no real function that she’d discerned from her two previous visits. It was big for its location, though, made of two rooms and an overhead loft. She’d only made it into the first room, however—what Bob had laughingly called his office—the first time.
As she drew nearer, she saw his shadow move across the tattered yellow cloth hanging before the one window she could see.
“Got movement inside,” she announced to Dave’s mike, having long overcome any awkwardness about feeling like she was talking to herself. Indeed, by now, she’d lost count of how many times she’d made similar drug buys, always invisibly escorted by her backup.
Crossing the last few yards warily, mentally switching over to her stage persona, she placed a hand on the battered brass doorknob only to have the door swing open before her.
“Whoa,” she said, startled, taking a step backward.
A man stood before her, bearded, heavy, and nervous. “’Bout time you got here.”
Cathy gave him a wilting look. “What? You got a dentist’s appointment? I said tonight. It’s tonight.”
Bob stepped out onto the dock and looked past her into the darkness. “You said midnight. You’re late.”
She touched his shoulder calmingly, maintaining a hint of scorn in her voice. “Fine. Relax, Bob. I didn’t know you cared.”
“I don’t,” he said shortly, but he, too, reached out, took her elbow, and drew her into the shed before closing the door again.
Cathy looked around at the wooden walls, covered with fishing gear and a few tattered pinups of naked women.
“You fixed the place up. You shouldn’t have.”
Bob stood in the middle of the room, looking uncomfortable. Cathy sensed that something was off kilter. She glanced at the door separating the two rooms and noticed it was slightly ajar. In the past, it had been wide open.
“You okay?” she asked him, as much for Dave’s sake as out of any real concern. “You look a little tense.”
He frowned. “You bring money?”
She decided to go along, for the moment. “Depends. What d’you got? If it’s like the last batch, we might have to haggle. You ought to consider switching suppliers.”
But he shook his head. “Uh-uh. First things first. Stick your arms out.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Oh, for crying out loud, Bob. We’re not doing this. You really want me to smack you again?”
He moved in, and for the first time in their few interactions, Cathy saw a dangerous look in his eyes.
“You do that,” he said, “and you won’t like what happens.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” she said wearily, but she held both arms out, as instructed, privately tensing against whatever might be coming.
She was surprised. Bob quickly and efficiently checked her over, without comment or lingering where he shouldn’t.
She smiled at him as he stepped back, risking opening the Pandora’s box she hated in order to keep in character. “You don’t like me anymore?” she asked.
He pressed his lips together in distaste. “You’re a crazy bitch.”
She laughed. “Maybe. That’s never been a problem before. You wanna do business?”
“Yeah. How much you want?”
“Two hundred,” she said.
That stopped him, as she’d hoped it would. “That’s a lot,” he said.
“You asked what I wanted.”
He chewed the inside of his mouth thoughtfully.
Cathy impatiently glanced at the cabin’s front door. “Fine. Bob, either bump me up the ladder or sell me the goods. You can do this or you can’t.” She paused and then added, “Who gives you your stuff? Maybe I should deal with him direct. I heard there’d been a shake-up anyhow. You drying up on me?”
Bob’s jaw muscles tightened under the abuse. “I’m not doing nothin’. I can get you the stuff. Just not right now.”
She looked down at the floor and shook her head. “Shit. That’s not how it works, Bob. Kmart doesn’t have it, Wal-Mart gets next shot—that’s the way it works. This is a capitalist country. Tell me who to go to, or take me to him now, or do something that’ll stop me from walking out that door.”
“How ’bout I sell you what I got, and we get together later?”
“Bullshit. I don’t like you that much. Figure it out. Pull a rabbit out of your hat.”
Her words worked like a stage direction in a play: The door between the two rooms swung open, causing Bob to stiffen and Cathy to recoil against the wall in alarm.
“What the fuck’s going on, Bob? Who you got in there?”
A man appeared in the opening—short, of trim but muscular build, with black hair, a goatee, dark features, and the tattoo of a snake peering over the top of his T-shirt.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m with him.” He pointed at Bob.
