by Dan Mahoney
That was the theory, and the man who had been the police commissioner at the time had endorsed it, but it hadn’t worked out as O’Shaughnessy had envisioned. For seven years the Mullen case had remained on the back burner and the annual review O’Shaughnessy had recommended consisted of nothing more than reinterviewing Kathleen Mullen, Dennis Hunt, and a few other friends of Mullen’s in the department. According to the reports, they hadn’t seen or heard from him and had nothing to add.
McKenna closed the folder and paced the room for a few minutes, thinking over the information he had just learned and pondering the points IAD had missed. He decided that the fugitive investigation wasn’t as badly done as he had initially assumed. He acknowledged that hindsight is always more accurate than foresight and IAD had had no reason to think that Mullen wasn’t what he had appeared to be in 1991.
Would I have been able to guess that if I had been assigned to the investigation? McKenna asked himself. Without having seen the Saga video, would I have been sharp enough to come to the conclusion that our Mullen wasn’t the real Mullen? Maybe, but probably not, he decided. But now that I know, what else is there in those folders that IAD missed? What’s in that seven-year investigation that will help me find Mullen in the week I have before he finds out I’m looking for him?
McKenna sat down at the desk again and took out all the reports written following the many interviews of Kathleen Mullen and Dennis Hunt. After the third rereading, he called Brunette.
Fifteen
Vernon and Thor arrived together at McKenna’s room at noon, as promised. However, Vernon wasn’t quite ready to give his opinion on what made Mullen tick. First he wanted to see Meaghan’s body, a request Thor handled. He took Vernon to the morgue, freeing McKenna for another unpleasant task. McKenna was a detective, not a boss, and he didn’t relish putting another detective’s feet to the fire. However, it had to be done. It was time to talk to Dennis Hunt.
Before Vernon left, McKenna got the Dwyer, Winthrop, and Maher case folders from him. He spread the crime scene photos of the three tortured bodies on the coffee table between the two couches in the sitting room, then made a fresh pot of coffee before dialing Hunt’s room.
Five minutes later, McKenna answered the knock at his door. Hunt was dressed in a fresh suit and looked better, but still uncomfortable.
“You get some sleep?” McKenna asked as he led Hunt into the sitting room.
“Some,” Hunt answered, then stopped dead in his tracks as he noticed the photos spread on the coffee table. Hesitantly, he walked over to the table and stared at the photos, but he made no move to pick any of them up for a closer examination.
“But you still don’t feel great?” McKenna guessed, pretending not to notice Hunt’s discomfort.
“I feel miserable, but it has nothing to do with sleep,” Hunt answered, still staring at the photos.
“How do you take your coffee?” McKenna asked, but Hunt ignored him as he stared down at the photos.
“How do you take your coffee?” McKenna repeated.
“Oh, sorry,” Hunt answered, looking up from the coffee table. “Today I think I’ll take it black.”
“You got it.” McKenna went to the service bar and poured two cups of black coffee. Hunt took his eyes off the photos and sat on one of the couches, dejectedly staring into space. McKenna returned with the coffee cups and placed them on the table, next to the photos. Then he sat on the other couch, facing Hunt, with the coffee table between them. “You ready to begin?” McKenna asked.
“Begin what?” Hunt asked suspiciously, focusing on McKenna.
“Begin telling the truth.”
The statement hit Hunt like a punch in the gut. He lowered his eyes back to the photos and took a couple of deep breaths as he looked from one to another of the gory shots. Then he made his decision and stared back at McKenna, resigned and dejected. “I guess this is the end of my police career, but I’m ready.”
“You’re ready to tell me that you’ve been lying to IAD for years to protect Mullen?”
“I didn’t think of it as lying,” Hunt said defensively. “I thought of it as protecting a friend.”
“Okay, let’s call it fibbing,” McKenna said. “But remember, if it weren’t for those fibs, maybe two of those people in front of you would still be alive.”
