Nantucket Five-Spot (4 page)

Nantucket certainly was lively these days.

I found Billy Delavane's jobsite, a sprawling mansion at the far end of Warren's Landing Road, perched on a bluff above Nantucket Sound, surrounded by churned mud and work vehicles. Stone cutters sorted rocks, piecing together the elaborate wall that snaked around the house. A web of scaffolding surrounded the giant chimney under construction thirty feet overhead. Shinglers moved across the roof, crab-like on staging planks. Someone had set up a table saw outside. Painters stood priming trim boards across a pair of work benches. Cedar dust scented the air and music from at least two different stations blared from the house, along with the whine of planers, the bang of hammers, and a Jamaican electrician who kept yelling, “We're on a ROLL!”

Billy Delavane was in the two-story living room, facing down a gray cement fireplace.

“Hey Chief,” he called out.

A compressor clicked on at that moment and its pneumatic roar rendered inaudible anything I might say. I lifted a hand in greeting. When the air pressure had built up again and the big machine cycled off, I said, “Busy around here.”

“Check this out. The fireplace was supposed to be plaster. Now the people decide they want painted brick. But the bricks would extend it out another two inches and we'd have to buy another hearth piece. That's about a thousand bucks worth of polished granite right there, and these zillionaires are ‘on a budget.' So what do we do?”

“Explain the problem?”

Billy laughed. “That'd work. No, Chief, what you do is find someone who spent his summers in high school working for a crazy old Irish mason and tell him to fix it. That'd be me. I troweled on this cement ten minutes ago. It's about ready, so stand back and prepare to be amazed.”

I retreated a step as Billy started pushing straight lines across the cement with his thumb, using a wet rag to clean the sludge off his finger between strokes. When he finished he took a breath and started making the vertical gouges. By the end it looked exactly like a wall of gray brick.

I stared. “How the hell did you do that?”

Billy wiped his thumb one more time and threw the rag into a trash bin. “Talent and practice, Chief. Just like police work. Or poetry. I used twenty bucks worth of Portland cement and saved Pat Folger a grand. You'd think he'd give me a bonus. But all I get is a free lunch.”

He glanced over my shoulder. Billy's girlfriend, Abby Folger, was walking toward us, carrying a brown paper bag and skirting the step ladders, coils of copper wire, tangled power cords, miter saws, and boom boxes. The cut-off shorts and work boots showed off her legs.

The Jamaican stapled a wire to a stud and shouted, “We're on a ROLL!”

Abby tossed her head toward the electrician. “He's happy.”

“We're all happy now,” Billy said.

“Except the chief. I have the feeling he'd prefer me to wear baggy pants. But I like the air on my legs.”

“You like the eyes on your legs,” Billy said.

She smiled. “That, too.”

The compressor kicked on again.

“Let's get out of here,” Billy shouted.

We followed him to sit out on the deck, our backs against the new shingles, watching sailboats track across the Sound. A ferry headed for the mainland, plowing steadily into the azure distance. Hyannis smudged the horizon. The immense cloudless blue sky arched above us. A gentle breeze shifted and cooled the sunlight. The air brushed our faces like silk.

Billy waved an arm expansively at the view. “This is what people pay a million dollars for. And we get it for free.”

I nodded, then shut my eyes and tilted my head back and let the heat press against my eyelids. It felt good. I was tired. I didn't want to have this conversation. I should have sent Haden Krakauer, but I had never learned how to delegate.

“So what's up, Chief?”

“It's police business.” My eyes were still shut. “It's private. You probably don't want to have—”

“It's fine. Abby won't even be listening.”

I opened my eyes, squinting against the bleached glare of noon. Abby was putting on a pair of earphone buds.

“I have the new Modest Mouse on my iPod,” she said.

I sat up straight, turned a little to face Billy. “We got a bomb threat phone call today. It came from your house.”

“So I'm a suspect?”

“Not to me. Not yet. You're a ‘person of interest' to the investigation.”

“In other words—almost a suspect.”

“Look, I think some kid made that call. There were a lot of them at your house last night. They trust you. Did any of them say anything odd?”

