Ward Keane, like the other District Attorneys of the Commonwealth (all of them Democrats), regarded Reese with a complex mixture of feelings: envy of his relatively youthful success; fear of his state constitutional authority to supersede them in any case that he might choose; secret hope of replacing him if he won the Senate seat; and wistfulness that he and the other DAs had in two years been unable to maneuver Reese into accepting responsibility for investigations that looked hopeless to their eyes.
Keane had called Osgood’s office after he received Reese’s invitation. Osgood’s secretary gave him the number of the hotel in Manchester, Vermont, where Osgood stayed when he took his wife to the races at Saratoga. “You know, Dave,” he said, “if that bastard Reese finds out what you’re doing, he’ll leak it to somebody. Guy gets shot in a robbery in your district, and where do you go? To the track. Will not look good in the papers. Won’t look good at all.” Osgood had replied first that he had in fact attended the funeral of a distant cousin the preceding Saturday in Woodstock, Vermont, and secondly that if Reese wanted to start “that kind of pissing contest, I’ll tell a few folks what I know about him, and where he stays when he rambles.”
Keane had then called Peter Mahoney. “Whaddaya think, Pete?” he had said, and Mahoney in his Salem office had said: “You mean: ‘Is he gonna take this goddamned pile of turds off our hands?’ The answer is: he’s not. He’s gonna feint and jab and dance like hell, and when the meeting’s over those armored car guys’re gonna go out of there just as pissed off and mad at us as they’ll be when they go in. But not at him, Ward, not at him. You’ll be going back to Brockton with your three pounds of shit in a two-pound bag, and I’ll be back up here, with my bag of shit, and when Dave gets back from losing his customary five hundred bucks on the ponies, his share shit will still be there, in the middle of his desk. And debonair Attorney General Gene Kelly’ll be tap-dancing his way through the six o’clock news, singin’ in the fuckin’ rain that’s fuckin’ drowning us.”
Graham Foster, regional security manager of Purolater, appeared to have been designated the chief spokesman for the courier executives. Nominally ranked below Edward Mackiewicz, the regional general manager to his left, Foster’s twenty years’ pre-Purolater experience as an FBI Special Agent gave him a superior familiarity with law enforcement matters that the other managers lacked. “General,” he said, “Lieutenant, I’ll be brief and I’ll be candid. Brief because we didn’t ask to come here today in order for you to hear what we’ve got to say. You can guess that, and you have. Brief, also, because what we did come here for was to hear what you have got to say. And candid because as everybody in this room knows, every single one of us has got a damned big problem here and we’ve got to figure out what to do about it. We’ve got a twenty-four-year-old kid lying in the Brigham today with two bullets in his spine. He’s going to live — if you call what a twenty-four-year-old paraplegic does for his next fifty years on earth a form of living, I don’t, but many do — but that’s just a matter his having been a little bit luckier than he might have been. Sooner or later, whether it’s my company, or Jake Nolan’s here, or Tom Hammond’s here, or someone else’s company that hasn’t been hit so far, sooner or later one of us’s going to wind up going to a funeral for some hardworking family man that never did a damned thing in the world except try to feed his wife and kids, guarding other people’s property. So, what are we going to do about it? Or maybe I should begin by saying: ‘What are you folks going to do about it, since it’s your jobs to do it? And when is it you plan to start?’ ”
The Attorney General looked stern. He folded his hands on the table. “Now Graham,” he said. “I hope by my seating arrangements here you didn’t get the idea I wanted or expected this to become an adversarial proceeding. Because I don’t see it as that at all, and I didn’t when I welcomed Ed’s request for it. Basically the reason that I asked Ward, and Peter, although he couldn’t come, and Dave, who couldn’t be here either on notice as short as this, and Paul and Andy here, and of course, Lieutenant Richards, who I understand’s been coordinating all of these investigations into these things, that reason was my belief that the government and the private sector, representatives of the private sector, need to have these meetings when they have a common problem. To see what each of them can do to correct it. Not to blame each other for the fact that they’ve got it, and exchange heated accusations.”
Foster held up his hand. “Let me interrupt, if I may, General,” he said.
Reese smiled. “Go right ahead,” he said. “That’s what we’re here for.”
