Lesser Evils

by Joe Flanagan

  He pulled into the drive in front of the building. It was a three-story white clapboard house with a slate roof façade in the front, a novelty from the nineteenth century, the kind of house built by people of means who wanted to set themselves apart from the dreary shingled commonality.

  He got out of the car, placed his fedora on his head, and bent the brim a little in front. Off in the side yard, two men were watching him. One was squatting in the grass, the other standing nearby holding a rake. Warren approached them. They seemed to freeze, watchful and uncertain. He showed his credentials. “I’m Lieutenant Warren, Barnstable Police.” The squatting man went back to what he was doing, picking up pieces of glass and dropping them into a dustpan. James Holbrooke was balding, about sixty, his blond hair infused with silver. He wore white Bermuda shorts, sandals, and a plaid cabana shirt. The man with the rake—Grayson Newsome—looked a bit younger, slight, dark hair shaved military style though most of it was gone. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a long-sleeved white shirt buttoned all the way up to the top. He had on a pair of paint-stained shorts and PF Flyers.

  “O.K.,” said Holbrooke. Newsome rushed forward and raked some scattered glass into a pile. Warren said, “I understand you had an incident here last night.”

  Holbrooke didn’t look up when he spoke. “In fact, it was a burglary. And we didn’t report it.”

  “Your neighbor did. Number thirty.”

  “Eleanor,” Newsome said wistfully.

  Warren looked at the broken window. It was nearly six feet tall. Its muntins were splintered and he could see the dim cavernous interior of the antique shop. He stepped closer and peered in. There was a set of pocket doors partially open, separating one large room from another. The walls around the pocket doors were packed with objects—hung from hooks and mounted on shelves.

  Warren turned back to the men. “Was this the only place they got in?”

  Holbrooke dropped another piece of glass into the dustpan and looked up at him. “Yes,” he said. “But you needn’t bother.”

  “I need to get a list of the things that were taken, along with a description and their value.”

  “Honestly, I’d just as soon pick up the glass and get the window repaired and leave it at that. Rather than waste time with a lot of . . .” He waved his fingers in the air instead of using a word.

  “This is a burglary,” Warren said.

  The man turned and appraised the window. “It certainly is.”

  “You don’t want to make a complaint?”

  “Mr. . . . Warren, is it? We haven’t been treated very well by this community, particularly by the police department, though that might not be your fault.”

  Warren shifted his feet.

  “We’ve been burglarized many times over the years, and no action has ever been taken. We’ve lost thousands of dollars’ worth of antiques and we never got a single item back. People would probably like it if we left. Maybe it’s their way of getting us to leave.”

  Warren looked over at Newsome and his eyes went to the ground. “Do you know what was taken?” Warren asked.

  Newsome said, “A hanging lantern. The Gothic revival one. And a Japanese tea caddy. From what I can see so far.”

  “I would imagine you have better things to do,” Holbrooke said. “Considering recent events.”

  “There’s a state police task force working on the killings,” Warren said.

  Holbrooke carefully lifted a small shard of glass from the lawn. “I cannot imagine what could possess someone to do a thing like that.”

  Newsome said, “I feel so sorry for those families.”

  “If you want to make a complaint,” Warren said, “I can get this window dusted for fingerprints right now.”

  The two men looked at each other. “I don’t know,” Holbrooke said.

  “Maybe they’ll find our things,” said Newsome.

  “Maybe someone will retaliate because we filed a complaint.”

  Warren said, “If people know there aren’t any consequences to breaking into your business, they’ll keep doing it.”

  “Well, that’s pretty much the current state of affairs, I would say.”

  Warren looked down, scratched his cheek.

  “Would we have to go to court and everything else if you made an arrest?” asked Holbrooke.

  “To describe the stolen items. To testify that your place was burglarized, yes. You didn’t see this person?”

  “No.”

  “Then you wouldn’t have to identify anyone. I’m recommending you do it.”

  Holbrooke walked over to Newsome and said something Warren could not hear. He then turned to Warren and said, “Can we discuss it? Grayson and I?”

  Warren nodded and walked back over to his car. Jenkins came on the radio, asking for his location. He sat behind the wheel and picked up the mike. “I’m 10-17 on West Bay Road, Osterville.”

  Jenkins requested he contact him when he was finished, then signed off.

  20

  Jenkins pulled into the parking lot of a shuttered yellow brick building a short distance from a dive called the Elbow Room. He got out of the car and climbed up on the loading dock, from which he had a good view of the place. The lieutenant had traced the number they found in Joseph Leapley’s wallet out here. In fact, the manager at New England Telephone had called that very morning to say that he’d had a technician climb the utility pole outside the place at three o’clock in the morning and send a signal through, confirming it.

  Jenkins leaned against the wall and smoked a cigarette. Traffic rolled by, east and west. He thought about the murders. He knew the state police were hitting it hard and had gone nationwide with their search but he had been calling around to some of his contacts to see if he could scare something up. So far he’d had no luck. Stasiak had someone watching James Frawley but according to Dunleavy, there was nothing new on him. Gene Henry, the cook from Mildred’s Chowder House, was still very much a person of interest, since no one could corroborate his whereabouts at the times of the killings.