Billy laughed quietly—a humorless little cough. “One reason they trust me is they know I won't rat them out to the cops.”

“I understand. But there's more at stake here than some underage drinking. We had to alert Homeland Security and the FBI. This is serious.”

“Okay, okay. But I didn't hear anything.”

“Listen, Billy…do you have any idea who might be talking to Debbie Garrison about you?”

“Saying what?”

“That you're capable of setting off bombs. That you're a potential terrorist.”

“What the hell? Me? Are they nuts? That's crazy. Who'd say something like that?”

“I don't know. But I'd sure like to find out.”

“Me, too, but I mean—”

My cell rang, with the first concussive piano notes from Jackson Browne's “Fountain of Sorrow.”

I cut Billy off with a raised hand as I wrestled the phone out of my pocket.

“I just got off the phone with DHS,” Lonnie Fraker said into my ear. “They're sending a couple of guys over. No big deal, it's just, you know—SOP. They have to snoop around a little and we have to let them.”

“Thanks, Lonnie.”

I slipped my iPhone back into my pocket—a hand-me-down from my ex-wife, who always had to have the newest version.

“Anything?” Billy asked.

People always want to know police business. “Nothing.” I stood up. “But I have to get moving. I'd tell you not to leave the island, but I know you won't. And talk to Debbie. Someone is spreading some bad rumors about you. Do us all a favor and find out who.”

Billy gave me a little salute. I stepped around Abby. Inside the house things were still going well. “We're on a ROLL,” crowed the Jamaican.

Back at the station, Haden Krakauer was sitting in my office. He handed me a fax as I walked around the desk. “Is this who I think it is?”

The note was printed on Department of Homeland Security letterhead: protocols and instructions. The gist was that DHS would require the full cooperation of the Nantucket Police Department. In the event of an ongoing investigation we were “tasked” with support services and expediting Federal initiatives.

Donkey work, in other words, if it ever came to that.

Two agents temporarily attached to the Boston office were flying over for a preliminary on-site evaluation—John Tornovitch and Frances Tate. I put the paper on my desk. Haden lifted his hands, palm up.

“What?”

“Come on. Is that Tornovitch from L.A.?”

“Unless there's another one. I heard he got promoted.”

“The prick who made your life miserable for six months?”

“People change.”

Krakauer laughed. “No they don't. He gave the staties that recording of Diana Lomax talking to her boyfriend, remember? And it wasn't because he wanted to help close our case. He just wanted to make you look bad. Lonnie said so, himself.” Haden was right. I remembered thinking I'd never get away from Jack Tornovitch.

Good instinct.

The muted rush of the air-conditioning filled our silence. Haden was waiting. I let him. “Well?” he said finally.

“Well what?”

“Jesus you are a pain in the ass sometimes!
Well,
is this the Frances Tate you've been telling me about since you got off the boat four years ago?”

“They worked together. And Tornovitch always managed to take the credit. So, yeah, probably.”

Krakauer was squinting at me. “You're OK with that?”

“I'm delighted.”

“Yeah, that's what worries me. They're on the two o'clock flight from Boston. That's forty five minutes, Chief. So get yourself together.” He rolled his eyes. “And if you're thinking of writing any poems on NPD time, make sure you let me proof them before you give them to her.”

He left and I picked up the fax again.

Franny Tate, after all these years.

Of all the police stations on all the islands in all the world, she walks into mine. I grabbed the brush out of my bottom drawer and slipped out of my office to the bathroom.

I actually needed a haircut, but I didn't have time.

Chapter Three

Reunions

Driving out to the airport, Lonnie started to brief me about the Homeland Security agents. I let him talk for a while.

“I guess what goes around comes around, right Chief? You messed with this guy in L.A., he messed with you on the Lomax case and now, boom, he's right here, out of the blue, taking over this one. Karma's a bitch, am I right?”

I looked out the window “We'll see.”

