Suspicion

by Joseph Finder

  At the intersection, the road forked. On the right it took you back to Route 2. The lane on the left took you into a densely settled old residential neighborhood in Arlington. He’d driven around here before and knew it well enough. The traffic light showed a red left arrow. A couple of cars were waiting in the left-turn lane ahead of him, a U-Haul van and a VW bug. He slowed down to a crawl as he approached, the Suburban right behind him, clinging like a barnacle.

  He had a choice to make: left or right.

  He flicked on his right-turn signal, and the Suburban did the same. Suddenly, he jammed one foot down on the brakes while keeping the other foot on the gas pedal. His car rocked to a halt, its engine revving like crazy. As the Suburban slammed to a halt behind him, Danny cut the wheel hard left and floored the Honda’s accelerator, blasting through the intersection, through the red light, swerving around the U-Haul van, narrowly missing it.

  The van honked and braked and skidded sideways. The VW bug, trailing too close behind it, clipped its rear bumper, sending both cars spinning into the center of the intersection. Danny saw this in his rearview mirror as he gunned it down the tree-lined road.

  He took a quick right turn, so fast that he felt the tires on the left side nearly come off the road, narrowly averting a collision with a Subaru station wagon pulling out of a driveway. Two blocks more and he turned left, then another right.

  Sirens were blaring, two police squad cars heading the other way—toward the accident, he assumed. The accident he’d caused. He glanced left, saw the pileup—and no Suburban. He’d left it behind. It was massive and ungainly and top-heavy, and a sharp turn might tip it over.

  Meanwhile, Danny took advantage of the crucial few seconds of lead time to hang a left, once he was sure he was out of the Suburban’s sight. He’d entered a short road with two houses on either side that ended in a T. There he took a right. The houses here were small, pristine brick buildings, all the lawns neatly mowed. He went to the end of the next street and took the first left and immediately realized he’d entered a cul-de-sac. Not good. He didn’t want to get stuck. So he pulled into the first driveway he came to. A pink tricycle sat in the driveway, silver fringe hanging from its handlebars. A brightly colored play structure on a postage-stamp-size lawn. Someone pulled back the curtain in the front window.

  He backed out down the street and went on to the next one.

  He was on a main thoroughfare now, much more heavily trafficked. A jeweler, a travel agency, a RadioShack, a Chinese restaurant. Two more blocks and he’d hit Route 60, which would take him straight to Medford. He glanced at the rearview—

  And his heart sank. There, turning onto the street, was a black Suburban. Gritting his teeth, Danny sped up and swung around into a narrow alley next to the Chinese restaurant. On the left side was a Dumpster, heaped with black trash bags. He cut the wheel and pulled up just past it, the Honda right up against the brick side wall.

  Had they seen him make the turn? Would they be able to make out the car from the road? He’d pulled into a blind alley, a dead end. All he could do now was wait. Wait, and hope. He was fairly certain he couldn’t be seen from the street. He looked in the rearview mirror, watched and waited.

  He was still holding his breath a minute later, when the Suburban came into view. It moved slowly, the sun glinting off its shiny black hood. Moving slowly enough that he could make out the crew cut driver, now wearing mirrored sunglasses.

  No question about it. It was them.

  He breathed out slowly. Took another breath. Waited.

  The Suburban kept going. Drove right past.

  He waited a few minutes longer, just to be sure. A scuffed steel door in the alley came open suddenly and a tired-looking middle-aged Chinese man emerged, jolting Danny. He spun, his fists up—and then he saw the man hurl a trash bag up into the Dumpster, and Danny started laughing, uncontrollably, with relief. The guy glanced in Danny’s direction, shook his head, and went back inside, slamming the door behind him.

  Five minutes later, Danny pulled back onto the street.

  Half an hour later, he arrived in Medford.

  He pulled into a large dusty lot surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with coils of razor wire. Signs on the fence said NO TRESPASSERS and KEEP OUT. A sign at the entrance gate said MEDFORD REGIONAL CONSTRUCTION & ENGINEERING/EMPLOYEES ONLY/TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

  The gate was open.

