The Dark Root (28 page)

“Jesus, Walt, I’m really grateful. I know this only worked because you pushed it.”

He laughed at the other end. “Don’t kid yourself. They’ll be dancing in the streets the day I retire. Anyhow, I thought you’d like to know. I’m generating the appropriate paperwork now, but you better call Dan and find out how their office is going to coordinate things as lead agency. Keep that in mind, by the way—if the state police don’t like you for some reason, either now or down the line, they’re higher in the pecking order than you are, and I’ll have to listen to them. So be nice.”

“Does that mean you’re running the task force personally?” I asked, reading into his choice of words.

He laughed again. “You think I’d risk putting one of my fresh young agents with you? Forget it—I have some loyalty to the flag.”

I thanked him again and hung up, finally feeling the white-hot anger born of Dennis’s death beginning to cool—if only a little. There were no guarantees this task force would end in success, but at least a failure now wouldn’t be for lack of trying. That realization alone bore an element of peace.

The Vermont State Police are headquartered on Route 2, between Montpelier and Burlington, in the village of Waterbury, about a mile from Exit 10 off Interstate 89. The most memorable detail about its location, however, is not that it’s part of one of the ugliest, antiquated state-office-building complexes I’ve ever seen, but that it shares a driveway with the state mental hospital—a geographical coincidence that has forced the VSP to put up with more than their fair share of bad jokes.

Dan Flynn came down to the locked reception area to escort me up to his miniature empire on the second floor—two rooms crammed with computers and filing cabinets, manned by Flynn and a gnomish, silent man named William Shirtsleeve—a statewide phenomenon known to everyone as “Digger.”

Digger was nearing retirement, after spending all but the last three years of his adult life as a patrolman. For decades, he’d driven the roads of Vermont, moving among the regional barracks as part of his organization’s standard rotation, but never moving up the ranks, never aspiring to, or even accepting, a single desk job.

Unmarried, rarely socializing, William Shirtsleeve had lived to do one thing—be a street cop. Wherever he was stationed, he spent every hour he could away from the barracks, visiting people at their homes, dropping in on businesses—legitimate and otherwise—and visiting kids in schools, taking a special interest in the ones who showed the potential of becoming future clients.

Without taking notes, or making a display of his intentions, Shirtsleeve slowly began to accumulate what keyboard operators now call data. He began linking names to families to places to events to organizations to trends, constantly soaking up knowledge, until he became a walking encyclopedia of Vermont’s less-than-genteel society. For this quiet prowess he was eventually nicknamed Digger, and relied upon by colleagues from around the state to come up with the answers they couldn’t discover on their own.

When Dan Flynn was given permission to set up VCIN, he had only one man in mind to assist him—the one man he was told would turn him down cold. But Dan had asked anyway, and Digger had said yes without hesitation or explanation. For the past three years, as taciturn as ever, he’d plied his computers with the same dogged zeal he’d once applied to the communities he’d patrolled. Dan’s own personal theory was that, knowing his retirement was near, Digger had felt the need to deposit his hard-won knowledge someplace useful, and that VCIN had appeared as if by prophecy.

Like some ancient elephant imparting wisdom to later generations, Digger was describing the world as he knew it to the memory chips of Dan Flynn’s electronic files.

Knowing all this, however, never helped me in dealing with the man himself, who now—as in the past—responded to my greeting by keeping his eyes firmly glued to the monitor’s screen, and muttering, “Uh-huh.”

Dan, the exact opposite in all ways, laughed, slapped me on the back, and steered me through to his inner office, a seven-by-nine-foot aggravated closet entirely decorated in Boston Bruins paraphernalia, from stuffed bears to pennants to magnetic hockey pucks to bumper stickers taped to the window.

“Quite the character, huh?” he stated, as always not expecting a response. “Don’t know what I’d do without him. Three years into this project, and half our information is still inside his head.”

He settled in front of a battered metal desk shoved up under the room’s one window and motioned to a chair wedged in between two tall filing cabinets. His face became suddenly serious. “I’m real sorry about Dennis. And I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the funeral—boss said he couldn’t spare me. How’s everyone taking it?”

