Prince of Thieves

by Chuck Hogan

  Dez appeared behind Krista, rushing to the noise, pulling on a shirt. He saw Doug and paused a moment-- then stepped out onto the threshold, ready to back him up.

  The music grew suddenly louder upstairs. "Hey!" Jem was over the railing, looking down at the broken door. He turned and came down a step, wearing a ratty white hotel bathrobe open over smiley-face boxers and sweat socks, coffee mug in hand.

  Krista's hand pressed against Dez's chest, and he stepped back against her door.

  "Duggy," said Jem, coming down two more steps, "what the fuck?"

  Doug released the glaring kid. They went around him to the stairs, seething, starting up toward Jem.

  Doug looked for some explanation, but Jem made a Later face and waved him on with his coffee mug. He started up ahead of the camo kids, then turned and came back down a few steps, seeing the light coming out of Krista's door. "If that's my sister, tell her I'm out of underwear here, she could throw in a wash."

  He turned and followed his pets up onto the landing, the door closing on the music.

  Krista sulked, Dez looking apologetically at Doug.

  Doug turned and walked out the front door, boots crunching glass, getting the fuck away.

  28

  Leads

  INSIDE THE HANGAR GARAGE of the South Quincy wreck yard, Frawley and Dino examined the charred corpse of a 1995 Dodge Caravan. The heat had blown out all the glass. The rear and middle were hopelessly charred, the front hood buckled up over the fused metal of the engine, but the dash had survived. The steering wheel was warped silly but remained whole.

  "They made some mods to the vehicle," said Dino, pointing out a blackened strap attached to a clip soldered to the frame along the driver's door. "Racing harness, in case of a chase. They also replaced the steering wheel-- the original had a Club on it and must have got cut. The accelerants were in freezer bags duct-taped to the floor in the rear, which is why the bad burn there."

  Frawley leaned inside the driver's window frame. The melted upholstery gave the stinking heap its extra-toxic stench. The steering wheel was plain black with grip grooves and an illegal "suicide" knob clamped on for fast steering.

  "No prints," said Dino. "The driver guard, Washton, said he saw driving gloves on dinosaur man."

  Magloan. Frawley fit Coughlin for the quiet one with the clown mustache who shot up the inside of the lobby, MacRay for the talker, the earphone man with the cosmetic burns. "Stolen out of New Hampshire?"

  "Wal-Mart parking lot, week ago Monday."

  "Handicap plates?"

  "Off a customized Astrovan outside a medical building in Concord, the day after."

  Frawley went around to the blackened rear of the still-warm car.

  "Little spots of latex there from the disguises, and some shreds of incinerated clothing," said Dino. "That would be the uniforms, stolen out of a dry cleaner's in Arlington. That melted box there, that's the guard's radio unit."

  Frawley returned to the front. Something about the warped steering wheel bugged him. "Wheel wasn't stolen though."

  "No. Probably new. Pick up a wheel at any auto store anywhere."

  "You say the dinosaur wore driving gloves?"

  "Right."

  "The kind with the holes in the knuckles?"

  "Probably so."

  Frawley pointed. "They print the entire wheel, or just the grips?"

  Dino shrugged. "Long shot, with the flame heat-- but good question."

  "One of the 911 callers from the highway-- you remember?"

  "She said they were hitting the horn, getting stragglers out of their way."

  Frawley mimed it. "He's fired up, strapped in with a racing harness and a suicide knob, just pulled off a big job, speeding down the highway, hitting his horn..."

  Frawley punched the center of his pretend steering wheel with his fist.

  * * *

  THEY TURNED IN THEIR loaner hard hats and stood in conference outside the Billerica work site, having just been lied to, lavishly, by Billy Bona. The double whistle went off, which, according to warning signs on the fence, meant a blast was imminent.

  "These guys used a shape charge in the Weymouth armored job, one of the early ones."

  Dino nodded, crossing his arms and sitting back against the Taurus's trunk. "Wonder what the arrangement is here. Maybe they got something on this Bona."

  Frawley squinted up into the sun, promising himself that when this all came down, he would personally deliver Bona his subpoena for aiding and abetting.

  "Problem is," said Dino, "on paper they were here yesterday."

  "Yeah. He happened to have their time cards right there with him."

  "We could go man-to-man here, break down every hard hat on this job, waste a day or two trying to find one who's ever worked with these two goofs-- "

  "Funny how they're not here today. 'First day they've missed, I can remember,' Bona says. Lying to a federal agent. The balls on that guy."

  "Then there's Elden too, at work all day yesterday, and that one's verified-- "

  "Yup. Boss says yesterday Elden checks in with him before getting in his truck-- says he remembers this because the guy's never once before stopped in to shoot the shit, ask how the kids are, the whole production."

  "Means he knew it was going down. Maybe there was no falling-out. Not if he's part of their alibi. And Magloan-- let's face it, he'll have somebody swearing up and down he was otherwise occupied the whole day. Bottom line is, bogus or not-- we got nothing. Not enough to bring anybody in on."

