Bellows Falls

Chapter 16

A TRIP FROM BELLOWS FALLS TO BURLINGTON takes about two hours by interstate. It also involves a sweeping natural tour of the state, from the low, rolling piedmont of eastern Vermont, across the dramatic, forested, fortress-like Green Mountains that form the spine of the state and give it its primary identity, to the glacier-carved Champlain Lowlands, from which Lake Champlain stretches, cold and turbulent, to the Adirondacks beyond.

Burlington is the state’s sole metropolis, its largest conglomeration of arts, medicine, education, and commerce, and in the previous century a major freshwater port for materials being shipped to and from nearby Canada. Including the satellite towns dependent upon it, one hundred thousand people live in the area, a fifth of Vermont’s entire population.

It’s been accurately described as a junior Boston-erudite, stimulating, culturally rich, and, with Montreal a short drive away, truly cosmopolitan. Spread over a descending series of low hills leading down to the shores of Lake Champlain, it has an Old World feel to it, accentuated by a preponderance of antique wooden buildings, pedestrian-only market streets, and the occasional governmental monolith. Dominating it all, since the city tilts toward it, is the lake-mysterious, deep, and at the best of times faintly ominous.

Our first stop, fittingly for a city with stylish ambitions, was a restaurant not far from the new police department headquarters-a favorite hangout of that building’s occupants. Spanning the buffer zone between the city’s commercial heart and its rougher, darker, more dangerous Old North End, Bove’s was a supplier of hearty, well-spiced, time-tested food.

A long, high-ceilinged hallway of a building, it had a narrow door and two windows at one end, a serving bar at the other, and ranks of tables and booths in between. The kitchen lay tucked out of sight to the rear.

As Jonathon Michael and I stepped in from the damp outdoors and stood blinking in the relative gloom, we saw the dim outline of an arm waving to us from one of the booths, and heard our names called out in greeting.

The man behind the voice was Paul O’Leary, chief of the Burlington police force, a thirty-year veteran who gave networking its most positive meaning. From the upper echelons of virtually every PD in the state, and many outside it, to the bureaucrats and politicians who controlled all our purse strings, O’Leary knew everyone of consequence. He swam these crowded waters as an informed, friendly presence, working for the betterment of all departments and often interceding when he thought his help could be useful. While some in our profession maligned his sunny enthusiasm as cynical self-service, I’d seen his integrity and intelligence in action more than once and recognized his good humor as genuine. It was reflective of his style that we representatives of three different agencies were meeting in a neutral, convivial setting instead of his office just a few blocks away. This was someone who knew his way around in a turf-conscious business.

He rose as we approached-a small, wiry, animated man with short white hair-and ushered us into the booth, introducing the serious young woman seated opposite him. “Audrey McGowen, Joe Gunther and Jonathon Michael. I figured it was too early for dinner, so I just ordered coffee. That okay?”

The waitress appeared as if by mental telepathy, and we both followed O’Leary’s suggestion. Our host waited until she’d retreated before folding his hands around his cup and looking at us both eagerly. “So, I hear we’re on a chase.”

In a role reversal of a few hours earlier, I began the briefing while Jon silently sipped coffee. O’Leary took it in with nods and occasional smiles; McGowen-Sammie’s friend from the Academy-took notes in a small pad she’d pulled from her pocket.

“So we basically have two priority items that’re relevant to our department,” O’Leary summed up when I’d finished. “Locate Lenny and see if and/or how he connects to Norm Bouch, and discreetly dig into Emily Doyle’s background to check out the same thing. Is that about it?”

To silent agreement from both of us, he continued, “I asked Audrey to be in on this, not only because your folks, Joe, have already started her going, but because she’s well suited to this anyhow. She’s been on our detective squad three years, after an impressive start on Patrol, and she’s been running cases that overlap both juvie and drug-related crime, so she’s familiar with the field and the players. She’s also sharp as a tack.”

Audrey McGowen gave us an embarrassed half-smile, as familiar as we were with her boss’s cheerleader ways. “I thought we could start at the computer,” she said. “See if Lenny crops up anywhere. Assuming that suits you.”

“Absolutely,” I said.

O’Leary gave a friendly wave to the waitress behind the counter and slid from the booth, dropping five dollars on the table. He led us outside to the drenched parking lot, from which we formed a two-car caravan and drove west toward Battery Street.