I sat on the edge of my seat, leaning forward to avoid the feeling of being swallowed whole by my two looming metal neighbors. “Not very well. The worst part is, Dennis’s death was the one push we needed when it came to getting the go-ahead from the board of selectmen. Billy Manierre made a pitch to the board like a born-again evangelist—I’ve never seen him so passionate—and Tony weighed in from the hospital with a letter not only saying that I had his blessing, but forecasting the end of the world as they knew it if they didn’t go along. I couldn’t believe it.”

“Lucky they did. A lot of people would’ve had egg on their faces otherwise.”

I sensed something beyond a colorful generalization in this. “You too?”

His seriousness yielded to a smile. “Not me. I’m the knight in shining armor here, helping out a beleaguered colleague. You’re the one making my bosses feel queasy—hotdog local cop, hell-bent on becoming a federal officer so he can get revenge.”

“And involving the VSP in his schemes?” I finished for him.

He raised his eyebrows sympathetically. “You think they’re wrong to be concerned? The death of a colleague can cut pretty deep.”

I conceded his point. “No. I’m amazed they went along with it.”

He leaned back, his expression amused. “Right—the green and the gold, the stuffy Vermont State Police, the you-guys/us-guys of law enforcement. Surprised you, didn’t we? I won’t deny we deserved some of that in the old days, but times are changing.” He suddenly leaped to his feet and headed for the door. “And as further proof of it, I’m going to introduce you to your partner.”

He was gone. I staggered to my feet, hitting a shoulder on one of the cabinets, and swung out after him, catching up as he strode quickly across the hallway to a closed door marked Conference.

He paused there theatrically, and then threw the door open to let me in. Standing in the room, studying a wall map through gold-rimmed glasses, was a tall, sandy-haired, alarmingly skinny man in his mid-thirties. He turned as I entered and gave me a wide, crooked smile. “Hey, Joe—long time.”

I laughed and crossed over to shake his hand, the sense of relief like a tonic. “Lester Spinney. I don’t believe it.”

From the time Dan Flynn had first indicated an interest in joining forces, the question in my mind had always been who they’d team me up with. I’d expressed my concern to Flynn, of course, but he’d reasonably answered that it wasn’t his shot to call. Seeing Spinney, however, convinced me that if not Flynn, then someone in the state police had made sure personality conflicts were not going to be blamed if this task force fell apart.

Spinney and I had first met years ago, when I’d been temporarily assigned to the Essex County State’s Attorney’s office as a special investigator. Ron Potter, the SA, was facing a tough murder case, and had pushed a little hard to make sure his investigator was fully included in what was a state police case.

Despite the implied lack of trust, no blood had been spilled. With only a couple of exceptions, the state cops had made room for me, and relations had been civil enough. But even the most cooperative among them had taken their gauge of me before fully opening up—except for Lester Spinney. Whether because of his naturally trusting nature or a personality that just happened to perfectly dovetail with mine, Spinney and I had connected from the moment we’d met—a compatibility that, through a bruising, emotionally charged investigation, had only grown. His independence, sense of humor, and spontaneity had formed the perfect link between me and a state organization that in those days had not been famous for any one of those three traits, at least not outside their own ranks.

But inevitably, that’s where it had ended. I’d returned to Brattleboro, and he’d continued working for their newly formed Major Crimes Squad—a mobile homicide unit of several specialists who traveled all over the state whenever they were called upon. We had exchanged phone calls a couple of times, he’d dropped by my office once or twice when he’d been in the area, and that had been it. We’d lost touch. The pleasure I felt at seeing him here, therefore, ran deeper than even I would have suspected.

The three of us sat around the small conference table in the middle of the room and caught up, trading war stories and information about mutual acquaintances, with Dan using his own specialized knowledge to fill in the blanks Spinney and I could not. Just as Digger kept Flynn updated on the criminal elements, so the nature of Flynn’s job dictated that he know the whereabouts and activities of every trooper within the organization.

Twenty minutes later, however, after we’d either talked up, run down, or reminisced about every mutually known name we could think of, Dan Flynn checked his watch and stood up. “Okay, time to meet the others.”

