She blushed and looked down at her lap.
“Now,” Richards said, “the reason that Sara Kindred and Molly Dennis’re not sitting where you’re sitting now is that — and you’d better not tell them this, because they’re mad enough at me as it is, and they’re good troopers that I don’t want any madder — but it’s because the only difference between them is their heads. You could swap their heads — take Sara’s head and put it on Molly’s body and Molly’s head on hers — and the only way anybody’d be able to tell the switch was made’d be if the stitching wasn’t good. They may be real ladies, but they look like cops to me, and they would to someone else. Big, tough cops.”
She coughed to hide a laugh.
“Those bodies,” he said, “those’re not the kind of bodies that a couple guys with a nice houseboat on the river’d invite on a little cruise on a summer’s day.”
She looked up at him. “No,” she said. “And you’d better not tell them that I said that, either.”
“I won’t,” he said. “You still signed on?”
“I’m still signed on,” she said.
“All right,” he said. “Now, here is the procedure. We rendezvous tonight at twenty-hundred hours at the Black Horse Inn on Route Sixty-three north of Greenfield. The rooms’re all booked in the name of Commonwealth Construction Company, me as Richard John being the president. I’m sharing a billet with Sergeant Martin Rowley of Troop B, whom you probably met in training.”
“The armorer, uh huh,” she said. She grimaced.
“You found Sergeant Rowley somewhat abrasive, did you?” Richards said.
“That’s a mild way of putting it,” she said. “He got very put out with me when, my first try with the machinegun, I didn’t fire short bursts.”
“Most do,” Richards said. “Find him abrasive, that is. Some even find him abusive. Most also fail to fire short bursts their first try with the machinegun. But Sergeant Rowley remains convinced that skill with firearms is an essential part of the accomplished trooper’s repertoire, and that’s why he acts that way.
“Sergeant Tom Morrissette from Foxboro,” Richards said, “will bunk with Corporal William Hanson of Holderness barracks. Hanson knows the river, because he grew up there. Sergeant Morrissette and Corporal Hanson, you probably don’t know. Sergeant Morrissette was a Recon Marine in Korea. He looks and sounds like the second curate in a three-priest parish, and his specialty was killing silently. I tell you this because Sergeant Morrissette will not. He is not generous with insights about himself. I think he believes the savages have something when they refuse to have their photographs taken: because the camera will steal their spirits. I believe he collects and personally destroys all his nail clippings and whiskers lest some witch doctor get hold of them, and use them to get power over him. Sergeant Morrissette is a formidable man. With him in back of you, you need not fear the hostiles.
“Corporal Hanson,” Richards said, “was Underwater Demolition with the Navy. Frogman. Expert with explosives. Very fine pistol shot.
“You will room alone, of course,” Richards said, “and so will Trooper Frederick Consolo. Trooper Consolo is a recent recruit to our ranks. He comes by way of the Metropolitan District Commission force, where he distinguished himself by shooting a rattlesnake. He did this on horseback while his mount was rearing in fear of the snake, thus demonstrating that he is an expert horseman, a crack shot with the revolver, and unimpressed by wildlife regulations declaring the rattlers in the Blue Hills Reservation an endangered species. That disrespect got him reprimanded and suspended for two weeks with no pay, which in turn pissed him off enough so that he applied to us. Trooper Consolo was a sniper with the Green Berets in Vietnam. He has the reputation of being among the, shall we say, sexually more aggressive members of the young male bachelor set. He is rich, by our standards, at least, and he is personally well-groomed. I’m told that many young women find him attractive. At the risk of offending you: You are not to do so, at least on this assignment.”
She sighed. “Lieutenant,” she said, “I met Cowboy Fred at Framingham one night and he put a move on me. I dusted him off then. If he does it again, I’ll do it again. You have my solemn word.”
