Gatekeeper (16 page)

Dancer put the phone back into his pocket. The exit was coming into view. Sam let out an inward sigh. She had video surveillance arranged at the pay phone so they could document this buy from start to finish. She could have used the cell. It wouldn't have made any difference. All the buyers that were to show up were either cops or paid informants. But again, she'd been triggered by Bill's attitude and thought it a good time to take him down a peg.

"Suit yourself," he said, without the resentment she'd expected.

He aimed the car at the downhill exit and swept onto Canal.

"Right there," she pointed at a battered phone under a nearby streetlight, the better to photograph by.

But Dancer kept up his speed. "Change of plans," he said, oozing the pleasure of someone springing a surprise. "I got a deal going that'll look like Fred and Ginger all over again. We'll be so hot, Rivera'll shit his pants."

He drove past the gas station and turned right on Fairground Road.

"Pull over, Bill," Sam yelled at him. "Don't you screw around with this. This is our shot, goddammit. Pull over." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Manuel sit forward in his seat, getting ready to act if necessary.

Bill pushed Sam's hands away from the steering wheel. "I know it's our shot, stupid. That's why I'm doing it. I'm the contact guy, remember? This is my job. I'm not going to screw around selling to a couple of needle freaks in town after town all over southern Vermont. That's stupid. Score once, score big, and blow Rivera's socks off. He won't even be on his second sitcom before we drop a bag of cash at his feet in an hour and a half."

He laughed and glanced at her. "Face it, Greta, you got the brains for some of this—I give you that. But I know this turf. I set it up while you were jerking around with Johnny boy, or whatever the hell you were doing up there." He patted his pocket. "Cell phones work just fine, and nobody is listening in. Trust me."

Unfortunately, she did. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that any agency in Vermont had the cash, the equipment, or even the know-how to grab a cell phone signal and do anything more than triangulate its source. Their first buy on their first outing on her first detail as an undercover was just about to go wild.

* * * * *

"Joe," the voice crackled in his earphone, "they just blew by the pay phone. Gatekeeper didn't look happy."

Joe straightened in his seat and pressed the earphone to his ear. He was sitting in a van parked nearby. They'd agreed to use Gatekeeper instead of Sam's name just to be safe. "Define unhappy."

The voice belonged to Lester Spinney. He and Joe were the only ones on this detail, testing the waters and lending Sam moral support. Traditionally, a deep undercover is on his or her own, except for checking in with control on a regular, preset basis. This time, however, because the operation had come together so fast, Joe had asked Rick McCall if he could baby-sit Sam's first outing. McCall had agreed but had limited them to Brattleboro only, not wanting to risk exposure.

"Just that. Dancer's at the wheel and he turned right onto Fairground. I think she's just pissed off. There's a third rider, by the way. Somebody in the back seat. I'm following them now."

Joe slid in behind the wheel of the surveillance van and pulled into traffic, driving down Canal toward South Main, which eventually looped around to meet up with Fairground Road. That way, he and Spinney were coming in from opposite directions.

"You get a look at the third rider?" he asked.

Spinney's voice was calm, as always, almost conversational, despite everyone being off the game plan by now. That was one thing about Spinney. Gunther had no idea what had been distracting him lately, but in a crunch, the man was as steady as a tree trunk.

"Nope. Just a shadow. We've passed the high school and the town garage, now heading toward the far end of South Main."

This was the same street where Henry Jordan had first spotted Roger Novelle—a magnet for this kind of activity. "I'm coming in from the far end," Gunther told him. "Don't crowd them."

* * *

Bill Dancer pulled over to the side of the street and extracted his cell phone again. Sam watched him, torn over what to do. He did have contacts. It was possible he had set something up that would reflect well on them. Her plan had been to deal to people she and Joe had set up all down the line, hoping both to keep the heroin out of circulation and to cover themselves legally—even deep undercover, she was still a cop and could not sell drugs personally. But this was now Bill's play. She was off the hook in the eyes of the law.

Maybe this could work.

"Hey, Bobby," Bill was saying into the phone. "How's it hanging, bro? I got the stuff if you got the time."

