Gatekeeper

Chapter 11

Sammie checked herself in the cracked mirror, pondering the symbolism of seeing herself reflected in two halves.

"About right," she murmured, and turned off the light.

She stepped out of the bathroom and moved to where Johnny Rivera was packing up bundles of heroin with latex-gloved hands, sitting before a set of electronic scales, a razor blade, a pile of rubber bands, and an assortment of small plastic bags, each stamped with the symbol of a lurking panther, clearly his trademark.

"Ready for your maiden voyage?" he asked. He followed that with a suggestive glance. "I guess your maiden days are pretty long gone, though, huh?"

"That's for me to know," she said, watching him expertly scraping and cutting the drug into the baggie-sized quantities he'd proposed she sell in Vermont in order to prove her worth. He had the heroin separated into three groups: the highly compacted "plugs," which arrived from New York looking like oversized pieces of chalk; the baggies, with so little drug in them-just.025 gram-that it almost resembled the fluff from a dandelion; and finally, the bundles, made up of ten bags apiece.

Each plug was enough to create forty bundles, or four hundred bags. Sammie figured that Johnny, depending on his haggling skills, maybe paid $1,200 to $1,500 for each plug. From what Bill Dancer had told her, she knew such an amount, broken down into bags, might fetch a mere $2,000 in Holyoke-that's what she'd paid him to buy into tonight's run. In Vermont, the same amount could go for $14,000. No surprise that Johnny had seized this as an opportunity. The surprise was that his competitors hadn't taken him out yet-except that business was perhaps still so good in Holyoke, claims from the police chief notwithstanding, that even at low local prices, enough money was being made to exceed demand.

"Who're my contacts going to be in Bratt and Rutland?" she asked casually.

He paused in his work to look up at her. "What did you just say? 'That's for me to know'? This is a test, girlie. You don't get contacts. You make sales-a lot of sales real quick-and my contacts, as you call them, will report back to me how good you did. You do that, and bring me back the money, and we'll see about what else. We talked about this yesterday. You said your boyfriend Dancer had all the contacts you need. Your bullshit beginning to show?"

She shrugged. "My efficient business sense is beginning to show. I got lots of people to go to, but you want to waste time doing a dog-and-pony act, that's fine with me. I'll jump through a few hoops for you, but you better be serious. What's my cut going to be?"

He laughed. "Your cut? For a test run? Your cut is you get in if you do the job good."

She stared at him incredulously "I don't think so, Pancho. I don't even fart for free."

His jaw tightened at what she'd called him. "You be very careful, chica."

"Then don't call me girlie."

Slowly, his eyebrows furrowed. "That's it? I call you girlie and you get all pissed off? Jesus."

"What's my cut?" she repeated.

"Two thousand."

"Four. That's only double my investment."

He shoved his chair back and stood facing her. "Four? You outta your mind? No fucking way I'm paying you four thousand bucks for a virgin run."

"You'll be getting ten grand after expenses, Johnny." She dragged out the pronunciation of his name and threw him a pout at the end.

His eyes narrowed in anger. "You little bitch. I kill you right here, nobody knows, nobody cares."

She smiled and almost whispered, "Except you. With the cops crawling all over Rutland, looking into that hanging and forcing whoever you have up there underground, this is the closest thing you have to a cash cow-my pretty white Vermont face. Three thousand. As a gift from me to you-a show of faith."

He held her gaze for a full thirty seconds before turning away and sitting back down at the table. "Deal."

* * *

It was dark by the time Johnny, Sam, and Bill Dancer, who'd been cooling his heels downstairs all afternoon, stepped into the street and crossed over to Bill's car. Lounging against its fender was a slim young man with a malevolent air.

"This is Manuel," Rivera announced, handing him the paper bag full of heroin he'd been carrying. "He's going with you."

"Bullshit, he is," Sam answered. "He's the exact reason you can't do this without me. I get seen driving around with him, the first cop we meet'll stop us."

Rivera stared at her contemptuously. "Then push his face into your lap, hot stuff. Show him what you got. You come from a state where boys marry boys. They can live with one poor lucky turncoat who can't keep his hands off white meat." His face turned mean as she opened her mouth to protest, and he concluded, "He's going-girlie. Lie back and enjoy it."

She shifted tack then and stepped very close to him, daring him to pull back, which he knew he couldn't do and save face. Her mouth almost touching his, she said softly. "Maybe I will, Johnny. In your dreams."

She then moved back abruptly and ordered Manuel, "Get in the back, then, and don't sit too high up, or they'll be on us like flies on shit."

