by Archer Mayor
“What is it?”
Grega laughed. “That’s the problem. I’m kinda embarrassed. If I tell you, you’ll think I’m nuts, but it’s still a great idea—a real money maker—and I’m betting you will, too, but only after you see it. It ties into your smuggling-by-sea idea, but with something extra.”
Budney seemed content with that. He settled in and looked out the window at the flat countryside outside as they reached the outskirts of town in under a minute.
Upon leaving the neck of the small peninsula Lubec called home, Grega picked up speed and headed west down Route 189, the van’s headlights the only signs of movement for as far as could be seen.
They chatted a little, but conversation was hard to maintain. They didn’t have the skills, didn’t share a background, and hadn’t yet become familiar with each other.
Four miles down the road, Grega slowed slightly before turning left onto Dixie Road.
“Back toward the water?” Alan asked.
“Yeah—like I told you. What I got is at Hamilton Cove. You know that?”
Alan nodded. “Sure. I passed by there just a few nights ago, doing a test run. You got something anchored there?”
Grega pretended to be embarrassed again and waved it away with his hand. “Yeah—well, you’re right. Still, I want it as a surprise. You really won’t believe this.”
Alan smiled and shook his head. “I didn’t know you were into surprises.”
“Oh,” Grega told him, “you know us. We’re a real sentimental bunch.”
Two and a half miles down Dixie, he turned left again and bumped along for the final two on Boot Cove Road.
“This is really cool,” he said, drawing near, hoping he wasn’t overplaying his hand. “I’ll be bummed if you don’t like this.”
Finally, he stopped the van and got out, letting his enthusiastic body language set the mood. He walked in front of the bumper and aimed toward the shore of the cove, a granite and evergreen-lined semicircle of water, barely visible in the gloom. He didn’t look back, encouraging Budney to follow suit by example. He heard the van door open behind him.
“Hey Luis, hang on,” Alan called out.
Grega didn’t give him the chance to see the small open boat with the chain and concrete weights ready and waiting. He knew what Alan had done to Roz and Harold, and knew also that it would be seconds before Alan realized how stupid he’d been to come this far. That’s where inexperience got you in trouble.
Grega shot him twice in the chest as he came into comfortable range. Alan went down without a sound.
Joe walked back and sat on the stern rail of the forty-foot Maine Marine Patrol boat that had been carrying him around for the past two hours. He was feeling a variety of emotions, most of them conflicting, and none of them matching the general mood of his companions.
He stared up past the wheelhouse roof and took in the huge, featureless void of the night sky. High, thick, invisible clouds utterly blocked its usual array of stars and made him feel as if he might suddenly be sucked up into some black hole. It was perfectly calm—not the hint of a breeze, with a mere swell under the hull. There were lights here and there, marking a thin line between the indistinguishable water and the absent sky—along with, of course, the eerie cluster of Navy radio towers, fifteen miles away. Some lights were clumped together as on the mainland, especially around now distant Jones-port, while others were isolated and forlorn, as on the island nearest to them, the current source of their interest.
There, they were close enough that he could make out several buildings—a home, a boathouse, a large dock with a cabin at its end. A substantial lobster boat was moored at the dock. It all belonged to Wellman Beale.
Joe didn’t need to be here. There was no known connection between Beale and Luis Grega, other than that they’d both worked for Matt Mroz at some point. Instead, Cathy Lawless’s enthusiasm the night they’d tailed Bernie to that meeting with Beale’s cousin had grown into a passion to give Beale a closer look—and resulted in both an ICE-sponsored warrant and a feeling inside Joe that he’d finally lost control of his case.
As he’d said to Sam on the phone, it was all good work against bad people. But how did it help solve Brian Sleuter’s murder? The emotional weight attached to a cop killing had struck them all at first and made of Joe and Lester favored guests. But the assumption from the start was that since they all knew who’d shot Sleuter, time and luck would probably play bigger roles in catching him than any huge outlay of effort. Matt Mroz’s enterprise coming under new management, on the other hand, was happening here and now, and begging for immediate action.