The Burlington Police Department used to occupy two overstuffed ancient buildings downtown, finally rendered so confusing through countless remodeling that once, after a prisoner had broken away from his handlers, he was located wandering around, fruitlessly looking for an exit.

The PD’s new home is a 30,000-square-foot converted factory building dating back to the twenties, half of which later housed an auto dealership in which a murder took place-a bit of karma O’Leary was regularly moved to explain. It is modern, well organized, well equipped, and designed for a twenty-percent expansion-the largest, most up-to-date station house in the state, and a monument to the diminutive dreamer who’d made it happen amid tight budgets and low expectations.

That same man now led us to one of the parking lots near the building and, tucked under an oversized umbrella, escorted us through the front doors. In the lobby, he turned with a big smile and said, “Well, I’ll get out of your hair. I hope you find what you’re after. I know you’ll be in good hands with Audrey, and if anything comes up where I can lend a hand, don’t hesitate to let me know.” He shook hands all around and was gone, leaving Jonathon shaking his head with a smile.

“Amazing,” he said. “Welcome to my house. Have fun, but I gotta go. Every other chief I know would be on us like we were recruiters from a motorcycle gang, wondering what we were really up to.”

Audrey McGowen laughed as she took us through a white-walled maze of hallways, crisscrossed high overhead by exposed piping and electrical conduits. “Don’t sell him short. One way or the other, he’ll know everything you’ve done in here before you hit the sidewalk. He just doesn’t get in your face like a lot of them do.”

We entered a small room with several computers stationed against the walls and gathered three chairs before one of them, with Audrey at the keyboard. She spoke as she typed her way to where we wanted to be. “After Sammie contacted me about all this, I poked around a bit after hours. Norm Bouch has been renting that apartment on North Street for about three years. I found only one neighbor who’d ever set eyes on him, and he said he was a real nice guy. Nobody local seemed to know him-I checked the bar at the end of the block, and a nearby grocery store. In that neighborhood especially, that’s unusual. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, except that he either keeps a super-low profile, or never uses the place.”

She hit a final couple of keys and then paused. “Okay. These are the Intel files. We’ll start with just ‘Lenny,’ and see if we get lucky. It’s not that common a name.”

The screen rewarded us immediately, identifying Lenny Markham, age twenty-eight, living on Cedar Street. Audrey studied the few coded entries below his name and sat back in her chair, her hands in her lap.

“We may’ve stepped into something here. There’s an indicator to go through the chief of detectives before establishing contact.” Michael and I exchanged glances, the satisfaction of moments ago suddenly losing its flavor.

Burlington’s chief of detectives was Timothy Giordi, Jr. He’d been a child when I first met him. His father worked for the Barre PD, just east of Montpelier. Tim, Sr., would drive his young straw-haired son around in the front seat of the town’s sole patrol car, tutoring the boy in the ways of law and order. The kid never had a chance. From elementary school on up, all he talked about was becoming a cop. Every course he took, every summer job he considered, and finally, every college he applied to were solely to enhance his progress to that end. And to be a local cop at that.

Where other people with his motivation might have aimed at some federal agency or at least the State Police, the other legacy left to him by his father was a love of the neighborhood. Tim Giordi applied to the Burlington PD fresh out of college and had been with them ever since, receiving his present assignment just a few months before his father died of a heart attack, the result, his son had once wistfully said, of bad coffee, worse food, and a lifetime of sitting behind the wheel of that patrol car.

The three of us found Tim driving a computer instead, hunched forward in his office chair, staring at the screen as if willing it to confess. He looked up at us with obvious relief as Audrey knocked on his open door.

He rose to his feet, a wide smile on his face. “Hey, look who’s here. Jonathon, Joe, good to see you. Christ, it’s been a year or more. What’ve you been up to?”

While he spoke, he circled his desk, shook our hands, pulled chairs from the corners, and generally fussed enough to make his Italian-born mother proud. As soon as we were all seated, Audrey brought the mood to a focus by handing him a printout of what we’d found.

Tim read its contents and raised his eyebrows. “Ah,” was all he said at first, with the kind of enthusiasm one reserves for unpleasant discoveries. He placed the sheet face down on his desk and asked me, “What’s up with this guy?”

“We think he’s working for a dope dealer in Bellows Falls-part of a network. Jon and I were hoping to talk to him.”

“You’re running that crooked cop case, right? Does this tie in?”

“We think so,” Jon said. “But we’re not sure yet.”

Giordi steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “The reason Audrey brought this to me is because Lenny Markham is an informant.”