“Knowing what I know now, maybe all three of them would still be alive if it weren’t for me,” Hunt stated.
Three of them? How can that be? McKenna wondered, shocked by Hunt’s assertion. If IAD had captured Mullen, then Winthrop and Meaghan would certainly still be alive. But Dwyer? Mullen killed him in 1989, two years before he was arrested. What could Hunt have done that could have prevented Dwyer’s death?
Hunt noticed McKenna’s bewilderment. He picked up one of the photos of Dwyer’s body, stared at it intently, then passed it to McKenna. “Is that Joseph Dwyer?” he asked.
“That’s him. Sometimes known as Josephine Dwyer.”
“Then if Mullen killed him, I’m partly responsible for his death.”
“How?”
“I think I’d like to talk to a lawyer before I say anything more.”
“And then you’ll come clean?”
“Like I said, I’m going to talk. But I’m going to be in big trouble over this.”
“More trouble than just for lying to IAD?”
“Yeah, maybe lots more. I didn’t realize how much more until just now, when I saw those Dwyer photos. Mullen really double-crossed me.” Hunt left it at that. He picked up his cup and downed the hot coffee in four quick gulps, then placed the cup back on the coffee table and stared at McKenna.
McKenna didn’t notice. He was looking at the photo of Dwyer’s tortured body, trying to get the connection between Mullen, Hunt, and the victim. Nothing came to mind, not a clue. He put the photo down on the coffee table, picked up his own cup, and took a sip. It was too hot for him, so he placed the cup back on the table and stared back at Hunt. “You know I’m only a detective, just like you,” he offered, seeking to place Hunt at ease.
Hunt wasn’t buying it. “That’s what you say, but let’s not kid each other,” he said, shaking his head. “I know who you are, I know your rep, and I know you’re Brunette’s pal. I also know I’m gonna sink on this one, but I still need a lawyer to make it official.”
“You’re right about me, and maybe that works to your benefit. Maybe you don’t have to sink.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I called Brunette this morning and told him that I thought you’d been lying to IAD.”
McKenna had Hunt’s total interest. “Yeah? So what’d he say?”
“He said, under the present circumstances, that was no big thing. He’s willing to forgive and forget, as long as you didn’t do anything criminal. Tell me the truth, hop on a plane, and it’s back to the Bomb Squad.”
McKenna had expected Hunt to jump at the offer, but Hunt still looked uncertain. He decided to pour it on thick. “Brunette’s looked at your record and liked what he saw. Says you’re a little misguided if you lied to protect Mullen, but he understands loyalty and values loyal people. He sees how you’d lie to protect a friend, but knows you wouldn’t lie to protect a murderer.”
“Then Brunette knows me, but his deal sounds too good to believe,” Hunt said, once again shaking his head.
“We can call him right now and you can ask him yourself,” McKenna suggested.
Hunt thought it over for a moment before answering. “That won’t be necessary. I guess I believe you.”
“More important, do you trust me enough to go off the record for two questions?”
“Maybe. Lemme hear the questions first.”
“Okay. First, did you know Mullen was going to kill Dwyer? Second, did you know Mullen was IRA?”
“That’s it? That’s all you want to know, off the record?”
“That’s it, but I need the truth. If you answer yes to either one of those questions, I never hea
rd it. We stop right here and I call Brunette and have him fly a union lawyer here for you. You trust me on that?”
“Yeah, I trust you,” Hunt said, suddenly smiling from ear to ear. “No and no. No, I didn’t know Mullen was going to kill Dwyer. Matter of fact, I didn’t even know Dwyer was dead until I saw those photos. And no, I never knew he was IRA. Now, let’s get back on the record and get this over with.”
“Okay, just some preliminary questions before we get to the meat. In all the years you two were partners, didn’t you ever hear a brogue from him?”
“Only when he wanted to put one on. You know, telling a few jokes over a beer or two, and then he was hilarious. He could make you think he was a leprechaun.”
