Gatekeeper (15 page)

Nelson had moved across the room, his expression closed.

"Chill out, Gail," Debbie said tiredly. "I'm not ruining my life. You want to know the truth, I'm getting it back together." She dangled the joint between her fingers. "This is nothing—it's like you having a beer. I am getting counseling. You said that yourself. I'm fine."

Gail had a sudden memory of herself at nearly the same age, sitting in a similar setting, albeit on a farm near Marlboro, smoking pot and spouting the same nonsense. To her, as to Debbie right now, the comparison between alcohol and marijuana had been benign and reasonable. But Gail had grown up, become a teetotaler, and no longer saw any benefit to either substance. If weed was a gateway to more addictive drugs, then beer was a gateway to liquor, in her hardened view.

But she knew she couldn't take that line with this girl, especially given the company she was keeping. Nelson might have been as big a threat as he was a ladies' man, but Gail seriously doubted he had Debbie's best interests in mind.

"I'm not going to argue the point here," she said instead. "Not with him around, and not with that crap in your system. I have something to offer you—I can be a guide to the other side, if you like. But you're going to have to come to me next time, and you better be clean."

With that, she turned on her heel, left the room, and slammed the door behind her, making sure they could hear the slap of her heels on the sidewalk as she retreated toward her car.

But her heart wasn't in it. She knew some of the techniques, had seen them used in her volunteer counseling, and didn't need telling that what she'd just laid down was part of a tried-and-true process. But none of it held against her mental snapshot of Laurie lying in that hospital bed—along with the caption that Gail had played a role in putting her there.

She knew full well that if Debbie didn't seek her out in short order, Gail would be back at this motel trying something else. It might be an obsession in the making, but a worthwhile one.

Or so she told herself.

* * *

Joe hung up the phone on Gail's machine without leaving a message. He'd already left two, and worried he was back where he'd been before his midnight visit. Her niece had affected her like a tectonic shift. Gail may have still been walking and talking, albeit under stress, but who knew what had changed underneath?

He was still in Rutland, the meeting having run for hours. They had hashed out everything from procedures and responsibilities to how to prosecute any arrests they might make. They'd even talked about various forfeiture strategies, in case they picked up any money, cars, or valuable property along the way. Notes had been taken, graphs produced, deadlines established, communication webs and chains of command. The most satisfying aspect of it from Gunther's perspective was that the VBI would be playing the support role he'd asked for, across the board, from the Rutland PD, to the state police drug task force, to merely picking up slack where necessary. In all things concerning Sam and whatever she might encounter, however, they were autonomous, free to act spontaneously and instinctively, the only proviso being that McCall be kept inside the circle.

Which was both good and bad news. For, beyond a couple of unsolved homicides, a governor's political pressure, and the overall goal of denting the drug trade, they were primarily responsible for the care and welfare of a single cop. What Sam had done of her own volition now made her the top of the proverbial iceberg, leaving them all to make sure she stayed upright.

Their hopes were that she might open the doors through which they could complete most of the tasks before them. But Joe Gunther's biggest fear was that, were the slightest thing to go wrong, everything could collapse, and he could lose someone as close to him as his own flesh and blood.

He stared at the phone again, thinking back briefly to Gail, wondering what she was up to.

So many loose strings, he thought. So much at risk. 

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."