Local Knowledge

by Liza Gyllenhaal

  I’m not sure if Paul noticed the cascade of sparks as we drove by, but they seemed to me a silent echo of the bright display that had filled the night sky a half an hour earlier. Like everyone else, I’d been entranced by the spectacle. But toward the end, without warning, I’d had a flash of insight, one that had momentarily drained the night of its goodwill and promise. As the fireworks bloomed above us, lighting up the sky, I suddenly saw illuminated on the hills beyond—in an eerie negative of night replaced by day—the enormous new houses that Paul had helped build for Nicky Polanski, the mansions that I had been selling for Nana. And in that moment of unwanted revelation, I remembered the fields of corn, a wandering brook, the hillside with slowly moving cattle, a stand of sugar maples red against the limitless sky, the forests and meadows of my girlhood. All gone now and never to be recovered.

  Part Four

  11

  I never did find out for sure who told. Or why. Paul was convinced it was someone connected with the people Luke was dealing with in Albany. Someone with a grudge, or who wanted a bigger cut of the cash that seemed to be floating down from the heavens like manna. Or maybe there really had been an undercover effort, as the state investigator told me, a well-coordinated operation that netted, after all was said and done, a grand total of two boys, barely out of high school, who thought they’d lucked into a way of making a good living in bad times. For Luke, I knew that part of the thrill was the idea that they were beating the system, circumventing authority. I think he probably loved the sense of risk inherent in the whole enterprise, as well as the subterfuge. What a joke! Sure, they were in the formative stages of Luke’s big development project. They were busy developing 325 marijuana plants in an underground dirt pit, using grow lights powered by secondhand generators, the whole jerry-rigged operation covered over with plywood and tarpaulins.

  “The investigation was conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration in Albany; the New York State Police Community Narcotics Enforcement Unit; the county district attorney, Stanford MacIntosh; the County Drug Task Force; and the county sheriff ’s office,” the assistant DA reported during the press conference.

  “Agents obtained and executed search warrants on the Barnetts’ main dwelling, the building on the property occupied by codefendant Paul Alden, as well as an extensive search of the Barnett property, where the growing and processing facility was discovered. Both men are being charged with conspiracy to manufacture, distribute, and possess with intent to manufacture and distribute marijuana, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Some of the sales took place within school zones, which means a mandatory minimum sentence of two years. We will be seeking a far harsher penalty. The district attorney wants to send a message through this arrest and ongoing investigation to anyone dealing in illegal substances in this county: get out now, because we don’t do drugs here.”

  It didn’t help that the district attorney was up for reelection and running in a crowded and hotly contested race. Looking back on it, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the “We Don’t Do Drugs Here” bumper stickers that began cropping up in the weeks that followed were underwritten by his campaign. Or that the barrage of editorials that ran in the local newspapers supporting the incumbent’s “get out now” message were more a rallying cry for a candidate than a denouncement of two young men, both first-time offenders. I can see that now. The larger picture. Public opinion. Political pressures. At the time, however, I did not have the luxury of hindsight. Or the comfort of perspective. I was spinning in the vortex, with nothing to hold on to.

  “I tried to warn him,” my mother said the morning after the raid and arrests, a morning when the news was sweeping like wildfire across the county. “I tried to tell him that Luke Barnett was no damned good.” My mother did not swear, so I knew how upset she must have been. But I don’t think she fully grasped the ramifications of what had happened yet; I know that I hadn’t. It was such a blow—so unexpected and horrendous—that I think we were both just stunned. We kept going back over the facts as we knew them, sorting through the rubble for meaning, the way people sift through the ashes of a burned-down house searching for cherished belongings.

  “You knew nothing about this,” my father said, standing at the kitchen sink and looking out over the bright, late-autumn day. “You were duped by him into believing this story about developing the land. You never even saw this—this marijuana nursery, this processing plant! My God, to think that he sat here night after night, lying through his teeth to me.”

  “I did see it, Daddy,” I said. “I made Paul drive me up there one day. He kept talking about the construction site and I wanted to see it. But there was nothing there, really, just a big empty space covered over with tarps. He wouldn’t let me get out.”

  “Good. Fine. You’re to tell the police that. You’re to be absolutely honest. You have nothing to hide. Nothing in the world to be ashamed of.” My father and mother both came with me down to Northridge for my meeting with the authorities. My mother waited outside while my father accompanied me into the small room where a police detective, the state investigator, and a representative from the DA’s office took turns questioning me. If I was told their names, I forgot them immediately; I wasn’t able to make any sense of what was happening. I felt concussed, out of sync with reality, confused by many of their questions:“You spent a lot of time at the Barnett property. You were at the house Paul Alden was occupying for nearly five hours the night before the arrests were made. We found marijuana being processed in the upstairs bedrooms there. What can you tell us about this?”