Joe could only hope that since Grega was apparently also involved, he might simply surface as a result of all the stirring. Also, given that Willy and Sam weren’t faring any better in Addison County, Joe hadn’t much to lose by sticking around Maine a little longer. For one thing, although ICE was still on board because of the continuing reference to transborder drug smuggling, it wasn’t going to be long before Lenny Chapman pulled up stakes and returned to Boston, ending the task force entirely.
A shadow separated itself from the huddle inside the wheelhouse, and a tall, lanky form made its way toward Joe’s perch.
“Taking in the night air?” Lester Spinney asked, sitting down beside him.
“More or less,” Joe answered, before admitting, “probably less. I’m starting to think we may have outlived our usefulness here.”
Lester laughed gently. “You could say that—I feel like I should be offering to hold people’s hats and coats. Still, tonight should be interesting.”
“The notorious Wellman Beale?” Joe asked.
“You don’t think so?”
Joe shrugged. “Oh, sure. He’s dirty as hell and has been for a long time. He hated Mroz, and now his fortunes have suddenly improved.”
“But?” Lester asked leadingly.
Joe shifted his position. “Oh, hell. I don’t know. I guess I just can’t get worked up about it. I want Grega. Cynical as it sounds, Beale is Maine’s problem.”
Lester nodded quietly, and Joe felt suddenly embarrassed.
“That came out wrong,” he said softly.
His companion patted his shoulder. “No. It actually came out okay. Gotta be realistic, Joe. None of us can do it all, and we all have our own fires to put out.”
The door of the wheelhouse opened and Kevin Delaney stuck his head out. “Guys? We’re about to rock and roll.”
Beale’s island was remote and far off the Maine coast, but it wasn’t very large. Their flotilla of four boats proved big enough to hit it pretty much at the same time and from the only four available approaches. Joe’s boat, carrying the brass, got to land at the dock.
It also tied off just a little after the others, since it also wasn’t carrying the entry team types, armed to the teeth and fully protected with Kevlar. Joe’s team, of course, landed with weapons drawn, but from the small amount of noise preceding their arrival, none of them expected any great violence.
In fact, once the entire island had been secured, their total human haul came to four: Wellman Beale, two women—one of whom was found sharing his bed—and an old man claiming to be the resident mechanic, and looking it.
Joe and Lester hung back for most of this, fulfilling their roles as guests, knowing how awkward out-of-towners could be during a coordinated action by people used to working together.
As a result, once the all-clear was given, but before they were invited into the main house, the two of them wandered around the complex for a while, admiring the self-sufficiency of Beale’s tiny empire.
This brought them to the boathouse, already posted with a guard who let them enter with a proprietary smile—the temporary invader enjoying the rule of the roost.
It was a modest building in itself—one-story with two slips—but stoutly built to resist what had to be some occasionally horrific weather. Joe hit the lights—powered by a generator heard chugging in the distance—and was surpr
ised to find that while one of the slips had an appropriately sized powerboat, the other berthed a full-fledged lobster boat, if smaller, older, and more battered than the fancy one docked outside.
“Jeez,” Lester commented. “He’s doing better than I thought.”
“No kidding,” Joe agreed distractedly, studying the contours of their discovery.
“What’s up?” Lester asked him, noticing what appeared to be a growing level of concern.
Joe approached the vessel slowly, picking his way among a scattering of ropes and tools. “I don’t know,” he said cautiously. “There’s something …”
Lester joined him. The lobster boat looked utterly mundane, indistinguishable to him from any of a hundred similar ones that he’d been seeing for days on end. The only two stand-out details were that its algae-green waterline showed it had been docked for a very long time, and that it had been heavily painted, if only in spots, making it look unattractively blotchy.
“It’s like something my kids would do,” Lester commented.