“I find that hard to believe,” McKenna said. “Never a slip?”
“You’ve met him, haven’t you?”
“Briefly.”
“Did you catch a brogue from him?” Hunt asked smugly.
“Not that I recall,” McKenna admitted.
“Enough said. If anything, he sounded like he was from Canada. Sometimes he’d slip and put eh? at the end of a sentence.
I guess this guy was good enough to fool just about everyone, McKenna thought. Except maybe Meaghan Maher. “He ever discuss Irish politics?”
“Only to say what was going on over there was crazy. Said he thought it would never end.”
So he always stayed in character, McKenna thought. Even with his partner. “He ever strike you as homophobic?”
“I know he didn’t like gays, always called them ‘sword swallowers,’ and he thought the AIDS epidemic was a pretty good thing. But he never made a crusade out of it, if that’s what you’re asking. Sometimes he’d have a good gay joke, but that was pretty much it.”
“You still think so? That was pretty much it?” McKenna asked sarcastically, pointing down to the crime scene photos of Dwyer and Winthrop.
“No, I guess not,” Hunt conceded.
“Okay, the preliminaries are over. Let’s start with the Dwyer murder and how you fit into that.”
“It’s complicated, but I told Mullen that Dwyer was an agent.”
“An agent? An agent for who?”
“I didn’t know. Maybe the FBI, maybe ATF, maybe even the CIA. I didn’t know which, but I knew that he had been infiltrated into NORAID and was probably working for one of them, either as an agent or an informer.”
McKenna was familiar with NORAID, an organization formed to raise money for social work in Northern Ireland. It was widely speculated that NORAID was, in fact, an American front organization for the IRA and that the money raised was used by them to buy arms. But McKenna didn’t see how it was possible that Dwyer was an agent or informer infiltrated into NORAID or how Hunt would know about it if he was. “You’re going to have to start at the beginning and explain that to me,” he said.
“Okay. Did you know where I was assigned before I was transferred to the Bomb Squad?”
“No.”
“I was an undercover in the Intelligence Division. In ’84 I was assigned to infiltrate NORAID and report on their activities.”
“And that’s where you met Dwyer?”
“Yep, once a week at the NORAID meetings. Sometimes more often than that if we did fund-raising duty together.”
“What kind of fund-raising?”
“Stupid shit. Sometimes we’d hang out in the Port Authority building soliciting donations. It was just like panhandling, really, but you’d be surprised how much money we’d bring in.”
“People would give money to you and a transvestite?” McKenna asked, incredulous.
“Lots of it. I knew Dwyer was gay, but he wasn’t doing his cross-dressing act back then. He was a nice guy with a quick wit, charmed in lots of bucks. Other times we’d pick up the bottles from the Irish bars around town.”
“Pick up the bottles? What does that mean?”
“NORAID had jars with labels on them soliciting contributions in most of the Irish bars. The patrons dropped in change and quite a few bills. You wouldn’t think so, but it was quite a haul.”
“Quite a haul? How much was that?”
“I wouldn’t know, but it had to be at least five thousand a week, not counting direct contributions.”
“Where would they get direct contributions from?”
“In the mail. NORAID ran advertisements and requests for contributions in all the Irish papers. According to Dwyer, they did pretty good.”
“How would he know that if you didn’t?”
“He did a lot of work for them, volunteering for everything. He opened envelopes in the office a couple of days a week. Before I left, he was even doing most of the accounting work and running up the totals.”
“How did you know he was an agent?” McKenna asked.
“Because he was always there. The way me and a few of the other undercovers saw it, only us agents were always there because that was our job. We had to be there.”
“How many agents were there?” McKenna asked.
“We couldn’t be sure because there were too many agencies doing NORAID undercover work at the time and they weren’t coordinating their efforts. It became sort of a running joke among us that if we hadn’t been working all the time for NORAID, the whole thing would have collapsed and the IRA would have gone broke.”
