Gatekeeper

Chapter 7

Lester Spinney sat in his car, watching a three-story house about halfway down the block. He knew the owner of record, a local garage mechanic who also ran a wrecker service. Except that his knowledge of the man came more from his history of petty drug busts. Nathan Sherman, nicknamed Natty for no reason related to his appearance, had been a steady customer of the Springfield police since his early teens, and he was in his mid-forties now.

But as popular as he was with the cops, he was genuinely so with the local teens. Two of these were his own sons, the older of whom had begun to build a record all his own.

Not hard-core stuff. The son, Jeff, had been charged with disturbing the peace, petty vandalism, loitering with intent, multiple vehicular offenses. And in a perfect example of a father-son tradition, minor drug offenses. Never heroin or crack or even the higher profile pills. But certainly a lot of marijuana, called weed by the kids, had passed through the house, and that was only what the police could actually prove. The law of averages dictated that what they'd missed was the vast majority.

Spinney's problem was that his own son, David, was now inside.

He checked his watch in the dark, using a nearby streetlight to see. He wasn't in his own car. He'd borrowed a neighbor's on some flimsy excuse. He hadn't wanted Dave to see him staking him out.

It was almost ten o'clock.

He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. He knew he wasn't acting rationally. He knew that the solution to all this was to talk to Dave and to ask him what was going on.

And yet he now sat in a borrowed car, running a surveillance as if he were building a case.

He hadn't found anything incriminating in Dave's room when he'd searched it earlier that day. Just a growing guilt, clinging like a sticky cobweb to all of his son's belongings. He had discovered hidden pictures of nude women, one stashed pornographic book. But instead of being touched by his son's normalcy and discretion, Lester only felt increasingly burdened by his own sense of failure. His son was acting on the hormones of any sixteen-year-old boy, while Lester had somehow jumped the tracks, ignoring everything about Dave except a vague and unsubstantiated possibility of drug use.

And now he was sitting in the dark, watching the shadows play across the curtains of the Sherman home, worrying about what might be occurring inside.

What had his own father been like? An icon of sorts, albeit a working-class one. Spinney had been born and brought up in Springfield, the heart of Vermont's so-called Precision Valley. Things had been invented in this region that became mainstays of the whole world's daily activities, from interchangeable gun parts, to the steam shovel, to the common spring clothespin. Early Vermonters were practical, hands-on problem solvers, and had bred a generational string of like-minded people. Over time, Springfield became the cradle of huge, expensive, very exacting machine tools-the type of equipment that manufacturers across the country and elsewhere needed to make their own machines. These were tools made to almost infinitesimal tolerances, and the workers who produced them carried their expectations to all aspects of their lives. When Lester's dad bought a car, he drove it around for a while, discussed its attributes with his friends, and then jacked it up onto a lift to perhaps rebuild the transmission to his own standards. He was a man in blue jeans and a white T-shirt who walked with the respect of his peers in a town whose various boards were dominated by engineers wearing pocket protectors. The 1950s lasted forever in Springfield, it seemed, preserving the town and its residents in a protective time bubble.

Until it all fell apart with a crash.

There are various debatable reasons for this, depending on who's got the podium. The economy, the fallout from the sixties and Vietnam, the unions and the strikes against the local plants, the flight of corporations for foreign shores, life in general, the Democratic Party.

Whatever.

In any case, Springfield's machine-tools market drained away, and with it, the town's lifeblood. What Lester remembered most, however, was how baffled the whole place became, almost overnight, like a huge ship whose rudder had been suddenly blown off. Friends fell out, relatives became polarized, the bars began doing a booming business, and domestic abuse became a recreational pursuit. The sons and daughters of those T-shirted men spun out and away from the cocoon everyone had taken for granted, leaving behind a stunned community

As for the Spinney family, the once-admired, benignly taciturn father became dour, anxious, and clearly directionless, leaving a leadership void his wife couldn't fill. Lester gave it his best, being firstborn, trying to be cheerful and supportive as the household unraveled. He got so good at steering people to look on the bright side that he was the last one to come to grips with his parents' divorce and his father's struggle with alcoholism. By the time he woke up, all he had left was a reputation for being upbeat, an attribute he felt had all the fragility of an orchid.

