Lesser Evils

by Joe Flanagan

  Captain Stasiak was seldom available for comment. People griped about the secrecy of the investigation. An editorial in the Standard Times asked why the FBI hadn’t been called in. This prompted Elliott Yost to respond in a radio interview that the investigation was proceeding in good order, and that they had the finest detectives in the region on the case. The task force had gelled and was operating smoothly and would not benefit from the “administrative disruption” the introduction of a federal agency might cause. Stories of Dale Stasiak’s heroics at Iwo Jima had multiplied and circulated everywhere, augmented by tales of audacious raids in search of the child killer.

  People recounted his involvement with the FBI’s campaign against the Mafia in Boston—rumors and outright fabrication given equal standing with fact. Light gray two-door Fords got a second look because everyone knew Stasiak drove one, and was that him flying down the highway early yesterday evening at sunset, headed down Cape at about eighty? Someone said that Stasiak had the state police mechanics install a specially designed engine in his car, a secret Ford prototype that was supposed to be faster than a drag racer. He carried a .45, the same one he killed a slew of Japanese with in 1945. Stasiak was a judo expert, could break your neck with a flick of his wrist. They said he knew Jack Kennedy personally and went sailing with the senator and Jackie.

  Warren found Chief Holland’s hospital room empty. He stood in the doorway, looking at what appeared to be the signs of a recent departure: the drawers of the small bureau open and empty, a tray with remnants of breakfast and a crushed cardboard orange juice container, the bed unmade, its sheets trailing off the mattress onto the floor. A nurse approached from behind. He turned to face her. “Chief Holland’s been discharged,” she said. “Are you with the police?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold on a minute. I have something for you.”

  The nurse went out and came back a few seconds later holding a gray felt fedora. “You left this here last night.”

  “That’s not mine.”

  “You’re not Officer Dunleavy?”

  “No.”

  “Oh. Well, the night shift told me Officer Dunleavy left it when he was visiting. Can you give it to him?”

  Warren was momentarily paralyzed. He looked about the room and was shaken back to the moment by the awful intimacy of Chief Holland’s slightly yellowed bedsheets and the feel of Dunleavy’s hat in his hands.

  28

  The Japanese tea caddy sat on Warren’s desk, its clumsy newspaper wrapping partially undone. On the floor, leaning against the desk, was the lantern, similarly wrapped but encircled twice in masking tape. Outside, the hallway was noisy with the eight-to-four shift coming upstairs from the locker room and going out to their cars. He went out and headed down to Garrity’s desk, the men parting to make way for him. “These antiques in my office, where did they come from?”

  “A lady dropped them off this morning. Before you got here.”

  “Did you get her name?”

  “Uh . . .”

  Warren reached for the visitor log. “Selectman Nicholas’s secretary, huh?” Warren knew by Garrity’s false ponderous movements, by his look of mild befuddlement, that he would have protected Nicholas, but it was too late.

  Warren put the antiques in his car and drove out to Osterville. When he pulled up in front of the shop, Grayson Newsome was out retrieving the mail. He was engrossed in reading the envelopes and when he saw Warren’s car pull in he gave an uncertain wave. Warren got out of the vehicle and went around to the trunk. “Mr. Newsome,” he said.

  “Good morning, lieutenant.”

  “I have something I’d like you to look at.”

  Grayson went over to the cruiser. Warren opened the trunk lid. When he saw the antiques he clapped one hand on to his mouth and the other on to Warren’s shoulder. “You got them. You found them.”

  “These are the items?”

  “Yes, they are. I can’t believe it. I have to get James. Hold on, I’ll be right back.”

  Grayson ran back to the house. Warren heard him calling James Holbrooke’s name inside. Soon they both came out, walking quickly, James wiping his hands on a dishrag. He was looking at Warren as he came toward him, shaking his head. Grayson led him to the open trunk and pointed inside.

  “God,” said James. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Thank you so much,” said Grayson.

  “How did you find them?” James asked.

  “Someone brought them by Wentzel and Livingston and tried to sell them. Irving Wentzel reported it.”

  “Who was it?”

  Warren was wrestling with whether to press things with the Nicholas boy, now that the antiques had been returned. “That’s a little sketchy right now. I’m working on it.”

  “Irving Wentzel must know.”

  “He does,” Warren admitted. “I’m trying to fingerprint and question that individual right now but he’s, uh, he’s got some influence.”

  “And you won’t tell us who it is?”

  “It’s an ongoing investigation. But if you give Mr. Wentzel a call, I don’t think he’ll be shy about letting you know.”

  Grayson and James digested this information quietly. They looked at the objects in the trunk, still wrapped in newspaper. “This has never happened to us before,” James said. “The police.” He gestured toward the trunk. “Someone actually helping us. We don’t know how to thank you.”

  Grayson said, “Lieutenant Warren, I don’t know why you did this, but I can assure you I will never forget it. The antiques themselves aren’t that important. It’s the principle.” He looked at Warren, both pleased and perplexed, it seemed, as if seeing him for the first time. James reached in and lifted the lantern out. “If there is anything we can do for you, I hope you’ll let us know. I know they’re going to be appointing a new chief of police soon and I certainly hope it’s you.”