  79

  Medford Regional was one of several Massachusetts companies owned by the Sinaloa cartel, with Tom Galvin the titular CEO. Danny wasn’t sure whether the cartel owned them for any reason other than that Galvin considered them a good investment. The company’s officials, according to Galvin, had no idea who their real owner was.

  But they knew the name of their boss on paper and were happy to accommodate.

  He drove through the gate and stopped at a construction trailer.

  Danny got out and climbed up a few steps into the trailer. On the trailer’s front door were a US Marine decal and a Boston Strong ribbon sticker. He opened the door and said, “I’m looking for Paul.”

  The guy at the desk stood up. He was a short, heavily muscled guy with full-sleeve tattoos and thick steel-framed glasses.

  “I’m Paul,” the guy said, glowering.

  “I’m Dan.”

  The guy suddenly turned friendly. He stuck out his hand.

  “The orders I got—this can’t be right.”

  Danny had expected such a reaction. “It’s right,” he said.

  “You got an end-user certificate?”

  Danny pulled out the document that had been e-mailed to Galvin and handed it over. Paul looked at it briefly, then looked up. He shrugged. “Long as my ass is covered, I’m good. Where’s all this stuff going?”

  Danny pointed to his Honda.

  “You’re gonna want to pull up to the last trailer. But first, you got a bunch of forms to sign.”

  80

  Though it had been several hours since Dr. Mendoza had learned the identity of the DEA’s confidential source, he was still astonished by the revelation.

  Thomas Galvin, one of the cartel’s American employees, had turned.

  Dr. Mendoza would never have expected el dedo, the snitch, to be someone at that high a level. Galvin had become immensely rich through his dealings with Sinaloa. He wouldn’t have terminated the business relationship unless he’d somehow been compromised. The DEA must have obtained actionable intelligence on the man. There was no other plausible explanation.

  But the explanation was far less important than the solution.

  The cartel wanted him silenced. For that, of course, they didn’t need Dr. Mendoza. A simple hit team would do. The cartel could dispatch a unit comprising local talent, to take Galvin with brute force, neutralizing his minimal private security presence. There were, after all, only four security officers standing guard at Galvin’s estate: three patrolling on foot and a fourth in a vehicle circumnavigating the perimeter.

  Easy.

  But the cartel also needed Galvin’s full cooperation. They needed access to the accounts he ran for them. They needed a full transfer of owner documents. To kill the man would only create vast bureaucratic problems for the cartel. Galvin had to be questioned before he was killed.

  Dr. Mendoza sat in his rented Nissan Maxima and watched the front gates of Galvin’s property and thought for a moment.

  Galvin had barricaded himself and his family inside his estate. But that was merely a desperation move. Dr. Mendoza had compiled a hasty psychological profile of the family based on little more than credit reports, financial statements, and a few cartel files. Galvin’s wife was a regular shopper with a regular, if small, social life. She was likely to insist on leaving the property soon. But she was the child of one of the cartel’s founders, so she was off-limits. Galvin had a school-age daughter who didn’t h
ave a driver’s license. She would not be leaving the premises on her own.

  But he was confident that Galvin himself would be leaving, and soon.

  And then he would set to work.

  Galvin would crack, as absolutely everyone Dr. Mendoza worked with cracked, without exception. He would volunteer passwords and codes and so forth. No doubt about that.

  What worried Dr. Mendoza was not Thomas Galvin. It was the others who were trying to get to him first.

  The former DEA agents.

  A few quick calls had established that they had been hired by the Zeta cartel. Los Zetas had been trying for quite some time now to penetrate Sinaloa’s security, and they had failed. Then they found a soft spot: Thomas Galvin.

  If they captured Galvin, they would capture, in one swift move, the ownership of billions of dollars of invested capital. Seize it from Sinaloa. It would be a catastrophic loss, and it had to be stopped.

