The Verdict on Each Man Dead

by David Whellams

  The jargon was intended to impress Henry, which it did, prompting him to ask his “bomb” question. “Should I give González the list of components from the pipe bomb? He was interested in that.”

  Henry paused while Boog assessed the dangers in dealing with González under the table. “I wouldn’t. The Mexican is no one’s ally in this case.”

  Considering this unusual expression of caution by the South African, Henry called his partner. “What’s with Boog’s almost-friendly tone?”

  “Yeah, Boog still hopes to rehabilitate his career, even though Grady has shifted him sideways from his job,” Phil stated. “Internal Affairs is starting an inquiry into Boog’s interactions with the Mexican. Boog needs friends.”

  The flow of tips from the public dried up. Nobody had seen anything. Nobody knew much more of anything.

  One afternoon as they climbed back into Phil’s sedan after another re-interview, Henry asked, “What now?” Phil drummed the dash with his hand and then shrugged.

  They couldn’t sustain this two-man charge without results, and Henry began to search for fresh perspectives. Every day, he was tempted to contact Avelino González, but he knew that the furor would be too great. He considered phoning Peter Cammon again, but he was pretty sure Peter would tell him to stay patient.

  He turned to Theresa. He let her read his final report to Chief Grady on the Wendover mano-a-mano. “I can’t figure out what González expected from me,” he said.

  “Just a guess here, Henry,” she said, “but I don’t imagine he was a foaming-at-the mouth drug user when you met him alone, right? He wasn’t needy in any way?”

  Henry, in part annoyed at himself for breaking all kinds of police rules by blithely handing her his report, as if demanding she edit the thing, transferred his pique onto her. “What’s your point?”

  “What are you consulting me about?”

  “You’re mad I didn’t show you the Wendover details before now.”

  “No. You’re being tight-assed on the biggest question of all. Why did he talk to you? I’m a tax accountant. You’re like a tax avoider who flunked his audit. Fine, this report is what it is, but where’s the personal detail?” She halted before a coughing fit hit her and sipped from her ever-present water bottle. “For example, how many brothers does he have? Are they all dead? Has the Watson thing some personal connection to his family? Where’s your bottom line on González?”

  “DeKlerk thinks his brothers, whether two or three, are in fact dead.”

  “Tell me all your own reactions, Henry.”

  Henry recounted every word of his conversation from the Quonset hut, trying to recall the quirky turns in his interchange with the Mexican. She unnerved him by jotting notes on a steno pad. After an hour, she got up and gave him a sloppy kiss and returned to her chair.

  “My brave husband,” she said, though the compliment was spoiled by a wracking coughing fit. Henry read her list:

  Severed head

  Name changes

  Sins

  Cigars

  Shakespeare

  Evil

  “What do these items have in common?” Theresa said.

  Henry floundered in policeman mode. “They don’t help us in finding the murderer?”

  “Think again. This criminal kingpin has shared his personal preoccupations with you. He reached out. Some indicate change in his life. Some focus on violence and evil. Others imply feelings of guilt. Personal change, confession, concern with violence. How about that?”

  “You’re not an accountant, you’re Mrs. Freud.”

  Theresa padded around the huge living room. “González is a man facing change, and he’s apprehensive. He vibrates with his own history, and, I believe, everywhere he goes he finds echoes of his own sins.”

  “Which he won’t confess.”

  “He’s not into confession but he finishes his conversation with you with talk of ‘evil.’ Mr. González wants to tell you something, but he doesn’t believe that his hypocrisy disbars him from passing judgement on the tragedy that unfolded on Hollis Street. Why this posture?”

  “I’ve thought of calling him up. He left the door open to me.”

  “Beware, husband.” Theresa had repositioned herself in her chair so as to take full breaths of the dry air on the patio. She disciplined her breathing, each inhalation measured, her movements slowed down. To Henry, she seemed more like the Delphic oracle than ever.