He led us down the hall to a second conference room, this one obviously reserved more for ceremony than for function—with portraits instead of maps on the walls, and a polished wooden table replacing the coffee stained, composite-topped model we’d just left. Seeing who was there to greet us, however, I understood the urge for a little pomp. Seated around the table, chatting among themselves, were Walter Frazier of the FBI, Margaret Lanier from the U.S. Attorney’s office, Richard Gibbons, the state’s sole U.S. Marshal, and Colonel Jeremy “Skip” McMasters, the uniformed head of the Vermont State Police.

This combination swearing-in and briefing had been arranged several days earlier, after Frazier’s bosses had given him the go-ahead, so having everyone here was not a complete surprise. Seeing them rise upon our entrance, however, and touring the table to greet each one, I was struck for the first time by just how big an operation I’d set in motion, and how many people had helped make it happen. Only now did I feel the weight of the cumulative faith they’d all put in me. Remembering also the Brattleboro Board of Selectmen, and Billy Manierre and Tony Brandt and Jack Derby, I realized that if my ambitions proved unsuccessful, I was not going to be the only one disappointed. Of course, that very fact carried its own built-in stimulus—I was obviously also not alone believing the job could get done, or that the effort was worth making. That, as much as the headstone that marked his grave, was a credit to what Dennis DeFlorio had worked for.

The ceremony making Spinney and me Deputy U.S. Marshals was short and only moderately formal; afterward, Walt Frazier, removing his jacket and sitting at the head of the table, took over the meeting.

“If anyone had told me a month ago that I’d be sitting here now, I would’ve told him he’d lost his mind. So I want to start this thing off by thanking you all for your cunning, your perseverance, and your willingness to take a chance. According to precedent, and maybe even procedure, we shouldn’t be here.

“I’ve come to think that the reasons we are have less to do with blatant self-service—or the lost life of a colleague—and more to do with potential. This case lends itself to cooperation. From what any of us can tell so far, it is relatively contained and involves only a limited cast of characters, but the latter are spread out wide enough, and are mobile enough, to have frustrated any one of us if we’d chosen to act independently.”

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “Technically, I’m running this show, so I wanted—just this once—to bore you with a little philosophy, to give you the pitch I gave to my brass in Washington, so I know we’re all on the same wavelength.

“What we’re about to do here is an experiment of sorts—a limited, small-scale exercise in mutual aid. I just said this is a small, contained case. I don’t actually know that for sure. It’s just how it looks now. But if it is, and we deal with it fast and well, people will take notice. There’s a lot of paranoia about Asian crime, and I make no bones about being one of the paranoids. Not only do I think this particular criminal element is bigger and badder than anything we’ve seen before, I also think it has its own built-in booby trap. If Asian criminals are not brought up short at this early stage, not only are they going to make the Cosa Nostra look pathetic by comparison, but they’re going to make all Asians look like crooks, and that is a racist by-product that scares the hell out of me.

“These folks are successful because they’re fluid, they’ve got a huge network, they’re not burdened by bureaucracy, and yet they respond to a chain of command. They’re also loyal to and trusting of one another,
within their individual organizations
, and that’s where we hope to have the advantage. Using the broader resources and connections within this room, I think we can beat this particular group at its own game, and maybe set an example that other law-enforcement people can learn from.”

He made a small, self-deprecating gesture and concluded. “Okay—end of speech. Just something I wanted to get out.”

I smiled at his style. In short order, Walt Frazier had just rallied the troops, established the theme of our cause, and declared himself our leader, all without becoming either domineering or pompous. And it was on that note that both Gibbons and McMasters took their leave—content to be periodically updated by the regular reports that we all knew were soon to regiment our lives—letting the rest of us get down to nuts and bolts.

Dan Flynn began with the basics. “A couple of housekeeping notes. Since the point of this task force is to be as fast on our feet as the opposition, there is not going to be an official home base. There’ll be a central post office instead, and that’ll be me, or Digger, if I’m not around. We’ll coordinate the flow of information, and my secretary’ll make most of the paperwork neat and tidy. If something crops up in the middle of the night, nobody’ll be here, since we’re basically eight-to-five, but we’ll have open computers, phone machines, and a teletype. Digger and I always check them first thing every morning.”