The Dark Root

by Mayor, Archer

  “The green one. At the time, I thought it was trying to pass. While I was gone on this trip, after the conference came to a close every day, I was sort of on my own, not being a very social person. So I tended to go to bed early, like I do at home. That’s when all this kept coming back, like a nightmare. The day it happened I was running late—I had something else to focus on—but at the conference, I guess I realized how close I’d come to getting killed, so I kept reliving it, and each time I saw things more clearly.”

  “You mentioned seeing one of the men.”

  “Yes. The driver of the green car. When you think of it, he and I came within just a few feet of one another, if only for a second,” he added with a smile. “I was looking at him because I thought he was going to kill me, of course. But he was staring right through me—like he couldn’t have cared less whether we hit each other or not. It was creepy. I’ve seen that face every night since it happened—totally empty of feeling, except a kind of cold rage.”

  I decided to put his recall to the test. I placed ten photographs across the surface of the drawing board. All of them were Asian, including recent surveillance shots of Vu and some of his colleagues, and the stills I’d had Tyler extract from the video of Truong, Diep, and Lam.

  John Crocker didn’t hesitate. As soon as the picture of Truong Van Loc hit the table, he said, “That’s him.”

  “Let me put the others down,” I cautioned, “just so you can be absolutely positive. Some of these photos look alike.”

  In fact, they did. I’d made it a point to find at least one near-match for every player I knew personally, and as luck would have it, two of them had the same general features and long hair as Truong.

  But Crocker didn’t budge. “That’s him,” he repeated. “Without a doubt.”

  I collected the pictures and put them back in my pocket. “You said one of the reasons you didn’t call this in was because you hadn’t gotten the license numbers. Does that mean you got a glimpse at the plates themselves?”

  “Oh yes, they were heading right at me. The blue car was from Vermont, and the green one from Québec.”

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked, a little startled.

  “I was born in a small town. I look at every car that comes at me that way. First the plate, to see if it’s from in-state, then the face, to see if the driver’s somebody I know.”

  I smiled at his answer, at the familiar chord it struck. I waved to half the people on the road when I was out and about, as they did to me. It was just something you did, living in Vermont.

  · · ·

  The satisfaction—in fact, the vindication—of finally putting Truong Van Loc’s face and name to one of Benny’s killers was only offset by the little I could do with the information at this point. Issuing an arrest warrant was hopelessly premature, since I still needed more evidence. We hadn’t found the car, or the famous Glock, or Truong’s reputed companions, and it could have been argued in court that at the time Crocker saw Truong, the latter was merely in the midst of recklessly passing another car.

  The best I could do, therefore, was issue a New England and Canada-wide BOL—be-on-the-lookout—bulletin, featuring Truong’s picture and vital statistics.

  I was in the middle of doing the paperwork for just that when Harriet’s disembodied voice came over the phone speaker, advising me that Heather Dahlin was on the line.

  “What’s up?” I asked her when I picked up the phone.

  “We got a call from the hospital an hour ago about an Asian woman in her thirties who came into the ER complaining of abdominal pains. According to her, she fell late last night. She didn’t do anything about it at the time because she thought the pain would go away, but this morning it got worse than she could bear, so her husband drove her in. The docs looked her over, diagnosed internal injuries, got her into the operating room. She died of internal bleeding.”

  “She say she fell downstairs?” I asked, sensing a familiar scenario.

  “Better than that. The hospital called the PD because they didn’t buy her story. Based on their experience, she had all the signs of someone who’d been beaten to death. A unit went over, checked out the body, and discovered she was Asian and the wife of one of the restaurant owners I was telling you about. That’s when they called me. We all went over to the husband’s house and found out he wasn’t looking too good either. Nor was his house.”

  “Home invasion?”

  “That’s what we think, but we hit the same wall you did. He said she fell downstairs, that he tried to grab her and fell with her. We could see the house was trashed, of course, but he won’t talk about it.”

