Lesser Evils Page 18

  “Don’t you try to strong-arm me. You’re in over your head.”

  “It’s your son who’s in over his head. We have fingerprints from the crime scene.”

  “Crime scene? Are you serious? Those two fags out there? Crime scene, my ass.”

  “I need to fingerprint your son.”

  “You can go to hell.”

  That evening he sat staring at the television set, watching images from the news. There was footage of a caravan of U.S. military trucks driving through a Japanese seaport, the American occupation headquarters in that country having been recently closed down. Negroes in Tuskegee, Alabama, were boycotting local stores, and there were pictures of radar dishes revolving slowly against the sky in some tundra, part of a new system of radar stations designed to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America, something called the Distant Early Warning Line.

  Warren wasn’t interested but he didn’t know what else to do with himself. He realized he was angry all the time now. In the odd moments when he wasn’t angry, he felt heavy and weary, like his limbs were made of lead. He looked at his watch. It had taken some doing, but he had arranged for a state police technician to meet Jenkins at the New England Telephone switching center with an induction device and a recorder. They were probably there at that very moment. Toward 11 P.M. he was ready to go outside and radio Jenkins with his handheld when the detective called.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not going to believe this but it looks like someone disconnected the line to the Elbow Room. I’ll take your silence to mean shock and outrage.”

  “How many people knew we were going to do this?”

  “Well, there was you, me, Dunleavy, Alvin Leach. The state police technician was clueless. We called him out of the blue.”

  “Whoever it was, they did it on short notice because I didn’t even say the word ‘wiretap’ until about eleven o’clock Friday night.”

  “Any way someone could have known enough to pull the wires before that?”

  “I don’t know. Alvin Leach made some inquiries before he started tracing the line.”

  “What kind of inquiries?”

  “He checked the billing department. He checked the records over at the switching center to see if he could find out who hooked up the lines. He asked around inside the company.”

  “So anyone who knew he was doing that could have been the one.”

  “I suppose so. But the timing is one hell of a coincidence.”

  “Someone knows what we’re doing,” Jenkins said. “And they don’t want us doing it. They’re gambling. They’re running an illegal gaming operation out of the Elbow Room. They’ve probably got money on the street, too. Bunch of guys from Boston trying out the water down here. But I found someone who will go in there for us.”

  “Who?”

  “Wilson Hayes. I worked with him in the Providence PD. He was a hot shit back in my days as a patrolman. A lot of guts, and very smooth.”

  “Can he be here tomorrow?”

  “I’ll find out.”

  “They actually went into the switching center and pulled the lines.”

  “And they did it quick, too. We’ve got ourselves a caper, lieutenant.”

  26

  Warren struggled to find what it was that made Wilson Hayes seem somehow immaterial. Sitting across from him and Jenkins in a booth at a diner, Hayes’s eyes flitted here and there, in some moments amused, in others nervous and uncertain, and in yet others hard and cold. Jenkins said that Hayes had once told him he was from Oklahoma, though at other times he had claimed other places of origin. He was a bullshit artist, Jenkins said, which suited him for the kind of work he’d done for the Providence PD and the side jobs he did as a private investigator, though he didn’t need the money—he was head of corporate security for Gillette. Warren watched him and noticed that he was reluctant to make eye contact. He had misgivings.

  Jenkins had explained what they believed was going on, and their suspicion that the Elbow Room was at the center of it.

  “They Irish?” Hayes asked.

  “Some of them.”

  “The FBI was on the Irish pretty hard not that long ago. Right after the Attanasio thing.”

  “And what happened?”

  Wilson Hayes shrugged. His eyes made a quick tour of the diner, light and dancing. “They had an investigation going and they shut it down or something. I don’t know. Wouldn’t surprise me if the Justice Department ran out of money. You know how much that Attanasio investigation cost?”

  Jenkins said, “A lot of the people we’ve connected to the Elbow Room are from the Boston area. I wonder if they’re associated with the Irish.”

  “George McCarthy is. It’s either that or he’s gone off on his own.”

  Jenkins lit a cigarette. “What do you know about McCarthy?”

  “He might work for Grady Pope. I say might. McCarthy’s an old-time gangster. He’s been around a long time. There’s some association there or was at one time.”

  Warren reacted visibly to the name Grady Pope. Hayes shot his eyes in his direction.

  “Let’s not get worked up yet,” said Hayes. “People like McCarthy are likely to pop up anywhere there’s illegal money. Doesn’t mean Grady Pope’s moved down here, too.”

  Warren asked, “Are any of the other names we gave you familiar?”

  “No. But let me get in there and see if I recognize any faces.”

  Wilson Hayes left the diner and drove off in the direction of Hyannis. He would be staying in a motel that he’d cased out ahead of time and whose name he had given only to Jenkins. He said he would call with a number where he could be reached.

  Warren and Jenkins walked to their car. As Warren got ready to put it in gear, Jenkins said, “There’s something you should know about Wilson.” Warren just looked straight ahead through the windshield, waiting.

  “He does black bag jobs for Fran Kasdan.” Jenkins watched him for a reaction. “Kasdan owns the Gillette Company.”