  A black Chevrolet Suburban had been circling the perimeter of Galvin’s estate for the better part of an hour. They were hoping, as Dr. Mendoza was, to grab Thomas Galvin.

  But they had to be stopped. Dr. Mendoza had to get to Galvin before they did. That was crucial.

  Suddenly came the unmistakable sound of a police siren. A squad car roared up the road half a minute later, all of its lights flashing.

  Was it possible . . . ?

  Yes. The police cruiser pulled right up to Galvin’s front gates. Dr. Mendoza could see through his binoculars one of the security guards checking the policemen’s badges and then waving it through.

  The police car was entering Galvin’s property for some reason. Was Galvin about to be arrested by local law enforcement? The sirens wouldn’t have been activated for a routine visit.

  Something very strange was going on.

  After the police cruiser had been on Galvin’s property for almost five minutes, Dr. Mendoza heard the sirens again, and the squad car came rocketing back out through the gates.

  In the backseat, a passenger was visibly handcuffed.

  It was Thomas Galvin. He had just been arrested.

  81

  Sixty-five minutes later, the Honda was hurtling down Atlantic Avenue, past the North End, along the Boston waterfront.

  Danny turned into a narrow lane posted with a NO VEHICLES ALLOWED sign, slowed to ease over the speed bumps, and pulled up to a gate labeled BOSTON YACHT HAVEN.

  The gate was unlocked. The marina was open twenty-four hours, but it was slow this time of year. Most of the slips were unoccupied. There were a couple of cars in the front lot, probably belonging to marina staff. A guy in a short-sleeved blue polo shirt and holding a clipboard came out and circled around to the side of the clubhouse, looking preoccupied.

  A few hundred feet away, Atlantic Avenue snarled and rumbled with rush-hour traffic, but here on the waterfront, it was oddly tranquil. A pair of seagulls soared and coasted on the breeze and then one of them dove suddenly to the surface of the water when it spied something.

  Tom Galvin’s beloved boat, El Antojo, was moored on the right side of the clubhouse, where the water was deepest. It glinted in the late-afternoon sun. It was truly a beautiful ship. Danny could understand why Galvin loved it so. It was the biggest boat in the marina for now, but not for long. When the summer season began, there would be far bigger, more ostentatious boats.

  Danny had downloaded the blueprints of the Ferretti Navetta 26 Crescendo, Galvin’s boat, and knew it was eighty-six feet long and almost twenty-three feet across. He knew it had twin MAN V8-900 engines and a fuel tank that held more than three thousand gallons.

  He knew it could go as far as the Lesser Antilles without stopping to refuel.

  Danny looked at his watch. He had very little time before Galvin arrived. Half an hour at most.

  With Galvin’s key card, he unlocked the gate that led to the gangplank down to his boat.

  Most of the wiring had been set up for him by Paul, the foreman at Medford Regional, back at the yard. Paul was a master electrician. It didn’t look particularly complicated. Now all Danny had to do, really, was put things in the right places.

  Everything else was outside of their control. It would happen, or it wouldn’t.

  It took him no more than twenty minutes. The sun was orange and plump on the horizon as it set. The sky was the purple of a bruise. The outside lights were coming on.

  He heard the squall of a police siren approach, nearby. He cocked his head. The siren was getting louder and closer. He stepped off the boat and went up the gangway, through the locked gate, and around to the side of the yacht club.

  The police car had pulled into the lot, its lights and siren now off. Leon Chisholm trundled out slowly, favoring one leg. He looked around at the clubhouse, at the water, and then he opened the back door.

  Tom Galvin emerged in jeans and sneakers and a gray sweatshirt. His eyes were bleary and bloodshot. He looked like he’d been crying.

  82

  “Yes, sergeant, that’s correct,” Dr. Mendoza said. “The name is Thomas Galvin. I’ll wait.”