  As he left Antiquitus, Warren decided to drive out to Marstons Mills and check on the Weeks place. As Warren pulled up to the house, he saw a pickup truck with New Hampshire plates in the driveway and a skinny man loading things into the back. He seemed prematurely aged, his clothes oil-stained. He wore a baseball cap and a baggy denim jacket that gave off a strong petroleum smell. Warren pulled up in his unmarked and got out. “I’m with the Barnstable police,” he said. “Are you a relative?”

  “This is my brother’s place. Russell Weeks.”

  “Do you have any idea where he is?”

  “I sure don’t. I just found out the bank’s gonna foreclose on the house. I thought I’d come by and take out some stuff before they do. If Russell ain’t gonna use it, I will. Is he in trouble?”

  “The state police are trying to find him. He’s been reported as a missing person.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “How did you find out about the foreclosure?”

  “Friend of mine gave me a call. He lives in Mashpee and he knew Russell and me. He said Russell skipped town and left the house empty.”

  “What kind of relationship do you have with your brother? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  Weeks shrugged. “We don’t socialize. Hell, I haven’t seen him in something like seven, eight years. My brother’s a pain in the ass. Contrary. He’s good to her. What’s her name. Miriam. But he’s always bitching about something. He’s a great one to start a fight and then walk off and leave you to straighten out the mess.”

  “So you have no idea where he might have gone?”

  “No idea.”

  “Have the state police contacted you?”

  “No.”

  “Would your brother call you if he was in trouble?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think he’d have to be in one hell of a lot of trouble to call me. We’re not on the best of terms.”

  “I think your brother might have borrowed
money from some disreputable people.”

  “Well, that’s his problem. We talked about that a long time ago. ’Course, you can’t tell him anything.”

  “He’s done this in the past?”

  “Gambling, borrowing money, hanging around with shady people, yeah. She got him straight pretty much, but he’s hardheaded.”

  “I’d like you to call me if you hear from him. Here’s my number.”

  “He’s more likely to call you than he is me.”

  “Just take my number. I need to talk to him. And let him know he’s not in trouble of any kind. I need to ask him about the people he borrowed money from.”

  It was Wilson Hayes’s fourth visit to the Elbow Room. He sat at the bar watching the first race at Suffolk Downs, not paying much attention to what was going on around him because he’d seen enough. Hayes knew what this place was. It was just like places he’d seen in New Bedford, Fall River, South Boston, Charlestown. The patrons of the Elbow Room were, on the whole, rough men. But what he noticed most about them was their docility. They shouted and swore and blustered. They glowered at newcomers or stared hard from beneath the brims of baseball caps or small-brim fedoras. Behind the posturing, Wilson Hayes could tell that they were afraid and he had been around enough of these kinds of places to understand why.

  What he wanted to do was get into the back area and see what was there. He had to get back up to Boston soon and he wanted to wrap this up. By the looks of things, he didn’t know if he’d be a witness for the state if this turned into a gambling prosecution and went to trial. There was too much going on here. Too much activity, too many people, too much money. It had the feel of a mob operation.

  Wilson Hayes was suddenly aware of people around him. He looked to his right to see a squat man with silver hair standing by his elbow looking at him. Directly behind him were a couple of big kids in their twenties. “Come on, sport,” said the older man. “You’re done.”

  “What?”

  The man took him gently by the elbow. “You’re done. Let’s go.”

  Wilson Hayes got off his bar stool. One of the kids leaned into him, breathing on his face. “What did I do?” Wilson asked.

  They escorted him outside.

  “Get the hell out of here,” the man with the silver hair said. “Don’t come back.”

  Late that night, a group of men stood around George McCarthy in the parking lot of the Elbow Room. “Nobody works until I say so,” McCarthy said. “Answer your phones so they don’t think we been pinched. Just tell them we’re closed for the time being.”

  Someone asked, “Was this the guy the cops were sending? This Wilson Hayes?”

  “He fit the description we got,” said McCarthy. “Anyone know how many times he was here?”

  “The fellas say maybe four or five times.”

  One of them said, “Is he a cop?”

  “We don’t know what he is,” McCarthy said. “That fucking Warren. Christ. Like he doesn’t have better things to do.”

  “What’s our good friend say about him?”

  “Warren?” McCarthy lit a cigarette and tossed the match aside. “He’s weak.”

  Steve Tosca’s voice came out of the darkness, “Speaking of our good friend, none of this shit is supposed to be happening. Isn’t he getting paid to do a job?”

  “What do you want me to do Stevie, call him up? Pay him a visit?”

  “Well, ain’t he talking to Grady? Ain’t he talking to anybody?”

  “I’ll be talking to Grady in the morning. He’s gonna shit when he hears this.”

  “Maybe this Warren can be convinced to back off,” one of the men said.

  McCarthy shook his head. “It won’t work. He ain’t like that.”

  “Well, what about something else?” Tosca said.

  “He’s a cop, Stevie. This may be East Nowhere but he’s still a cop. You know better. You think we got trouble now.”

  “Some of them will play along if you get them in the right spot. He’s got a kid, don’t he?”

