“On my way in a minute, Chief.” Finley turned and walked out. He could feel Corcoran’s eyes on him every step of the way.
Finley picked up a squad car and started the trip to Augusta, another chickenshit errand the Chief dreamed up. The report could have been faxed or sent by email, but instead he’d have to drive two and a half hours there and two and a half hours back, effectively taking him out of play for the entire day.
But as he approached the spot where Rte. 15 crossed the small bridge between Holt Pond and the Inner Harbor, right where Chief Corcoran had killed the last smuggler, he slowed to a stop and looked around. Four houses overlooked the little beach where the drug smuggler’s boat had put in. And while it was late at night when everything happened, somebody might have seen something. And he knew just who that somebody might be.
He made a note to look into it when he got home tonight.
______________
Finley was on the outskirts of Augusta when Honeycutt called.
“Where are you?” Honeycutt asked.
“Just arriving in Augusta. Another errand for Corcoran.”
“Thought you might want to know that I sat in on the autopsy of the last smuggler, the guy Chief Corcoran and his men shot last light. Cause of death is pretty straight-forward: he was shot four times. There hits to the heart, one to the head.”
“Okay,” replied Finley. Everybody knew Chief Corcoran and his team had blown the smuggler away.
“So, here’s the thing,” Honeycutt says with relish. “The Pathologist , a Dr. Diana Chapman, she tells us the cause of death is gunfire and Corcoran thanks her and walks out. Because I like autopsies so much, I decide to stay. This guy, some cartel guy, he’s got so many splinters in him that he looks, you know, like a goddamned porcupine.
“I haven’t had lunch yet, Howard, can we dispense with the details?” Finley complained.
“Well, it gets better. Dr. Chapman, she’s pulling out every splinter and examining him to see what the damage was. Well, she finds one, a big nasty one, imbedded in the base of his right thumb.” Honeycutt paused.
Finley was cursed with a very visual imagination; he could picture a large shard driven into the man’s hand in too much detail. “Howard, for Christ’s sake, what’s your point?”
“Your Police Chief told me in detail about the shooting. How the guy could barely stand upright, but he lifted his pistol to shoot, so they had no choice but to take him down. He was very clear about it.”
“Yeah, okay,” Finley encouraged.
“Corcoran specifically said the cartel guy was holding the gun in his right hand,” Honeycutt said with satisfaction.
Finley abruptly pulled off into the breakdown lane and stopped. He held the phone tight against his ear. “I’m listening, Howard.”
“Well, Dr. Chapman – a marvelous woman, by the way – she says that the shard I was telling you about drove right through the ball of the cartel guy’s thumb and at a downward slant deep into his wrist. Frank, that splinter sliced right through the guy’s wrist bones and nerves,” Honeycutt said excitedly.
Finley’s eyes widened. “You mean-”
“I mean the guy could not hold a gun in his right hand. His right hand couldn’t be moved. He couldn’t close his fingers or pull his trigger finger. He was not holding a gun because he couldn’t even pick it up!”
Finley took a breath. “So Corcoran and his squad just murdered him,” he said.
Honeycutt sighed. “Well…maybe. It was dark, it was raining, the poor bastard might have just held up his hand or something and spooked them and they blew him to shit. But the autopsy shows that whatever the hell happened out there, it wasn’t the way Corcoran said it happened. Oh, and another thing-”
“Yeah?”
“The gun that Corcoran said they found on him, there were no fingerprints on it, there was no round in the chamber and the gun was dry.”
“So they planted it,” Finley said, stating the obvious.
“Well, I would have thought they’d at least wrap his fingers around it,” Honeycutt said. “I think the ambulance showed up right after the shooting and they may have gotten distracted. Remember, these are not big-city cops. They don’t deal with forensic niceties every day.”
“Not as much to go on as I had hoped,” Finley said. “Couldn’t prove Corcoran’s dirty just on that.”
Honeycutt chuckled. “It’s my business to collect bricks. Get enough bricks, you can make a wall. This is a brick. We’ll find a few others and see where we are.”
“Did Corcoran tell you how he happened to be waiting at Elm Tree Cove?” Finley asked.
