The Verdict on Each Man Dead

by David Whellams

  Rogers interrupted, “And we will continue to do so.”

  González hadn’t looked at Henry again. Addressing Rogers, he became formal, his tone stiff, perhaps dangerously so. “I certainly hope not.”

  “Then tell us what you know about the murders of Gabriella Watson and Tom Watson.”

  “E bien, I can only tell you what I don’t know.”

  “You mean you have no information.”

  “In this case, nothing can mean something.”

  Rogers sneered. “You’re a philosopher, González?”

  Sometimes the precise truth can be the worst kind of affront, Henry judged. The Mexican raised his eyebrows. If he likes to play philosopher, Rogers, you son of a bitch, let him. We’ve both seen his sheet. González had been a killer for four decades, a devious drug pusher ready to use violence to keep his empire together. He wouldn’t be confessing today.

  “Okay, tell me about the murders, and I will tell you what I think,” said González.

  Henry thought it politic to take over, and he presented the important details of the events on Hollis Street and the discovery of Tom Watson hung up in the floating tree in the Provo River. He followed with an account of the frustrating investigation over the last three weeks, and was relieved that Rogers didn’t interrupt.

  A couple of times, González posed quirky questions: “Detective, did you see the severed head of Mrs. Watson?” “Did Tom Watson die slowly?” At first Henry supposed the Mexican was wallowing in morbid detail, but then he sensed that he, like Henry himself, was struggling to climb into the killer’s mind.

  “The blood in both houses was … excessive,” Henry said.

  “I understand,” González said solemnly. “Why would a rival operator, simply trying to take out a competitor, bother with all this formality? This …”

  “Ritual?” Henry said.

  “Yes!”

  Rogers’s gaze had stayed belligerent the whole time. He squirmed in his chair, hating to cede control of the interplay. “You tell us, González. You are the drug dealer. What do you know about Watson’s dealing?”

  “Small-time, sold only in Salt Lake and Provo. Rumoured good-quality weed, I dunno, I never tasted it. Watson didn’t know what to do with it even then. He used unreliable street hustlers,” González growled.

  “Come on, señor,” Rogers interjected. “You don’t want even mom-and-pop sellers in business against you. Maybe you took him out. On principle.”

  Henry watched the Mexican fight for control. He had an elegance to him, but the hearts of elegant men can turn particularly cold. “Officer, I am telling you that this massacre isn’t the style of the hombres fuertes in this area.”

  “Not your style?”

  “Not our way, no.”

  “That’s rich, sir, coming from you.”

  González took a deep breath. He wasn’t about to offer a wiring diagram of the cocaine and heroin trade simply to make the point that the marijuana business in Utah was small-time and always would be. But the question hung in the air for all three men: What bothered González about Hollis Street?

  He continued. “There’s business, then there’s individuals. You have to ask, why would we drive Watson up into the mountains, all that comedy with throwing an already dead man into a fly-fishing river?”

  Rogers tilted back in his chair, his look contemptuous. More, he seemed to feel that he had the upper hand. How wrong can you be? thought Henry. He wondered again if Rogers and the state police had a contingency plan — helicopters, for example. If so, there would be three dead cops out there on the parking pad, and Henry one of them. The bodyguard in the sunglasses wouldn’t bother with beheadings.

  González leaned forward. “We were not involved. We don’t need the aggravation from you cops. And I repeat, it is not my way.”

  “And I repeat, that’s rich coming from you,” said Rogers.

  “Did you ever read Dante’s Inferno, officer? Dante condemns hypocrites to the eighth circle of Hell. Ruby Ridge. Waco.”

  For the first time, Henry heard real anger from the Mexican, but the weighted references to the botched government ops were red flags on both sides of the table. The DEA, FBI, and especially the ATF, which screwed up mightily at Waco, recoiled any time Randy Weaver and David Koresh were thrown in their faces.

  Rogers’s retort was blatant, and cheap. “We have reports of your people cutting off the heads of your competitors by a roadside in Xuahaca two years ago.”

  González’s voice turned hard. “Señor, I want to talk to this man alone.”

  “What the hell?”

  “He is the officer with — what do you say — carriage of the case? You are DEA. I said no feds.”

  Henry felt panic and elation, and it seemed wise to suppress both. Is it possible he expects something special from me? González had revealed almost nothing of his motives.

  Rogers persisted. “This situation is a lot simpler than you think. We can trade …”

  González tossed a baleful look at Rogers, a final dismissal. The agent stood, unbelieving; he shot a warning look at Henry and strode to the other end of the steel building. González waited until the Alice-in-the-rabbit-hole door closed, and turned his chair.

  “Sit down. You understood Puerto Rico, señor. How is that?”

  Henry’s voice cracked unimpressively. “Research?” He recovered, took a breath, and tried frankness. “While researching you, I noticed that Avelino González, a figure in the drug business, was just released after serving seven years for robbing an armoured truck with $7 million in it. I went back and looked at the case. He called himself an activist in the Puerto Rican independence movement.”

  González smiled; his posture was benign, and he had all the time in the world.