Manuel stiffened and closed his fists. Sam smiled at them both. "Ooh. Speaks English. That's a start."

Johnny said something quick and unintelligible to his sidekick, who sullenly got into the back of the car, slamming the door behind him. Rivera looked at Sam seriously, all posturing gone. "Greta Novak, I know you think you're very hot shit and that I'm going to be making you into my number one guy, but be careful. Don't push it too far." He tilted his head slightly in the direction of the car. "People like Manuel don't have the management skills I have. He don't know that some assholes can sometimes be handy. He just kills them-it's worth it to him to get in trouble after."

Sam read his expression, considered a retort worthy of Greta, but then stopped, seeing in Johnny's eyes not just deadly earnestness but even an element of real concern.

She reached out and touched his forearm. "Don't worry, Johnny. We'll get along fine, and we'll bring back some money." She smiled. "Like the movie says, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

* * *

Sammie Martens wasn't happy, but she didn't feel boxed in, either. Having Manuel along as a watchdog, she finally rationalized, staring through the side window as Bill Dancer drove through the night toward Vermont, might even play to her advantage. If she was impressive enough, the report to the boss could only help, especially coming from a source she'd made no effort to win over.

Although that last part did concern her. In her effort to get Manuel out of the trip, she feared she'd overplayed her dismissiveness of him-he could mess her up in Johnny's eyes just as easily as he could help. Perhaps more so, given the stony silence that had drifted over from the back seat like a cold fog since they'd headed out.

"Hey, Manuel," she therefore said in a conversational voice, slinging her arm up on the seat back in order to half turn in his direction. "Hope you didn't take what I said back there personally. I'm just trying to keep us out of trouble and make a pile for everybody, you know?"

Manuel stared back at her, unmoving, expressionless.

"I mean," she continued, "it's kind of like a con job-you gotta dress and act like the people you're planning to rip off. Dumb, but that's the way it is."

But even Bill had gotten her first message loud and clear. "Give it a rest, Greta. You called the guy a slimeball. All the sucking up in the world ain't gonna change that."

She gave one last glance at Manuel's unsettling poker face before turning back toward the front again. "Up yours, Bill. I mean it."

The green "Welcome to Vermont" sign loomed up into the car's headlights by the side of the interstate and flashed by like a specter. Show time was nearing.

She placed her hands flat on her thighs. This was where the fabric of her design would be tested, beginning with Bill Dancer's involvement. She'd needed him for access to Miguel Torres. But now that Torres was no longer a factor, Dancer had suddenly become the odd man-not out necessarily, but certainly not in. Rivera assumed, as did Bill, that they were a team, but Sam knew that Dancer, far more than Manuel, was the loose cannon.

Joe had pointed this out during her debriefing the day before, asking if there might be a way to get him out of the picture. She'd bluffed her answer then, eager enough to impress her mentor that she casually dismissed the problem. "I got him where I want him" was the line, or something equally obvious in hindsight.

In fact, she had no idea where she had him. He behaved like a lapdog, so pleased to be in her company that he was willing to do anything, but during this very drive, she'd begun to wonder at the truth of that. He seemed different heading into the drug dealer's equivalent of battle-either more self-possessed than she'd expected or perhaps simply more adrenalized. The tone of his voice during that last comment caught it well-there was a new edge, and she wasn't sure what it meant.

"Pull off at Exit One," she told Bill as Brattleboro drew closer, her confidence sounding tinny to her own ears. "I want to use a pay phone at the gas station, to line up the first buy. I got people itching for this good shit, all their beepers waiting to flame on."

Bill dug into his pocket, squirming in his seat. He handed her a small phone. "Use my cell. Easier."

She looked at it, surprised he had one, and didn't take it. "Forget it. Don't you know? They're starting to pick up on those things-radio waves or something. Give me a pay phone anytime."

He laughed, his hand still outstretched. "You shitting me? In Vermont? We don't even have state police coverage around the clock. You think they have fancy crap like that, sniffing the air for illegal cell phone chitchat? You are definitely smoking something, babe."

She looked at him hard, struck again by his tone, and especially the nickname. That was a first. "You want to screw this up from the start, be my guest. In the meantime, pull off like I said. I already got this locked in. I put out the call, they all know to show up behind a certain building on Canal. We deal right from the car window, and we're back on the interstate, heading for Bellows Falls-no muss, no fuss."

