The Dead Room (22 page)

48

Darby felt as though her stomach were packed with ice. Drops of sweat slid across her ribs.

‘I know only two names,’ Ezekiel whispered. ‘When they were alive, working as Feds, their names were Peter Alan and Jack King. But you won’t find them. They died in a boat fire, along with Sullivan. I don’t know what their names are now.’

She swallowed and said, ‘Mr Ezekiel, can you –’

‘I know what you’re thinking. “This man is a goddamn schizophrenic, he’s making this all up.” I’m not. The first time I was arrested, some quack slapped that bullshit diagnosis on me and it’s stuck with me ever since.’ Ezekiel was speaking fast, too fast, in a garbled rush to get the words out over his mounting anger. ‘Was I paranoid? Did I think people were always watching me? You bet your ass I did. In my line of business, you always have to be careful. You never know who’s going to sell you out. Paranoia is what keeps you alive on the street. But I don’t hear voices that aren’t there, I don’t think aliens are reading my brain waves or any of that crap. Doesn’t matter how many times I tell them, they still come around and inject that shit into my ass three times a week. All it does is keep me in a permanent fog, makes me easier to control. I don’t blame you for being sceptical. But whatever my present mental condition is, it doesn’t change the fact that Kendra Sheppard visited me, does it?’

‘You haven’t told me why she visited you.’

‘Kendra was working with your father, giving him information on Mr Sullivan and his crew. Kendra was the one who found out that Sullivan was an FBI agent and told your father. That stuff about his prior arrests and serving time in prison? All bullshit. Planted information for his cover. Kendra found out who Sullivan really was, and she also found out about the Boston Feds setting up local witnesses and informants. Some were killed; some just disappeared. And then there were the informants and witnesses who were promised witness protection as long as they cooperated. Guess what? They’re dead.’

Darby thought about Michelle Baxter’s comment about being placed into protective custody.
Thanks, but no. I’ll take my chances here in the real world.

‘This one guy, Jimmy Lucas?’ he whispered. ‘He was supposed to go into the programme. The Feds picked him up, brought him somewhere and Kevin Reynolds strangled him to death. I overheard Reynolds talking about it. Kendra did too, only she was smart enough to tape it.’

‘She was taping their conversations?’

‘At the hotel, at Kevin Reynolds’s house. Sullivan found out what she was doing, and he went to her house to kill her and her family. Only Kendra wasn’t there. She was very smart – that’s how she survived this long. She sensed Sullivan knew something was going on, so she split Dodge and went to see your father. She was helping your father, giving him tapes, helping him smuggle people out of Boston and Charlestown, from –’

‘What people?’

‘Witnesses. Some of the young women at the hotel parties. Kendra trusted a few of them – they helped her tape conversations, set up the listening devices and these pinhole cameras your father gave her. Kendra wanted to see Sullivan go down. She was helping your father build a case against him. It was brilliant when you stop to think about it. They had whole squads within the Boston police, the state police – officers, mind you, who were probably on Sullivan’s payroll – and these groups were sharing information with the Feds, who naturally turned around and told Sullivan everything. And here was Kendra working with a
patrolman
from Belham.

‘Your father knew what he was up against. Big Red heard the tapes, knew what these Boston Feds were doing, the names of the cops and state troopers Sullivan had on his payroll. Sullivan and his Federal friends, they were Charlestown’s version of the Gestapo. Witnesses and informants could never come forward because they knew they’d be killed. Your father… he had to take matters into his own hands. He couldn’t trust anyone on the Belham police force, but he couldn’t leave these people blowing in the wind. He knew what he was up against, so he had to get them as far away from Charlestown as possible, get them new identities. We’re talking dozens and dozens of lives that he saved.’

‘Was my father working with anyone?’

‘I don’t know. Kendra said when she spoke to your father she was alone. I met him only a handful of times, always alone. Kendra brought me to him. I told him what I saw, and Big Red set me up in a safe house. A week later, your father was dead, and I was arrested. A month after that, Sullivan and his Federal buddies died in that raid on Boston Harbor, and that was the end of it.’

‘Why were these men looking for her all this time?’

‘Because the tapes she gave Big Red were only copies,’ Ezekiel whispered. ‘Kendra told me she’d kept the actual tapes – and she had notes on the Feds, times and places, that sort of thing. And she’d kept a list of the names of the people your father had smuggled out of the state. All this time, Kendra thought these Feds had died along with Sullivan. That changed about a year ago when she was living in… Wisconsin, I think. Working at a small insurance company, she told me. One day she left work, was driving home, when she realized she’d left something at the office, and when she pulled around to the front she saw Peter Alan heading inside the building. The other guy, a man named Jack King, was behind the wheel of a car parked right out front. She picked up Sean from school and started driving to look for a new place to live, just left all of her stuff behind.’

‘What did she tell Sean?’

‘Kendra said she told him
everything
. She had to, because after Wisconsin, they were always switching identities. That’s why she decided to come forward, because of Sean. She didn’t want anything to happen to him. After Wisconsin, they moved to New Jersey. Their apartment got broken into and she panicked and split for Vermont, changed her name again, this time to Amy Hallcox. She was a pro at changing identities. Always worked at places where social security numbers were easily available – places like insurance companies. She told me she was sick and tired of running, said it was time to come forward with what she knew before they killed her. She was the last one left.’

