The Catch (8 page)

Surrounded by a small team hard at work dismantling the contents of Marano’s apartment, Chapman cast a glance at Joe Gunther and his female sidekick, wondering if they were going to prove a help or a hindrance with his ambitions. Right now, given that they had started the ball rolling toward this mess, he wasn’t optimistic, even while he was paradoxically grateful to them for flushing Grega out of the bushes.

He had another problem—time was short. There was going to be a critique of the evening’s outcome, with everyone spending most of the night at the office, being scrutinized by people in suits who hadn’t even been at the scene. Chapman wanted at least a vague idea of what Marano and Grega had been up to before he was forced to stop dead in his tracks and cool his heels for this bureaucratic circus.

“How did you get Grega’s name in the first place?”

Chapman blinked at the still unfamiliar voice. Gunther was looking right at him.

“What? I don’t … He was just mentioned in passing, at least initially.” Chapman scratched his head, realizing he’d been caught daydreaming. “Let’s see,” he began again, looking away from the Vermonter and gazing at his colleagues, who were tagging, labeling, and photographing almost everything in sight.

“His name came up a couple of months ago. A snitch of mine was going on and on about how the Hell’s Angels were losing their grip in Canada, and how other players were starting to horn in on their territory. He mentioned how his pal, Luis Grega, was making serious money running product across the border as a result.”

“He was a mule?”

Chapman nodded, thinking back. “At first. Later, the same guy told me he was violent, upwardly mobile, and ambitious to make a dent in the U.S. That moved him up in my ranking, because he’d been caught here illegally once already and tossed out. If he was back and turning nasty, I wanted to grab him—and now had double grounds to do so.”

Gunther asked, “Did your snitch say who he was working for?”

“No. It was pretty vague—mostly generalities. I remember him saying, too, that another trend was the growth of drug use in the boonies, and how cities were losing their appeal as the only places to make money. He was very upbeat and used Grega as an example of all boats getting a lift from a good tide.”

Chapman read the look in the older detective’s eyes and added, “Needless to say, I’ll get back in touch with him and squeeze him harder.”

One of the search team approached them with a plastic evidence bag. “Found a cell,” he said.

Chapman’s expression lightened. “Great. The lab should make some hay out of that. You finding anything else?”

The man made an unhappy face. “Be nice if these people kept diaries. Mostly, it’s clothes and trash and drugs. A lot of cash lying around. There are some scraps of paper with scribbling on them—we’ll have to take a closer look at that. See if any of it takes us anywhere. Otherwise, not much. I’m guessing this wasn’t the only place they called home.”

The technician held the cell phone up to the light so that Chapman could better see it, adding, “By the way, this is a throwaway, so don’t get your hopes too high. Some of these guys use ’em for a single call before ditching ’em.”

“I know, Larry,” Chapman said, distracted and irritable. “Just let me know what you find.”

“If anything,” Larry offered.

“Right.” Chapman turned away, pretending to look out the apartment’s open door. “If anything.”

Larry faded away. Chapman gave Gunther a half smile and murmured, “Don’t like him much; not sure why. He never gives me good news.”

“It’s early yet,” Joe suggested hopefully.

Chapman reflected on his looming bureaucratic headaches and muttered, “Not early enough.”

He suddenly faced Gunther full on, his expression much lightened. “They’ve got things under control here. What d’you say about chasing that snitch down I told you about? He
might
have more to say about Grega. Where’s your sidekick?”

Gunther crossed to the doorway leading into the apartment’s one bedroom and called out to Sam, who was watching the search there. She appeared at the door. “Boss?”

“Field trip,” he told her, and pointed at Chapman, who was already heading into the hallway.

The three of them went downstairs, to the sidewalk and the hum of the surrounding city.

“We’re going to see a man about a man,” Joe murmured to Sam as they followed Chapman to an unmarked agency car.

Gunther let Sam ride up front, mostly so he could stretch out in the back, wedge his shoulder into the corner, and shut his eyes, if only briefly. His days of being able to stay up around the clock with impunity were long gone.

Chapman drove around for about half an hour, occasionally working his phone in an attempt to locate
his target, before finally parking opposite a bodega in a neighborhood Joe didn’t bother trying to identify.

“We have to sit here for a couple of minutes,” Chapman explained. “So he can see us. Then we’ll pick him up around back.”