But it became his signature characteristic. It got him jobs, friends, his wife, and the fondness of his children. And for most of the time, it even worked, especially since things had more or less gone his way. Working for the state police, then the AG's office, and finally the VBI, Lester Spinney had led a charmed life.

Only when he hit the occasional adversity was he reminded of the shallowness of this vaunted optimism. Normally, all it took was a few hours to rebuild. But this time, right now, whether it was his age or David's age-the same as his own at the time of his family's collapse-or perhaps his growing exposure to drugs and their destructive effect, Lester wasn't bouncing back. From the moment he'd received that phone call from Officer Walker, the emotional pull on his psyche had been comparable to quicksand. He was feeling alone and speechless, his only visible resource being his training as a cop.

He passed his hand across his forehead, struck anew by the realization of what he was doing-sitting in the dark, substituting communication with surveillance.

He caught sight of himself in the rearview mirror. "You are one crazy son of a bitch, you know that?" he murmured.

He started the car and headed home, not casting a further glance at the Sherman home.

* * *

Holyoke, Massachusetts, is the home of the Volleyball Hall of Fame, an incongruity lifted to Olympian heights by an actual visit to the city. For if ever there was an image associated with a sport, it couldn't be more at odds with this city. Holyoke is, in a sequence of contrasting images, a stalwart, brick-and-granite icon of faded nineteenth-century industrial might; a city trying to adapt by building duplexes where once there were factories; a monument to the arsonist's craft, with enough rubble-strewn empty lots to recall newsreels of bombed-out Berlin of late 1945; the proud parent of one of the largest shopping malls in New England; the near title holder in Massachusetts for high crime and unemployment; and a case study in how outdated the region's WASP reputation had become, with a now nearly 50 percent Hispanic population.

In short, the portrait of Holyoke presents like a splayed-out collection of unrelated postcards: genteel, leafy suburbia; gutted urban relic; lofty, graceful Victorian mansion; and embracing, blue-collar, 1950s neighborhood. The jarring thing is that these contrasts often fit into a single city block. Schools are next to crack houses, which are opposite tourist stops that overlook ruins. To the casual onlooker, this sociological chaos is only punctuated by the gap-toothed look of the place-there are so many missing buildings, prey to either fire or the wrecker's ball, that the eye can see much farther than expected, all the way to countless walls of boarded-up or bricked-over windows.

Holyoke is startlingly eccentric as cities go, and despite the bright face its chamber of commerce advertises, a place of staggering disadvantages.

It was also where Sammie Martens, once again as Greta Novak, arrived in the company of Bill Dancer the day after she'd dropped by his cabin to tantalize him with her proposition.

Not that he'd been wholly converted to her vision of an economic bonanza. He was still worried about the company they'd be keeping. "Greta," he said as they entered downtown, as bustling a place as any, if more down-at-the-heels, "you don't know these people. They're not like the woodchucks or highfliers we had at Tucker Peak. This ain't no ski resort. These sons of bitches'll cut your heart out as soon as look at you."

"Give it a rest, Bill. You sound like a bad movie." Sam looked out the passenger side window at an unusually large number of Hispanic faces slipping by before her eyes. She knew Holyoke had been a big Irish town back when it was king of the hill in the early 1900s. To her, coming from the whitest state in the Union just an hour's drive away, the difference was both surprising and confusing, defying explanation. History-much less the nation's ethnic migratory trends-had never been of interest to her, who far preferred equipment catalogs and police intel printouts. She was feeling like she'd been dropped into a totally different world, which also made her a little less sure of what she was doing.

She was now flying solo, again without having told her boss. Were she to disappear down here today, nobody would be the wiser.