‘The last of what?’

‘The last of the people your father smuggled out of Charlestown. They’re all dead. After she saw Alan, she did a little research. She took her list of names and found out that they had been murdered. All unsolved. This secret Gestapo unit of dead FBI agents – they had tracked them down and killed them.’

‘How?’

‘Your father must have had a list. They must have confiscated it. That, his tapes, evidence, whatever he had. They had a tough time finding Kendra because she kept switching her identities every time she moved.’

‘Was the entire FBI involved or just the Boston office?’

‘I don’t know. Kendra told me about the Boston Feds who were involved, that’s it.’

Darby thought about the ransacked house in Belham. Her home in Vermont had been searched.

‘Kendra told me she’d kept the tapes, notes, all of it,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know where they are; she didn’t tell me. I told her to let sleeping dogs lie. Besides, it wouldn’t have changed anything. It’s been twenty plus years since she left Charlestown. If she’d come forward with whatever she had, what would it have accomplished? The FBI would have maintained that the Federal agents who had died on those two boats were, in fact, dead. It would’ve just made her a target. And when they find out you’ve spoken to me – and they will –
you’ll
be a target.’

‘Is Kevin Reynolds a Federal agent?’

‘Kendra had her suspicions,’ he whispered, ‘but she couldn’t prove it.’

‘Did she tell you who was on these tapes?’

‘No, she didn’t. We had only forty minutes to talk. I let her do all the talking. I just listened.’

‘Does she know who killed my father?’

‘No. I don’t know either. I was in this motel when your father was murdered. I told this to my wonderful public-appointed lawyer, of course. The motel said they had no record of me staying there. No bills, nothing. It didn’t matter. The Feds set me up. They stole my car, they found the gun I kept in my apartment – they planted enough evidence to leave no doubt that I’d done it. Without any evidence to support what I was saying, my lawyer thought he was listening to the paranoid ramblings of a schizophrenic.’

‘My father wouldn’t have left you alone in a hotel. He would have arranged for someone to watch you.’

‘He said he had someone watching the hotel – someone he trusted. I don’t know who he was, I never saw the guy.’

‘I’ll look into this.’

‘
No
,’ he hissed. ‘I didn’t call you to
help
me; I called to warn you about these so-called Federal agents. I have no idea if they’re still working for the FBI, but, regardless, they’re out there looking for these tapes.
Don’t go looking for them
. You know what they did to your father; you saw what happened to Kendra. If you find these tapes, destroy them. Don’t think you can expose these people. You can’t trust anyone, especially people inside the Boston police department. Sullivan had plenty of
your
people on his payroll.’

‘Tell me some names.’

‘I don’t remember their names, but I’m sure they’re still out there. You start in on this, you’ll wind up buried next to your father.’

I haven’t started in on this
, Darby wanted to say.
I’m already in it
.

49

Darby felt cold all over as she collected her things from the female guard. She was dimly aware of the woman speaking, making a joke to Billy Biceps about how everything must’ve gone well with Zeke ’cause the doc still had both her ears, ha-ha. Darby forced a smile, thanked the guards and stepped into a cool, bright corridor echoing with murmured conversations.

The rational part of her, which had been oddly quiet all this time, spoke up.
You actually believe everything Ezekiel has told you
.

A statement, not a question. Did she believe
everything
? She didn’t want to believe any of it, but a good majority of the things he had told her – like Special Agent Alan, for example – were true. Some of the other things he had said clambered around the truth – too goddamn close to it. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the man didn’t fit the mould of someone suffering from a schizoaffective disorder. The delusion about the room being bugged should have dominated the entire conversation. His paranoid thoughts should have been rampant, but the man’s speech had remained remarkably coherent. He had answered each of her questions, had easily moved from one topic to the next without confusion and –
and
– had shown a remarkable degree of empathy when speaking about her father.

And what about her father? At thirty-nine, her memories of Thomas ‘Big Red’ McCormick had started to blur and fade. As it was, she didn’t have many memories to start with. She had barely seen him during her childhood, Big Red having to work a tremendous amount of overtime while Sheila attended night school for her nursing degree. A few random snapshots came to her – clutching her father’s big leg on the subway as the crowded T-car rocked-and-rolled its way down the track; Big Red cracking peanut shells in his long, callused fingers at Fenway Park.

But, beyond her father’s love of the Red Sox, Frank Sinatra records, good bourbon and cigars, she didn’t have the first idea about what had made Big Red tick. He had been an unnaturally quiet man, more prone to listening than to talking. And he was always observing the world around him. In her memories he seemed constantly exhausted.

Kendra introduced me to your father… She loved your father very much.

I admired him greatly.

Big Red was a remarkable man. One of a kind, you could say. I regret what happened to him every single day.

Darby opened the main doors. The afternoon sky was a bright, hard blue and free of clouds, the air still unbearably hot and humid. She looked behind her, having the absurd feeling that Ezekiel had followed her outside.

