Lesser Evils

by Joe Flanagan

  “I heard you were the proverbial honest cop. I was told you were decent and honest and upstanding and all the rest of it and that it’s made trouble for you.”

  “I can vouch for the trouble. I don’t know about the rest of it.”

  “I’m innocent. They never produced this so-called informant who claimed I had pot in my room and that is because there was no such person. There was no pot in my room. They brought it with them when they came to toss the place.”

  “A woman called my office to report it. She asked to speak to me directly.”

  “Sure. They used you as the patsy. Who knows who she was?”

  “Mr. Sibley, you have a history of drug use . . .”

  “Yes, for a certain period in 1955, but I quit. I got off the stuff and I never went back to it.”

  “Do your former employers at the Globe think you’re innocent?”

  “No, and that’s the whole idea, isn’t it? You really know how to keep a stiff upper lip, Warren, but I know I’ve got your interest.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. I need an ally and I know you don’t trust Stasiak.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m a reporter.”

  “Who told you I don’t trust him?”

  “A detective named Phil Dunleavy, in so many words. A Sergeant Garrity. Word gets out. Hard feelings follow Stasiak around. I knew it wouldn’t take much looking to find out who he had problems with. Word has it you went to the district attorney about him.”

  Warren sat silently for a moment. He was surprised at how busy the reporter had been in the short amount of time he was on the Cape. “It’s true,” he said. “But I’m out of it now. I have a handicapped child to take care of. I have to find work.”

  “You may be off the police force but you’re still connected. I know things about Stasiak. I know things you want to know. And yes, I’m claiming he had that pot planted in my motel room so he could get rid of me.”

  “You would have to sell this to Elliott Yost. Or someone.”

  “I was hoping you could help me do that.”

  “What do you know about Dale Stasiak?”

  “Sometime during the coverage of the Attanasio trial, I got curious about him. Everyone was curious about him. He’s got this charisma. My editor got the idea to do a side piece on him. Well, we knew he was a war hero of some kind. He won the Navy Cross at Iwo Jima. I knew he grew up in Charlestown. They love him there, even if he’s only half Irish. Not much good comes out of Charlestown, so this is a big thing for them.

  “The popular belief about Dale Stasiak is that his parents sent him off to the Marine Corps to keep him from falling in with street thugs in Charlestown. That’s not the way it happened. Stasiak was not only already a street thug, he was an accomplished street thug. And he was feared. At sixteen. Even grown men were afraid of him. He worked for a gangster named Bob Gormley running betting slips across town and driving his collectors around. Gormley liked him. He used him as muscle. Stasiak was beating people up when other kids his age were studying geometry. What happened was, back in 1940, Stasiak was among a group of guys who tried to hijack a truck full of liquor on Route 1 outside Neponset. It turned out it was a sting and they all got caught. Since he was underage and it was his first offense, the judge gave him the choice of the Marines or reform school. He joined the Marines and his record was expunged.

  “Anyway, when Stasiak came back from the war, he joined the state police but he never let go of his Charlestown connections. I’ve been told he had all kinds of little rackets going. Selling information, graft, doctoring records.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “Wouldn’t the DA like to know. I’m not telling, Warren. People have told me things, and they’re people that anyone investigating Stasiak—if they happened to be investigating him—would love to talk to. But I’m not telling you who they are until I see some payment in kind.”

  “Fair enough. Go ahead.”

  “Everyone talks about Stasiak and the Attanasio investigation. But what people don’t know is what happened afterward, and that is at least as significant as Attanasio, if not more so.”

  “What happened afterward?”

  “After the whole Mafia thing transpired, the Attanasio indictments, the trial, the conviction, the Globe special series, I followed up on what the FBI was going to do next. Well, whatever they were doing, it was super-secret. Nobody was talking, and I mean nobody. But I had a contact at the federal building in Boston, a mid-level attorney who worked for Justice, and he told me the FBI got a warrant to bug a place in Charlestown, a plumbing supply warehouse. I did some asking around and in no time I knew the FBI was chasing after Grady Pope. In the meantime, I’d done this puff piece on Stasiak and I had all the background on him which, of course, I never put into the article, and I’m just sitting on this stuff because it’s so explosive.”