“The fact of the matter,” Foster said, “and I don’t want any of us to lose sight of this, but the fact of the matter is that we do not have a common problem. We have different problems. Yours is that you happen to be the chief law enforcement officer of this Commonwealth. That’s the job you sought, and that’s the job you’ve got. Our problem is that you, and the people who work for you and Mister Keane and the other DAs, aren’t doing that job. Not saying that’s your fault, or that all of you aren’t trying. But, fact remains, jobs’re not getting done. If they were, our problem wouldn’t exist.”
“Is that a fact?” Reese said. “Do you honestly think your man got shot yesterday in Braintree because the Attorney General was busy with something else? That’s ridiculous. Let me ask you something: Why did he draw his gun? Why he was even carrying a gun in the first place, as far as that goes? My clear recollection from my days in the General Court is that there’ve been repeated, numerous, almost annual pieces of legislation intended to reduce the number of non-law-enforcement personnel allowed to carry guns, and every time one of those bills’s been offered, your people have been among the loudest in their oppositon. And the argument’s been made, time and time again, that sooner or later one of these amateur — and I use that word deliberately — amateur cops that thinks he’s Wyatt Earp is going to get himself into a gun battle that’ll end up with him or some other innocent person getting badly hurt or killed. And you, not necessarily you personally, but your industry, you’ve rejected it, rejected it, rejected it. Time and time again.
“Well,” Reese said, “what happened last Thursday at the South Shore Plaza is the proof of the pudding, I see it. A young man who overestimated his ability got himself badly hurt. Just as all those people you opposed predicted for so many years. What’s bothering you gentlemen here today — and I mean no insult by this because it’s bothering me as well, I can assure you — but what’s really on your mind here today is that you’re, Purolater is, you’re going to end up paying a multi-million dollar judgment, or settlement, to this paralytic. And you know just as well as I do what the grounds of that lawsuit’re going to be: that you failed to give him proper, adequate training; that you did give him a firearm he did not know how to use; that you should’ve foreseen what would happen, even if you didn’t; and now he is crippled for life.
“Now,” Reese said, “my position on the necessity for cooperation between the private sector and the government is well-known. Where it doesn’t exist, I want it to begin. Where it does exist, to continue and improve. That is what I want.”
Foster looking grim opened his mouth as Reese shot his left cuff, looked at his gold watch, and stood up. Foster closed his mouth. “Now,” Reese said, buttoning his jacket, “I’m afraid I must ask you gentlemen to excuse me. I have a commitment of long-standing to be in the House at two-thirty sharp. One of my former law partners is being sworn in as a probate judge, and I simply must be there. So, you gentlemen make yourselves at home here, stay as long as you like, and see what you can work out as our response to this thing. Paul and Andy here have my complete authority. And I assure you, gentlemen,” he said, slapping his right hand on the table, “I assure you that whatever plan you come up with will have my own, personal, full, complete, and unstinting support.” He strode from the room.
Foster leaned back in his chair. He looked at Richards. He looked at Green and Boyd, who shifted uneasil
y in their chairs. He looked at Keane. He looked back at Richards. “John,” he said, “tell me something: Does somebody breed those guys? Like fancy dogs and horses? Is there some farm somewhere that grows them, attorney generals, US attorneys, all those guys like that?”
Richards laughed. He shook his head. “He’s all right, Graham,” he said. He nodded toward Boyd. “I’ll vouch for Andy,” he said. He nodded toward Keane. “And for Ward, too.” He smiled at Green. “Paul here I don’t know too well,” he said, “since we just met when I got here today. But he’s probably all right. And Peter, Peter’s wife really is having a baby. So, don’t take it so hard. The people you’ve got to work with, we’re all in the room, and that guy that left’ll back them, just like he said he would.”
Foster stared at Richards. “Huh,” he said, “sure. And when I get home tonight my wife’ll be the spitting image, Gina Lollabrigida.”
Richards glanced quickly at Green and Boyd. Green’s young face was troubled. Boyd, at thirty-two, four years younger than Green, was harder. His jaw was set and his eyes were narrow. Richards nodded. “Okay,” he said, looking back to Foster, “lemme ask you a couple things, so we can see where we go. You talk to Matt Lund about this problem?”