  “Yeah,” said McCarthy. “I sent guys by his house a few times.”

  “We ought to set his fucking house on fire.”

  “I’ll talk to Grady tomorrow,” said McCarthy. “Everybody just calm down and keep your mouths shut.”

  They left the parking lot in a line of four cars. When they were gone, Wilson Hayes emerged from the woods. He carried a few pieces from his lock picking set and a Luger shoved into his pants at the small of his back. He inserted his tension wrench into the deadbolt lock on the side door and applied twisting pressure. Then he pushed the pick in and forced it upward against the key pins inside. After some wiggling, the bolt turned. Then he turned his attention to the knob. He pulled the door open slowly and stepped inside.

  Warren, Jenkins, Dunleavy, and Wilson Hayes sat in a car at a beach in Yarmouth, the wind blowing rain sideways across the parking lot, the bay churned into a turbulent plain of whitecaps. Hayes described his visits to the Elbow Room and what he’d discovered in the back room. It was, he said, a major bookmaking operation. If he had to put a number on it, he’d say it was a hundred thousand a year operation, or at least in that ballpark. Patrons watched sporting events on the bar’s several televisions. Betting slips found their way to the back, where the wire was and where they set the line, kept their books, and generally ran the business. They kept the music up just enough so you couldn’t hear the phones ringing back there, but he had used the toilet and could hear them through the wall.

  The seat he chose afforded him a view of the side door, and he noticed that the men who came and went often carried bags or satchels and in them, he suspected, was money and betting slips. They had collection men coming in with payments from the losers and slips from the other locations they ran.

  Jenkins had mentioned that tailing the people associated with the Elbow Room revealed a few other locations believed to be connected to the bar—a place in Dennis called Brinkman’s, a dive in Orleans called the Bilge, and a private home in Harwich—and Hayes figured these were satellite locations, part of the franchise, where guys in Chatham or Brewster or wherever could get some action on a race or a fight or a ball game. What was coming in the side door of the Elbow Room, he surmised, was business from those places. They had done a good job building a bettor clientele. They could probably cover costs just with the action in the bar alone.

  They were probably loaning money, too. Hayes didn’t have anything solid but would be surprised if it wasn’t happening. Occasionally, individuals were called out and were ushered into the back. When they returned, they looked either pale and dazed or revved up and jumpy. These, he suspected, were either men who were receiving counseling on their debts or hopeful loan applicants.

  “Any indication whether this is tied in with organized crime?” Warren asked.

  “I’d say yes. There’s too much going on here for it to be an independent thing. Too much activity, too many people, too much money. It has the feel of a mob operation.”

  Hayes had sketched them a rough layout of the interior of the Elbow Room and a list of the items they would find inside the converted walk-in: A teletype machine connected to Continental Wire Service, five telephones, four television sets, bettor lists, line sheets, racing forms, five illegal firearms, and a large safe in the corner.

  “If you’re going to hit the place,” said Wilson Hayes, “you better do it soon. It wouldn’t surprise me if they got rid of everything already. Or moved it all somewhere else.”

  “We’ll do it tonight,” said Warren.

  Warren met Jenkins and Dunleavy at a vacant textile factory alongside the railroad tracks a half mile from the Elbow Room. He had picked eight men from the midnight-to-eight shift and called them to the location. The cops were bewildered when they saw the lieutenant standing there in uniform, the detectives beside him in casual street clo
thes and shoulder holsters.

  When all the officers had arrived, Warren briefed them on what they were about to do. He told them that the Elbow Room was a bookmaking operation with possible ties to organized crime. He gave them a list of the items they were looking for. Two men would take up position behind the Elbow Room with Jenkins. The shift sergeant would cover the side door with a shotgun. Everyone else was going in the front door. The patrons would be gone but they expected to catch the bookies, bar employees, runners, collection men, and anyone else who was hanging around after hours. They left the factory in a convoy and drove the short distance up the road to the Elbow Room. When they turned into the lot, the building was completely dark and there was not a single car in sight. Warren was stricken by a sudden, uncomfortable feeling in his chest and his palms started sweating. “There’s no one here,” he said

  “Let’s go anyway,” said Dunleavy.

  “Something’s wrong.”

  The shift sergeant parked his cruiser out by the side door and got down on one knee behind it, leveling his shotgun on the trunk. Jenkins and two patrolmen went around back to cover that side. Warren and Dunleavy hauled a length of six-by-six out of the trunk of one of the cruisers and used it as a battering ram against the front door. On the fifth blow, the metal door tore free of its dead bolt and the knob’s locking mechanism sheared off. The officers rushed with guns drawn into total darkness and an empty building. Warren led the way into the back and opened the walk-in refrigerator. There was nothing inside but the plywood counters. There were phone jacks in the walls and ashtrays full of cigarette butts, but no evidence of what Wilson Hayes had described. Dunleavy went through the drawers of the desk in the storeroom. “There’s nothing here,” he said. “Orders. Receipts. Catalogues. Check register.”

  “They’ve got someone in the department,” said Warren. “Someone must have told them.”

  Jenkins came through the swinging doors. “What the hell happened? Where is everything?”