  Apparently, Dunleavy had made a good impression on someone with the state police. They were always finding things for him to do. Jenkins’s days were largely idle. He’d been out here three times now to have a look at the Elbow Room, more because he was tired of sitting in his office than anything else. He’d driven through the parking lot once, but he couldn’t be bothered to write down license plates. There was a handful of cars that were always parked by the rear entrance—employees, he supposed. One of them was there now, a blue and white Cadillac.

  A Barnstable cruiser went by and he saw its brake lights go on as it went out of sight. A minute later, it came back in the other direction and drove up to the loading dock. “Jesus Christ,” Jenkins muttered. Officer Welke got out of the cruiser. For some reason, he and Welke hadn’t gotten along from the start. It began at the scene of a domestic dispute, when Jenkins had told the patrolman to go looking for the abusive husband at his sister’s place where he was believed to have fled. At the time, a fight had broken out at the Panama Club, but it was under control, with Warren and the shift sergeant on the scene. Welke gave Jenkins a number of reasons why he should go to the Panama Club instead, offering his opinion on the lesser importance of a fat broad getting knocked around by her husband in a lousy neighborhood. They got into it. Jenkins put his hands on Welke, who reached for his nightstick, and they had to be separated by another cop and two ambulance attendants who were there to treat the wife’s injuries.

  Now, he watched the officer swagger toward him, adjusting his belt, touching the butt of his revolver, his handcuffs. “Is there a problem?” Welke asked.

  “Now there is.”

  “What are you doing? Meeting your boyfriend?”

  “Get the fuck out of here, Welke.”

  Welke looked at him, nodding, as if assuring himself th
at something he had long believed were in fact true.

  “I’m working, Welke. You’re interrupting me.”

  “Yeah? What are you working on?”

  “Shit they wouldn’t ask you to do in a million years because you can’t be trusted.”

  Welke turned back toward his cruiser. “I’m not going to lose my job over a fight with you.”

  “No. There’s a dozen other reasons they could choose from.”

  Welke held his middle finger up and drove off.

  Jenkins had kept his problem with Welke quiet but now he felt he might have to say something to the lieutenant. He watched Welke’s cruiser pull away and seconds later, the blue and white Cadillac materialized at the entrance to the Elbow Room’s lot and turned right. Jenkins jumped down from the loading dock and walked to his car. He cut into traffic on Route 28 and followed.

  He tailed the Cadillac to Dennis, where it stopped at a service garage called Brinkman’s Brake & Lube. It was by itself, with no other buildings around. Jenkins kept going and didn’t see another dwelling until he was two miles down the road. He turned around and drove past the service station again. The garage doors were closed. The Cadillac was parked in the back, only the tail end of it visible from the road.

  He sat in stop-and-go traffic all the way back to Hyannis, where he stopped at the Ocean Street docks and bought a clam roll from one of the vendors down there. He radioed the lieutenant, who said he was looking into something over in Osterville, but didn’t say what. Jenkins requested a call back when he was finished.

  The detective sat in his car and smoked. Most of the fishing boats were out and there were a few tourists wandering along the pilings, looking bleakly down into the petroleum sheen on the water below. He looked down the line of boats to find Warren walking toward his car, looking afflicted and severe, like he was getting ready to do something drastic. Jenkins got out and met him by the pilings. “What’s going on?” the lieutenant asked, and without taking a breath or waiting for a response, said, “You have a cigarette?”

  Jenkins held his pack of Chesterfields out and Warren took one. “What did you want to see me about?”

  “Alvin Leach called this morning,” said Jenkins. “That telephone number goes to the Elbow Room. He had one of his guys climb the pole outside and send a signal through at three o’clock this morning.”

  Warren lit his cigarette and drew on it hard, his eyes wide and going down the row of boats like he was suffering from some kind of possession. Jenkins began to wish he hadn’t called him.

  “I was just over at the Elbow Room a little while ago,” said Jenkins. “There’s a two-tone Cadillac that’s always parked behind the place. Anyway, I followed it to a service station called Brinkman’s Brake & Lube in Dennis.”

  “Brinkman’s.”

  “Yeah. It’s way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. And it didn’t look like there was any brake or lube work going on. Anyway, I got the plate number on the Cadillac.”

  “Run it through the registry of motor vehicles. And see what you can find out about Brinkman’s. Have you heard from Dunleavy?

  “He’s out doing something with the staties.”

  “Like what?”

  “I guess Gene Henry’s still on their radar. They got him looking into that, as I understand it.”

  Warren nodded. “I was just over visiting Marvin.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “They’re going to release him pretty soon. I brought up the murders and he didn’t have a word to say about it.”