He laughed at whatever response he heard. "No problem, dude. Be there in five. Start countin' out the money."

Dancer put the car back into gear and resumed driving down South Main, but slowly, his eyes on the house numbers. "There it is," he said finally, pulling over, killing the engine, and, Sam noticed, leaving the key in the ignition. "Everybody out."

Sam and Manuel stepped onto the sidewalk and looked around as Bill popped open the car trunk and retrieved Rivera's bag. South Main was an interesting mix of homes and apartments, some middle-class, many far less fortunate. This entire part of town was largely overlooked by Brattleboro's citizenry, acknowledged only when one of the street's several bordering cemeteries was put to use or when a high-profile crime was committed here. But unlike many low-income neighborhoods, this one was also low-profile—the signs and symptoms of its status were easily missed by motorists who used South Main as a shortcut to elsewhere. There were no boarded up or gutted buildings, no gangs of kids loitering around spruced up BMWs. This wasn't Holyoke. It wasn't a hot spot. It was a remote way station on misery's course into the hinterland. Too many of the people who lived here were either victims or transient opportunists, with no more plans of empire building than making enough bucks to see them through the day—or buying enough dope to minimize the pain.

With a bright, cocky smile, Bill Dancer strode by them with the paper bag, heading toward a ramshackle, two-story building with a sagging front porch. "Let's go make some money."

For the first time, Sam and Manuel shared a connection, glancing at each other, he with raised eyebrows, she with a shrug, followed by simultaneous smiles, before they swung in behind the subject of their nervous amusement and climbed the steps to the porch.

They were met at the door by a grim-faced bearded man with his hand under his shirt and his eyes on the street behind them. He placed his free hand flat against Bill's chest and stopped him at the threshold.

"Not so fast."

Bill sounded incredulous. "I just called, for Christ's sake. Lighten up. Bob said to come ahead."

"And now you stop," the man said, "until I tell you different."

He looked at the other two. "You stay outside while I check him out."

He grabbed Bill by the shirtfront and began dragging him inside.

"The bag," Sam quickly said.

Catching her meaning, Bill back-passed the bag to her as he vanished through the door.

In the few moments it took the bearded man to check Bill for weapons or wires, Sam whispered to Manuel, "I don't like this divide-and-conquer shit. If anything goes wrong, we grab the product and run."

Manuel spoke for the first time since they'd met. "What about your friend?"

"If this goes wrong, he's on his own. I got bigger fish to fry than that loser."

The door reopened and the doorman motioned to her. Sam handed the bag to Manuel. "See ya."

The bearded man pulled her by the arm into a small room off the entryway and pushed her up against the wall, holding her there with one hand hard against her breast.

"You're cute."

She smiled back. "You're not. You want to get this done?"

His expression froze. He extracted a .40 Glock from under his shirt and shoved it painfully into her stomach, making her gasp for air. "I had a wife with a mouth like yours. You don't wanna know what happened to her."

Sam spoke through gritted teeth. "She probably got bored."

The bouncer's search was thorough and painful, leaving Sam at the end of it walking bowlegged for several minutes. He pushed her by the scruff of the neck into an adjacent room, where Bill was waiting.

"You okay?" he asked.

She glared at him. "You are a total moron. You know we're going to get ripped off here, right?"

His voice climbed to a plaintive pitch. "That's not true. Bob and me go back."

She held up her hand. "Shut up." She moved to the door she'd just entered by, paused a moment to listen, and then walked through fast and low. Ahead of her, his gun to Manuel's head, the bouncer had just torn the bag from his hand. At the sound of her entrance, he turned and began swinging the gun in her direction. He was too late. Crossing to him quickly, Sam grabbed a lamp off a small table and in the same gesture smacked him across the side of the head, breaking the lamp, exploding the bulb in a bright flash of light, and bringing him to his knees. She kicked the gun from his hand and finished him off with a chop to the side of the neck. He fell over without a sound.

Manuel stared at her openmouthed, as did Bill, entering behind her.