Foster blinked. He worked his mouth. “I don’t see what that’s got to do with this,” he said.
Richards said: “Uh huh.” He leaned back in his chair and massaged his ear with the first two fingers of his left hand. “Tells me what I want to know, though, doesn’t it? Tells me that before you came in here, breathing fire and smoke, telling everybody where to go and how to get there, tells me you called up your old pal, the Special Agent in Charge, and you bounced this difficulty off of him. And I bet I can almost imagine what you said to him, can’t I? You said: ‘Hey Matt, old pal, old buddy, this stuff got stolen from us, it was moving, interstate commerce. We had checks and stuff aboard, you know, in our custody, from other jurisdictions. And those deposits, they’re from federally insured banks. So how about the FBI comes in on this with us, give us a little hand? How’s about banging it past the USA and getting authority, investigate interstate transportation, stolen property. Or theft from federally insured banks.’ ”
Foster looked uncomfortable. Richards leaned forward in his chair. “And I bet,” he said, “I would just bet that one of two things happened then. Either Lund said he would do it, bounce it off the US Attorney, and then got back to you and said you know what a bastard the guy is, he won’t turn the Bureau loose. Or else he told you the truth, which is that he would rather go rub shit on his head’n have to explain to Washington how come he got the Bureau involved. I bet I could almost quote him, couldn’t I. I bet he said something like: ‘Jesus H. Christ, Graham, you gotten simple since you left? Bureau only wants the cases it will win. Screw this package, buddy. I wouldn’t touch this one with a goddamned barge pole.’ ”
Foster chuckled. “Pretty close,” he said. “Pretty goddamned close. He did the first bit. Took it the US Attorney, and USA turned him down.”
“Sure he did,” Richards said. “And I believe him, too. He went over to the courthouse and said to the man in there: ‘Graham Foster’s got this cockeyed idea we ought to get ourselves in this mess the State boys got, and I think if you okay it you should be committed for a nice long rest in a very quiet place.’ And the USA said: ‘Thanks for the advice, Matt. Blow it out of here.’
“So,” Richards said, “since you discovered you’re not going to get Matt on the evening news reading one of those stirring statements about how the FBI is throwing its unmatched resources into the armored car robbery investigation.… Would Matt say ‘investigation’, Graham? Or would he say ‘manhunt’?” Green and Boyd were grinning.
“He would say ‘investigation’,” Foster said, smiling. “The press would say: ‘manhunt.’ ”
“Right,” Richards said, “of course. But anyway, since he isn’t going to do that, you decided you’d come in here today with a broomstick up your ass and see if you could bully the AG into doing what the Bureau will not do. Which is get the heat off you at headquarters by having Mister Reese go out in front of the cameras and get their minds off you. And because people like you always get stuffed by Mister Reese, you now have the feeling that you have just had six pounds of breadcrumbs rammed up your ass.”
Foster joined in the laughter. “All right,” he said, “all right.”
“Now,” Richards said, “if we can all conduct ourselves in these palatial quarters like we actually belonged here, maybe we can actually get something done. Let me tell you what we’ve actually got, and then if you’ve got something we don’t have, you can tell me that.”
He glanced around the table at the prosecutors. “I can at least finally tell all you guys that I think we’re making some progress. Since the last one, down in Brockton, we’re pretty sure we’ve gotten hard IDs on the two ringleaders. Well, the ringleader and the assistant ringleader.”
“Excuse me, John,” Keane said, “but how’d you manage that?”
“Stopped doing what wasn’t working,” Richards said, “and started trying to find something that would. Years ago, I was down in the Norwell barracks, met this kid that used to hang around the Waterford police station. Name of Alton Badger. Bright as hell. Think he was about fifteen, he went to college. And he was a cop buff. So through him I got to know his uncle, Larry Badger, runs this industrial security outfit over the Prudential. And I called up Larry and I said to him: ‘Larry, you guys ever do any work, any these defense contract types that had trouble with the longhairs?’ And he said: ‘Sure. And Alton, he probably knows even more’n I do. He had the Dow Chem and the Dupont disturbances, the defoliant and napalm protests. Come by and have a chat. Give you anything we’ve got.’