  “I know who he is. What else?”

  “He does things for other companies too.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Union busting, mostly. He’s been known to cross the line from time to time, though, work for the unions.”

  “Coercion?”

  “Persuasion.”

  “Coercion.”

  Jenkins threw his hands up. “Whatever word you want to use. It’s not pretty, I’ll give you that.”

  “Has he ever been charged with anything? Any connection with known criminals?”

  “Not unless you consider Fran Kasdan a criminal. He’s got some principles. But you remember that thing where the CEO of Borg-Thurman Corp. was caught with a Chinese prostitute in a motel off the Mass Turnpike?”

  Warren had to think for a moment but he recalled the photographs in the newspaper, the disheveled executive, wide-eyed and pallid as the police led him into the Watertown station, a bed, sheet falling from his bare bony shoulders. Warren also recalled the Chinese girl, who could be seen flanked by cops a short distance behind, her hair looking like a fright wig, her mouth a tiny oval as she said something to the photographer. There were rumors she wasn’t even sixteen. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “That was Wilson Hayes.”

  “Jesus.”

  “The CEO was bent on moving the electronics production down to Havana or some damn place. The union was against it and they couldn’t change his mind.”

  Warren thought of how devious it was, the choice of a Chinese hooker at the peak of the Red Scare, and thought of the glittering, dishonest eyes of the man he had just met. He thrust a thumb in the direction Hayes had driven. “That guy?”

  “What, you don’t think he’s capable?”

  “No. I’m sure he’s capable . . .
”

  “He’s on our side, lieutenant.”

  “I suppose that’s a good thing.”

  “It’s a good thing. Let’s go.”

  Doctor Hawthorne and his guests sat around the dining room table and finished the last of the red wine he had served with baked striped bass, asparagus, and new potatoes. From the open kitchen windows they could hear the revelers on Commercial Street and smell the occasional briny draft off Provincetown Harbor.

  The guests were two photographers, a painter, and a playwright. As was his habit, he had invited no one from the medical profession. The sole exception was Karl Althaus, who had come down from Boston to discuss research currently under way at Luxor Laboratories, the pharmaceutical firm for which he worked. Hawthorne had agreed to help them with their latest project, Fenchloravin, an experimental antiseizure prototype.

  Hawthorne was a peculiar host, seeming to prefer to remain apart from the conversation, the evening less a spontaneous gathering than an event he had staged so he could observe the participants. His dinners were known in the Provincetown artists’ community and were considered an experience one should have at least once (few people were invited twice). It was not only the novelty of spending an evening under the doctor’s gaze, at once probing and detached, but the fact that he was a psychiatrist, of all things, who talked about Shiva and Byron and occasionally invited his patients, who enlivened the evening with their furtive movements, their nonsequiturs and fits of staring. A local writer had said it was like finding oneself in a scene from Edgar Allan Poe.

  Toward the end of the night, Edgar appeared. It wasn’t clear whether he had been in the house all along or if he had come in from outside. He hovered around the entrance to the kitchen as the guests were preparing to leave. At one point, Hawthorne looked over to find him engaged in conversation with Karl Althaus. He made his way in their direction, but Edgar drifted away before Hawthorne was halfway across the dining room.

  That night, Hawthorne sat in the tiny room that served as his study, up later than usual because Edgar kept moving around the house. Hawthorne heard the back door open and thought he’d gone out, but then he was back in the house again; in the kitchen, the bathroom, the front parlor. Hawthorne went downstairs to find him sitting at the kitchen table in the dark. “What is it, Edgar?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I can’t sleep.”

  “Did my guests disturb you?”

  “No.”

  “I noticed you talking to Karl Althaus.”

  Edgar averted his eyes. He slowly rubbed his palms together, watching their motion. He said nothing.

  “What did you discuss?” Hawthorne asked.

  Edgar looked around the kitchen.

  “Hm?”

  “Fishing,” said Edgar.

  “There probably isn’t a subject that interests Karl Althaus less than fishing. Not even I am less interested in fishing than Karl Althaus.”

  Cleve sat there looking at the floor.

  “I advise against any more of this in the future,” Hawthorne said. He took a quick look around the kitchen, scanning the countertops, the sink, the dish towel hanging from the oven door. Before going back upstairs, he removed his car keys from the hook on the wall and put them in his pocket.

  27

  Warren went in the front doors of the town hall and stopped at the reception desk. He’d debated whether to show up in uniform for his meeting with Earl Mott, the head selectman, but in the end decided against it. He was concerned now about looking foolish for his pursuit of the burglary at Antiquitus, and he thought appearing in uniform would just make it worse. Mott was waiting for him, his elbows on the desk, touching the tips of his fingers together in a repetitive motion. “Close the door please, lieutenant,” he said.

  Mott was portly, in his mid-sixties. He had the face of an old teamster, pockmarked, blunt, void of nuance. He wore a blazer with a broad light blue plaid pattern and a white tie. He was cut of the same mold as Marvin Holland; in fact, the two were friends. Warren had heard he was crafty and treacherous but had never had the opportunity to discover whether this was true.

  Mott hocked something up out of his throat and swallowed it. “What’s going on with the Nicholas kid and this burglary? I want it done with.”