Through the open door to the entryway, they heard footsteps descending the stairs. A fat man in a stained T-shirt and electric-green sneakers appeared, looking shocked and apologetic in the remaining light from a dim lamp in the far corner. He spread his hands wide to his sides, looking at Dancer and shaking his head. "Jesus, Bill, what the hell happened? That crazy bastard didn't try to rip you off, did he?"

Bill was still staring at everyone wide-eyed and mute. "Bob," he finally said, "what's the deal? You and me go back—"

But the fat man interrupted him, approaching and patting his arm with one meaty paw. "No, no, Bill. I'm real sorry. The guy's a maniac. High most of the time. Crazy bastard. I shouldn't have him around."

As if to prove the point, he took a halfhearted but solid shot at the downed man's head with his sneaker and then draped his arm around Bill's shoulders. "I'm real sorry. Come on up, all of you. I gotta make this up."

Bill paused long enough to stoop and retrieve the paper bag. After he and their host had turned their backs to address the staircase in the cramped entryway, Sam picked up the bearded man's abandoned gun, sticking it discreetly into her waistband at the small of her back. Just before she fell into step behind Bill, who was following Bob upstairs, she leaned in close to Manuel, who started slightly in surprise, and murmured, "If I yell go, you go. No questions."

* * *

"Les, update, goddammit." Joe had seen the flash of the lamp being broken over the doorman's head, without knowing the details.

Spinney hesitated, still squinting through a pair of binoculars from his position closer by. "Sorry, boss. Had to figure it out first. I'm still not sure, but Sa—shit—Gatekeeper may have thrown a lamp at somebody, maybe the guy who met them at the door. I saw some shadows when the light flashed. Looked like she was still standing."

"What're they doing now?"

"It's quiet. I can see movement at the windows upstairs, but all the shades are drawn."

Gunther swore silently to himself. This whole operation was falling apart. He should never have let her do this.

"Call for backup, Les. Have them stand by at first, but let's you and me get ready to move. I don't like this at all."

* * *

Sounding like a herd of cattle, they all stomped up the narrow wooden stairs, each person's eyes on the heels of the one before him. Except for Sam, who was trying her best to peer around the bulk of the big man leading the parade who was still talking in a loud voice about how hard it was to get good help.

His voice was too loud, she thought, and his mood too falsely upbeat given what had just transpired. And she didn't like the fact that while they were climbing under a single light high above, the top of the stairs and the landing doubling back above them were cloaked in darkness.

Surreptitiously, she reached back and wrapped her hand around the gun butt.

Which is when she heard a small metallic click—as with a safety being released—above and over her right shoulder, where the landing gave way to a shadowed door on the second floor. She spun around, her gun out, just in time to see the glimmer of the overhead light on the black metal of a semiautomatic.

There was an enormous flash as the shooter fired at her, thrown off by her sudden move. She fired back, heard a yell, and spun around to snatch the paper bag from Bill Dancer's hand as everyone began shouting at once.

"Go, go, go, go," she screamed at Manuel, pushing at him and kicking him to get him going back down the stairs. Another shot rang out and a piece of plaster snapped next to her head. She paused a moment, fired four times wildly overhead, and heard several people diving for cover.

She and Manuel stumbled, jumped, and half fell down the staircase as more gunshots flashed like lightning, punctuated by a bedlam of voices.

Incredulous they were still alive and unhurt, Sam propelled Manuel out the door, yelling, "To the car, to the car," just as she saw Lester Spinney dive out of sight behind a bush near the front walkway.

But Manuel was too stunned to notice much of anything. He staggered toward Bill's car as instructed, looking over his shoulder at her and the house beyond, clearly expecting a small army to burst out in hot pursuit.

"Get in," she ordered, circling the hood to reach the driver's seat. She could hear sirens approaching in the distance, and as she slid behind the wheel, she caught a glimpse of Joe Gunther crouching behind a nearby parked car. Unseen by Manuel, she gave her boss a quick nod and a thumbs-up signal out the window.

She turned the key, fired up the engine, did a tight, wheel-squealing U-turn in the middle of the road, and retreated the way they'd come, heading for the interstate.