"Where's Torres live?" she asked, mostly to get her mind elsewhere.

"A few blocks down. We won't be seeing him, though."

She took her eyes off the scenery. "What d'you mean? That's why I'm here, for Christ's sake. You jerking me around?"

Dancer made as if he were swatting away flies. "I'm not. Damn. You get worked up fast. I keep telling you: These people do things different. There's like, you know, a pecking order. You gotta pass muster."

"Meaning you've never set eyes on Torres."

"I have, too," he complained, turning off Appleton just shy of the discordantly large and modern police department building. "A lot of times. But he's not gonna take too kindly to my bringing some girl to see him first time, right off. You could be a cop, for Christ's sake."

"And you could be a genius. Fat chance," she retorted, but she could feel the blood slowly rising to her cheeks.

She was here out of pure ambition. Not for herself-at least not to where she'd admit it-but for the bureau. She'd convinced herself, in that odd way people have when they've turned away from the obvious, that she needed to seal a connection to the Holyoke crowd before telling Gunther of her plans. She'd sensed his apprehension that she was moving too fast when she'd told him of meeting with Bill Dancer, just as she'd known that after a night's sleep, Joe would make sure she didn't do anything impulsive.

But time was of the essence here. When he'd asked about what drug contacts she'd made at Tucker Peak last winter, he'd all but told her that. He needed the VBI to have credibility as the governor dumped them into the task force's lap, and she was going to give it to him-whether he liked it or not.

"So who are we going to meet?" she asked Bill.

"Guy named Carlos. He's like a lieutenant. You make an impression on him, you get to meet Torres. Why're you being such a bitch? Last night, it was like you couldn't wait to get it on. Now I'm like some piece of shit."

She let out an exasperated sigh and blurted out the simple truth. "This is a big deal to me, Bill. It means a lot."

He didn't answer, staring straight ahead. She suppressed her irritation and touched his cheek with the back of her hand. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't take it out on you. You're my passport here-like my guiding light. I'm just wired is all. Do you forgive me? I'll make up for it later."

Dancer's face pinked up slightly, and he smiled despite himself. "It's okay. I been there. This is it," he announced, pulling the car over to the curb, surprisingly near downtown and police headquarters.

A young man approached the car on Sam's side, smiling as he caught sight of the car's license plate. He squatted down on the sidewalk to see them both through Sam's window. "Hey. You guys from Vermont. You here to score?"

"All set," Bill said in a loud voice. "We're late for a meeting."

The young man glanced at the address across the sidewalk from them. "I'll sell to you cheaper."

"Christ," Bill answered him. "Back off."

The dealer straightened and said, "Sure. Fuck you, too," and wandered away, his eyes on the passing traffic.

They got out of the car, Bill looking sour. "Only reason anyone from Vermont comes down here is for dope. And we're like sugar to cockroaches." He nodded toward the dealer. "That guy works for Carlos-only reason he can be this close to the front door-and still, he's trying to undersell his own boss."

He motioned to a large beige brick apartment building with a recessed and arched front entrance-straight out of the 1920s-but stained, cracked, tired, and decorated with a waist-high band of continuous graffiti. "These people are something else."

As they crossed the sidewalk, another young man wearing a tank top and two gold chains appeared, this one standing in the doorway. He was looking at Sam as if she were made of ice cream. One of his chains had a large pendant in the shape of an Uzi machine gun.

He made a show of reaching toward the small of his back, as if resting his hand on a real weapon. "What do you want?" He kept his eyes on Sam as Bill did the talking.

"We're here to see Carlos."

"He's not here. You gotta talk to me." He smiled and raised his eyebrows, still not acknowledging Bill by sight.

"We have an appointment. Concerns Miguel."

This time he shifted his gaze. "What about?"

"That's our business."

Sam gave Bill credit. He did seem to know how the protocol worked. The young man stepped back, just barely. "You better hope it don't get to be my business. Apartment 8, straight ahead."