“I don't know this Tate guy, but if he works for Tornovitch, he's gotta be a hard-ass. Check this out. When Tornovitch was with the California Highway Patrol, he used to pull people over for driving exactly the speed limit, that's the kind of dick this guy is.”

I nodded. I'd heard all these stories before. “The most annoying part is, the system worked. Every time he pulled over a careful one, he found something. Guns in the trunk. Coke in the glove box. No registration. All of them driving double nickels and signaling for every lane change.”

Lonnie grinned. “So how bad did you fuck up in L.A.? I never got the full story on that one.”

I shrugged. “Everybody fucked up. Except Franny. I used the case in a novel I was writing. It didn't make the LAPD look good. The brass got wind of it. I had to let them read it. They confiscated the manuscript. It violated the non-disclosure form I had to sign when I was promoted to Robbery-Homicide. But a section of it was already running in
L.A. Weekly.
So I started job hunting.”

“Frances Tate. Franny—I get it. So you worked with her, too.”

“Tornovitch likes her. She gives him the credit when she figures things out.”

“You write about that?”

I nodded.

“No wonder the guy hates you.”

“The truth hurts.”

Lonnie snorted out a laugh. “This is gonna be fun.”

We pulled into the airport parking lot. The flight from Boston was fifteen minutes late. I left Lonnie talking to an agent behind the Nantucket Airlines counter and walked out to the chain link courtyard to wait for the plane, thinking about Franny Tate. It had been a long time, but it didn't seem that way this morning. Maybe she had gotten fat, maybe she had forgotten about me. Two unlikely prospects—Franny was a raw nerve of energy, constantly in motion, living on coffee and bagged salad greens.

And she never forgot anything.

Behind me, a man struggled with the
Boston Globe
in the gusty south-west wind. The plane taxied toward the terminal.

I had been married the last time. Maybe Franny was married now. But probably she wasn't. Franny didn't stand still long enough for that. If she were single, there'd be nothing stopping us, no reason to hold back, apart from work and the watchful eye of Jack Tornovitch. Chaperone was one of the few jobs he was qualified for.

When I turned back to the chain link fence the plane was coming to a stop in front of the terminal, a kid with a reflecting vest and two batons guiding the pilot. I watched Franny walk across the tarmac—the same half run. She always looked like she was about to break into a sprint. She was a little thinner than I remembered and her hair was longer, a great brown mane, scattered by the wind. She wore khaki shorts and a white t-shirt, flip flop sandals. She looked like a tourist. She caught my eye and waved. I waved back. Tornovitch trundled along behind her, squinting in the sunlight, wearing the same wrinkled gray suit and polyester shirt I remembered from L.A. He must have a closet full of them.

Lonnie Fraker stood behind me. “Frances Tate,” he said admiringly. “Things are looking up.”

“Down boy. She's out of your league.”

Franny pushed through the gate and gave me a hug. “Hey, Hank. How are you?”

“Good, Franny. Much better all of a sudden.”

“Always the right words.”

She disentangled herself and turned to Lonnie with her arm out. “Frances Tate.”

“Lonnie Fraker.” He shook her hand.

Tornovitch brushed past them.

“Can it,” he said. “We have work to do. Write any good books lately, Kennis?”

He was striding into the terminal before I could answer. Franny followed him.

Lonnie turned to me. “Hank?”

I raised my hands in surrender.

We walked out of the terminal, trotting to catch up with the Feds. As we passed the little Homeland Security shed by the taxi stand, Andy Cochran stepped out and raised an arm in greeting.

“Andy.”

“Hey Chief. Orange alert today.”

“Thanks. We're on it.”

We caught up to Franny and Tornovitch on the access road into the parking lot. “I like the look of that kid,” Tornovitch said. “I like his attitude.”

“Really, Jack? I wish I could feel that way. But half the summer specials I didn't rehire are working for the TSA now. Like this Andy Cochran kid.”

“He was probably just overeager, Kennis. The boy looks like a go-getter. No harm in that.”

“He was a go-getter all right. He was tearing up girls' parking tickets in exchange for their phone numbers. If terrorists actually show up here, for Andy's sake I hope they're ugly old guys. If they're cute girls, he could wind up joining al Qaida. Which might actually be the most effective way he could help Homeland Security.”