“Fine,” Richards said. “We’ll meet for dinner at the inn at twenty-thirty hours — civvies, naturally. Those who wish will have a couple beers or other refreshments after dinner, and that’s all that they will have. We will retire at twenty-two hundred hours. Wake-up time tomorrow will be oh-five-thirty hours. Breakfast. Jump off to the marina at oh-seven-thirty hours. From the marina: oh-eight-fifteen hours. I want to be off the beach from that little retreat before nine-hundred hours, and we are going to do it. I want our subjects to be still in the middle of their Cheerios and herbal tea when we arrive to see them.
“It is very important,” he said, “and I can’t emphasize this enough, that we keep the element of surprise on our side. Tibbetts and Walker are very dangerous men. The only reason they didn’t kill anybody until three years ago was that they apparently didn’t think it was necessary. They left a young man paralyzed on one of the armored car robberies — that at this time we can’t prove, and if hearsay was good evidence we’d be able to prove they killed one of their own people when they decided she was ratting out on them. The only question in my mind about the part they played in The Friary murders is whether we can prove it.
“The way we got this indictment, these indictments,” he said, “was we finally got a blabbermouth, a stinking sewer rat, and he for money told us what his old pals’ve been doing. Some of it at any rate. He held back what he did with them, when he was doing it.
“The rat did this for money,” Richards said. “Did it for a reward. Naturally he’s a bit nervous, lest his old chums find this out. He’s afraid that they will kill him, and I must confess, I see his point. That would be my inclination, so I assume it will be theirs.
“There’s no question,” Richards said, “that we’ve got enough on this guy’s statement to go into some convenient District Court and get complaints and arrest warrants. But if we’d’ve done that, once we arrested the bastards they’d be entitled to a probable cause hearing. And those things’re dodgy. First thing you know, you’ve got some antic judge up there, letting them go free. Not only’re we not gonna see them again, because they’re gonna vanish like Ariel, into thin air, but they’re gonna figure out how we snapped them in the first place. So Terry says to me: ‘Fuck public probable cause. Fuck hearings. We’ll put the guy’s statement into the grand jury, through you, which is prima facie probable cause, and then they’ll be indicted. And then by the time they get their first crack at deducing who the polecat is, they will be in custody. And he’ll be safe from them.’
“So what we did was have me go into the grand jury after some other, minor witnesses, and I read what this guy told us, from the transcript of our talk, and I said I believed it. Without giving them his name. And Terry said that’s good enough. They could indict on that.
“Terry Gleason’s a son of a bitch in court,” Richards said. “And he’s our son of a bitch, and he says he can do it. So I have to believe him. But I’m not as confident as Terry, on the slate of the evidence as we’ve got it now. Still, I can see why, after four years of doing almost nothing but going after these birds, he’s getting a little impatient. And since I’ve got eight years in on it myself, I guess maybe so am I. But there’s a real question whether we can surface our informer in this case, when it comes to trial, and a real question whether his testimony’ll stand up if we do surface him.
“So,” Richards said, “it’s a matter of crucial importance that when we go in tomorrow morning, we hit that place like a battering ram and prevent them from getting rid of anything that might link them to this fucking slaughter that they did a year ago. I’d imagine any coke they got is probably long gone. If they didn’t snort it, they sold it. The money? Well, unless Nichols and Abbate had it labeled as theirs, and the labels aren’t gone, finding it may not he
lp us much. If there’s any left. We’ll therefore be looking for twenty-two-caliber automatic pistols, High Standards, at the most two of them. And also for any little sentimental keepsakes that the ladies may’ve saved from the dalliances they had with the cook and the waitress in The Friary. Because according to our source, that’s how Tibbetts and Walker first found out about the booty, and how to get in to it.
“When we go cruising down the Deerfield, tomorrow bright and early,” he said, “you and friend Consolo in your bathing costumes will be lounging on the roof of the houseboat in such manner and position as to suggest to the casual observer that you are utterly engrossed in each other’s physical attributes.”
“I see,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Richards said. “It’s necessary. You saying you find Trooper Consolo’s prospective attentions more disagreeable than you find the prospect of filling someone’s belly with lead?”