  He had taken note of the squad car number as it pulled away from Galvin’s house. Only later had it struck him that it was a Boston Police car, not a Weston one. On his laptop in the front seat of the rental with its wireless connection, he had Googled the district number from the car and was startled to learn that District C-11 was Dorchester, part of the city of Boston.

  Why was a police car from Dorchester arresting someone who lived in the suburb of Weston, Massachusetts? It didn’t seem logical.

  The desk sergeant from District C-11 came back on the line. “No paperwork here on a Thomas Galvin. What’s your name again?”

  “John Ryan,” he said. “With Nutter McClennen.”

  The sergeant probably didn’t even know that was the name of a real Boston law firm. He certainly didn’t ask Dr. Mendoza to prove he really was a defense attorney representing Thomas Galvin.

  “Look, Mr., uh, Ryan, I got no Thomas Galvin brought in at all today at any time. Not for questioning, not booked for arrest, nothing.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Very strange. My apologies.” If Galvin had been taken into custody, for some reason, by a police car from Dorchester, he’d have been booked at the Dorchester station house. How could they have no record of him?

  Unless . . .

  “Oh, one other thing, Sergeant. Mr. Galvin gave me the number of the squad car. It was number 536. That’s a District C-11 car, is it not?”

  The desk sergeant sighed loudly. “Hold on.”

  He came back on the line two minutes later. “You got that wrong, too. That car’s out for repair. Hasn’t been in service for almost a week.”

  83

  Tom Galvin set two duffle bags down on the pavement.

  “Thank you, Leon,” Danny said.

  “It was worth it just to find out my old uniform still fits,” Leon said. “Now, if you gentlemen are all set, I need to get this back to the garage before someone reports it missing. Then I got to head over to school. I’m working tonight—College Night, you know.”

  “Sorry we’re not going to be there,” Galvin said.

  Danny wondered whether Galvin had ever had occasion to speak to Leon before today. Maybe not. But not from snobbery, he knew. They were just two circles that never overlapped.

  “Your family gonna be all right?” Leon asked Galvin. “Or are those Russians after just you?”

  “Just me,” Galvin said. He took out his wallet.

  Leon shook his head. “No need. Any friend of Danny’s is a friend of mine.”

  Galvin pulled out a wad of bills and pressed them into Leon’s palm. Leon looked embarrassed, but he took the money. “You let me know if I can do anything else.” He shook Galvin’s hand, then Danny’s.

  When Leon Chisholm had left, Galvin handed Danny one of
the duffle bags. Danny zipped it open and quickly checked its contents. “Shoes?” he asked.

  “Boat shoes. Sperry Top-Siders.”

  “Sure, why not. Underwear?”

  “Check.”

  “I need a wristwatch, too,” Danny said.

  “All I have is what I’m wearing. I left the other watches . . . behind. At home.”

  “I’ll need it.”

  “Christ,” Galvin said. He unbuckled the brown leather strap of his Patek Philippe and gave it to Danny. “This wasn’t cheap. How’m I supposed to check the time?” He seemed to be complaining almost by rote. His heart wasn’t in it. He looked distracted, tentative. As if he’d been hollowed out.

  “Use your BlackBerry,” Danny said. “I’m sorry. Now we need to check cell phone reception.”

  “I get a full five bars here.”

  “Out on the water,” Danny said. “I need to know how far out you can go and still get at least two bars of signal. You need to be making and receiving calls on your BlackBerry when you’re offshore.”

  Galvin nodded. “I’ll take her out into the harbor. I got nothing to do but wait.”

  Danny looked at his own watch again. “Not much longer,” he said. “You need to get on the boat. You shouldn’t be standing around here. Where’s all your stuff?”

  Galvin gestured with a toss of his head. Just the one remaining duffle bag.

  “Is this it?” Danny said. “All your worldly possessions?”

  “It’s an interesting exercise, packing for the rest of your life. How much do you really need? What do you absolutely have to have with you? And you realize pretty quickly that you can’t pack everything, so instead you pack almost nothing. You can’t pack for years, so you pack for a few days.”