  “How’re you going to deal with it?” I asked.

  “We’ll play it by the numbers—it is a homicide, after all—but we’ll probably get nowhere,” she said dismissively. “The interesting thing is, I checked out the Asian hot spots to see what I could pick up, and guess what I found?”

  Now I understood where she was headed, and the reason for her excitement. “New players.”

  “Bingo. Those tough guys I told you about who gave Michael Vu the cold shoulder? Can’t find a single one of ’em. They’ve all been replaced by new people.”

  “Vietnamese?”

  “No, no. It’s a mixed bag, like before. I haven’t found out who’s who yet. But I thought you’d like to know.”

  “Thanks, Heather. I’ll update Dan Flynn. Maybe he’ll have heard something from his end.”

  · · ·

  “You know,” Flynn said minutes later, “you’ve got an amazing sense of timing. I’ve been calling around, and you and Dahlin aren’t the only ones seeing changes among the Asians. I’ve had feedback now from Burlington, Rutland, Springfield, and a few odd spots like Newport and St. Albans. It’s nothing much, and most of the people I talked to said they hadn’t even filed reports within their own departments, much less been tempted to let me know, but there’s been movement.”

  “What kind?”

  “Power shifting, mostly. Old faces being replaced by new ones. The point is, it’s happening all over the state, all at the same time.”

  “Any more mention of Michael Vu or Sonny?”

  “I asked. With Vu, I got nothing, but Sonny cropped up with the Burlington PD and with INS.”

  The mention of INS sharpened my interest. “What did Immigration say?”

  “They were a long shot, since Dahlin’s pointer card said Michael Vu was into illegal aliens. But they said they’d heard Sonny’s name just recently. A couple of illegals the Border Patrol handed over to them said that Sonny had made the arrangements. I called a friend at the Border Patrol. He couldn’t help me with Sonny or Vu or any of the other names I had, but he did say the number of Asian crossers had gone up, and it looked like the regular channels were either being changed or challenged.”

  “By a competitor?”

  “Who knows? Asian illegals are the tightest-lipped of all of them. Sonny could’ve been operating for years, and we just tumbled to it now. And habits in border crossings change all the time, for all sorts of reasons. That’s the problem with all this information—you can mold it to fit whatever theory you want.”

  That last comment made me stop and think a moment. “Dan,” I finally asked, “what’s your own gut reaction? Am I way off base here?”

  He laughed. “Hell, Joe, you’re talking to somebody who’s paid to see conspiracies under every rug. I’m a believer.”

  I hung up the phone and contemplated where we stood. In conventional terms, I was in trouble, having a rape with no complainant and a murder with skimpy evidence. Only Truong Van Loc was good news, since I was convinced his reappearance could have far-reaching consequences.

  But even there, I was in a jam. Assuming I was heading in the right direction, it was starting to look as though Truong and Sonny and the others might be involved in federal-level violations. Which meant that if some government agency suddenly took an interest in this case, and the State’s Attorney w
as willing to wash his hands of it, our sole reward would be a pat on the head for some preliminary ground work, and the hope that somebody might end up doing federal time.

  Which gave me scant comfort. The old bloodhound in me was reluctant to give up the scent of a good case, and I had a habit of following things to the end.

  9

  IT WAS NEAR FIVE O'CLOCK in the afternoon when Ron Klesczewski yelled through my office door, his face flushed with excitement: “Something hot’s going down.”

  I caught up to him halfway across the parking lot. “What the hell’s happening?”

  “A source at the bank called,” he said, unlocking his car. “She just paid out fifty thousand dollars cash to the owner of the Century Cinema, Peter Leung. He was nervous as a cat. She said she thought he might have a heart attack right on the spot. He even dropped some of the money he was stuffing into a briefcase. She knows she could get fired for giving us the tip, so I figured we better give it a look.”

  “Where’s Leung now?” I asked, swinging into the passenger seat.