“In a word, yes,” she said. “The guy’s got more hands’n a damned watch factory. The night I ran into him in Framingham, and we were both in full pack uniform at the time, I felt like I’d bumped into an octopus.”
Richards nodded. “Well,” he said, “keeping in mind that I’ve now told you too much to let you out of this detail, I guess you’re going to have to grin and bear it.”
“Only this time,” she said, “in a bikini.”
“Well,” Richards said, “I suppose it doesn’t have to be that. But it’s got to be something along that line, because otherwise you won’t look like what I want you to look like when we show up at that cabin.”
“Which is: a tramp,” she said.
“That’s correct,” he said. “Harsh, but still, correct. When Hanson runs that craft aground the sandbar he says is there, and you and Consolo jump off the roof with your sidearms in plastic bags, and the rest of us come out of that cabin like bats out of Hell, I want any chance spectators to be absolutely stunned.”
She nodded. She took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, “but I’m going to tell him, you know, if he touches the wrong place, I may blow the whole patrol and use the gun on him.”
Richards gazed at her. “You can tell him you’re going to do that,” he said, “but you’d better not do it.”
She returned his gaze. “How about,” she said, “how about if I don’t do it until after the arrests?”
He grinned. “Satisfactory,” he said. “That I’ll tolerate.”
“Deal,” she said.
He stood up behind the desk. “Okay,” he said, “let’s go get our stuff together, and meet the other kids.”
MAY 9, 1978
10
John Bigelow’s office occupied three hundred square feet of trapezoidal space on the second floor of the townhouse at 91 Beacon Street in Boston owned by Damon, Bigelow & Connors. It overlooked an alley, and the bay windows were sun-blocked by the townhouse at 93. Bigelow at fifty-one inhabited the space like an orderly bear, his clean antique cherry desk located precisely in the window bay so that he presided with his back to the dim light over the leather armchairs for clients and the fireplace behind them. There were floor-to-ceiling bookcases on each of the walls except at the base of the trapezoid, where the fireplace was surrounded by portraits done in oil or photographed by Bachrach. There was a worn Aubusson rug on the parquet floor. His voice initially seemed too soft for a man of his size; he reserved volume to make emphases.
When Clayton and Florence Walker were settled in the chairs, Bigelow took his own and cleared his throat. “I’ve found it helps,” he said, “if everyone is candid. As candid as possible, at least. At your request, through Mister Badger, I have seen and talked to James. I can give you my impressions of him and his case, and I want to do that, as I told you on the phone, before you see him yourselves. But I cannot divulge what he said to me, or any responses of my own that might suggest — except in the most general terms — what he said.”
“We quite understand that,” Clayton said. His white hair was tousled and matted, dampened to his skull by the early summer humid heat of his walk across the Public Garden. His face was flushed and he was flustered. “I assured Mister Badger, as I am assuring you, that we fully comprehend the relationship between you, and appreciate very much your willingness to see us at all.” He paused and frowned. “We’re new to this,” he said, “this terrible sort of thing. Any help that you can give us, much appreciated.”
“I’m afraid it won’t be much,” Bigelow said. “As much as I sympathize with you in your predicament, as much as I truly think that the people paying the bills are entitled to all the solace the lawyer can provide, there simply isn’t a great deal that I can say to comfort you. James is in bad trouble. It’s made worse by his attitude, his perception of it. He was hostile toward me when I arrived. He was hostile when I left. He’d already refused to see Mister Badger — both Mister Badgers, in fact, despite the fact that they’d arrived on short notice, interrupted their weekend, at your express request. Why he consented to see me, I do not know. The Charles Street Jail’s not a pleasant place to stay — perhaps by the time I showed up, he’d become tired of his cell. I can only speculate.
“He appeared to be in relatively good physical shape,” Bigelow said. “Fatigued, truculent, ‘defiant’, one could say. But: in full possession of his faculties. Not that that’s a plus.”
“Why is that?” Florence said. “I should think that would be good. If he has to face this case.”