Dancer put the phone back into his pocket. The exit was coming into view. Sam let out an inward sigh. She had video surveillance arranged at the pay phone so they could document this buy from start to finish. She could have used the cell. It wouldn't have made any difference. All the buyers that were to show up were either cops or paid informants. But again, she'd been triggered by Bill's attitude and thought it a good time to take him down a peg.

"Suit yourself," he said, without the resentment she'd expected.

He aimed the car at the downhill exit and swept onto Canal.

"Right there," she pointed at a battered phone under a nearby streetlight, the better to photograph by.

But Dancer kept up his speed. "Change of plans," he said, oozing the pleasure of someone springing a surprise. "I got a deal going that'll look like Fred and Ginger all over again. We'll be so hot, Rivera'll shit his pants."

He drove past the gas station and turned right on Fairground Road.

"Pull over, Bill," Sam yelled at him. "Don't you screw around with this. This is our shot, goddammit. Pull over." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Manuel sit forward in his seat, getting ready to act if necessary.

Bill pushed Sam's hands away from the steering wheel. "I know it's our shot, stupid. That's why I'm doing it. I'm the contact guy, remember? This is my job. I'm not going to screw around selling to a couple of needle freaks in town after town all over southern Vermont. That's stupid. Score once, score big, and blow Rivera's socks off. He won't even be on his second sitcom before we drop a bag of cash at his feet in an hour and a half."

He laughed and glanced at her. "Face it, Greta, you got the brains for some of this-I give you that. But I know this turf. I set it up while you were jerking around with Johnny boy, or whatever the hell you were doing up there." He patted his pocket. "Cell phones work just fine, and nobody is listening in. Trust me."

Unfortunately, she did. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that any agency in Vermont had the cash, the equipment, or even the know-how to grab a cell phone signal and do anything more than triangulate its source. Their first buy on their first outing on her first detail as an undercover was just about to go wild.

* * * * *

"Joe," the voice crackled in his earphone, "they just blew by the pay phone. Gatekeeper didn't look happy."

Joe straightened in his seat and pressed the earphone to his ear. He was sitting in a van parked nearby. They'd agreed to use Gatekeeper instead of Sam's name just to be safe. "Define unhappy."

The voice belonged to Lester Spinney. He and Joe were the only ones on this detail, testing the waters and lending Sam moral support. Traditionally, a deep undercover is on his or her own, except for checking in with control on a regular, preset basis. This time, however, because the operation had come together so fast, Joe had asked Rick McCall if he could baby-sit Sam's first outing. McCall had agreed but had limited them to Brattleboro only, not wanting to risk exposure.

"Just that. Dancer's at the wheel and he turned right onto Fairground. I think she's just pissed off. There's a third rider, by the way. Somebody in the back seat. I'm following them now."

Joe slid in behind the wheel of the surveillance van and pulled into traffic, driving down Canal toward South Main, which eventually looped around to meet up with Fairground Road. That way, he and Spinney were coming in from opposite directions.

"You get a look at the third rider?" he asked.

Spinney's voice was calm, as always, almost conversational, despite everyone being off the game plan by now. That was one thing about Spinney. Gunther had no idea what had been distracting him lately, but in a crunch, the man was as steady as a tree trunk.

"Nope. Just a shadow. We've passed the high school and the town garage, now heading toward the far end of South Main."

This was the same street where Henry Jordan had first spotted Roger Novelle-a magnet for this kind of activity. "I'm coming in from the far end," Gunther told him. "Don't crowd them."

* * *

Bill Dancer pulled over to the side of the street and extracted his cell phone again. Sam watched him, torn over what to do. He did have contacts. It was possible he had set something up that would reflect well on them. Her plan had been to deal to people she and Joe had set up all down the line, hoping both to keep the heroin out of circulation and to cover themselves legally-even deep undercover, she was still a cop and could not sell drugs personally. But this was now Bill's play. She was off the hook in the eyes of the law.

Maybe this could work.

"Hey, Bobby," Bill was saying into the phone. "How's it hanging, bro? I got the stuff if you got the time."

He laughed at whatever response he heard. "No problem, dude. Be there in five. Start countin' out the money."

Dancer put the car back into gear and resumed driving down South Main, but slowly, his eyes on the house numbers. "There it is," he said finally, pulling over, killing the engine, and, Sam noticed, leaving the key in the ignition. "Everybody out."