  “Heading home, I think. A patrol unit picked him up on the qt about four minutes ago heading west on Route 9. He lives out on Green Meadows.” He suddenly gave me an apologetic look as we sped out of the parking lot. “I know this may be nothing—that he has the flu and a mortgage payment due at the same time or something—but I thought we better play it safe. Ever since you tumbled to this Asian thing, I’ve been reading up, and home invasions where one family member is sent out for the cash while the rest are held captive are supposed to be pretty common.”

  “No problem,” I said, privately wondering if Ron would ever overcome the insecurity that would probably forever keep him halfway up the corporate ladder. His actions just now had been flawless—fast, decisive, and intelligent—but I sensed that had I raised one finger in opposition, however wrongheaded, he would have folded his tent. Still, I comforted myself, he had come a long way—he never would have stuck his neck out this far in the old days.

  We pulled onto Route 9 and picked up speed heading west.

  “What’ve you got lined up?” I asked him.

  “In addition to the patrol unit and us, I had Harriet rally what she could get of the Special Reaction Team. They’re to stand ready at the West B fire station. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Fine with me.” I didn’t know where Peter Leung lived specifically, but I was familiar with Green Meadows. A short horseshoe attached to the side of Greenleaf Street, it was an archetypal slice of suburban America, with ranch-style homes, lawns with swing sets, a swimming pool or two, and graceful young trees coming into bloom. It was as far from the town’s meaner streets as it could get, both physically and psychologically. If this did turn ugly, though, and Ron’s worst fears were realized, Green Meadows could well become a combat zone.

  Not knowing which scenario might play out—or even if Leung was heading home—was going to severely cramp our style. The safest approach—sealing off his street, evacuating the neighbors, waiting for the transaction to go down, and then picking up the pieces—was almost ludicrously out of the question. Instead, we would have to be discreet, leaving the patrol unit and the SRT people nearby but out of sight, and making the approach to Leung’s house ourselves, without visible backup, without body armor, and with only our concealed sidearms for protection.

  The radio crackled beneath the dash. “O-8 from O-20. Subject car has pulled into Green Meadows.”

  Ron unhooked the microphone. “10-4, 20. Find a spot where you can see both ends of the street. O-3 and I are going to make a direct approach.” He looked over at me questioningly. I nodded without comment.

  We pulled off Route 9 onto Greenleaf Street and drove up a short distance to Green Meadows’s first entrance. Ron paused a moment and looked around. Almost completely hidden by a large, leafy tree farther up and across the road, a fender and part of the windshield from O-20’s patrol unit looked like any other parked car.

  “Where’s he live?” I asked as we entered the horseshoe.

  “Right in the middle. East side.”

  I glanced over at him. His eyes were straight ahead, scanning the street before us, his tension completely at odds with the smells of spring wafting in through the open windows, the sounds of a dog barking in the distance, of a mother somewhere calling for her child. I took a deep breath to relax.

  “There,” he said, “gray house, red roof.”

  It was all but indistinguishable from its neighbors in mood and tidiness, but it had a strange stillness about it, emphasized by shut windows and drawn curtains. One car was parked outside the closed garage, another—sportier, more pretentious, built for speed, and with Massachusetts plates—was by the curb. Both were empty.

  Ron pulled over beyond the house, on the opposite side of the street. He cleared with Dispatch on the radio, killed the engine, and wrestled a portable radio from his pocket. “O-8 to all units and Dispatch. O-3 and I are approaching the front entrance. The SRT can stand by out of sight on Greenleaf beyond Green Meadows.”

  A small chorus of muttered “10-4s” followed us as we left the car and walked slowly across the street, keeping several feet apart from each other. Ron held the radio in his hand, hidden behind his leg as he went.

  I watched the windows for any movement, hearing the odd piece of gravel crunch under my shoe, feeling the weight of my gun in its holster. Those earlier sights and sounds of a neighborhood in early spring faded from my consciousness, until all I could focus on was that utterly still house, and the front door looming ever closer.