“Said he had a hunch,” Honeycutt replied. “Thought it would make a good drop-off location.”
“That’s bullshit, but we’ve still got nothing,” Finley complained.
“We don’t have enough to go to a jury, but it isn’t nothing, either. I’m convinced that Corcoran is dirty. We keep looking, we’ll find some dirt.”
“Ah, Christ,” Finley groaned. “It would have been so nice to catch them when they took the dope from the freighter. Now we’ve got dead witnesses and no good evidence.”
Honeycutt chuckled. “We’ve got more than that. We know that the squeeze on I-95 North is working, forcing the cartel to look for alternative routes. Corcoran says the bag of dope he retrieved weighed fifty pounds. So, twenty-two kilos! What’s that, street value of $10 or $11 Million? We’re kicking their butts, my friend! And if we have to do that by blowing them out of the water one go-fast boat at a time, it works for me.”
Ahead, Finley saw his exit. “Howard, I’m almost there, I’ve got to hang up. I’ll call you later after I’m home. There’s one more thing to check out.”
Chapter 27
Saturday
What Honeycutt did not know was that Wallace Charles Moore III was a planner at heart. Above all, he believed in redundancy.
Saturday afternoon and early evening, two more freighters passed into the Gulf of Maine and then into the Bay of Fundy. Just two more freighters among many that went to Canada every week.
A man on the first freighter dropped a fifty-pound bag of heroin and ten pounds of fentanyl into the cold ocean waters at four o’clock. The second freighter reached the same position at eight o’clock. A man stepped out under the cover of darkness and dropped another fifty-pound bag into the water, then went back inside.
Neither man was on the open deck for more than two minutes. No one saw them.
Each bag sank to a depth of twenty feet, where it hovered until it was caught by the Eastern Maine Coastal Current and carried on its way.
A total of one hundred and fifty pounds of heroin and ten pounds of fentanyl, in three separate bags, were now drifting slowly towards the Maine coast. Their combined street value was in excess of $35 Million.
In Mexico, Wallace Moore sipped his gin and tonic and waited for the outcome to his experiment.
Chapter 28
Saturday Evening
It was almost suppertime before Finley made it back to Rte. 15 and followed it into North Harbor. As he approached the bridge bisecting Holt Pond and Elm Tree Cove, he pulled over and walked up to one of the small houses. This particular house had a splendid view of the Cove and the little sandy beach where the smuggler’s boat had come in.
It was a simple two-story house, built plain and sturdy, with white clapboard siding and green shutters and a clear view over Elm Tree Cove to the Inner Harbor. Finley knew the old man who lived there, Ralph Cudworth. Used to be a commercial fisherman back in the day, but he was retired now and didn’t get around as much as he used to.
Cudworth was sitting on the porch, a beer in his hand, smoking a cigar. He waved Finley over.
“Thought your doctor told you to stop smoking those damn things,” Finley said mildly.
Cudworth snorted. “Doctors say a lot of things,” he said, and blew a plume of smoke into the air. “Keeps the bugs away.”
Finley sat down beside him in a wick
er rocking chair that smelled vaguely of mildew, but rocked just fine. A breeze from the water fortunately dispelled both Cudworth’s cigar smoke and the mosquitoes. From where he was sitting, Finley could see the little beach where the drug smuggler’s go-fast boat landed.
“Seen a lot of pretty sunrises from this porch,” Cudworth said.
“Quite the storm last night,” Finley commented casually, not looking at Cudworth.
“Yup,” Cudworth drawled.
Finley said nothing. The silence grew.
“You never could bullshit worth a damn,” the older man chuckled. “Your old man always said he loved to play poker with you – it was a guaranteed payday.”
Finley laughed, despite himself. His father and Ralph Cudworth had teased him as a boy because he could never tell a lie with a straight face. His dad would be astonished to hear his son was an undercover cop for the DEA.