Franny gave me a little shove. “That's harsh.”

“Yeah? Well, most people who want to be cops should be disqualified automatically. Lord Acton got it right. Power corrupts—even the power to write parking tickets.”

Franny narrowed her eyes, her head tilted slightly with alert curiosity. It was an almost canine gesture. She was like a Pointer who had just heard a duck crash into the underbrush. But there was a very human challenge there. I remembered that expression. I used to get it a lot. “Who was Lord Acton, anyway?” she said. “All anyone knows about him is he said that one thing.”

“I know a little more.”

“Of course you do,” Tornovitch snorted.

We had reached the car. Lonnie hit the remote entry, the Explorer honked twice and Tornovitch took shotgun. Lonnie got into the driver's side, and I was alone with Franny for a few seconds in the bright sunlight. A private jet was taking off. We watched it climb.

“So come on, who was this Lord Acton guy, anyway?” Franny asked.

Our first moment alone in half a decade was vanishing fast, and she had derailed it in typical fashion. But she had always enjoyed rummaging around in my steamer trunks of irrelevant information. She was smiling at me now across the SUV's hood.

I took a breath. “Okay. Sir John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton. He was a nineteenth-century English historian. When he said that, he was talking about the pope. There's more to the quote, something like—‘Great men are bad men.'”

Franny smiled. “Amen to that.”

Her parents were both Catholic, I remembered. “Good Catholics,” she had said once, with a tired sarcasm that discouraged further questions.

Lonnie honked the horn, at Tornovitch's insistence, no doubt. We got in and Tornovitch was talking before the car doors closed.

***

“Okay, let's set some ground rules,” he said. “First of all, we are treating this telephone call as a serious infraction. Agency directives specify prioritizing any incident that occurs in a primary threat location, a category which happens to include Nantucket, among areas as diverse as the twenty square miles radius around Camp David in Pennsylvania, parts of lower Manhattan and all of Aspen Colorado. But even without reference to DHS policy, I have to tell you, I would pursue this matter, Kennis. I have a gut feeling about it.” He waved a dismissive hand at the passing landscape. “This place is a catastrophe waiting to happen. Or it was. The wait may just be over.”

“Jack, I think you're overreacting a little. We don't even know—”

“We know a great deal. I have been fully briefed by the State Police. Captain Fraker was quite informative—a model of inter-service cooperation. You could learn a lot from him.” I could see Lonnie's self-satisfied little smile in the rear-view mirror. He lifted his head an inch, chin up, preening like an Afghan hound. I half expected Jack to scratch him behind his ears.

“I'll keep it in mind, “I said.

“Good. Now, here's what you can do for me, Kennis. We have a National Security Letter for The Souk clothing store at 32 Broad Street. I want to turn that business inside out—in town and also the warehouse on Teasdale Circle. I want phone logs, e-mails, billing and accounts receivable, customer lists, credit card records as well as complete personal breakdowns on both Rashid and Patel Lashari.”

“The Lasharis are law-abiding citizens, Jack,” I said. “What are you going to do—throw them in jail for being Muslim?”

“Maybe I will, Kennis. If that's what it takes. And maybe I'll send them to Guantanamo Bay and if I do, they'll never be heard from again, whether they did anything wrong or not. So back off.”

“They're not the main focus of the investigation,” Franny said.

“No. Obviously. The main focus right now is on this William Delavane. His credit card was used to purchase a voice changing machine on June 3rd of this year. The numbers are a lock. And that includes the three digit identification code.”

“We've been trying to get that information,” I said.

“Well, you never will. It's classified now and you need a higher clearance than ‘local cop' to access it.”

It was all flooding back to me. You couldn't work with Tornovitch for more than twenty minutes without feeling the urge to hit him with something wet and messy.

“I don't believe it,” I said. “I have a crime report on file, Jack. Billy's wallet and credit cards were stolen last week.”

“How convenient. But we'll be searching his house, Kennis—from the insulation in his attic to the subfloor in his basement.”