  "I'm not talking about putting them in a lineup."

  "It's not even enough to go around shaking trees," said Dino. "We start turning the Town upside down over this-- even if we ignore Elden and his squeaky-clean record-- lawyers will be leaping out of their wing tips crying witch hunt. We don't have it."

  "We can get it."

  "Not enough to haul in these jokers. DA's office would ball this up and throw it right back at us, and we'd be poisoned for the next time. Where'd you get the authority to check their tax returns for employment anyway?"

  "This MacRay has no credit cards, nothing in his name. His ride, this '86 Caprice Classic piece of crap, it's registered to the Coughlin sister who lives on the first floor of their house. I run her-- it turns out she's got seven different cars reg'd to her name, her insurance. One of them's a high-line Corvette. Fifty dollars says she doesn't know about any of them."

  There was a hot crack of thunder, a cannon shot, and Frawley felt the pulse in the ground like a shudder. They could not see the blast but heard the echo riding out, fading away.

  Dino said, "I think we need to go full-court press on this. Bring on some assistance."

  Frawley watched for rising dust. "No need."

  "If these tea-pissers are feeling our heat, then we need to go broader, push them harder. Farm out some of this work."

  "We can push them ourselves."

  Dino said nothing, meaning Frawley had to turn back to face him.

  "Okay," said Dino. "Now tell me what the hell is going on here."

  "What's going on is, I'm trying to catch some bad guys."

  "No, I think what's happening is, you're taking this thing personally. I can't figure why, but that is the numskull approach and you're too clever for that. This is how mistakes get made."

  "I want to bring this one home ourselves."

  "Look, Frawl-- I can play hard. I've been a detective seventeen years, I know how. I don't particularly mind going to war. All I need is a good reason."

  "This is no war," said Frawley, backing off. "Boozo and his crew, they were like a big rock we flipped over, all these other little bottom-feeders wriggling out into the light. MacRay and company, we know who they are and we know where they are. Them squeaking by has gone on long enough."

  "MacRay?" said Dino. "I thought you liked Coughlin as honcho."

  "I'm thinking now it's MacRay."

  Dino frowned impatiently. "And this is based on?"

  "Call it a h
unch."

  Which Frawley regretted saying as soon as it left his lips. Dino slow-crossed his arms, leaning against his car, Frawley waiting for it. "What is this you're giving me now? Bullshit hunches?"

  "Dino, look. These guys, they're an insult, an affront. Laughing at us. Now it's our turn to make them sweat a little. Let's take a bite out of their day for a change, just to let them know we are but a matter of time."

  Dino's cell phone rang. "We get one chance," he told Frawley. "One." He went into his car for the phone and stood there with his elbow high, talking fast. He hung up and turned back to Frawley almost disappointed. "Your steering wheel," he said. "It's dirty."

  29

  Roundup

  DOUG STEPPED OUT OF Lori-Ann's coffee shop and saw two uniformed patrolmen waiting at the curb. Only a split-second reluctance to spill the large tea in his hand saved him from obeying his first, immediate, and not entirely irrational impulse, which was to take off running. Illness rose in his chest, a gut reaction to these two uniforms and the death of freedom they represented. But running would have been a huge mistake, and this near catastrophe was a second cup of ice water down his back.

  Everything else looked normal for 7:30 A.M. on lower Bunker Hill Street: cars moving, civilians waiting for the 93 bus into the city, two project kids sitting on basketballs at the corner. For the arrest of an armed-robbery suspect, the G would have shut down the street like it was parade day, or else dispatched plainclothes federal marshals to serve the warrant.

  The cops stepped up to him. "Douglas MacRay?"

  He elected to go with them rather than follow in his own car. That they gave him the choice after patting him down was another good sign. The backseat of the cruiser was torn up and cramped, with the usual foot or so of legroom. Nice to be in there without handcuffs for a change.

  He set his copy of the subpoena down on the duct-taped vinyl next to him and pulled out a glazed doughnut and bit in, relaxing. "Might want to go Prison Point instead of the C-town bridge," he told them through the plastic partition, "unless you're gonna light up your roof."

  Instead they sat for minutes on the groaning iron skeleton of the Charlestown Bridge. Doug finished his second doughnut, a Boston creme, while reading through his subpoena.

  United States District Court, it headlined. SUBPOENA TO TESTIFY BEFORE GRAND JURY, below that. Under SUBPOENA FOR, there were check boxes, and an X was drawn through the box next to DOCUMENTS OR OBJECT(S), leaving the box for PERSON unchecked.

  Area A-1 was the police district that covered Downtown Boston and Charlestown. The station was a big brick box around the corner from City Hall Plaza. They parked between two other blue-and-whites angled along Sudbury Street and led Doug down the steps to the glass doors and the lobby. It was a shift change, the halls crowded as they moved left past the women's detention room to the booking area, in sight of the holding cells and the slumbering prisoners.

  The cop opened the ink pad and Doug licked sugar off his fingers. "What happened, you guys lose the prints you had?"