“You want to know if I saw that boat come in,” Cudworth declared with satisfaction. “Course I did! I may be old, but my eyes and ears still work pretty good. Storm had died down some and I heard an engine come around Whitmore Neck, into the Inner Harbor and the Cove. Guy had to be in trouble, seein’ how nobody in their right mind would have been out on the water unless they were in trouble.” The old man waved a liver-spotted hand towards the beach just a hundred feet away.
“No lights, no nothin’. Then he came right up onto the beach, just drove his boat up on the sand and some of them rocks. Fancy-assed boat, too.” He shook his head at the foolishness of it all. “I came out here to the porch, that’s when I saw the police cars. Three of ‘em. Two men to a car. They all got out and walked closer to the boat. Then one of them called out to the guy in the boat, speakin’ Spanish or Cuban or some such.”
“Spanish?” Finley wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think Corcoran or any of the other cops on the beach that night could speak Spanish.
Cudworth shrugged elaborately. “One of them said, ‘amigo.’ Sounded like Spanish to me.”
“Huh,” Finley grunted. This didn’t make any sense. “You’re sure he was one of our cops?”
Cudworth absently scratched his chin. “Well, he got out of a cop car. Don’t that make him a cop?”
Finley frowned. “Was he in uniform?”
“Nope,” Cudworth said with certainty. “Them others were, all five of them, but this guy was wearing dark pants and a dark shirt. Carried a gun, though, I saw that much.”
“You recognize him from around here?”
Cudworth shook his head. “Never seen him before. I recognized Corcoran, that asshole, and his four stooges, Wolf, Higgins, and Alisberg and that other asshole, Burrows. Burrows gave me a parking ticket last month.”
“But you don’t know the sixth man?” Finley pressed.
“Nope. Might be some State cop, maybe. But he was the one who almost shot the guy from the boat, but Corcoran beat him to it.”
Finley digested this for a minute or so, taking another sip of beer. “Cuddy, the guy from the boat, did he shoot first?”
Cudworth snorted. “Poor fucker didn’t shoot at all. He could barely stand up. He looked weird, Frank. I couldn’t see him real good in the dark, but his chest and face looked like something was growing on him. But both his arms were down by his sides. I couldn’t swear to it, but I certainly didn’t see anything in his hands.”
“So what happened, then?”
Another shrug. “The guy from the boat was talking to the guy dressed in civvies and Corcoran pulled out his gun and shot him. The guy from the boat, that is. The guy in civvies got real mad and I thought he was going to draw on Corcoran, but Corcoran said something to him and that seemed to calm him down. Then they searched the boat and took off some sort of bag.” Cudworth looked at him shrewdly. “That was the drugs, right?”
Finley nodded.
“Well,” Cudworth continued. “They put the bag into one of the police cars and about that time I decided that I would just sneak back inside and mind my own business. I couldn’t tell what was going on, but I didn’t want no part of it.”
Finley sighed. “Cuddy, it might be best if we keep this between you and me. If anyone else comes asking around, tell them you were asleep.”
Cudworth looked at him for a long moment, then nodded. “You be careful, Frank. These are not people you want to mess with. They shot that man like a dog.”
“I will, Cuddy. Thanks for the beer.” Finley stood up and walked back to his car, wondering just what the hell was going on.
Chapter 29
Saturday – Lunch
Jean-Philippe LeBlanc finally caught up with Banderas by telephone on Saturday. He had been busy with his family all morning in Bucksport and not heard about the police shootout at Elm Tree Cove. Banderas was eating lunch at a small Mexican eatery in Belfast, just off Rte. 1.
“I know where it is,” LeBlanc said. “Stay there. I’ll drive there, take me about half an hour.”
“What’s this about?” Banderas asked.
“Not on the phone. I’ll see you soon.” LeBlanc hung up.
The little restaurant was full and noisy when LeBlanc slid into the booth thirty minutes later. He tried to order a hamburger, but they didn’t serve them.
“Try the chicken fajitas,” Banderas suggested. “Nice and spicy!”
LeBlanc pushed the menu away and just ordered a beer. Once the waitress left, he looked hard at Banderas. “I heard Friday that one of the North Harbor cops, Frank Finley, found Henry Mitchell’s body washed up on an island off of North Harbor.”
Banderas put down his drink and stared at him.