  “You never went to anybody with this?”

  “What was I going to do? Shit on a local icon? Me, who’s got an embarrassing history of drug use that I’m trying to keep secret? No one knew the paper had to send me off for the cure and I wanted to keep it that way. And just between you and me, it wasn’t just marijuana. I’d got started on opium as well, and it took me to parts of the city that I’d never meant to go. That’s how I found out a lot of these things. Some stuff about Stasiak I found out through the people I used to buy narcotics from. The drug dealers in certain parts of Boston have to pay Pope in order to operate, and he’s not cheap. Of course, I started hearing later that Stasiak was getting paid to protect Pope’s operations. People were scared to death of them both, but some of them couldn’t resist telling a few tales. And yes, you heard correctly. Dale Stasiak providing protection for Grady Pope. ‘Our good friend.’ That’s what they call him.

  “Then I found out that the FBI’s investigation into the Irish mob is suddenly over, an investigation that I couldn’t get the slightest tip on because it was so secret. But there was a lot of recrimination in the aftermath of that thing and some people were talking. They had some eavesdropping or surveillance exposed, is what I hear, and the FBI thought someone inside the investigation betrayed them. Suddenly, Stasiak gets sent down to the Cape, which more than a few people thought was strange. Maybe the state police just transfer people like that. I don’t know. But I heard the feds didn’t trust him and the staties just wanted to get him out of sight. Somehow, somewhere, word got out that I’d been asking questions. When I showed up in Hyannis to cover the child murders, I had ulterior motives. I was pursuing Stasiak. By then, they knew it. Now, here I am. I should have been smarter.

  “He’s complicated, Stasiak. He’s not just a bad guy. He’s a bad guy with an asterisk. I know it sounds strange to hear it, but I’m convinced he has a very strong sense of right and wrong. Yes, he’s a thug—probably a psychopath. But somewhere in all that is the man he might have been. I understand, being a drug addict. I guess that’s something Stasiak and I have in common: That little voice that’s always telling you it will be O.K. to go ahead and do something you know you shouldn’t. Always that pull from the past.

  “Anyway, I heard there was a meeting—all high-level cops—where the feds basically accused Stasiak and some others of being in bed with Grady Pope. There’s a lot of bad blood. But in the end they had to drop the investigation. If they could be persuaded to pick it up again—if you want to send some FBI people in here to talk to me—I can tell them who to talk to in Boston, Charlestown, Somerville, Medford. These people are bookies, drug peddlers, loan sharks, pimps. You put the right kind of heat on them, they’ll play ball. They’ve all got something to hide. I can help you with that, too.”

  Warren sat there, thinking.

  “Listen,” Sibley said. “Do they have something going on Stasiak?”

  “We’re looking into some things.”

  “What
things?”

  “I’ll be back, Mr. Sibley.”

  37

  Warren and Jenkins sat in the living room of the house on General Patton Drive. It was mid-morning, the neighborhood still. Jenkins, in a suit and tie, had one arm draped over the back of the sofa and drummed his fingers on his knee. Warren was in work clothes and sat hunched forward, staring absently across the room and out the kitchen window. He had just told Jenkins about his visit with Fred Sibley.

  “So what do we do?” Jenkins asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

  “Yes. The only problem is the truth is connected to a deal we don’t have the authority to make. No one is investigating Stasiak for anything and no one is going to. Sibley’s out of luck.”

