by Joe Flanagan
Parked a short distance from General Patton Drive, Steve Tosca watched Warren come out of his house and get into his car. He followed him as far as a newly constructed Howard Johnson’s by a cloverleaf on the Mid-Cape Highway. Tosca pulled over by a row of phone booths and watched through a small pair of binoculars as Warren parked and then got into the passenger side of a light-colored sedan. The car circled the lot, passing near Tosca, who got a look at the driver and, as the sedan was waiting to enter the highway, wrote down the license number.
Twenty minutes later, he was walking into the kitchen of the Depot Road house where George McCarthy was meeting with some of the others. “Hey,” he said. “I just seen Warren get into a car with someone up at the Howard Johnson’s on the highway.”
“That doesn’t tell me a lot, Stevie.”
“With a cop, George. He’s with some kind of cop. And he isn’t local.”
McCarthy turned in his chair.
“And I think I seen that car parked outside Warren’s house before. I wrote down the license number.”
No one said anything. The kitchen was quiet for a full ten seconds. “Give it here,” McCarthy said, finally.
At the Black Rose, a pub beneath an elevated section of the partially completed Central Artery in Boston, Grady Pope stood by a window peering out the drawn blinds, his narrowed eyes sweeping across the empty street, peering into the dim entrances to alleyways, scrutinizing the steel trestles one after the other as they proceeded down Atlantic Avenue and curved out of sight. He was alone except for the man who managed the place for him. It was a small bar, for drinkers only, and only certain types of drinkers, because its location in the shadows beneath the noisy highway project was both off-putting and little known.
Pope heard the phone ring in the storage room where the man was stocking booze. “It’s for you, Grady,” he said.
Grady walked over and picked it up. It was Stasiak. “We’ve got a problem down here,” he said.
“What.”
“Warren’s meeting with the FBI.”
Stasiak waited for Pope to respond, but there was nothing.
“He was seen getting into a car with one of them. We got the license number. The car is registered to the U.S. attorney’s office in Boston. We have to do something. Now.”
“I figured it was going to come around to this sooner or later.”
“This guy disappears. I’m going to do this one personally.”
“No, you’re not.”
“What?”
“I’m gonna have Frank Semanica do it.”
“What?”
“Just listen to me. I’ve been having problems with Frank. He told me that this Buick Special we used to have got stolen from out front of his apartment in Quincy. But I find out he was down there on a run earlier this summer and he had the goddamn cops chasing after him for something he did. He set the car on fire up by the canal and the cops down there got the VIN number and started asking questions up here. I just found out about it last week. And there’s trouble over some weird sex shit he pulled with some girl up here. He’s got to go.”
“And this is who you want to go after Warren? My ass is on the line too, you know.”
“I’m going to have him kill Warren and then you’ll take him out. It’ll look like you came to the rescue just a little too late. George says Frankie’s been doing a lot of speed lately. That’s another thing. We’re going to work it so George gives him a bunch of bennies and then we’ll send him over to Warren’s house late at night. You’ll be set up somewhere near there and when you see Frank coming out of the house, you go in and take care of him. You say you spotted a wanted car sitting outside Warren’s house. When you went to check it out, Frank came out and pulled a gun. When they do the autopsy they’ll find out he was all hopped up on speed and we’ll make sure he has a trunk load of stolen goods. It will look like a burglary gone bad. Some out-of-control bastard from Boston.”
“You know Warren’s got a kid, right?”
“With any luck he can finger Frank as the guy who shot his Daddy. Knowing Frankie, he’ll probably kill the kid, too. We get rid of Warren, we get rid of Frankie, Frankie takes the rap, you come off looking like the cavalry. They already think your shit’s ice cream down there anyhow. What about the DA down there? Is he going to be a problem?”
“No. He’s under control. He’ll do whatever I tell him.”
“All right. And quit worrying about Frankie,” he said. “I’ve been doing this a long time.”
“So have I.”
“Not on my level, you haven’t. Play it like I say and we’ll be fine.”
Stasiak hung up the phone and looked around the tiny cottage. He wouldn’t be back here again. The last time, he was finishing a phone call to Pope when he turned around to find Mitzi retreating unsteadily from the doorway, hurrying to get back into bed. He followed her into the bedroom. “Not as sleepy as we pretend to be, are we?” he said. She had hidden the dose of heroin he had given her beneath her pillow. He made her cook it up and inject it, then waited while she nodded off. He prepared a second dose and stuck the needle into her arm, which roused her sharply. “No, no, no, no,” she said. Mitzi’s mouth gaped open and she closed her eyes. She rolled over on her side, away from Stasiak. He readied a third and gave it to her.
That was two days ago. The place was starting to smell bad. Stasiak wiped down every surface in the cottage he might have touched. He looked in on Mitzi and he saw the lividity in her legs and a brown stain on the bedding. He didn’t know what she’d been up to but he didn’t like it. For good measure, he wiped the entire cottage down again.