  “Here’s how I imagine him,” she continued. “González is like an old vaquero probing the canyons in Old Mexico. An imperialista, unafraid to invade white-bread Utah and wander where he pleases. A drug entrepreneur, lord of the frontier. A Mexican patriot but an enemy of the establishment. Rogers was right, he’s a philosopher, too. A fanatic for Diego Rivera, you mention here, and Shakespeare. But listen to me: I can romanticize him, but don’t you dare, Henry. Something more is going on with Señor González, and he wants you to know it.”

  Theresa sat back to regain her breath.

  CHAPTER 16

  Phil threw his pen down on the chipped table, which was bolted to the floor in Interrogation Room Number 5, and declared, “We’re driving the neighbours nuts.”

  They had shuffled the fourteen bulging folders, one per house, for the tenth time, and one of them, “Anderssen No. 12,” had slipped to the floor. “When the file gets dog-eared,” Phil said, “shoot the dog.”

  It was a bad joke, Henry thought, but the right one. Phil recognized that they were bouncing off walls. The street kid from Boston was ready to deal some rough treatment, and Henry fed in the straight line. “What do we do, then?”

  “We drive just one of them nuts. Proffet.”

  Henry was happy to be doing something. “Okay, let me clear out this stuff so we can bring him in.”

  Phil wasn’t through venting. “Jesus, Henry! They’ve closed ranks against us. The neighbours show more affection for Puffles the Dog than the Watsons. What if Theresa’s Orient Express theory is right and we’ve got a big, fat case of collusion here? They took collective action against what just happens to be the first house on the block. Nice.”

  “Phil, have you got your notes on the community association handy? Before we call in Proffet, let’s look at who served over the years.”

  They had a file on this, as they had on most facets of life on Hollis Street.

  “Okay, twelve years back. That’s when HASA was formed,” Henry said.

  Phil read. “First president was, no surprise, Jerry Proffet. Vice-president was Ronald Devereau, at Number 13. Term was one year, but renewed.”

  “So the president and vice-president lived next door to each other. Little power centre forming?”

  “That often happens in condo-type associations, doesn’t it?” Phil said.

  “I guess.” Henry checked the master list of presidents (which they weren’t sure was complete) against the individual evens, while Phil did the same for the odds. “Carleton Davis at Unit 10 was the prez … for a single term. I’m guessing he chose not to run again. If you’d sampled Davis’s personality, you’d see why.”

  “Didn’t like local politics?” Phil said.

  “Doesn’t like people, I’d say. Maybe I’ll interview him again.”

  Phil picked up on a theme. “You think maybe it was Jerry Proffet who turned him off?”

  “Could be. Proffet returned for another double term. The next president was Devereau for one, maybe two terms, then — guess who — Jerry Proffet again.”

  “The Grover Cleveland of Hollis Street.”

  Henry scanned the list:

  Jerry Proffet: 2 Terms

  Carleton Davis: 1

  Jerry Proffet: 2

  Ronald Devereau: 1? 2?

  Jerry Proffet: 2

  Stanley Chambers: 1

  Jerry Proffet: unofficial
>
  Henry pointed to the bottom. “The most recent official president was Stanley Chambers at Number 6, one of the now-vacant places. Served one term, then the community committee dissolved. That was eighteen months ago. Has Proffet really explained why?”

  “Said no one wanted to pay the annual levy any longer. They weren’t a condo community, and there was no legal requirement to pay into a contingency fund. Contingency fund for what? Why didn’t they levy a special fee to complete those stone gates?”

  Henry and Phil began flipping pages as if competing to find the key to the history of Hollis Street. Eventually Peter returned to Stanley Chambers. “Picture this: Chambers lived right across from the Watsons but claims no knowledge of the grow house. He saw nothing, smelled nothing. But HASA went defunct after his term as chairman, and he sold out a year and a half later. Close to the crime, linked to the executive. He might be the best witness we have.”

  “Even if he wasn’t living on the street that night.”