He didn’t need to say much more. I now understood both his and Audrey’s reactions. Confidential informants-CIs in police jargon-ran the gamut from the vaguely reliable bum on the corner to the shifty-eyed undercover operatives so popular in the movies. Regardless of where they are in the pecking order, however, they are jealously kept by their individual police handlers. The breaking of a case often hinges on the availability and reliability of a CI, so the officer with the most or best of them does well to tend his or her flock. Unfortunately, this attitude isn’t entirely altruistic. In a competitive market with limited upward mobility, officers see their sources as money in the bank. What everyone in that room understood was that we wanted access to someone whose handler was likely to voice a very strong objection.

Giordi checked his watch and picked up the phone, muttering, “Excuse me a second,” as he did so. He dialed an internal number and said to whoever answered, “It’s Tim Giordi. We need to talk. I just got an interagency cooperation request involving Lenny Markham. Give me five minutes to clear out my office, okay? Thanks.”

He hung up and looked at us apologetically. “I hate to do this, but I better run this by Lenny’s contact. Audrey, why don’t you introduce these two to the soda machine or something? I’ll page you in a bit.”

We filed out and followed his advice, silently marching toward the refreshment machines to stare at the offerings. There was no question that we’d eventually get access to Lenny Markham. The attorney general of the state of Vermont wasn’t likely to let a case be derailed because of some cop’s desire to keep his sources to himself. But it was a delicate matter. The spirit of interagency cooperation was still in its infancy, with everyone paying it lip service, and many privately fighting it tooth and nail. And while the AG’s jurisdiction extended to the state’s borders, his success was often linked to the vagaries of local politics.

“I wonder who he’s talking to,” Audrey mused, her eyes fixed on a small bag of corn chips with a suspiciously fluorescent glow to them.

Fifteen minutes later, we trooped back into Giordi’s office, summoned by a disembodied voice over the building’s P.A. system. As we crossed the threshold, I just barely heard Audrey groan and knew right then we were in for some negotiating.

The man sitting opposite the chief of detectives wasn’t happy. He didn’t get up as we entered, didn’t offer to shake hands, and generally regarded us as if we’d just doubled his mortgage payments.

Giordi nodded in his direction as soon as we’d settled down. “This is Duncan Fasca, Lenny Markham’s contact inside the department. Given the sensitive relationship between a contact and his CI, Duncan had a few questions about your interest in Lenny.”

I glanced from Fasca to Tim and back again, picking up on Giordi’s almost stilted manner. Not only had the conversation obviously not gone well between them, but they clearly didn’t like one another in the first place. I gave Fasca an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry we stepped right into the middle of things. We had no idea Lenny had ties to the PD. We heard about him through visits he used to make to a Lawrence, Mass, guy named Norm Bouch-he’s actually the one we’re after. At first, we just wanted to find out what Lenny could tell us about Bouch, but I got to admit, it’s starting to look like he and Lenny are working together. You hear about the homicide in Brattleboro-the blood in the abandoned motel and no body?”

Fasca spoke for the first time. “What of it?”

“We’re pretty sure the dead man worked for Bouch, too-was Lenny’s Brattleboro counterpart. We think Bouch runs a juvenile drug ring using regional lieutenants.”

Fasca looked at me incredulously. “Markham’s running a dope ring? Here in town? What kind of evidence do you have?”

“Witnesses to conversations between Bouch and him,” I said vaguely. “But that’s why we want to talk to him. To nail a few things down.”

“A fishing expedition,” Fasca said. He looked at his boss. “I expose Lenny to other cops, he’ll stop working for me. Just ’cause his name came up in a conversation.”

“When you set up Lenny as a CI, you knew he was no choirboy,” Giordi answered stiffly. “Isn’t it possible he could be doing this without your knowledge?”

That put Duncan in a corner. If he said no and we proved him wrong, he’d look like an idiot. If he said yes, then all room for objection evaporated. My mention of Jasper’s homicide hadn’t been anecdotal. I’d brought it up to show that Lenny could be tied to a capital case-and that Duncan Fasca should tread carefully.

He steered for middle ground. “Maybe.”

I saw the hint of a smile appear on Jonathon’s face, which made me careful not to gloat. “Duncan, look. I know what a pain in the ass this is. But by your own admission, Lenny could be dirty, which means his time may be up anyhow. Why don’t you come on board with us and show these guys the price of playing both ends against the middle? We could go after him ourselves, but it would be a lot easier with your help.”