  Jenkins’s face suddenly took on a quizzical look. “What’s this?” he said. Warren turned and looked out the front windows. Two Barnstable patrol cars had pulled up in front of the house. He saw Welke get out, then Petraglia and a handful of others. Jenkins and Warren got up and went out the front door. Petraglia led the group across the patchy grass and up to the front step. In his hands he held an envelope. Welke hung back by the cars. “Sir,” Petraglia said. Warren was embarrassed by his appearance, a ratty old T-shirt and paint-spattered khakis, home in the middle of a weekday because he was out of work, the neighborhood dumpy and neglected. Warren watched the policemen approach. For one terrifying moment he thought something might have happened to Mike and that they had come to tell him. But Petraglia cleared his throat and held the envelope forward while the others looked down at the ground. “Sir, some of the men and myself took up a collection and, uh . . . Because we knew you were short on work and you might need some cash. And we—the fellas and myself—we put together a little something to maybe tide you over.”

  Warren thought he heard Jenkins mutter, “Jesus Christ” and glanced his way to find him trying to stifle the surprised expression on his face. It was with great consternation that Warren realized tears were coming to his eyes. The constriction in his throat was such that he feared his voice would break if he tried to speak. He was mortified but profoundly moved, looking down at the envelope, unable to speak or look at them. “You can’t say no, lieutenant,” one of the cops said. “That’s the deal.” He tried to croak out a “thank you” but only a noise escaped, which he tried to conceal as a cough. “Thank you,” he said, finally. “Thank you. I can’t tell you what this means to me.”

  They made awkward small talk with him, discussing their patrols and what had been happening around town. Jenkins walked over to Welke, who was standing back by the cars with his thumbs hooked into his utility belt. “You in on this too, tough guy?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  Jenkins watched the men gathered around Warren. He shook his head. “You disappoint me, Welke.”

  “Is that right?”

  “You’re ruining my picture of you as a complete asshole.”

  “Jenkins, there’s some things I gotta ask you.”

  “Yeah, like what?”

  “There’s some things going on—I think—that you and the lieutenant know about and I think I know about them too. I’m no genius but I can put two and two together as well as anybody.”

  “What are you talking about, Welke?”

  “In early July I arrested a guy who’d broken into a sheet metal shop in Cotuit. He was trying to steal copper out of there. I get him handcuffed and I get him outside my patrol car and I’m going through his pockets and I find these slips of paper. And I says, ‘What’s this?’ and he says, ‘Betting slips,’ and he starts telling me about places where there’s gambling going on. Anyway, he named a few places and one of them was the Elbow Room. He told me he heard there were cops involved and I just figured he was full of shit so I brought him in and booked him and that was the end of that, but I made it a habit to drive by the Elbow Room every now and again. Now, I got a brother-in-law who tells me there’s gambling at a place called the Bilge in Orleans and he says he heard they have some kind of protection. He said the rumor is they’ve got some cops on their payroll. I went into the property room and pulled out the stuff belonging to the guy I arrested in Cotuit and the betting slips weren’t there. Not only that, but the inventory I did when I booked him wasn’t there either. And then I came up on you that day you were over at that abandoned gas supply place across from the Elbow Room. You remember that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I started paying real close attention then.”

  “Why didn’t you come to us with this?”

  “Because I know I’m on the outs with you and I figured the lieutenant didn’t like me very much. I’ve said some stuff about him and I figured it got back to him somehow. I don’t know. I just kept it all to myself. But then there was the raid and the papers have been talking about that whole Weeks thing and how it might be connected to some rackets down here. How’d they find out about that?”

  “Beats me.”

  “I’ll bet. I know you’re watching, Jenkins, because I seen you parked near the Bilge and I seen you at a house in Harwich, too.”

  “You followed me?”