Sam and Manuel stepped onto the sidewalk and looked around as Bill popped open the car trunk and retrieved Rivera's bag. South Main was an interesting mix of homes and apartments, some middle-class, many far less fortunate. This entire part of town was largely overlooked by Brattleboro's citizenry, acknowledged only when one of the street's several bordering cemeteries was put to use or when a high-profile crime was committed here. But unlike many low-income neighborhoods, this one was also low-profile-the signs and symptoms of its status were easily missed by motorists who used South Main as a shortcut to elsewhere. There were no boarded up or gutted buildings, no gangs of kids loitering around spruced up BMWs. This wasn't Holyoke. It wasn't a hot spot. It was a remote way station on misery's course into the hinterland. Too many of the people who lived here were either victims or transient opportunists, with no more plans of empire building than making enough bucks to see them through the day-or buying enough dope to minimize the pain.

With a bright, cocky smile, Bill Dancer strode by them with the paper bag, heading toward a ramshackle, two-story building with a sagging front porch. "Let's go make some money."

For the first time, Sam and Manuel shared a connection, glancing at each other, he with raised eyebrows, she with a shrug, followed by simultaneous smiles, before they swung in behind the subject of their nervous amusement and climbed the steps to the porch.

They were met at the door by a grim-faced bearded man with his hand under his shirt and his eyes on the street behind them. He placed his free hand flat against Bill's chest and stopped him at the threshold.

"Not so fast."

Bill sounded incredulous. "I just called, for Christ's sake. Lighten up. Bob said to come ahead."

"And now you stop," the man said, "until I tell you different."

He looked at the other two. "You stay outside while I check him out."

He grabbed Bill by the shirtfront and began dragging him inside.

"The bag," Sam quickly said.

Catching her meaning, Bill back-passed the bag to her as he vanished through the door.

In the few moments it took the bearded man to check Bill for weapons or wires, Sam whispered to Manuel, "I don't like this divide-and-conquer shit. If anything goes wrong, we grab the product and run."

Manuel spoke for the first time since they'd met. "What about your friend?"

"If this goes wrong, he's on his own. I got bigger fish to fry than that loser."

The door reopened and the doorman motioned to her. Sam handed the bag to Manuel. "See ya."

The bearded man pulled her by the arm into a small room off the entryway and pushed her up against the wall, holding her there with one hand hard against her breast.

"You're cute."

She smiled back. "You're not. You want to get this done?"

His expression froze. He extracted a.40 Glock from under his shirt and shoved it painfully into her stomach, making her gasp for air. "I had a wife with a mouth like yours. You don't wanna know what happened to her."

Sam spoke through gritted teeth. "She probably got bored."

The bouncer's search was thorough and painful, leaving Sam at the end of it walking bowlegged for several minutes. He pushed her by the scruff of the neck into an adjacent room, where Bill was waiting.

"You okay?" he asked.

She glared at him. "You are a total moron. You know we're going to get ripped off here, right?"

His voice climbed to a plaintive pitch. "That's not true. Bob and me go back."

She held up her hand. "Shut up." She moved to the door she'd just entered by, paused a moment to listen, and then walked through fast and low. Ahead of her, his gun to Manuel's head, the bouncer had just torn the bag from his hand. At the sound of her entrance, he turned and began swinging the gun in her direction. He was too late. Crossing to him quickly, Sam grabbed a lamp off a small table and in the same gesture smacked him across the side of the head, breaking the lamp, exploding the bulb in a bright flash of light, and bringing him to his knees. She kicked the gun from his hand and finished him off with a chop to the side of the neck. He fell over without a sound.

Manuel stared at her openmouthed, as did Bill, entering behind her.

Through the open door to the entryway, they heard footsteps descending the stairs. A fat man in a stained T-shirt and electric-green sneakers appeared, looking shocked and apologetic in the remaining light from a dim lamp in the far corner. He spread his hands wide to his sides, looking at Dancer and shaking his head. "Jesus, Bill, what the hell happened? That crazy bastard didn't try to rip you off, did he?"

Bill was still staring at everyone wide-eyed and mute. "Bob," he finally said, "what's the deal? You and me go back-"

But the fat man interrupted him, approaching and patting his arm with one meaty paw. "No, no, Bill. I'm real sorry. The guy's a maniac. High most of the time. Crazy bastard. I shouldn't have him around."

As if to prove the point, he took a halfhearted but solid shot at the downed man's head with his sneaker and then draped his arm around Bill's shoulders. "I'm real sorry. Come on up, all of you. I gotta make this up."

Bill paused long enough to stoop and retrieve the paper bag. After he and their host had turned their backs to address the staircase in the cramped entryway, Sam picked up the bearded man's abandoned gun, sticking it discreetly into her waistband at the small of her back. Just before she fell into step behind Bill, who was following Bob upstairs, she leaned in close to Manuel, who started slightly in surprise, and murmured, "If I yell go, you go. No questions."