  Phil and Henry trundled their notes into the precinct boardroom and took over the whiteboard, as they had done many times since the González meeting. Phil scribbled out every resident’s service on the HASA executive — President and Vice-president, after which he began a new heading: Treasurer.

  Henry scanned the notes. “Interesting. Six different treasurers: Davis, Chambers, Bross, Anderssen, Devereau, Henneker — though Anderssen and Henneker now deny serving.”

  “Geez. Bureaucracies,” Phil said. “But just about every resident contributed to the running of the street at some point, even the Watsons. And nobody but nobody saw a thing. I come back to that Big Possibility, partner. What if everybody saw everything? Maude Hampson and Carleton Davis saw the activity across the street at all hours and ignored it. Stan Chambers tired of the smell of marijuana and put his house up for sale. Nurse Anderssen ignored the light leaking from the factory at the Second House every time she came off her shift. Maybe the executive knew all about it but tried to wish it away, until …”

  “And that begs another Big Question,” Henry said. “Did Tom Watson ignore an explicit warning from the street committee?”

  “Let’s call in Jerry Proffet.” Henry grunted assent. Phil added, “Coolest cucumber on the street, our boyo,” and left the interrogation room to make the call from his desk.

  The detectives skipped the hard-cop/soft-cop approach — every TV watcher knew that game — and launched straight into hard-cop/harder-cop. Beforehand, mulling over Proffet’s problem with his body thermostat, Phil queried, “Should we turn up the air conditioning?”

  “No fooling around, Phil. We simply push him hard to come clean,” Henry said.

  Phil summoned Proffet to the station and set the meeting for 11 a.m. Proffet arrived wearing a heavy argyle sweater, and they shook hands; Phil made sure his were cold.

  Phil raised the stakes almost at once. “Jerry, thanks for coming. We feel we’ve talked to the residents as much as we can, but tell us, why do you think Tom Watson thought he could get away with marketing marijuana in your quiet neighbourhood?”

  Proffet fell for the sucker wording built into Phil’s question. “He wasn’t marketing on the street. He slipped his bags of grass out at night …”

  “Not those last two bags of top-quality weed,” Henry chirped. “Premium Mary Jane.”

  That was a little fact Jerry, presumptive supervisor of Hollis Street, didn’t know. Phil leaned in. “He brought in the seeds, the paraphernalia, the grow lamps, the fertilizer. He must have spent hours unloading it all, hours more crossing back between houses. He loaded his truck with product every few days and came and went in the dark, but nobody saw a thing. Nobody smelled a thing.”

  “I understand that it was a small operation. A few bags at a time,” Jerry pleaded.

  “How would you know?” Phil fired back.

  “I never had an inkling of what he was doing.”

  “Did any of your neighbours ever buy from him?”

  “Nobody knew about him.”

  Henry took a shot. “You had four or five association presidents over twelve years, out of a pool of fourteen households. Why not more inclusive?”

  “We opened the election to all. Besides, the lesser executive posts were taken by others.”

  Lesser? Phil ignored the gaffe and played soft cop for a moment. “Jerry volunteered his services for six whole years as president, Henry. Cut him some slack.” Both detectives knew that Proffet’s tenure added up to more than seven years, if one counted his ad hoc service. He had always been the street czar.

  Proffet asserted, “We’ve given everyone a chance who wanted it.”

  Henry counterpunched. “Did Tom Watson ever run for president?”

  “He expressed interest a few years back, our third election, I recall, but I don’t believe he would have been elected.”

  Henry remembered, from his classes on interrogation at Quantico, a lecture called “pedalling backward.” The term lacked precision, but the idea was to disarm a witness by revisiting questions that had already been answered, thereby making him wonder if the interview would ever end, if the interviewer would ever be satisfied.

  “Why’d you call it HASA?” Henry said, setting up the next line of attack.

  “Why wouldn’t we?” Proffet threw back, mustering indignation.

  “It’s Hollis Street. But the Hollis Avenue Street Association? Confusing. Redundant?”