  Jenkins watched Warren work on his cigarette as he spoke. “He’s probably out of sorts,” Jenkins said. Warren looked up and down the docks again. Jenkins had seen him worked up like this before. The transformation was so drastic he found himself both compelled to watch and anxious to be clear of him. Each of Warren’s movements was explosive, his eyes devouring the scene around him. It was impossible to reconcile this person with the formal, disciplined man he knew. He had seen this side of Warren come out in scuffles or when some suspect was giving him lip. But he also got this way when he felt he’d been crossed. He took things personally, the lieutenant.

  “What’s going on in Osterville?” Jenkins asked.

  “A burglary.”

  “Where?”

  “An antique shop.”

  “Which one? The homos?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jenkins suppressed his reaction. As far as the department was concerned, the place didn’t exist. The two guys who lived there knew it, too. Somehow it figured that the lieutenant, intense and furious, would go over there to check it out. It figured, too, that he would wind up on the wrong end of this one. It was usually kids who broke into the homos’ place. Jenkins’s boys knew some kids who did it from time to time. He could imagine the mess that was going to fall in the lieutenant’s lap when he hauled someone in over this. Warren said, “Any ideas who we ought to look at for that one?”

  “No idea.”

  They went back to their cars. After Warren left, Jenkins sat at a traffic light thinking about the lieutenant. He had unrealistic ideas about human nature and how the world worked. These weren’t good qualities in a policeman. On the other hand, he seemed perfectly suited. Naïve, yes, probably, in some ways, but on the right side and willing to go down that way. There were some people who needed a cause—a war, a disease, an idea—and they were only truly themselves when chasing after it. The qualities that made them stand out were the same ones that made them difficult to live with and which sometimes destroyed them. Jenkins reflected that he might have to be careful around the lieutenant, to think very carefully about where he followed him and how far.

  21

  Dr. Hawthorne waited in his study for his ten o’clock appointment. The local paper was on the desk before him, the front page carrying the story about the murdered young boy whose body had been found in a creek in Eastham. Hawthorne read the account, sifting through the lines of newsprint until he was satisfied that, aside from the basic facts, the article contained nothing of interest to him. He raised his eyes at what he thought was the sound of someone downstairs. For a moment he thought it was his patient, but then the house was silent again. Edgar?

  Edgar was working on a fishing boat now, which Hawthorne opposed. Keeping company with fishermen. Coarse men. Impulsive. He might start getting ideas.

  Hawthorne reached into a drawer and took out his prescription pad. He thumbed through it and reconsidered his earlier suspicion that some of them were missing. Once again, he looked around his study and tried to see if anything was amiss.

  Now there was noise downstairs again. This was his ten o’clock appointment. Charles Vogel. The halfhearted stealth. The tentative way Mr. Vogel disturbed his surroundings because as much as he wished he could go about unseen, he knew it was not possible, a knowledge that, Hawthorne believed, accounted for at least some of the strangeness of his affect, the combination of mincing about and not giving a damn.

  Vogel walked in and quickly took a seat. This was intended, Hawthorne knew, to minimize a full view of him, though what was visible in that brief moment told Hawthorne enough, and that was that Mr. Vogel hadn’t made any progress since his last appointment. He wore a short-sleeved jersey with broad vertical red and blue stripes and loose dungarees with the cuffs rolled up to show off a pair of spotless white Chuck Taylors. He wore bangs and had a cowlick in the back, which, Hawthorne suspected, had taken some work to create. Charles Vogel was thirty-eight years old.

  “How have you been this week, Charles?” Hawthorne asked. Vogel bridled, stirring in his chair.

  “Despite your affinity for ‘Charlie,’ your formal name is more age appropriate. Which is why I use it. And while I’m on the subject, your wardrobe . . .”

  Vogel reddened, his eyes locked on some point beneath the desk.

  “You remember the discussion we
had last week about clothes,” said Hawthorne. “Age appropriate. This is not trivial, Charles. This gets to the heart of why you’re here. Do you understand?”

  Vogel nodded, mumbling.

  Hawthorne watched his patient expectantly, though the man could not come up with a response and appeared to be incapacitated with anger and embarrassment. Hawthorne let the silence draw out, his eyes fixed on Vogel. Finally, he said, “How is your search for employment coming along?”

  “Nothing yet. I’m looking.”

  “Drinking?”

  “No, I said I was looking. I’m looking for work.”

  “I heard what you said. I asked if you were drinking.”

  “No.”

  Hawthorne subjected him to another prolonged stare, then jotted something down on his notepad. “So tell me about your week. What have you been doing?”

  Vogel stammered through a bland litany of his activities. As Hawthorne listened, he shook his head. Vogel still hadn’t learned that this sort of performance, so poorly executed, intended as an offering to keep Hawthorne from pouncing, was just the kind of thing that induced him to pounce. He took hold of the edge of the newspaper on his desk and pulled it toward him. His eyes quickly went over the dateline. “Friday,” he said. “What about Friday?”

  “What about it?”

  “What were you doing?”

  Vogel spread his hands. “Same as the other days, pretty much.”