  They printed his palm also, and the soft side of his hand opposite his thumb, then they had him make fists and printed each of his bottom knuckles before handing him a tissue. This was strange and worrisome, though Doug went along like he was enjoying the tour.

  They took photographs with the height marker, front and profile, no booking number around his neck. Doug didn't smile, but he didn't not smile either, going for a borderline-amused Sure, why not?

  They took a DNA swab from the pockets of his cheeks with a double-sized Q-tip that screwed into a plastic tube. Then they plucked eleven strands of hair from his scalp. "You want some piss too, I drank a large tea on the way over."

  They declined his offer, handing him a script instead and making him recite witness-remembered sentences into a digital recorder:

  Arnold Washton, 311 Hazer Street, Quincy.

  Morton Harford, 27 Counting Lane, Randolph.

  Take the coin tray off the cart, open up the safe, and start stacking bags.

  Remember this ain't your money and how nice it's gonna be to get back home.

  Ain't gonna be no rematch. Say hello to my little friend.

  We're here for the popcorn, Mugsy. Yeaaahh, see?

  They made him do the last line three times over until he read it straight, then allowed him into the bathroom for his unwanted piss before shutting him inside an interrogation room and leaving him alone for the better part of an hour. Soft carpeting covered the soundproof walls. Doug got up once to check the thermostat-- he had heard this was how interrogators turned on hidden microphones-- but couldn't tell anything without lifting off the box. Instead he dropped a little whistling on his imagined audience, "The Rose of Tralee," and hoped they liked it.

  The one who came in introduced himself as a detective lieutenant assigned to the Bank Robbery Task Force, name of Drysler. He was long-armed and walked with the stoop of a tall man getting older. He set down a clipboard with Doug's print card on top and pulled off a pair of reading glasses, folding his long arms like someone collapsing the legs of a card table.

  "One chance," he told Doug. "I'm giving you one shot, and this is it."

  Doug nodded like he was interested.

  "You're the first one brought in," said Drysler. "So lucky you gets first crack at setting up a deal."

  Doug nodded and leaned close to him. "Okay, I did it," he confessed. "Tell O.J. the search is over. I killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman."

  Drysler stared, too old and too pro to get pissy. "Did you like prison, MacRay?"

  "To that I'd have to answer no."

  "They say life is full of choices, MacRay, but it's not. Life is lived choice by choice by choice. What you eat, what you wear, when you sleep, who you sleep with. You choose wrong here, MacRay, and you may never get the opportunity to choose anything again. That's what life in prison means-- the death of choice."

  Doug swallowed, the older detective's words going down like razors, but he smiled through his pain. "If you got that printed on a bumper sticker or something, I'll take one home with me."

  Drysler nodded after a long moment of consideration. "Okay, you can go."

  On his way out to the lobby, Doug passed a guy standing near the water-cooler, jacketless like Drysler, a simple blue tie on a long-sleeved white shirt tucked deep into tan dress pants, shoulder rig prominent beneath his left arm. He was drinking water from a cone paper cup, watching Doug over the rim, and Doug found something in the guy's eyes that was familiar.

  The cup came down and the guy looked at Doug as he swallowed, showing attitude. Doug was past him before he realized who it was and stopped, turning back.

  "Hey," said Doug with a nod. "Rash cleared up, huh?"

  The G-man just kept looking, wearing the same I'm-smarter-than-you face as do all the true believers in the Cult of the Gold Badge. The only thing different about this one was his hair, not straight and tight like a boy's regular but a tawny morass of rings and tangles. Doug had two or three good inches on him, and at least forty pounds.

  Doug said, "What, a little penicillin from the clinic took care of that?"

  The look became a stare. Drysler came up on them to shoo Doug along, and Doug should probably have kept going to the lobby and out the door, but he couldn't resist. He stopped again and snapped his fingers, pointing back at the G-man and his professionally insolent face.

  "Red Cavalier, right?"

  No answer, the G's hand a tight fist at his side, trying to compress the paper cup into a diamond. Doug grinned, then turned and walked through the lobby, though by the time he hit the outside steps rising to the sidewalk, his grin was well gone.

  * * *

  SPENCER GIFTS SOLD ASS-SHAPED beer mugs that farted when tipped to drink. The mall store was deep, dark, and disorientingly loud, the clerk behind the counter-- looking like a cross between an Orthodox rabbi and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Flea-- mouthing the anguished lyrics of a screeching Nine Inch Nails song like a
man mumbling prayers at work.

  Doug felt ridiculous himself, having outgrown this place ten years ago, but the store was G-proof and the music made it virtually unsnoopable.

  Dez arrived late, his black eyeglass rims achieving a kind of retro rightness as he passed a jewelry counter of body art and skull rings. He was all worked up, Doug holding out a hand to slow him down, giving him a quick fist-rap of reassurance.

  "They picked me up in the parking lot at work," said Dez. "This is after paying my boss a visit, checking on my story."