  “I have had many names over the years. It is my nature to change shape, starting with my name. But my birth name is Juan Chico González. A dull name, right? I heard about Avelino González and found him inspiring. That was the inspiration to change my name.”

  “You’ve got my colleague confused.”

  “I don’t like your colleague from the drug police. He thinks of Mexicans only as illegals, aliens, and outsiders. If anyone has got a claim to the old Wyoming Territory, it is Spanish-speaking people. Coronado rode up the Camino five hundred years ago, when everything was called Old Mexico. You know, Boog DeKlerk is the only one I can talk to in your shop.”

  “Meaning?”

  “No, Detective, DeKlerk is not in my pocket. I mean, I can talk to him because he admits he is an outsider, a South African. Utah is a place for outsiders.”

  He fell silent to let Henry work it out. The Mexican, Henry understood, was saying that he did not defer to the DEA or any gringos.

  “Take your people.”

  “You think I’m Mormon?” Henry replied.

  “That clip-on tie you’re wearing isn’t fresh out of the box. We are all immigrants, all outsiders to this land. Who should say who should make the rules?”

  “Let us be clear, Señor González, you deny any connection to the deaths of the Watsons?”

  “I never heard of them before. I had no reason to care about their marijuana business.”

  “Do you care at all about the marijuana business in Utah?”

  González treated this frontal assault with proper contempt. “I will not be confessing all my sins today.”

  González was entirely composed, yet Henry perceived that he wanted something from this confab. The FBI file recorded that he regularly smoked twenty cheroots a day, though he had yet to light up. He seemed to have abandoned other features of his profile: no sidearm, no hovering bodyguard. Is he toying with us?

  González broke into Henry’s reverie. “Besides, few love to hear the sins they love to act.”

  “Shakespeare?”

  The drug boss nod
ded. Henry was flattered that the man wanted to impress him with erudition; then it occurred to Henry that González might have done some background research on him. He idly wondered about gaps in the police bio. Did González have children? Were there four brothers or five? Was he sixty or sixty-eight, or in between? Had he become bored with the drug business and that, somehow, was why they were meeting?

  Henry knew that Rogers would re-enter the hut soon. González’s sentinel might try to waylay him; a tussle in the blazing sun could easily cause a shootout. Time to press the case.

  “Señor González, who do you believe killed the Watsons?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “But there’s something you came to tell us? That’s why you’re here?”

  The Mexican tilted back in his chair. “I can tell you this about the executions: the violence was not suitable to the problem.”

  “What was the problem?”

  “Someone didn’t like a grow house on their street.”

  The circular responses were getting to Henry. González wasn’t used to revealing himself when every disclosure was potentially probative against him, yet he wanted Henry to know certain facts about the Watsons. This wasn’t helpful. Henry recalled one fact that the Mexican hadn’t acknowledged: the Puerto Rican Avelino González had been the self-appointed leader of a gang called the macheteros, men who used machetes.

  “You have to give me more, Señor González.”

  “If you show me your work files on the murder, your study of where they lived, the situation, I can tell you who killed Tom Watson.”

  “You said you didn’t know the killer or the victims.”

  González clearly didn’t want to answer and only said, “It’s a puzzle.”

  Yes, it is a puzzle.

  “Give me a takeaway, señor.”

  González stood and paced, came back to the table. Is it still a negotiating table, or are we done? His voice was flat, declamatory. “I know the killer. He has killed before. Show me the blueprints of his bomb.”

  “I can’t release the whole file. The forensic reports, maybe …”

  “No.”

  “The whole file?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  They paused. The room reverberated with the Mexican’s power and all the possibilities of violence.

  Henry heard Rogers open the door behind him. Before the agent gained earshot, Henry rushed to say, “I’ll do my best. I’ll be in contact.”

  González stood behind the desk and leaned on his fists. “Young man, we are in the presence of evil here. Be careful.”

  Peter was mildly surprised that Henry called so soon after the Wendover meeting, but he was also very pleased. Henry had been on his mind much more than he had conceded.

  “What was your impression of González?” he quickly asked.

  “He was self-controlled … confident,” Henry said carefully. “A bit …”

  “A bit old, like me?”

  “Not that. But he reminded me of you in other ways.”

  Peter understood what his friend was getting at. Old men tote irreversible burdens, and the drug dealer could no more dismiss the ghosts of the men he had executed on Mexican roadsides than Peter could easily forget the men he had killed in the line of duty. Peter wanted to help Henry. He found González’s approach to the police an extraordinary gesture — there was no precedent, and there had to be something personal behind it. Peter had the young detective run through every detail of the conversation.

  “Then he quoted Pericles. He had courtly manners. And he wore beautiful shoes.”

  “Don’t sentimentalize him,” Peter countered. “Let me think about this.”

  Peter tried to visualize the Mexican. What did González need from Henry Pastern? Peter felt his old detective instincts welling up. The man had tentacles into six states and much of northern Mexico. He always thought big, yet Hollis Street was small beer. Peter thought it unlikely that the dead Watsons, whom González professed not to know, held the key to the fate of González’s drug empire.

  “Peter, are you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you make of him?”

  Peter worked it out as he talked. “There is only one explanation for it. I don’t want to prick your balloon, but he doesn’t plan to reveal his operations to you. González’s angle on Hollis is personal.”