“So I did,” Richards said. “Alton runs about two, three hundred names he’s got through his goddamned machines, comes up with couple names he remembers always on the violent fringe. Days of Rage and all that shit — he was in Chicago, at the University. Knew the troublemakers there, plus the visitors, and kept up his collection when he joined his uncle’s firm. And he says these guys fit our bill. Big one comes from around here, and he’s dropped out of sight. Matches the description, right age and all that stuff. So that’s what we’re going on.
“Ringleader’s a young charmer named Samuel F. Tibbetts. Born, Newton Wellesley Hospital, March ten, Nineteen-forty-seven. Parents Walter J. Tibbetts, Ellen Davis Tibbetts. Father’s employment: research chemist. Then for W.R. Grace Company, Cambridge. Now for Monsanto, Springfield. Members, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, which our young Samuel attended faithfully and assisted on the altar. Graduated Newton South High School, Nineteen-sixty-four, very highest honors. Editor of yearbook, varsity letters all four years in cross-country and track, All-State and All-New England band clarinetist, senior class treasurer, National Merit Scholarship winner, all-round American boy who would’ve almost certainly made Eagle Scout, and I’m not kidding here, if he hadn’t’ve decided to use that scholarship, plus one he got from Stanford, move out to the west coast. Graduated Stanford, Nineteen-sixty-eight, summa cum laude. Entered graduate school, Berkeley, same year, advanced fellow in mathematics. Candidate for Ph.D. First term, completed first quarter of that year. Did not enroll for second term, January Nineteen-sixty-nine, and has not done so since.”
“This is a robber?” Foster said. “This is a goddamned highwayman? Why the hell’s he stealing, pointing guns at people? All he’s got to do, have money thrown at him, was keep on the way he’s going, and he’d swim in the damned stuff. If my kids’d had what he got, got and threw away, the whole family would’ve been delirious with joy.”
“Good question,” Richards said. “I don’t have the complete answer, but the question’s very good. Apparently what happened was that studious young Sam got himself pretty heavily involved first in the uprisings against Lyndon Johnson, while Sam was still at Stanford. Then that summer, Sixty-eight, he’s down in Central America someplace, pr
obably playing kissy-face with some goddamned guerillas, filling up his impressionable young mind with a load of communist shit. And then when he came up to Chicago to riot, Democratic National Convention, and went on to Berkeley, the process just sort of continued. And he went from being against Johnson, because of the war that of course Sam didn’t have to fight, being Two-S and all, to being against the whole, just society in general. And naturally Nixon, and anything else that anybody brought to his attention. Stopped reading his math books and started spending all his time with the radicals, getting himself a late education in Marxist theory and so forth. And by the time Christmas rolled around, and his papers in math were due, there was no way he could pass. So he just dropped out. Started this group Alton thinks they call ‘Bolivian Connection.’ ‘Contingent.’ Some fool thing like that. Ended up becoming the intimidating fellow with the thirty-caliber grease gun that we all admire so much. The one that paralyzed your guard there, what I understand. And in other ways, as well, no longer a model boy. Stopped writing to his parents, even calling them. Tell me they haven’t heard from Sam — and I believe this, Graham — tell me they haven’t heard from Sam in almost six years now. Don’t know where he is. They have no idea.”
“Well,” Foster said, “that last part, you may believe that, but I don’t. The father may not know, but the mother does. The mothers always know. And the mothers never tell.”
Richards shrugged. “Could be,” he said. “I doubt it, but it certainly could be.
“Second guy,” he said. “Deputy ringleader. James M. Walker, a.k.a. ‘Beau James.’ Born, New York Memorial Hospital, January ninth, Nineteen-forty-five. Father, Clayton D. Walker, MD, then staff cardiologist, Columbia Presbyterian, now chief cardiologist, New York Memorial. Mother, Florence Amberson Walker. She’s about half, maybe a quarter, black, I’m not sure which. Jamaican parents, one of them, at least. Born in London, where she met Clayton during a research year. Naturalized American citizen. Concert cellist before her marriage. What I’m told, a very striking woman still. James has one sister, Christina, born Nineteen-fifty-three, said to be an extremely beautiful young woman. Whether she’s involved in this hootenanny, that I do not know. None of the descriptions we’ve been able to get of the women involved in these heists even remotely suggests that one of them’s good-looking.
Outlaws (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) Page 3