“Ordinarily it would be,” Bigelow said. “Ordinarily a client in a disturbed state greatly complicates his lawyer’s job. But in your son’s instance, given the extreme gravity of the charges against him, some agitation at least would be appropriate.” He paused. “You’re familiar, I’m sure, Doctor,” he said, “with the ‘Fight or Flight Syndrome’?”
“I am,” Clayton said. “But James has always had what we call a ‘low-affect personality.’ ” He scowled. “Unlike his sister, who’s if anything too resourceful. But James, James lacks motivation — self-motivation, at least — unfortunately he was all too responsive to the kind of stimulus Tibbetts was able to give.”
“Well,” Bigelow said, “that’s my point, then, in a nutshell. James fails to manifest either of the symptoms appropriate to animals under stress. It’s almost as though he perceives his situation as irrelevent.”
“Well,” Florence said, “is that because he thinks he’s going to go free?”
“I really couldn’t say,” Bigelow said. “I don’t, if that’s what you mean. The Commonwealth’s case, what little of it I’ve been able to glean from cursory examination of the documents that they’ve filed, certainly isn’t airtight. And it deserves the suspicion appropriate to all evidence that hasn’t been tested. Liars sometimes look like bishops, swearing affidavits.
“On the other hand,” Bigelow said, “although it isn’t ironclad, the Commonwealth’s case, it’s certainly substantial enough to warrant serious apprehension by the persons facing it. Murder in the first degree’s equaled or excelled only by treason in the popular mind in gravity of offense. Jurors on such cases tend to take themselves very seriously, and no matter how often they’re told that the defendants are presumed innocent, conclude from the mere fact that the cops believe them to be killers that they must be pretty bad actors. And James and the others are alleged to have killed not one, but seven. So that indigenous suspicion will be multiplied. It’s one thing to look at a drunken-driving charge, say, and say: ‘Well, even if I lose, what’s the penalty? Lose my license for a while. Let’s go — let’s take the shot.’ It’s quite another thing to say: ‘Murder One? They can’t prove that.’ But if they do, it’s life.
“So,” he said, “under the circumstances, I would have expected the defendant to welcome the visit of the Badgers, which he did not, and to be, if not gladdened, then at least relieved when I showed up to see him. And he definitely was not.”
“Well,” Clayton said, “nevertheless, we want to do everything we can for him, and we want yo
u to do that, too.”
“Doctor Walker,” Bigelow said, “Mrs. Walker, that may well be my point, if I do represent your son. It may be — and forgive me for this observation if you find it offensive — but it may be that you’ve hit upon precisely the thing that bothers me the most about this very troublesome case. And this equally troublesome young man. If what the Commonwealth alleges is correct, he and his co-defendants have voluntarily, and as openly as you can without being captured, lived outside the law for the better part of six years. At least six years. Mister Gleason — Mister Gleason is the prosecutor — Mister Gleason is a very artful man. I know him well, have faced him many times. While it’s of no concern to you or James, we don’t like each other. But that does not cause me to underestimate him. He knows how to plant mines in a case, so that one false step by an unwary defense counsel sets off an explosion that destroys his client’s cause. Experienced as I am with Mister Gleason’s — I don’t want to call them ‘tricks,’ although I think I’d be justified — I’ve learned to read his documents very carefully. He may not have as much as he’d like, but he may have more than he needs, and something in reserve as well, to spring a trap on me.
“To avoid those traps, I’m going to need full client cooperation. The sullen submission of a young man whose parents — and now lawyer — want to ‘do everything we can for him’ will not suffice unto the day. I can spend your money without stint, my time heedless of expense. But if he persists in his current attitude, I will be helpless; he will be convicted, and you will be distressed. Under the circumstances, as much as Larry Badger cherishes you, and as greatly as I sympathize with any friend of his, I really hesitate to tell you that you’ll get your money’s worth. James is entitled to a public defender. He’s of age. He says he has no money. Your circumstances are immaterial. Speaking forthrightly, I must tell you I think that might be best.”
Outlaws (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) Page 9