They had to squeeze by him, and he closed the gap even more when Sam got close, his chest bumping into her arm and jostling her. He smiled and put his hand on her ribs, just under her breast. "Hola. Careful. You don't wanna fall."

She stared right at him. "Not with you, I don't."

He laughed. "What do you know?" His face hardened slightly as he added, "You stand against the wall. I gotta check you out."

"Come on, man," Bill protested.

"You, too. Hands on the wall."

The phrase startled Sam, given the role reversal. She wondered how many times she'd given the same order. But she also heard the tone in the man's voice. He needed to save face. And she needed to comply.

"It's okay, Bill," she said, and put her palms flat against the wall. "These folks can't be too careful."

To pay him some credit, the man checked out Bill first, even if the search was sloppy and for looks only.

When it came to Sam's turn, though, the whole point of the exercise became clear. He ran his hands all over her, carefully, slowly, between her breasts, between her legs. It was only when he lingered in the latter place that she finally turned, swatted his hand away, and asked with a smile, "Satisfied?"

He smiled back, his self-image reestablished. "For now."

They proceeded down the hall to room number 8.

The door was open. They saw a man sitting at a rough wooden table, calmly apportioning white powder Sam guessed was heroin from one package into a series of much smaller pale blue baggies. The scene reminded her of when her mother used to put the sugar she bought in bulk into several glass jars. Except that the room here was a pigsty.

"I help you?" he asked, measuring carefully. He was wearing chains, too, the seeming accessory of the moment.

"Hey, Carlos, it's me," Bill said, entering with a faux-familiar swagger, designed, Sam thought, solely for her.

Carlos looked up, both surprised and at a loss to remember who Bill was.

Sam smiled and couldn't resist explaining, "Bill Dancer, from Brattleboro. He said you'd sold him stuff a couple of times."

Carlos nodded. "Right-Bill. You want some more?"

Sam figured now was as good a time as any to step out from behind Bill's shrinking shadow. "Much more. I want to talk with Miguel about setting up an operation in Vermont."

Carlos's reaction was unexpected. He sat back in his chair as if pushed and stared at them under furrowed brows. "Set up an operation? In Vermont? Who're you trying to fuck with here? Johnny send you two assholes?"

Bill threw his hands up. "Jeez, Carlos, lighten up. I don't even know anybody named Johnny."

But Sam picked up on the implication. "What's wrong with dealing in Vermont?"

Carlos considered them a moment in silence, before stating, "You guys really are as dumb as they say. Get the fuck out of here."

He returned to his measuring as if they'd already left.

Bill opened his mouth to say something, but Sam laid her hand on his arm. "Come on, Bill. Money's no good here."

As they walked back down the hall, Bill shook his head. "What the hell was that all about? What a loser. And what's this shit about Johnny?"

"Shut up, Bill," Sam said quietly as they approached the lobby "And keep it shut while I find out. In fact, wait for me on the sidewalk, right at the bottom of the steps, okay? Not too far off."

Bill looked at her in confusion. "What're you talking about?"

The man who'd greeted them at the door reappeared from outside, having heard their voices. He smiled at them, once again focusing on Sam. "Hey. So soon? That was fast business. You're a quick operator."

Sam smiled back. "Little do you know." She turned to Bill. "Wait for me. I want to talk to. ." She glanced at the young man in the gold chains.

"Don Juan," he leered.

"Don," she finished. "I'll only be a second."

Doubtful and clearly put out, Bill followed instructions, looking over his shoulder as he left. "I'll be right out here."

"Whatever," Sam murmured, just loud enough for the young man to hear. He laughed. "What's a slick bitch like you doing with such a yo-yo?"

"He drives the car," she said, leaning back against the wall. "You really named Don Juan?"

A small flicker of the kid leaked through as he admitted, "Nah. It's Ricky." He placed a hand against the wall beside her head so his body was almost leaning against hers. The flicker was gone. "But I can be Don Juan to you."