“Take a squint at this,” Joe said, pointing to a white lump mounted just under the outside of the wheelhouse roof. “What’s that look like to you?”
Both men left the berth and stepped into the boat so they could study the object just a foot above their heads.
“A rooster?” Lester suggested. “Looks weird, painted white.”
Joe pulled out a pocketknife, exposed one of its blades, and reached up to the extravagant comb arching over the bird’s head. He scratched away a small spot, revealing a patch of bright red.
“Jesus,” he murmured.
Lester stared at him, concerned by his sudden pallor. “What?”
Instead of answering, Joe entered the open-backed wheelhouse and walked to a much-abused wooden cabinet in the opposite corner from the wheel. Once there, he lifted its lid, revealing a scattering of maps and navigational books.
But he wasn’t interested in the contents. Lester saw him staring at the painted surface of the lid’s underside.
“Come here,” Joe requested and pointed across the cabin. “And bring that light.”
Lester stepped up next to him with the flashlight.
Joe tapped on the lid’s wooden surface. “Right here.”
Both men bent at the waist, putting their faces inches from the fresh paint job.
“What do you see?”
Lester saw two distinct sections of writing, only visible under the thick slather of white because they’d originally been put there with a ballpoint pen, which had left a faint furrow.
“I don’t understand the first line,” he said, reading it clumsily. “But it looks like, ‘Heróis do mar, nobre povo,’ whatever that means.”
“‘Heroes of the sea, noble people,’” Joe translated, his voice heavy with dread, explaining, “It’s the opening line of the Portuguese national anthem, just like that rooster is a symbol of Portugal—the so-called Galo de Barcelos.”
He then tapped his finger on the lower section.
Lester shifted his light to a sharper angle from the wooden surface and said, “Looks like names. I can figure out José, Evie or maybe Evelyn, Steve, something like Abe at the beginning, and a couple of others I can’t read.”
“Abílo,” Joe said.
“What?”
“It’s not Abe,” Joe said dully. “It’s Abílo. This boat belonged to Lyn’s father. I recognized it from the pictures in her apartment. She told me about the rooster, the anthem, and how they all signed this lid, including her daughter and husband—so her dad would always feel them nearby when he fished.”
Lester straightened and studied his boss’s haggard expression. “I’m not sure I get it,” he said carefully.
Joe explained: “Everyone thought this boat was lost at sea years ago, with both men on board.”
CHAPTER 26
Wellman Beale was a barrel-chested, red-faced, angry man of fifty, whose inclination to chat with the likes of Joe Gunther—if it had existed at all—had been atomized by several hours with Cathy Lawless and Lenny Chapman. He hadn’t asked for a lawyer yet, but—according to them—that was mostly because he hadn’t needed one. He knew how to handle cops just fine.
Originally, Joe hadn’t even been scheduled to meet the man. Jurisdictional considerations and the fact that Grega didn’t feature prominently in Beale’s arrest had both played a role in denying Joe a one-on-one. The discovery of Abílo Silva’s boat, however, had led to a fast gathering of minds, and Joe being given his chance.
They were still on the island, it was still night, although barely, and Joe was feeling the full weight of his dreary discovery.
He entered the small room they were using for Beale, rigged with recording equipment and bright lights, and sat at the table opposite him.
“Which one’re you?” he demanded.
“Joe Gunther, Vermont Bureau of Investigation, officially attached to this ICE task force.”
“Vermont? You guys don’t have enough shit on me right here? I never even been to fucking Vermont.”
“That’s okay. You probably wouldn’t like it. And I’m not here for anything you’ve been asked about.”
Beale raised his eyebrows in expectation. “No shit? You from EPA or the ASPCA?”
“Nope,” Joe answered him affably. “I already told you where I’m from. I want to talk to you about Abílo Silva.”
The split-second hesitation before Beale answered gave the man away. “Who?”