“That means by now the cops know he was shot,” LeBlanc continued.
Banderas wiped his mouth with a napkin and put it down slowly. “The police don’t have his body,” he said.
Now it was LeBlanc’s turn to stare. “What do you mean?”
“I mean Finley didn’t tell Corcoran.”
That hung in the air between them for several seconds. If Finley didn’t bring the body to the North Harbor police, then he took it somewhere else.
“Shit,” LeBlanc cursed.
“You didn’t know this because I didn’t tell you,” Banderas said. “Last night we took delivery of a shipment from a freighter near the Bay of Fundy.” He paused. “Then the Coast Guard jumped us. They were waiting for us. They knew. We lost the boat, the shipment and the three-man crew.”
“Ah, Christ,” muttered LeBlanc. “Do you know who Finley works for?”
Banderas shrugged. “DEA, FBI, it doesn’t matter. Whoever it is has enough clout to be able to call up a Coast Guard cutter, and enough juice to figure out which freighter was carrying the shipment.” His voice hardened. “And they killed our men. They must answer for that.”
LeBlanc suddenly looked nervous. “Hey, I didn’t sign up for that, Bruno. Fuck with the Feds and the heat will be tremendous.”
Banderas looked at him. So weak. “Do not worry, my friend.” He thought for a moment, then asked, “Who told you Finley found Mitchell’s body?”
LeBlanc smiled in satisfaction. “His older son, Jacob.”
Chapter 30
The Inspection
On Sunday morning, Barbara Yancey, the drug technician from the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, came to take custody of the fifty-pound bag of dope Chief Corcoran had seized from the smuggler’s boat. As part of the process, she first took a sample of the product and put it through a chemical reactive to determine exactly what it was and its level of purity.
She viewed the results of the first test, then shook her head. She checked her equipment, ran a diagnostic test on the analyzer unit, then ran a second sample through the machine.
Same result.
Yancey had been with MDEA for fifteen years. She knew the score, knew there was always the possibility that someone in a police department might be crooked, but she also knew that sometimes equipment malfunctions gave bizarre results. She locked up the bag of dope, then walked casually out to her car, got
in and locked the doors. Opening her glove compartment, she took out her service weapon, checked to make sure there was a round in the chamber, then put it on the seat next to her. Then she called her boss at home – it was Sunday for him, after all – told him the story and that she needed a backup analyzer unit right away.
She also told him there was no way in hell she was going back into the North Harbor Police Department without an armed guard accompanying her. When her boss hesitated, Yancey said, “Paul, that bag in there weighs fifty pounds. If it’s dope, or if it was dope and somebody stole it, it’s worth millions. Hear me, millions. Also, it is covered in salt spray and blood. Blood, Paul. And if my first test is right, then there is something seriously fucked up going on. I don’t care how it looks, I am not waltzing back in there alone, do you hear me? I want at least two guys – big, mean motherfuckers carrying big, mean guns on their belts. I will not wake up dead in some shitty alleyway for the sake of not hurting anyone’s feelings. Have you forgotten Miami?”
Of course her boss remembered Miami. A Federal DEA technician had gone in to inspect fifteen kilos of heroin captured in a raid, only to stumble upon three Miami vice detectives in the process of stealing half of it and replacing it with powdered baby food. If the unfortunate DEA technician had arrived an hour later, she would have just assumed the raid had netted some already-cut dope.
But she hadn’t come an hour later. She arrived at the worst possible time. Caught in the act, the detectives had strangled her and dumped her body in an alley a few miles away, where she was discovered by a deliveryman.
The DEA had gone apeshit. The DEA and FBI descended on the Miami police station where the dope was being held and tore the place apart, finding enough DNA evidence and security camera footage to put the detectives in jail. But for the DEA and various State DEAs, it was a somber lesson: You can never be sure who you are dealing with.
An hour later a Maine DEA-issued sedan pulled up and Yancey’s boss got out. Right behind him was a Maine State Police cruiser, carrying two of the largest State Troopers she had ever seen. Both of them wore dark glasses, bulletproof vests and black shooting gloves. They looked mean as hell.
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