Bob plainly wished this wasn’t so. “Yeah,” he said without conviction. “It’s okay. This is Luis. He’s cool.”
“Luis who?” Cathy asked, her features set but her mind in a turmoil. She was sure she’d seen this face before, if only a printed version. “I like to know who I’m dealing with. This your supplier?”
The newcomer smiled slightly, his eyes very watchful. “I think you’re right,” he said suggestively. “You like to know a lot. That makes me suspicious.”
“What?” Cathy protested, still mentally racing through a catalog of mug shots and police bulletins, groping for an answer. “I just got here. You don’t know shit about me.” She narrowed her eyes, as if struck by a sudden thought. “Hold it. Are you a cop?” She shifted to Bob. “You son of a bitch. You set me up?”
Bob held up both his hands, but Luis cut him off before he could utter a word.
“I don’t think he’s the one setting people up,” Luis said. “He’s not that smart. You are, though.”
He took three steps toward her, so that they were now only inches apart. “Aren’t you?” he finished.
Cathy held her arms out to her sides again and smiled at him. “I get it. You want a feel, too. Fine. Knock your socks off.” She spoke to Bob over Luis’s shoulder. “Pretty lame, Bob—getting your faggy friends free feel-ups. I don’t think we’ll be doing business anymore.”
Now that Luis was standing virtually face-to-face with her, Cathy was all but certain that she knew who he was, finally prodded by his threatening demeanor. He’d surfaced recently in a Be-On-the-Lookout as the suspected shooter in a Vermont police killing.
“You’re sweating,” Luis Grega commented quietly, still not touching her.
“Wouldn’t you be?” she countered. “Slimy little guy pops out of nowhere. What the fuck do you want, anyhow?”
Grega’s right hand reached behind him and reappeared holding a small semiautomatic.
Cathy didn’t let him get any farther. Whatever he was planning, her chances of surviving it were about to vanish. As he began to speak, she struck upward with her fist, striking the gun and sending it, still in his hand, against his mouth. He shouted in pain as she then threw him off balance by shouldering him in the chest, before bolting for the exit, screaming, “Gun, Dave. Gun.”
Outside, Dave had already placed the receiver on top of a nearby lobster trap and was reaching for his own gun when he heard his partner’s shout.
Ripping his earpiece away and throwing it wide, Dave took a shooter’s stance in the middle of the dock and aimed at the small building’s door. Behind him, in the distance, he heard the backup’s van squealing to reach them quickly, along with several bursts from their siren.
Cathy was the first to appear, running fast and low, heading directly toward him with her eyes wide and her mouth open. Not moving a muscle,
Dave stayed as he was.
Behind Cathy, another shape appeared in the doorway, staggering slightly, lighted only from behind. He brought the gun in his hand to bear on Cathy’s retreating back.
Dave shot once, apparently missing.
The man’s shadow shifted. There was a flash from his gun, an explosion, and a piece of wood went flying from the crate to Dave’s left.
As Dave fired back, Cathy dove headlong into the water beside her, vanishing into the darkness.
With Cathy now out of the line of fire, Dave ducked behind the same crate for protection and tried to take better aim.
But the man by the shed merely stepped back inside.
“Dave—you okay?”
He quickly glanced down and to his side, into the black water. Cathy’s pale face floated there like an expressive lily.
“Yeah,” he answered. “You?”
“Fine. Where is he?”
“Back in the shed. Who was that?”
“The cop killer from Vermont.”
“Luis Grega?” Dave asked immediately.
She should have guessed he’d know that. “I’m freezing down here.”
Keeping his gun aimed at the shed, he reached down with his other hand and helped her up onto the dock behind the crate, just as the others came pounding up to join them. They all heard an outboard engine come alive in the distance.
“Damn,” Dave said.
It was eloquent enough. With two men known in the building, and possibly more, there was no way the cops could safely break cover, charge to the end of the dock, and hope to stop whoever it was from leaving.
“Hey,” Cathy said hopefully, her teeth already chattering. “Maybe he left Bob behind.”
“Right,” her terse partner said doubtfully, which, as usual, was all he really needed to say.