“This guy reliable?” Sam asked.

“Has been so far. I’ve been using him for maybe three years without a hitch. We started out because I had him by the balls, but he finally worked a deal with the prosecutor. So for the past half year or so, he’s been giving me stuff for free. Claims he owes me for helping him out—guess it’s all in how you look at something.”

Chapman put the car back into gear and drove around to the rear of the building, into a small, fetid courtyard lined by blank brick walls and a row of evil-smelling garbage cans. He hadn’t come to a full stop before a shadow appeared at the window across from where Joe was sitting, and the door flew open to admit a wiry, dark-haired man with wide, unnaturally energetic eyes, with which he immediately scanned the car’s interior in a panic.

“Who’re these guys, Lenny? I don’t know these guys.”

Chapman twisted around and patted him on the knee. “Easy, Flaco. I told you about them. They’re out-of-town cops, from Vermont. They only want some information. I didn’t even give them your name.”

Flaco had to absorb that for a few seconds, staring at the floor of the car before finally nodding. “I heard about Vermont,” he said.

Joe wasn’t sure what to do with that but recognized it as a peace offering.

“Nice place,” he said. “You ought to come visit.”

Flaco cast him a quizzical glance before refocusing on the floor, as if doing so would make him invisible. “Thanks.”

“We can drive or we can sit here,” Chapman stated. “Your choice.”

Flaco worked himself into the corner, as Joe had done earlier, but slid way down in the seat, so he couldn’t be seen from the street. “Drive.”

Chapman backed out of the alley and headed on a random drive around the area.

“What d’ya want?” Flaco asked from his corner, addressing the back of Chapman’s head.

“Tell us about Luis Grega,” Chapman requested.

Flaco’s mouth opened. “Grega? Who gives a fuck about Grega?”

“Gee,” Chapman reacted, yielding a little to the night’s pressures. “Maybe
we
do, Flaco. You mentioned him last time we talked, remember?”

Flaco kept looking from one of them to the other, reminding Joe of a dog trying to decide who might hit him first. “Lucky prick—that’s about it.”

“Making a lot of good money?” Joe prompted him.

Flaco eyeballed him carefully, weighing the cost of addressing anyone besides Chapman. “Yeah,” he finally conceded, adding, “Till lately.”

“Doing what?” Joe continued.

That loosened him up a little. “What you think? Running dope. That’s what he does. Shit, that’s what we all do.”

“Who for?”

“Whoever, man. It’s a complicated world. Lotta people work for a lotta other people.”

Joe heard Sammie let out an irritated sigh. But he kept at it. “We heard he was taking stuff over the border from Canada. But you’re right. Sounds pretty sophisticated. Probably more than you could know about. Which is fine, of course.”

Flaco straightened with outrage, momentarily uncaring who might see him from outside. “I know plenty. I didn’t say I didn’t know. I said it was complicated. Maybe I was making it simple for you.”

“Easy, Flaco,” Chapman cautioned quietly. “I could stop driving right here and let you out.”

The skinny man looked around suddenly and slumped back down in his seat, suitably abashed. “I’m not stupid. I done good work for you, haven’t I?”

“Always,” Chapman soothed him.

Joe made sure Flaco could see him shrug nonchalantly. “Sounded like you were unsure, is all,” he told him, “since you didn’t answer the question.”

Their guest pursed his lips, struggling with some inner debate. “What I meant is that a bunch of things have just changed, so nobody’s real sure what’s goin’ on.”

“Okay,” Joe conceded, to help him save face. “Guess I got that wrong. So, what
is
going on?”

“There was a killing. Got everybody running around covering their butts.”

Joe nodded. “Yeah. We know about that. Kind of put Grega in the hot seat.”

Flaco paused in his continual scanning of their three faces to stare directly at Joe. “Grega? What’s he got to do with it?”

Joe hesitated, rethinking. “Wasn’t he pretty close to that shooting?”

“Nah. He was down here, after his last run.”

Sammie spoke up for the first time. “Where was this killing?”

“Shit, I don’t know those places. They got all sorts of funny names. It was somewhere up there.”

“Where?” she repeated, trying to sound conversational.

He looked at her as if she needed therapy. “Maine. Where else?”

There was dead silence in the car as all three cops struggled to contain their surprise.