  Warren explained the situation.

  “Why did you go out there in the first place?” Mott asked.

  “Where?”

  “To Osterville.”

  There was a silence as the two men looked at each other, Mott squinting, smiling almost, as if waiting for someone to explain a punch line he’d missed.

  “We got a call. It was a burglary.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Mott wheeled around in his chair and struggled to open the window, which he accomplished after some effort. “You’ve been a cop down here how long?”

  Before Warren could speak, Mott waved off his last remark as if intending to start over. “Look,” he said, “with all respect to the uniform, et cetera, et cetera. You need to learn how to pick your battles. These fellas out on . . . Where are they?”

  “West Bay Road.”

  “Right. That’s not a battle. That’s not even a goddam tick on the radar. So I hear about you going out there for fingerprints and going after Donny Nicholas’s kid over this—what—do you have a feud going with Donny Nicholas?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what the hell are you thinking, then? People are talking about this, you know. And they want something done. You’re not going to charge Donny’s kid with burglary. You’re not doing it.”

  “I’ve got no plans to charge him. I just want to fingerprint him and interview him.”

  Mott raised his voice: “You’re not getting this, are you, Warren? Did you hear anything I said in the last twenty seconds? This thing ends now. Right now. Drop it.” He looked directly into Warren’s eyes. “You’re a good officer and we don’t want to lose you,” he said, and waited for the implication to sink in. “We’re good to our people, you know that. Now, I know you’ve got your challenge there with your son, and . . . your situation. I know all that. Raises are coming up in January. Merit increases. We get more tax revenue, good things are going to happen. And that means you, too. Because we’re a family and we take care of our family. So if one of them strays a little, we correct him, we don’t cut him off. We bring him back into the family. And we play by house rules. Now, just give Selectman Nicholas a friendly visit—he’s just down the hall—and apologize and we’ll let the whole thing blow by and get on to better things.”

  “This is wrong.”

  Mott chuckled. “Wrong. There’s nothing wrong.”

  “Nobody knows what wrong is anymore.”

  “And you do. What are you, a damn saint?” Mott’s voice had dropped its conciliatory, fatherly tone and gone harsh in an instant. “Are you going to let this go?”

  These people, Warren thought, Mott, Nicholas, and the rest of them. They were arrogant and vindictive. He considered the act: Simple burglary. Theft. The attempted sale of stolen property. If it had happened to anyone else, they’d have a court date by now. He thought of the antique dealers’ defenselessness among a people who prized civility and lawful behavior. They stole from no one and kept to themselves but they lived in a community that had turned against them. It amounted to a kind of tyranny, a collective cruelty that he had seen directed at weak children and people of little means. His own father would never have tolerated it. A procession of things passed through Warren’s mind in that moment, Nicholas, the burglary, Chief Holland, the Elbow Room, Stasiak, even the killings. He didn’t know why. He reconsidered. Maybe he wasn’t thinking straight. “I’ll go down to Selectman Nicholas’s office on my way out,” he said.

  Mott nodded his big head. “Good.”

  “I want his kid in my office by noon tomorrow.”

  When Warren got to the station, Jenkins in
tercepted him outside his office. “What the hell happened?” he said. Warren brushed past him. “Mott just called here ranting like a goddamn lunatic. The chief called too. He wants you to come over to the hospital right now. Both of ’em’s madder than hell.”

  “I’m bringing Stephen Nicholas in here tomorrow.”

  “Whoa. Hold on.”

  “He tried to sell stolen property. He was in possession of stolen property. He’s had more than a fair chance to come in and straighten this out, if he’s innocent, but he hasn’t done it, has he? Instead, I get hauled over the coals by Earl Mott. I get threatened by Donald Nicholas, who thinks the rules don’t apply to him or his kid. He’s got more authority than the law, Donny Nicholas. And we’re supposed to roll over and say, O.K., we’ll let you make the rules. You and all your friends with money and connections. You go to the front of the line. You do whatever the hell you want and it’s just too goddamn bad for everybody else.”

  Jenkins said, “Can I make a suggestion?”

  The lieutenant paced, gritting his teeth, his eyes wide.

  “Sir, leave it alone. You’re going to lose your shirt over this and for what? Some knickknacks taken off a couple of queer antique dealers?”

  Warren sat down behind his desk and started opening and closing drawers. He was breathing as if his lungs couldn’t take in enough air. He folded his hands on his desk and looked at Jenkins. “Stephen Nicholas. Here in this office by noon tomorrow or I arrest him on suspicion of burglary.”

  Warren slowed as he passed the newspaper stand in the lobby of the hospital. The killings were a constant staple now, the headlines orchestrating the tempo of hysteria: “Who Is Killing Cape Cod’s Children?” “Evil Visits a Seaside Resort.” Less imaginative editors went with the predictable trouble-in-paradise angle, which was a stretch because the victims were from working-class families and the murders committed in such unremarkable settings as to add to their squalor. Dunleavy had told him that a reporter from the New York Times had settled into a suite at the Sheraton and the murders got national television exposure recently on CBS’s nightly “Douglas Edwards with the News.”