  Or …

  “You say that you did visit the growing site with Paul Alden in early September. And yet Mr. Alden claims that you were never there. And that you knew nothing about their illegal activities. How do you account for this discrepancy?”

  Or …

  “What were you doing at the Barnett residence when the police arrived with a search warrant? You said at the time that you had been at the house where Paul Alden was living and that he had called to tell you to leave that residence and go to the main house. Why would he do that? What did he ask you to do when you got to the main house?”

  And …

  “We understand that you and Paul Alden are engaged to be married. Obviously, this means you must have a close and trusting relationship. Do you honestly expect us to believe that you knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about the extensive and extremely lucrative criminal activities that he was undertaking with Luke Barnett? That you did not know, did not even guess, that he was helping to grow, process, and distribute marijuana?”

  Of all the questions, that last was the only one that made any impact. It tore through my numbness and sank down to the very roots of my worst fear. Duped. It was my father’s word. Tricked. Made a fool of. Betrayed. How could I not know? Why had Paul lied to me, over and over again! I had entrusted him with my future, all my hopes and dreams. I had given him my heart, and now it felt as though he had tossed it on the table, in front of these men. How could I not know?

  My father stayed on and spoke to the officials when they were done with me. I went to sit in the hallway next to my mother. We were both utterly bewildered by what felt like a loss worse than any death I could imagine; it was the only time I can remember us ever holding hands.

  On the way home in the car, my father told me:

  “You will do everything you can to cooperate with this investigation, Maddie.”

  “But I don’t know anything. You heard what I told them.”

  “I think they believe you, but I’m not positive. I’m going to ask Harry to go with you next time.” Harry was my father’s first cousin, older than him by at least a decade, and a practicing lawyer in Berkshire County.

  “Next time? I have to go back?”

  “Yes. I don’t know if you really understand how serious this is. These people are going to nail Paul and Luke to the wall. They are going to crucify them. And you are going to help them every step
of the way, do you hear me?”

  It took me months, years really, to understand how deeply my father was hurt by what Paul had done. He was never able to forgive Paul for allowing him to believe in Barnett-Alden Enterprises, for priding himself that he had a role in what he saw as its early success. I think he felt sullied and humiliated by Paul’s deception at a time when he most needed to feel otherwise. I also believe he had truly loved Paul; that he felt he had finally found the son he’d probably always longed for. To lose him in such a devastating and public way fundamentally altered my father’s character. That love turned into a nagging, obsessive hatred that would work away at him for the rest of his life.

  Dandridge remortgaged the farm to pay Paul’s bail and to cover what was bound to be a heavy load in terms of legal expenses. Dandridge stood by his son in court and in every other way in public. The whole Alden family closed ranks around Paul. He was one of them, and they took care of their own. I would learn later, however, how Dandridge worked Paul over in private. Day after day, telling him he was a loser, a liar, a failure, a shame to the family. It was revenge, pure and simple, for Paul turning his back on the farm, for thinking he had a smarter plan, that he was better than his father. But Paul was so wounded already I doubt he really felt his father’s blows. He believed it was what he deserved, anyway. Perhaps he even welcomed it.

  Paul tried to call me twice that first week.

  “You will never speak to my daughter again,” my father told him.

  “Never call here again,” he told him the second time. “You are dead to us.”

  Harry Fedderson met my father and me at the Northridge police station for my second interview early the following week. This time, they asked my father to wait in the hallway.

  “We hope you’ll be more candid with us this time,” the state investigator began, while the police detective activated a tape recorder. “The fate of your fiancé might very well rest in your hands, in what you can—”

  “Paul Alden is no longer her fiancé,” Harry interjected. He was an ashen-faced, dour man, but I believe he took his responsibility as my legal representative very much to heart. He understood my father’s concerns about Paul’s actions tainting me and the family. We were there to cooperate, he stated, to do all that was asked of us, but I was not to be implicated. I hadn’t broken any law. No Fedderson had ever broken the law. In fact, over the past one hundred years or so, there happened to be at least four Feddersons who had actually practiced the law, besides Harry himself.

  “We will bear that in mind, Mr. Fedderson,” the state investigator responded. “In the meantime, Maddie, we have to assume that you want to get at the truth as much as any of us. You are in a unique position in that—and we will assume for the time being that what you have been telling us is accurate—though you didn’t know what Paul Alden was actually doing, you were there while much of this was going on around you. You are a witness to conversations between Paul Alden and Luke Barnett. You knew their work habits and schedules, where they said they might be traveling, who they claimed to be seeing.”

  “Yes. But I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  “Exactly. And that’s not for you to worry about, okay? It’s our job to sift through all the information, to sort out fact from fiction. For instance, did they ever mention who exactly they saw in Albany?”

  “By name? No. Luke called them his venture capitalists.”

  “Yeah. And did they go up to Albany together?”

  “I think so. Sometimes, anyway.”