  “It sounds better,” Proffet countered lamely.

  Phil jumped in. “Why didn’t you run for office yourself in year eleven, extending your chairmanship?”

  Proffet arched his back, then adopted a stiff military posture in his chair. “Like I said, to give others a chance.”

  Phil’s anger was genuine. “Were you afraid Tom Watson would beat you in a knock-down contest?”

  “What? Knock-down?”

  Henry piled on. “You were having trouble getting participation, weren’t you? I think people were reluctant after a while to get active in street affairs when you and the clique refused to close down the marijuana operation.”

  “Clique?”

  The detectives’ grilling was intended to prompt Jerry’s memory about what he thought he didn’t know: who was capable of the killings. He couldn’t win: If he was the keeper of standards on Hollis, why didn’t he notice the grow op and take action? If street solidarity was firm, why not proceed to carry out the collective will?

  Henry shifted in his chair and looked at the clock. “Okay, Mr. Proffet, why are there no pictures of the annual barbecues?”

  Taken by surprise, Phil stared at Henry with admiration for this perverse little question.

  “There aren’t?”

  “I talked to Wooski. Says he never took any. Someone, he can’t remember who, didn’t want any group photos.”

  “Well, I’m sure Selma snapped a few. I’ll ask her when I get home.”

  Henry had hounded every resident on his side of the street and, even though the barbecues had stretched from the era of Instamatics to digitals to cell phones, all his interviewees were certain that they had left their cameras at home.

  “Mr. Proffet,” Phil continued, “we need you to state for the record that the street executive never had any suspicion that Tom Watson was running a grow operation out of Number 5. And that no resident ever lodged a complaint or a concern. This includes the recent period when you were serving as ad hoc president.”

  Proffet hesitated, knowing he was being put to an affidavit. “We were bothered by the houses going empty at 5 and 8, and then Chambers at Number 6,” he began.

  Henry’s calculated explosion startled even Phil. “Come on, Warrant Officer Proffet, a less lukewarm statement, if you don’t mind. We’re asking what the committee knew, what steps they took to verify the goings-on at Number 5, whether the committee contemplated taking action, and
if Watson ever threatened you. You are the only real president the street’s ever had.”

  On the word threatened, the ex-soldier winced. Henry caught the fright in his eyes and the contraction of his mouth. What had Tom Watson done to cow his neighbours?

  Don’t let up.

  “Come on, Jerry, what did you know?” Phil said.

  “Detective, I personally began to get suspicious when Tom Watson volunteered to maintain the grounds next door. It was right there, he said, no problem to cut the grass. The place had been vacant six months at that time, and the executive had failed to find out anything about the owners’ intentions. Some subsidiary mortgage company from out of state.”

  “You told me that when we first talked,” Phil said, his tone falsely kind.

  “Right. We couldn’t think of anything else to do to pressure the owners, so we accepted Tom’s offer.”

  Henry pressed. “But Watson didn’t do a complete job. You might say he did the opposite, letting the side yard grow over, and leaving toys and junk in the weeds to obscure the water line and power cord between the houses. Why didn’t you take him to task?”

  Proffet looked shamefaced. “I should have known. The previous owner had no kids and neither did the Watsons. Where did the toys come from, I wondered?”

  Phil threw him crumbs. “He did it to fool the police, Jerry. Maybe they wouldn’t suspect a grow op or a crack house if a family lived there.”

  “Did Watson ever threaten you?” Henry said.

  “Never. Detective, the old executive gathered and considered sitting down with Tom and asking whether he was doing something illegal at that end of the street. We decided we had no proof and we backed off.”

  “Who was at that meeting?” Phil asked.

  “Myself and Ron Devereau, and Selma, my wife, sat in. We recognized the crisis on the street. By then Stan Chambers had announced he was moving, and Mr. Starr at Number 7 was contemplating a sale.”

  Henry flashed on Theresa’s dream. Indeed, a flood had crept through the stone gates and swept up the road.