  “A couple of times, yeah. After I started working midnight-to-eight I started noticing things. I’ve seen guys at the station late at night. City guys. Badasses. You know the type. I came in once at about three in the morning to book a drunk-and-disorderly and I saw one of them standing behind some cars back by the radio tower. I went over to see what the hell was up and there’s Dunleavy sitting in a car talking to the guy. Three o’clock in the morning. Dunleavy acted real shifty and the guy stepped away like he didn’t want to be seen. I got a damn good look at him, though. The next night, Dunleavy’s at the station again and he comes up and tells me the guy was plainclothes state police working on the murders. That made sense to me but then I was parked down the street from that house in Harwich one day—same place I seen you parked—and a guy pulls up and goes into the house. And you know who it was? The guy that was with Dunleavy. The same guy. Sometimes I see the light on in Dunleavy’s office and the door closed and I can see him moving around in there. What the hell he’s doing at the station at that hour I don’t know. I figured I’d talk to him about some of the things I was hearing. I always got along good with Phil and I just wanted to see what he’d do. But all of a sudden he doesn’t have any time for me. There’s something going on. I know it and I think you and the lieutenant know it. How about you tell me what it is?”

  The men started walking slowly back to their cars, leaving Warren standing on his step, looking at the envelope in his hands. Jenkins said, “Have you talked to anyone else about this?”

  “No.”

  Jenkins reached into his inside jacket pocket and took out his cigarettes. He lit one and snapped his Zippo shut. Welke said, “I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

  “Me too, Welke. Me too.”

  The patrolman watched Jenkins, waiting for an answer, but he just nodded to the others as they passed. Welke stood there, staring at the detective, silently demanding a response. Jenkins finally looked at him. He squinted through smoke, his eyes hard and assessing. “Sit tight,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Stroke, narcolepsy, hypotonia, idiopathic aphasia, the usual variety of head injury. Dr. Hawthorne leafed through the Cape Cod Hospital’s admittance records for neurological cases for the past five years. The managing staff at the small hospital—the only one on Cape Cod—was eager to accommodate the doctor from Boston who was engaged in research for an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. Since the war, the small facility had seen an influx of money, equipment, and expertise and was making the transition from the rural triage station it had always been. Its directors were anxious for both visibility and a connection to the research community.

  But an hour and a half into his search, Dr. Hawthorne had only co
me up with one seizure case, and that a twenty-two-year-old hypoglycemic male. He looked at the two boxes full of buff folders. It was unlikely he was going to find the test population Althaus wanted here. As a psychiatrist, Hawthorne was uneasy about this latest project with Luxor Laboratories. All of the others had involved drugs intended to address disorders of thinking and behavior. It would be difficult for him to explain his involvement in a neurological issue. The prototype antiseizure medication that Luxor was testing—Fenchloravin—was not entirely a secret. Another firm had developed something similar using the same basic compounds. It was unknown where they were with their trials but Althaus was confident that Luxor had the advantage thanks to the services of Dr. Hawthorne.

  He spent another half hour going through the files and eventually came upon a case of a thirteen-year-old boy admitted for evaluation after a seizure. The unfortunately named Perry Boggs was mentally retarded, with a history of self-injurious behavior. Extensive skin lesions were noted by the examining physician. At the bottom of the admitting form was the signature of one Father Terrence Boyle. Hawthorne paged through the documents and discovered a second admitting form—a different date, a separate incident—and again the signature of Terrence Boyle. Further examination revealed that Boyle was from St. Clement parish in Hyannis.

  Hawthorne carefully aligned the edges of the papers before him. A retarded boy. A priest. Possibly a fruitful avenue of inquiry.

  38

  Jenkins spent the better part of the morning at the registry of motor vehicles checking license numbers Dunleavy had given him. When he was finished, he headed back to the station to see if he had any messages: Gladys, asking him if he would pick up the dry cleaning on the way home. Heller with the name and address of some people in Barnstable who probably had some kind of half-assed information for him. His dentist, reminding him of his appointment next week. And a message from Pete Gabbert, the cop who had been his partner when he was a patrolman in Providence, and who was now the detective in charge of the robbery branch down there. They still spoke often and even managed to get in a couple of fishing trips together every summer.