  “How often?”

  “Maybe once a month that they told me about. Or twice at the most.”

  “And where in the city? Around the Capital District? The university?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t say. I always thought they were purposefully vague about Albany. I thought it was because Luke’s father’s old law partners were helping Luke out.”

  “No. In fact, Earle, Haverford, and Barnett has been cooperating fully with the investigation. Do you know why he was fired by that firm?”

  “No …”

  “He was caught selling marijuana to a paralegal there. He said it was the first and only time he’d ever done such a thing. They let him off, though they now regret that they didn’t turn him over to the authorities then and there. Have you ever smoked marijuana?” The sudden change of subject and tone threw me off for a second.

  “No …”

  “You don’t sound so sure. Why is it that—”

  “She answered your question,” Harry interrupted. “For the record, she said that she has not. Can we move on?”

  “Have you ever seen Paul Alden or Luke Barnett smoking marijuana, or doing other kinds of drugs?”

  “Well, yes. A few times… .”

  It went on like that for another hour and a half. We backed and filled over the past year, tediously going over the chain of events as I remembered them: Paul’s worries about finding work … Luke’s development idea … the financial backing from Albany … the sudden influx of cash … the trips to Albany … the new Jeep … my visit to the site … the argument a night or two before the raid when Paul cried, “Don’t talk fucking dope talk to me! Don’t think I don’t know what you’re trying to do” … his call that day telling me to go up to the house …

  “Thank you,” the police detective said. He stopped the tape recorder. “We’re going to break for lunch now. Be back here by two o’clock, please.”

  The meal was a stilted, unhappy affair. The three of us went to Salter’s, at that point Northridge’s fanciest restaurant. We each silently paged through the lengthy, ornate menu, ordered expensive sandwich platters, and ended up eating practically nothing. I knew instinctively that Harry, who in the past had shown a courtly sort of interest in my existence, was repulsed by what he now thought he knew about the drugs and the delinquents with whom I’d somehow entangled myself. Harry was a practical, no-nonsense kind of man. I’m sure he believed that where there’s smoke there’s fire, and I could almost feel him sniffing the air around me for a whiff of marijuana.

  “Do you have any sense of what’s going to happen?” my father asked Harry. We’d ended up back at the police station a good half hour before it was necessary, and were huddled together outside the brick building in the dull gray chill. “They can’t possibly charge her with anything, can they?”

  “They can do whatever they want,” Harry replied.

  “I’m cold,” I said. “Please, I’d like to go inside.”

  My father was invited to participate in the discussion that afternoon, though it was really more of a monologue by the state investigator, a Lieutenant Riccio. Over the course of my debriefing, he’d been the one who had asked the most pointed and informed questions. He seemed to have the best grasp of the story line, the characters and settings, the overarching dynamic of our little tragedy. He was a balding, stout man, gentle-voiced, polite. The police detective had badgered me from time to time. The man from the DA’s office had been frequently sarcastic. Lieutenant Riccio had approached me with the mild concern of a caring teacher, inquiring about a sudden slip in grades. He made me feel as though he understood exactly what had happened, that he believed and trusted me. I found myself longing to confide in him, to tell him much more than he seemed to want to know, and for this reason I knew him to be the most dangerous person in the room.

  “This is such an unfortunate situation, Maddie. I hope you know that we all see that. I have this feeling, and this so often happens in cases of this kind, that good people are going to be badly hurt by what we—the group of us that constitute this drug task force—uncover. What you have to understand is that Paul, Luke, and their little business enterprise are actually part of a much bigger and more serious picture. This investigation started in Albany, you see; it began as an operation to break up a very powerful and professional drug organization that we believe is operating in at least five different counties at this point, maybe more. I will tell you, Maddie, that thus fa
r we have been unable to penetrate the heart of that organization. Our leads take us out peripherally to people like Luke and Paul. Don’t get me wrong: what those two have done is criminal. They will both be punished, serve time in jail, be put on probation for years to come. But we also know that they didn’t work alone—”

  “Maddie knew nothing about any of this!” my father cut in angrily. Lieutenant Riccio, whose gaze had been drifting back and forth from the darkening window to me, now turned to stare at my father. It was a cold, judgmental look, and I realized then that it was Riccio who was in charge of the investigation, that he had been from the beginning.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said. “In fact, Joe, Scott, why don’t you take Mr. Fedderson outside? I’d like a chance to talk with Maddie and her lawyer alone. Okay?”

  It was an order. All three men pushed back their chairs and left the room.

  “I’ll get to the point. Obviously, Luke and Paul didn’t work alone. We believe they were financed by the drug organization that I mentioned, and that they were allowed to use an already well-established network to distribute the marijuana that they grew and processed. They are deeply, integrally connected with this organization. We know that. It is self-evident. Though they both deny it. Which is a pity. Especially for Paul.”