“How did you find out about the other agents?”
“By accident. One time I had to go to court on an old case and I met another NORAID guy there, Dennis Quinn. He was from ATF and doing the same thing I was, going to court on one of his old cases. We sat down for lunch and had a lot of laughs compiling our agent list.”
“How many were there?”
“At the time I knew about another guy from the Intelligence Division and Quinn had been assigned with another guy from ATF, John McGreevy. McGreevy had told Quinn about yet another guy, an FBI agent he knew. So me and Quinn put our heads together and that day we formed the NORAID Undercover Agents Club. Made things quite a bit easier for the members.”
“How?”
“How?” Hunt asked, permitting himself a chuckle. “If we can go off the record again I’ll tell you how.”
“Okay, we’re off. Tell me.”
“First of all, you have to understand how boring those meetings were. Same old rhetoric every time, the same old suggestions, the same old boring speeches calling for more and more work. Those meetings bored us to tears and took a lot of time out of our lives. So we asked ourselves, Why should we all have to go and sit through that horseshit? See what I mean?”
McKenna did and ventured a guess. “Sure. You only needed a couple of your club members there to make a report on who was at the meeting and what was going on.”
“Right. Then the rest of the club members just copied the report for whatever agency he was working for. Gave us all a few days off and some time to lead something like a normal life.”
“How many members did you eventually wind up with in your club?”
“Seven.”
“But Dwyer wasn’t one of them, was he?” McKenna asked.
“No. We were all sure that he was working for someone, but we didn’t know how to approach him. You see, there was the risk that he wasn’t an agent like us, just an informer on some agency’s payroll. In that case, we wouldn’t want him in the club.”
“Because he might inform your agencies about what the club members were up to?” McKenna guessed.
“Right. Once a snitch, always a snitch. So we left him working as hard as ever. He still was when I left the Intelligence Division in ’86. Didn’t see him again until ’89 when I ran into him on a Bomb Squad run with Mullen.”
“Where? At a NORAID meeting?”
“Nope. The plot thickens. Queer Nation had a fund raiser in the Village and some joker had taped a package to the door when they were all inside. The patrol sergeant thought it was a bomb and we were called. Mullen knew what it was right away, just an alarm clock hooked up to some highway flares. We had a couple o
f laughs taking it apart, but when we opened the door I almost pissed my pants. Standing in the middle of two hundred raging fags in full dress regalia was Joseph Dwyer, skirted up and dressed to the nines.”
“Did he recognize you?” McKenna asked.
“Of course he did. We had spent hundreds of hours together. He looked just a little surprised to see me in my Bomb Squad coveralls, but the important thing was his reaction when I recognized him. He just gave me a little nod and a smile, but didn’t say a word. Then I knew for sure that myself and all the old club members had been right. Dwyer was working at NORAID for somebody, and, for all I knew, he might have been working at Queer Nation for the same people.”
“So when did you tell Mullen about him?”
“As soon as we got back down to the car.”
“What was his reaction?” McKenna asked.
“He was real interested and thought it was hysterical, but I didn’t know at the time if he believed me or not. He wanted to know exactly what Dwyer looked like and what he was wearing. I had to describe him to a tee before he would leave me alone about it.”
“Let me guess what happened then,” McKenna said. “Mullen took the rest of the night off, didn’t he?”
“You got it. On the way back to the base he developed a toothache and took the rest of the night off.”
“You know what he did then?”
“I do now,” Hunt said. “He went back to the Queer Nation party and followed Dwyer home. Probably followed him on and off whenever he got a chance until he got an idea of his routine.”
“And then he killed him,” McKenna stated flatly.
“I guess so, but why like that?” Hunt asked, pointing to the crime scene photo of Dwyer.
“Because once he found out that Dwyer was spending his nights as a transvestite hooker, it gave him the perfect opportunity to torture him for information and then kill him without anyone getting suspicious. He made it look like a sex killing, not an assassination.”