“Right,” Chapman volunteered at last, retrieving the relevant tidbit from a different part of his brain. “Rockland.”

Flaco brightened. “Yeah—that was it. What kind of name is that, right?”

“But still,” Gunther persisted, “Grega was directly affected. You said he’d been making good money till lately. The Maine shooting shut him down?”

“Shut everybody down in that network—that’s what I been telling you.”

“Meaning it’s all connected,” Sam almost blurted out, “Canada, Vermont, and now Maine.”

He stared at her for a moment. “Whatever. I don’t know about Vermont, like I said.”

“Let’s back up a little,” Joe suggested. “When Grega was making money, before anybody got killed, what was the setup?”

“Standard deal,” Flaco answered. “He’d get a call, drive up to Canada, get the stuff, and drive it back.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Whatever’s hot: coke, weed, pills, meth—you name it.”

“How?”

“How did he do it? Depends. The weed’s bulky, so that takes more doin’. A lot of the other junk, you can body pack or hide in your car or somethin’. When Customs started getting wise to the body packing, we went to usin’ girls. And when they tumbled to that, it was pregnant girls, since they didn’t want to feel them up or x-ray them.” He laughed. “You can shove a lot of shit up there—know what I mean?”

There was no response. Flaco paid no attention. “Course, that’s only if you use the official crossing points. There’s the whole border, too—lakes, rivers, Indian reservations. I heard of those model airplanes being used, too. You know, remote control? It’s not that hard, once you get the hang of it. All that crap about the border being monitored twenty-four/seven and a hundred percent is bullshit. They got a few cops running a crapshoot.”

Gunther kept pushing. “But it all came out of Canada, regardless of what it was.”

Flaco shook his head pityingly. “I been talking to myself here.”

“Who’s the supplier, then?”

His expression changed to something possibly more self-protective. “I don’t know.”

“You implied you’ve done this, too,” Joe said. “Who did you see up there?”

Flaco glanced at Lenny Chapman.

“Tell him,” Chapman urged. “I’m not here to jam you up. You and I work together, remember?”

But it was a nonstarter. “I don’t know,” Flaco said. “Honest. I don’t think anybody knows. I did it a couple of times. Luis did it a bunch. Every time, all we got was the product. We’d be told to show up wherever and pick it up, and it would be there. Never saw nobody. I always figured we were watched, but maybe that was just the creeps, you know?”

“You knew Grega did it,” Sammie asked. “You got other names?”

Flaco was already waving that away with his hand. “Nah, nah. Luis brought me in ’cause he couldn’t do it a couple of times. I was like a subcontractor. I only knew him, and he said we might get in trouble even then.”

“Meaning he knew more than you did,” Joe said.

“Well,
yeah.
Plus, Grega’s a bad man, on the move. Takes no shit. Rumor is, he’s killed people, but what do I know?” Flaco finished rhetorically.

Joe exchanged quick looks with his colleagues. Chapman took that as an opportunity to aim the car toward a darkened parking lot under an elevated railway, speaking as he drove. “Right, Flaco, what do you know?”

He stopped the car and twisted around in his seat. “You been a big help, man.” He reached back and shook hands. “Take it easy.”

Flaco was nonplussed. “That it?”

“That’s it,” Chapman told him.

The skinny man hesitantly got out of the backseat, holding the door open for a moment to ask, “What was this about?”

“Jimmy Marano was shot to death tonight,” Chapman said. “And Grega’s on the run. You might want to watch your back. Somebody’s shaking things up, and since I found you in under an hour, you might want to figure out who’s calling the shots now, or they might find you next.”

Chapman started rolling away before Flaco had even fully closed the door.

Joe leaned over and finished shutting it. “I’m with him, Lenny,” he admitted. “What exactly did we get out of that?”

Chapman laughed as he picked up speed and reached for his cell phone. “I hope we got a rabbit to run,” he said. “And with any luck, we should be able to track him as he goes. In Flaco’s case, it’s less
what
he knows and more
who
that counts. This isn’t the first time I’ve used him to lead me to someone else.”

He began giving instructions on the phone, ordering a tail on Flaco, “as tight as a tick.” He turned to his guests afterward. “Flaco’s never happier than when he shares bad news with someone. We’ve just got to hope that someone’s connected to the fire we just lit under him.”