She quelled the obvious rejoinder inside her head and answered instead, "Yeah, I bet you have your moments." She reached up and hooked one of his chains with her index finger. "This is pretty."

"Not as pretty as you."

Christ, she thought, what thirteen-year-olds have you been hanging out with? "You should know," she said. "You got a good enough feel."

"You complaining?"

What the hell? she thought. Since we're replaying bad movies: "You didn't do any harm. I like a man who knows what he wants."

"Damn," he said softly. He placed his other hand against her stomach and leaned in to kiss her ear gently.

She rested her fingers on his wrist to stop him from moving up her torso. "Doesn't mean he always gets what he wants. Right away. Who's Johnny?"

He straightened, caught off guard. "What?"

"Carlos told us to go see Johnny," she said, expanding a bit on the actual message.

His eyes widened. "He did? No shit. Must've been bullshitting you."

"Why's that?"

Ricky leaned in to touch her neck with his nose. "You smell good."

I bathe, she told herself. "He a bad guy to work with? I don't want to get in trouble."

He gave her a less lascivious look. "You going to work with him?"

"I'm from Vermont. That's where Carlos told me to go."

Ricky tilted his head appraisingly and then laughed softly. "Yeah, well, that's right. Vermont's Johnny's turf now. I'm just real surprised Carlos sent you there, 'cause Johnny, he's like shit around here."

"Bad blood?"

"Shit yeah. Miguel used to run junk into Vermont, like a bunch of 'em do. Johnny took it over, a couple of weeks ago. Got ugly, too. Some shootings. A few people beat up. I don't know if Miguel might not get him back, or one of the other top shits around here, for solidarity. They're still pretty hot about it. Johnny might have to pay big-time if he wants to see tomorrow, you know? I mean, live and let live, but you gotta show respect."

"Right," Sam agreed, hoping to keep him rolling. "Maybe they could work something out. Is Johnny smart enough for that?"

Ricky seemed to have almost forgotten his lover routine in exchange for being the answer man. "Johnny's plenty smart. He figured out how to get a piece of the pie, didn't he? Cutting out a hunk of Vermont for himself? That's smart, if you ask me. Maybe he pissed a few people off, but now he's a big shot when he was just a street guy before, and he didn't have to face off with any of the bosses around here for stealing local turf-that really would've got him killed."

"You all but said Miguel wanted him dead."

He took his hand off her stomach and waved it dismissively. "Yeah, yeah. Miguel can't just lie down, you know? Plus the others're mad, too. They all have to save face. It's kind of like Johnny ripped 'em off a little, too." Ricky cupped his groin. "But he has cojones. You gotta respect that. They'll work something out. They always do. Maybe some people'll die, there'll be a little trouble, but Johnny's got protection, and like I said, Vermont's not the biggest deal in the world or anything. It was like he took over a side business or something. There's still enough to go around."

"But it's not settled yet, right? There could still be a fight."

He nodded seriously. "Oh, yeah. It's like they say on TV, you know? 'It's a fluid situation.' I love that. 'Fluid situation.'" He suddenly seemed to remember a forgotten line, because he slipped on the leer again and put his face close to hers. "Like us, right, baby? A fluid situation."

She allowed herself a genuine laugh then, patted his cheek with her hand, slipped down and under his arm, and walked toward the open door. "You never know, Ricky. You like older women?" she asked over her shoulder.

He took her rejection in stride, which she was only hoping he'd do, and laughed back at her. "You can't tell by now? I'm losing my touch."

She paused on the threshold, faced him, and put her hands on her hips, suddenly realizing how close this kid was to the type of man she often did fall for-a little dangerous, a little lost, dangling between being clueless and far too knowledgeable for his own good. "Don't you believe it. What's Johnny's last name and where do I find him?"

"Rivera," he said, and gave her the address, adding, "You be careful. I want you back without bruises."