  “A trade for our files, maybe? He indicated …”

  “Think it through, Henry. He was jerking your chain on that, wasn’t really offering anything in return for your file.”

  Henry sighed. “I can’t give him any details anyway.”

  “Don’t be tempted. It would end your career.”

  Peter realized that his advice thus far had been discouraging, and he moved to a more upbeat subject. “You know, Henry, that you’ve just earned yourself a reputation …”

  “The cop who went up against the drug czar?” Henry sounded skeptical.

  “More or less. You can use it to your advantage. You say that DeKlerk is trying to poach on Homicide’s territory. Use this with your superiors to keep him back.”

  “But meanwhile, stay away from González.”

  “Yes … unless he calls with some real information.”

  Peter sounded firm, but he was equivocal. The Mexican’s final statement had conjured up an image of “evil” that still lurked on Hollis Street, and that piqued his interest for unknown reasons. They were all trying to enter the butcher’s mind. Perhaps González, even if he could not yet name this evil, knew the killer best. If the Mexican’s motive was personal, it could only mean one thing: he was seeking vengeance.

  They chatted for a few more minutes. “Call me anytime, Henry, but especially if González reaches out to you,” he said. Peter thought that this final gesture would be enough.

  It wasn’t.

  CHAPTER 15

  Odd things happen to cops who obsess on a case. They shed weight, or perhaps they put on weight. They turn edgy and stop worrying about offending others, especially “civilians” — that is, anyone with nothing to contribute, which is pretty much everyone. In this, they become as insular and defensive as the fugitives they are hotly pursuing.

  Over the next two weeks, Phil Mohlman and Henry Pastern forged a solid team as they got back to the hard slogging on Hollis Street. Initially, the González meeting was judged by everyone in the policing fraternity as a washout, but the Mexican’s adamant denial that the gangs had taken out the Watsons impelled the detectives back to Forest Vale with renewed resolve. And so, as Henry was to recollect many times, perhaps González had achieved what he set out to do.

  Chief Grady kept up the pressure with talk of “quantum leaps” and “clearing the ledger.” But Phil and Henry preferred to think of their case as a jigsaw puzzle. The pair arranged and rearranged constellations of forensic details, time sequences, and witness statements on the wall of Interrogation Room Number 5. They expressed confidence that Grady would have his killer soon.

  “A Rubik’s cube with a magic solution just around the corner,” Phil promised, punchily churning up the metaphors.

  Grady remained supportive of Homicide but demanded an update every third day. Henry and Phil bonded over their conviction that the key to the Watson killings lay inside the Hollis Street cordon, and they strove to complete a detailed dossier on every one of the residents. They became dreaded figures on the cul-de-sac as they forced the pace of their visits.

  They worked to fashion a truce with their law enforcement critics, except Agent Rogers, who reported to Grady that Henry’s tête-à-tête with González was a screw-up, that Pastern had been gulled by the Mexican. But he wasn’t party to the conversation, was he? The chief, who was cautious by nature, kept the bigger picture in view and remained hopeful that González would funn
el leads to Pastern or DeKlerk. He was inclined to believe Henry’s assessment that González was being honest when he professed no involvement in the local murders.

  If the other federal agencies had ever sought control over the Watson case, they now abandoned their claims. The Wendover meeting was hardly a success, but no federal agent had ever managed to face the notorious drug dealer one-on-one, so there wasn’t much they could denounce. An outlandish episode turned into a nascent legend, and Henry gained considerable street cred. The glances he received when he visited the federal and state offices on Amelia Earhart Drive were now semi-respectful. Rogers rationalized the DEA’s pullback from the Hollis murders by dismissing the bloodbath as a localized incident.

  As for DeKlerk, Henry and Phil dug a moat around Hollis and warned him not to cross it without permission. Staties and feds should not bother trying to enter the stone gates, either.

  But the drug angle remained a raw issue. Rogers continued to assail DeKlerk for what he regarded as a humiliating fiasco in Wendover, and he persuaded his colleagues at the DEA in Salt Lake to minimize their collaboration with West Valley Police. Conduits dried up. Henry tried to compensate by spending long hours on various crime databases looking for parallel incidents. He was soon convinced that Boog DeKlerk’s re-involvement was essential.

  “I trust him as far as I could throw a hogshead of Guinness,” Phil said.

  “Sure,” Henry said, “but it will be faster to track down reports on drug incidents through Boog than on our own. I also need his advice on contacting González.”

  “Stay away from González, I told you. Besides, I don’t know that he has Boog in his pocket, but you don’t want your voice appearing on a tap related to some Internal Affairs operation.”

  “Do you believe Boog is regularly contacting González anyway?”

  “I doubt Boog will risk dancing with the devil anymore. Grady and Rogers are suspicious.”

  Henry still hoped to consult DeKlerk about the use of pipe bombs in the drug wars, but it was DeKlerk who ended up making the overture with a phone call one afternoon.

  “Pastern, I called to confirm the tests on the two bags found at Number 5. High potency, if not highest quality, all of it. Superbud-standard. White widow, northern lights strains.”