I shrugged. “Good luck with that.”

“Luck has nothing do with it, Kennis. You're about to learn that. We're going to be taking over the emergency response suite at your shiny new police station. On the second floor. I have the specs, Kennis. I do my homework. As you might remember.”

“What I remember is that you have an office full of drones to do your homework for you. They work all night and you get a sheet of paper to read on the plane coming over.”

“And what do you have? Thirty half-trained summer specials, ten keystone cops in uniform, a couple of detectives who've worked one major case in the last decade, with a twenty million dollar playhouse for them to trash. And, oh yeah, I almost forgot—an alcoholic second-in-command who could fall off the wagon tomorrow. That's nothing to boast about, Chief.”

“Gee,” I said, “I thought the organization was called ‘Alcoholics
Anonymous
.”

The laser intensified. “Nothing is anonymous. This is the twenty-first century. We're fighting the war on terror and our biggest weapon is information. We can't afford secrets anymore.”

“And here we are,” Lonnie broke in, cruising past the berm of plantings (like a bad haircut, they were finally starting to grow in and look natural) and into the wide parking lot that faced the handsome brick façade of the new station. The flags on our high poles snapped in the wind. Tornovitch climbed out first. Haden Krakauer was striding toward the car, over the big compass etched into granite by the front doors. He was walking in a straight line. I was pretty sure he could also stand on one foot and touch his fingers to his nose.

I got out and performed the introductions.

Tornovitch was examining the building. “Very nice. But all the new construction in the world can't replace real police work. That's what controls criminal activity—old fashioned leg work. Knocking on doors.”

As if he had ever done any of that.

“We have the criminal activity pretty well under control—sir,” Haden answered. The gap before the ‘sir' drew Tornovitch's attention. He had a heightened sensitivity to insubordination, the faint crackle of disrespect, like Billy Delavane's pug bounding into the kitchen when I peeled the plastic wrapping off the cheddar cheese.

“Except for the bomber.” He turned to Haden. “This is a little more serious than your usual island drug busts and two-bit DUIs.”

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” I said.” We don't have a bomber. We have a crank call.”

“Really? You also have the biggest drunk driving problem in New England. And remember—you're all suspect. One of the 9/11 hijackers was wearing a Nantucket t-shirt. All right? Someone sold it to him. Or maybe it was a gift. We're still investigating that. There's no statute of limitations on treason, Kennis. Now let's get inside, get oriented, and get busy. The clock is ticking, people.”

Tornovitch strode into the station. Lonnie Fraker hurried after him. Haden shook his head. “Clock? What clock? There's a clock? Is it going to be ticking until the Pops concert? Because that could really get annoying.”

“Get in there,” I said. “Play nice.”

I hung back with Franny. “Has he gotten worse or is it just my imagination?”

She pushed a hand through her hair. “The worse he gets, the faster they promote him. Maybe he knows something we don't.”

“He knows you. That's all he needs.”

I first met Franny on a case in Los Angeles. A twenty-five hundred-dollar-a-night hooker had been killed. The crime scene looked like a robbery. But the girl had been involved with some prominent drug dealers, and the FBI wound up big-footing the investigation. Franny and Jack Tornovitch were new partners then, long before their transfer to DHS. This was one of their first assignments. Franny was clearly the junior member of the team. He used to send her out for coffee. But she broke the case. She never bought the robbery angle and started poking around into the alibis.

Detective Sergeant Roy Elkins was lead investigator on the case, out of the Robbery-Homicide Division. He had been my mentor in the LAPD. He knew the girl. He had used her as a drug informant from time to time. Franny had a bad feeling about Roy from the start, but he had a solid alibi for the murder. He had been in line at the Silver Lake post office that Friday, express-mailing a package to his mother for Mother's Day. Friday was always the worst day for that PO, because all the Mexicans showed up to send home their week's wages. Long lines, no air-conditioning. A postal clerk verified Elkins' story. An ambitious, high-ranking officer with no motivation for the killing, the LAPD barely looked at him.