Joe smiled. “Nice try. You see, the funny thing is that while you may have never been to Vermont, and I’m a minor player here, I’m the one who can cause you the most pain.”
“Why’s that?” Beale was forced to ask after Joe left his last comment dangling.
“’Cause I’m the one pinning a murder rap on you.”
Beale’s eyes narrowed. “You’re full of crap.”
“The boat in your boathouse—where did you get that?”
“I found it.”
“Where?”
“At sea. I was out fishing and found it floating empty, abandoned.”
“So you stole it.”
“Salvage of the sea.”
“You have to be awarded salvage, Wellman,” Joe told him, “by a court or the owner of the vessel. You stole it.”
“I’ll let a court decide that, since I was about to bring it in anyhow. I just found it a few days ago. My sternman will testify to that.”
“Who painted over its name and identifying numbers?”
Beale smiled and shrugged. “Wish I could help you out, Mr. Vermont.”
Joe studied him, all smug and comfortable. There were other topics to pursue. The whole subject of Luis Grega had yet to be broached. But he’d looked at Beale’s criminal record earlier, and what he had facing him only confirmed his suspicions. Beale was a been-there-done-that kind of perpetrator—a hard case with a vested interest in staying just that way.
“You could help someone out here,” he suggested, instead of following his planned line of questioning.
Beale laughed at him. “Meaning me, right? By trading the whole truth for the love of the prosecutor and my own self-respect? I heard that one before.”
But Joe shook his head, yielding to a purely emotional impulse that he knew would be futile, but that he simply had to pursue. “Nobody’s here to help you,” he explained. “Least of all yourself. I was thinking of the family Abílo Silva left behind—a wife and two kids who have been twisting in the wind for years. They would love to know what really happened. Maybe you could give me that without screwing up either your legal case or your ego. You could tell me what a little bird told you, or that you found a letter floating on the water that later self-destructed. Anything so that they can know what to do with all that grief.”
Beale tilted his round head to one side and considered Joe pitiably. “See? There’s the catch,” he finally said. “I’ve had a few wives and kids, too. But I don’t give a fuck about any of them. Why should I care a
bout this guy’s? It’s a hard world. And hard people are the best at running it.”
Joe stood up, unsurprised but more depressed than ever, and frowned at the irony of what he’d just heard. “You better hope for your own sake you’re wrong,” he said.
Beale countered with a wide smile and offered Joe, in a sudden snapshot, what Steve Silva had witnessed all those years ago—a broad, welcoming, guileless friendliness, free of cant or subterfuge.
“Yeah. Well, the difference is,” he said as Joe reached the door, “I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
Joe didn’t doubt him for a second.
What they’d all set in motion didn’t end until midmorning the following day, after which, exhausted, they called it quits and retired to their various beds, in and around the Augusta MDEA headquarters, where Delaney had decided to process what they had.
They reassembled that evening, for only a couple of hours, mostly to make sure everything was where it needed to be, properly filed, logged, indexed, and accounted for.
And then, Lester and Joe found themselves back outside, in front of the huge office building on the outskirts of town.
“You want something to eat?” Lester asked.
“Not really,” Joe admitted. “I’m tempted to go back to the motel, grab a candy bar from the machine, and call Lyn.”
“You gonna tell her what we found?”
“Not on the phone. This is purely selfish. I just want to hear her voice. I’ll wait on the other stuff until we get together—God knows, there’s no rush and using a phone call is pretty harsh. How’s your daughter doing on that broken ankle?”
“Fine,” Lester said. “Says it itches. Won’t be much longer now till she gets a walking cast. How do you think Lyn’s gonna take it?”
“I really hate that I’m going to find out.”
They were standing side by side by the curb, facing a parking lot built to accommodate some fifteen hundred cars. It was dark, but not terribly late, so there were a fair number of vehicles still scattered about. While a nice and modern setting, and certainly impressive to the underfunded Vermonters, it was nevertheless a little alienating and added to the two men’s longing to return home.