  We crossed the sidewalk and came to the entrance from different angles, stepping on the grass rather than the paving stones leading up from the street. We reached the door, positioned ourselves to either side of it, our backs to the wall, and paused a moment. Ron’s face was glistening with sweat, as I suspected mine was. We exchanged glances, I nodded, and he knocked loudly.

  At that moment, instead of the door opening, a snow-white BMW appeared around the bend in the street and pulled up behind the car already parked there. Loud music could be heard pulsing against the tinted, closed windows.

  “Jesus Christ,” Ron muttered.

  The music died with the engine. The driver’s door swung open, and Michael Vu, resplendent in a white suit and purple shirt, stepped out into the street. His back still to us, he shook his pants legs loose, slicked back his long hair, and turned to walk around the front of his car. He froze in mid-step as he saw us.

  Before any of us could react, however, a second car rounded the bend, drawing all of our attention. Blotched with rust, trailing a pale-gray plume of smoke, it stopped abruptly in the middle of the street. Out of it half fell a wild-looking, disheveled Vince Sharkey. One hand reached out to the car hood for support. In the other was a gun.

  It was at that moment that the front door opened between us, revealing through its narrow gap a frantic Peter Leung and, behind him, the familiar and malevolent face of Henry Lam.

  What followed unfurled like a slow-motion silent movie, where I was so keen on survival that I heard no words of warning, and was only aware of the gunfire as I might have been of a hard rain hitting the roof at night—a distant sound in a dream-like state.

  Still facing the street, Ron brought the radio up to his mouth with one hand and cleared his gun of its holster with the other. I threw my weight against the building’s front door, reached in to grab Peter Leung by his shirtfront, and pulled him past me with all my strength, throwing him into the bushes behind me. Now fully revealed, Lam stood openmouthed, rooted in place with an automatic machine pistol by his side.

  Across the lawn, Vince Sharkey brought his gun unsteadily to bear on Michael Vu and fired a round that starred the white car’s windshield. Ron, now down in a crouch, shot once and hit Sharkey in the chest, sending him up onto the hood of his car before he rolled off and landed on his face in the street.

  Meanwhile, Lam quickly recovered and brought his snub-nosed machine gun to bear on me
as I leaped backward off the stoop and pulled my own gun free. The air between us suddenly burst into a smoky cloud, and I could feel Lam’s bullets tugging at my clothes and thudding into the ground around me. Stumbling backward, I fired twice into the middle of the cloud.

  For a split second everything stopped. I was on my knees, my gun still bearing on the now-empty doorway. Ron was standing at the foot of the steps, gun in hand but unsure of what to do, and Vu stayed where he had been all along, still looking stunned.

  Then the storm broke a second time.

  Suddenly framed in the door were two more gunmen, young Asian boys, one with a shotgun, the other a semi-automatic pistol. Both looked utterly terrified.

  As from a long, long way off, I heard myself yell, “Freeze—police.”

  The one nearest me brought the shotgun to bear on my chest. I fired first, sending him flying backward out of sight. The second one aimed at Ron, who was just turning to face him, and unloaded four rounds before Ron responded in kind, hitting him three times in the stomach and bringing him to his knees. Clutching his middle, the young man looked at us with a confused expression and then toppled forward, landing spread-eagled across the steps.

  We stood motionless for a moment, our guns trained on the doorway. I suddenly became aware of sirens, the squeal of tires on the street behind us. I heard Michael Vu being ordered to spread himself flat on the hood of his car.

  I glanced at Ron; blood was dripping from his ear and darkening the shoulder of his jacket. “You all right?” I asked, my eyes back on the door.

  He opened his mouth to speak, said nothing, and finally just nodded.

  I glanced over quickly to where I’d thrown Peter Leung. He was still lying half across the bushes and half against the wall of his home, looking like a discarded rag doll. He was clutching his forearm, and I could see blood oozing from a thigh, where one of Lam’s wild shots had caught him.