The house on Daggett Lane was quiet, the windows open on an Indian summer midmorning. Edgar Cleve stood alone in Dr. Hawthorne’s office. He looked around at the sunlight in the screens and listened for any sound in the house. Reassured by the silence, he approached the doctor’s desk. The drawers were locked. Cleve saw the binder that had to do with Hawthorne’s dealings with Karl Althaus and Luxor Laboratories. Partially concealed beneath it was a prescription pad. When Cleve reached for it, he saw the newspapers, four individual front page sections of the Cape Cod Standard Times, folded in quarters, their edges neatly aligned: Third Child Death Stuns Community; Hyannis Victim Strangled, Coroner Says; Truro Boy, 9, Slain. Affixed to them with a paper clip was a piece of Dr. Hawthorne’s personal stationery on which he’d written numbers. Cleve held it up to his face. It looked like a list of dates and beside each, illegible notations, which he struggled to read until a distant movement that he perceived through one of the screens halted his effort. Looking down Daggett Lane from the second-story window, he saw Doctor Hawthorne walking back from the direction of Commercial Street, a newspaper under his arm.
Cleve hurried to his place on the porch, where he pretended to work with his magazines. He listened to Dr. Hawthorne enter the house and go upstairs to his office. A few moments later, Cleve heard him come back down. He thought he heard the back door open and close. A long period of silence followed. Cleve crept quietly back inside, entered the kitchen, and was startled to find the doctor standing there. “What’s the matter?” said Cleve.
“Have you been in my office?”
“No.”
“There are thirty-five slips on that prescription pad upstairs. I’ll know if any are missing, Clyde.”
“How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t want you to call me that.”
“Look, I’ve indulged you more than is reasonable. The reason we’re doing this business with the names is because you made some unwise choices.”
“What about the choices you’ve made?”
“You are here, spending the summer in Provincetown and not in other, much more dire surroundings, on account of me and a certain amount of trust I have placed in you. Now if you’re going to say trusting you was a bad choice, maybe you have a point.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“I am uncomfortable, Clyde. Uncomfortable with what’s going on here. Do you know we had a couple of visitors here the other day? Authorities. Police.”
“They weren’t here for me.”
“They were not, as it turns out. But who’s to say they won’t be back?”
“Why would they?”
“A good question. I don’t suppose you’d hazard an answer.”
Cleve reached for the hook where the car keys had hung but they were gone.
“No more car,” said Hawthorne. “The car is revoked permanently.”
Cleve reddened. “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to tell everyone about you. I’m going to tell everyone about what you’ve been doing.”
“And what does that mean?”
“What do you suppose it means? That’s what you’d say to me. Well, now the shoe’s on the other foot. What do you suppose it means? You and children. You and all kinds of other things I know about.”
“Sit down, Clyde.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Sit down. You’re out of control.”
Cleve said, “I know what benzodiazepam tastes like, even if you crush it up.”
Hawthorne opened a drawer and reached in.
“The needle is gone,” said Cleve. “I found out where you were keeping it.”
“Is this the voice of liberation, Clyde?”
“I said don’t call me that.”
“There is nothing quite so feeble as a feeble rebellion.”
Cleve turned and bolted, flinging the door to the farthest extent of its arc so that it hit the wall and left a scattering of broken glass on the floor. Hawthorne watched his ungainly form round the bushes in front of the house, out of sight, and then reappear in the backyard, where he planted one hand on the points of the six-foot stockade fence and then cleared it in a motion that seemed nearly superhuman. Hawthorne gazed at the spot where Cleve had stood. It was time, he decided, to search the house.
46
Bring your car around back, Frankie.”
Night was picking up pace at the Elbow Room. At 10 P.M. the place was getting noisy and crowded. The televisions were tuned to the Colts-Steelers game, the tables were full, and the bar was crowded three deep in the chaotic traffic of drinks and betting slips. Frank Semanica was already showing the signs of the speed George McCarthy had given him. He had grown quiet but more volatile. The bouncers had had to tell him twice already to keep his hands off the customers. When Semanica went out to get his car, McCarthy and one of the bouncers went into the back. The door to the walk-in was open, the telephones ringing with late action on the game. Outside the back door was an assortment of items, a vase, a crystal bowl, a set of golf clubs, a new Admiral record player still in its box. They had been stolen in a series of quick burglaries over the last two nights.
McCarthy looked at the stolen property. Each item had been carefully wiped. “Fucking Frankie.”
“How many did you give him?” asked the bouncer.
“Four.”
“He musta took them all. He’s fucked up.”
Semanica pulled around to the back of the building. “Grady wants this stuff,” said McCarthy. “Take it up to Boston.”
“Golf clubs? Grady’s playing golf now? Motherfucker.”
McCarthy stared at him. “Whoa, Frankie. Whoa.” He stepped back inside, calling over his shoulder to Semanica, “Go ahead and load it up.” He took a nine-millimeter pistol out of the safe and wiped it down with a rag, then went back outside and handed it to Semanica. “Are you ready for this, Frankie?”
“Of course I’m ready. What do you think?”