Fasca shook his head, his face an angry scowl. “That’s easy for you. If it turns out to be a wild-goose chase, you haven’t lost a thing. I end up with a snitch who never talks to me again. This guy’s good. He’s been real useful to me. You know that, Chief. I don’t want to be run over by a bunch of hotshots from out of town who could give a shit what they leave behind.”

“I don’t think that’s the case here,” Giordi said, his voice carrying a veiled warning.

Reluctantly, Fasca had all but conceded. “Yeah, well, like I said, easy to say.”

“You join us, you can find out for yourself,” I suggested. “If you’re interested, I’d like you in on the initial meet. You can steer the conversation yourself. That way, if we all agree we’re barking up the wrong tree, maybe you won’t lose him.”

Fasca didn’t answer immediately, but by now his resistance was purely for show. “He might not play if he knows I’m bringing someone.”

The answer to that was too obvious to mention. The room remained silent a few moments longer, until Fasca finally threw in the glove. “All right, I’m screwed either way, so I might as well go along.”

He suddenly leaned forward and stared at Tim Giordi. “But I want it known I’m doing it under protest, okay?”

Tim kept a straight face. “You got it, Duncan. Why don’t you pull what you’ve got on Lenny?” He jerked a thumb at Jonathon and me. “They’ll be wanting a full profile on him prior to any meeting. I’ll send them your way as soon as I’m through.”

Fasca heaved himself out of his chair and nodded sharply in our direction. He left without saying a word. The mood in the air instantly lightened. Jonathon raised his eyebrows at me. “You sure giving him that much clout was a good idea?”

Giordi answered for me. “He’s not much on manners, but Duncan’s a hard worker. You point him in the right direction, and he’ll chew through walls. He just has to feel he’s got some element of control. I appreciate what you did, Joe, and I think you’ll be happy with the results.”

Duncan Fasca was as good as Tim Giordi’s word. He took Jonathon, Audrey, and me to a small conference room and briefed us for over an hour on everything he knew of Lenny Markham, which, as it turned out, left ample room for Lenny to be functioning as we suspected he was. To my eyes, he was a classic hustler, working every angle, faithful to no one. Reviewing Fasca’s limited perspective on him, I thought back to the context in which we’d first heard Lenny’s name. Molly Bremmer had described him not as Norm’s trainee but more as a colleague. Given the insight I had now, I wondered if Norm had recruited Lenny, or if Lenny had smelled an opportunity. If the latter were true, then the relationship between the two of them became more complex-and possibly more dangerous.

The briefing was valuable for another reason. It allowed us to see Duncan in his element, showing off his work, sharing his insights. I could see Jonathon Michael getting used to the man and growing to accept him. He was as Giordi had described him-tenacious, persistent, and not very appealing-but he was also insightful in his way, and certainly knowledgeable about his beat. What he told us of Lenny was at least as useful for what it revealed about Burlington, which unfortunately for me resulted in a slight dampening of my admiration for the town. As eclectic and appealing as it remained, the Queen City’s tattered petticoats were now exposed, and I found them depressingly familiar.

Nevertheless, by the time Duncan Fasca finally reached for the phone and called Lenny Markham for a meeting-“one on one”-I felt I knew enough about our target to be comfortable talking with him.

The phone call didn’t last long. Both speakers were used to the routine. Duncan hung up after a couple of minutes and announced, “Flynn Theatre, tomorrow morning, ten o’clock, on the grid. He’s got a job there.”

Jon looked at him quizzically.

“The grid,” Audrey explained, surprising us all, “is like a huge metal catwalk, ’bout forty feet over the stage. It’s a good way to get around, and to see without being seen, but it’s not a place for people who don’t like heights.”

In the silence that greeted her explanation, she added, “I had a summer job at the Flynn once. It’s a beautiful old place-lots of nooks and crannies.”

“Which is probably why he chose it,” Jonathon said unhappily. “Is it safe?”

Duncan waved his concern away. “The Vermont Symphony Orchestra’ll be practicing at the same time, for Christ’s sake. It’s not like it’s the North End at midnight. He chose it ’cause he’s there anyway, and none of his cronies would be caught dead in a real theater, that’s all. He doesn’t want to blow his cover.”

A young woman poked her head through the doorway. “Is there a Joe Gunther in here?”

I raised my hand. “Yeah.”

“You have a call on line three.”

I thanked her and picked up the phone on the conference table. “Gunther.”

“It’s J.P. I think we found Jasper Morgan.”