* * *

"Les, update, goddammit." Joe had seen the flash of the lamp being broken over the doorman's head, without knowing the details.

Spinney hesitated, still squinting through a pair of binoculars from his position closer by. "Sorry, boss. Had to figure it out first. I'm still not sure, but Sa-shit-Gatekeeper may have thrown a lamp at somebody, maybe the guy who met them at the door. I saw some shadows when the light flashed. Looked like she was still standing."

"What're they doing now?"

"It's quiet. I can see movement at the windows upstairs, but all the shades are drawn."

Gunther swore silently to himself. This whole operation was falling apart. He should never have let her do this.

"Call for backup, Les. Have them stand by at first, but let's you and me get ready to move. I don't like this at all."

* * *

Sounding like a herd of cattle, they all stomped up the narrow wooden stairs, each person's eyes on the heels of the one before him. Except for Sam, who was trying her best to peer around the bulk of the big man leading the parade who was still talking in a loud voice about how hard it was to get good help.

His voice was too loud, she thought, and his mood too falsely upbeat given what had just transpired. And she didn't like the fact that while they were climbing under a single light high above, the top of the stairs and the landing doubling back above them were cloaked in darkness.

Surreptitiously, she reached back and wrapped her hand around the gun butt.

Which is when she heard a small metallic click-as with a safety being released-above and over her right shoulder, where the landing gave way to a shadowed door on the second floor. She spun around, her gun out, just in time to see the glimmer of the overhead light on the black metal of a semiautomatic.

There was an enormous flash as the shooter fired at her, thrown off by her sudden move. She fired back, heard a yell, and spun around to snatch the paper bag from Bill Dancer's hand as everyone began shouting at once.

"Go, go, go, go," she screamed at Manuel, pushing at him and kicking him to get him going back down the stairs. Another shot rang out and a piece of plaster snapped next to her head. She paused a moment, fired four times wildly overhead, and heard several people diving for cover.

She and Manuel stumbled, jumped, and half fell down the staircase as more gunshots flashed like lightning, punctuated by a bedlam of voices.

Incredulous they were still alive and unhurt, Sam propelled Manuel out the door, yelling, "To the car, to the car," just as she saw Lester Spinney dive out of sight behind a bush near the front walkway.

But Manuel was too stunned to notice much of anything. He staggered toward Bill's car as instructed, looking over his shoulder at her and the house beyond, clearly expecting a small army to burst out in hot pursuit.

"Get in," she ordered, circling the hood to reach the driver's seat. She could hear sirens approaching in the distance, and as she slid behind the wheel, she caught a glimpse of Joe Gunther crouching behind a nearby parked car. Unseen by Manuel, she gave her boss a quick nod and a thumbs-up signal out the window.

She turned the key, fired up the engine, did a tight, wheel-squealing U-turn in the middle of the road, and retreated the way they'd come, heading for the interstate.

"Jesus," Manuel was saying. "What happened?"

"It was a setup. That idiot Bill set us up to get ripped off and killed. Probably bragged to the fat bastard that he had a fortune worth of dope to sell, or some damn fool thing. Guaranteed to get everyone good and greedy."

"Johnny's not going to like this."

Sam pulled over suddenly, killed the lights, and yanked Manuel down onto the bench seat with her. Two patrol cars went screaming past them, unaware the car wasn't empty. She straightened and resumed driving at normal speed, the car's peaceful progress at direct odds to the hammering of her heart. But not from fear, or even postaction nerves. It was excitement. Sam was feeling on top of the world, as if she'd confronted the lion of legend and bearded it thoroughly.

"Johnny's not going to know," she said confidently.

Manuel stared at her and pointed out the back window, his anger boiling over. "What the fuck you mean? We almost got killed. I'm going to tell him you're a fucking crazy bitch. What do you think?"

"I think," she said calmly, "that you can tell him whatever you want, but not till we're done selling his junk."

"Selling? Who the hell're you gonna sell to? You gonna hang out a sign? Maybe the cops'll chip in."

"Nah," she told him, casting him a smile. "That wouldn't work. Relax. Brattleboro may be blown for tonight, but we'll get a few customers in Bellows Falls and Springfield."

He stared at her in stunned silence as she hit the turn signal and headed toward the northbound ramp.

"See what you can find on the radio."

She kept both her hands on the wheel, not daring to show him how much she was shaking.