“Remember he’s got a kid in the house. If he doesn’t see you, leave him be. If he does, do him, too.”
Parked within view of Warren’s house, Dale Stasiak looked at his watch. Semanica should be showing up any minute now. But Warren’s car was not in the driveway. There was a female in the house. He had seen her shadow behind the drawn shades. He raised his binoculars. There she was, peering out from around the edge of one of the shades. He pulled out and turned on to General Patton Drive. She answered on the first knock. Stasiak could see the heavy chain on the door pulled taut. “Good evening,” he said, holding up his credentials. “I’m with the state police. Is Mr. Warren home?”
“No. He was supposed to be back an hour ago. Is something wrong?”
“No. I’m here to see him on police business. Do you know where he is?”
“Cameron’s boatyard. They had a late job to do there. I don’t know why he isn’t back yet.”
“Cameron’s. Where is that?”
“Osterville.”
“O.K. Thanks.”
Back on the road, Stasiak radioed Heller. “State zero nine to five seven.”
“Five seven.”
“We’re stand down on detail one. Stand down. Copy?”
“Copy. Stand down.”
Under the floodlights at Cameron’s, the hoist finally came to life. Warren gave a thumbs-up to the mechanic, who stood at the controls. Suspended over the open engine bay of a fishing boat was a six-cylinder diesel engine. The boat belonged to longtime clients of Len Cameron who had brought it in to replace bad crankshaft bearings and the rear main seal. Len had promised them he would have it ready in two to three days but the parts had to be back-ordered and the vessel had sat for more than a week and now the owners were missing the crucial fall season. Warren had been sitting at home when he got an unexpected call late in the day, asking if he could come over for a few hours to help get the engine installed and running.
Everything went well until they were ready to lower the engine into place. The hoist rolled out over the fishing boat on its twin I beams and suddenly stopped. It was an electrical problem but locating it had taken them well into the night.
Now, they lowered the engine down and worked to get it into position. Standing in the hold of the fishing boat, Warren suddenly realized he had forgotten to call Jane to tell her he would be late. If she had been trying to reach him, he never would have heard the phone out here. “Hold on for a minute,” he called out to the mechanic. “I have to call my babysitter.”
He ran to the phone in the dry dock bay. “Jane, I’m sorry,” he said. “We ran into a problem here and I completely forgot to call. Is everything O.K.?”
“Yes. I was just getting a little worried, that’s all.”
“I apologize. I’ll be home in about a half hour. We just have to finish up. Is Mike in bed?”
“No. He wants to wait up for you.”
“Would you put him on?”
He told Mike to do as Jane said and get in bed. He would come into his room and see him when he got in. “O.K.,” he said. “Dad, Jane wants to talk to you.”
Jane came back on the line. “Mr. Warren, a state policeman was here looking for you.”
“Did he leave a name?”
“No.”
“Did he say what it was about?”
“No. He just said it was police business.”
Warren worked his way around the engine, tightening the bolts that held it in place, wondering who had visited his house and why. His mind fabricated ominous scenarios, which preoccupied him to the point where he had torqued down all of the bolts and started going around a second time before he realized what he was doing.
Jane Myrna read Mike a story, put him to bed, and went back out to the living room. She thought she heard a car pull into the driveway. Pushing back the shade, she was relieved to see a car there but then saw that it was not Warren’s. She closed the door, then turned to find a man standing in the kitchen, the back door open to the night. She fought the impulse to scream, holding a hand over her mouth. The man had long hair and wore a denim jacket with the cuffs rolled up. He looked d
irty and crazy. Jane tried to sneak a hand to the front doorknob, but he was across the room in an instant and planted his hand on the door. In his other hand, he held a gun.
“Where’s Warren?” he whispered.
“I don’t know.”
“You better tell me, honey, because I am not fucking around.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
He brought a hand up and grabbed her breast. She closed her eyes tightly. He massaged it and squeezed hard. Jane let out a cry. Semanica lifted her skirt and looked at her panties. He hooked a finger in the waistband and pulled them down for a look.
“Please,” she cried.
He wheeled her around and grabbed her by the arm, twisting it behind her back. “You’re coming with me,” he said, and pushed her out the door. “Who else is in the house?”
“No one.”
“No kid?”
“Mr. Warren took him with him. They went out to visit someone.”
“Out kinda late, aren’t they?” He shoved her into the car. “You’re going to tell me where Warren is and I don’t mean maybe. Stay down on the floor. Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me!”
Dale Stasiak sat in his car, concealed off a dirt road a short distance from his rented house in Wellfleet. Whoever was following him, they knew what they were doing. And they had resources. He counted at least three cars involved in the relay technique they were using. He first spotted them near the shuttered Hyannis rail depot where he had met Heller and told him to intercept Warren at Cameron’s boatyard in Osterville. Stasiak then headed down Cape, leading his followers far enough away that they could not interfere with Heller.
He needed to contact Heller and let him know that something was up, tell him to get to a telephone. Stasiak figured it was likely they were monitoring the state police net but he and Heller used codes that no one would understand. He radioed Heller but got no response.