Lieutenant Warner, sitting behind the wheel of her car, had parked in one of the spaces reserved for police. He had a good view of the entire car park and the prison’s front doors. He saw her and pulled out of his spot.

She didn’t want him behind the wheel, she didn’t want him in her car. She wanted to drive alone, in silence, to process what had just happened.

Warner was on his mobile.

‘Commissioner,’ he said after she shut the door. He handed over his phone as he drove off, heading for the exit. ‘Go ahead, it’s safe to talk.’

Chadzynski wanted an update. It took Darby a moment to collect her thoughts. She spoke slowly, concentrating on her words. The commissioner listened without interruption.

Darby finished talking. A long silence followed. For a moment, she thought the connection had died.

‘Commissioner?’

‘I’m here. I was… I’m still trying to process what you’ve told me.’ Another pause. ‘You’re suggesting that the head of the Irish mafia, a man responsible for the deaths of countless numbers of people as well as the disappearances of several young women, was a Federal agent.’

‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just telling you what Ezekiel told me.’

‘But just the
idea
of it… it’s… Darby, Frank Sullivan was a vicious psychopath. He killed Boston cops, state troopers – he killed people from Boston and Charlestown and God only knows who else. I have stacks of files of unsolved homicides that are believed to be linked to Sullivan. I’ve always heard rumours about the FBI trying to place an undercover agent inside the Irish and Italian mafia, but if what Ezekiel said is true, it means the Federal government not only placed an undercover agent inside the Irish mob, they somehow made him the goddamn head of it. We’re talking about a man who’s a mass murderer. It means the Federal government is implicit in the murders and disappearances of, what, nearly a hundred people? Do you realize the magnitude of what you’re suggesting?’

Unfortunately, she did. Not only had the Boston FBI – maybe even the entire Federal organization – sanctioned Sullivan’s actions, they had also helped to cover them up.

Your father knew what he was up against
, Ezekiel had told her.
Big Red heard the tapes, knew what these Boston Feds were doing, the names of the cops and state troopers Sullivan had on his payroll.

‘Do you believe Ezekiel?’ Chadzynski asked.

‘I do. Even if I wanted to dismiss it as some sort of paranoid schizophrenic story, Kendra Sheppard did, in fact, visit him. Ezekiel knew her real name. Knew where she was living, knew about her son – he knows too many details for it to be some sort of made-up story. And why ask to speak to me after all this time?’

I didn’t call you to help me
, Ezekiel had said.
I called to warn you about these so-called Federal agents
.

‘The timeline bothers me,’ Darby said. ‘Kendra Sheppard’s parents were murdered in April of 1983. She disappears, then my father is shot in May. Sullivan and these Federal agents – how many are these again?’

‘Four,’ Chadzynski said. ‘Here they are, on the
Boston Globe
’s website. Peter Alan, Jack King, Anthony Frissora and Steve White. There’s an interesting note in the article. They were all assigned to the Boston task force set up to dismantle both the Irish and Italian mafias. I’m starting to gather information from our files to see what we can find out.’

Sullivan and his Federal friends, they were Charlestown’s version of the Gestapo
.

‘Ezekiel mentioned Jack King,’ Darby said.

‘Since we found Peter Alan’s fingerprints on the database, it makes me wonder if the FBI didn’t know what was occurring in their Boston office. If headquarters was involved with the cover-up, I’d assume they’d wipe the prints off the database. They could do it easily, since they own it.’

‘We won’t know anything for sure until we find those audiotapes and whatever else Kendra Sheppard had.’

‘And Mr Ezekiel didn’t give you any indication as to where this evidence might be?’

‘No. For all I know these… this group of dead Federal agents might already have it.’

‘We’ll have to go on the assumption that they don’t. I don’t know if Mr Warner told you, but he found a listening device mounted underneath your dash, right below the steering column. It’s the same model as the one he recovered from my office. He also found a GPS tracking unit. Are you coming back to work this afternoon?’

‘I’m heading back to the lab.’

‘Good. Mr Warner is going to sweep your office and the lab.’

‘I don’t see how these people could gain access.’

‘Most likely, they couldn’t. But I can’t dismiss the possibility that these men have inside help. We have to limit our circle of trust.’

Sullivan had plenty of your people on his payroll… I’m sure they’re still out there.

‘I agree,’ Darby said.

‘Now I have two matters to discuss with you. The first involves Michelle Baxter. She’s disappeared.’

Darby closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.

‘After I left the hospital, I sent a detective to go speak with her,’ Chadzynski said. ‘The door was unlocked. No sign of a struggle, although the detective told me it was impossible to tell, given the apartment’s state of disarray. The detective didn’t find a handbag, suitcase or any other sort of luggage, so it’s possible the Baxter woman decided to leave town.’

‘Does this detective have a name?’

‘It’s someone from Anti-Corruption.’

Chadzynski didn’t elaborate.

‘Please don’t take it personally, Darby. It’s not a matter of trust, it’s protocol. I have to safeguard their identities. Any information I receive will be forwarded to you through me or Mr Warner.’

‘I understand.’

‘What do you know about Detective Pine?’

‘I know he used to be my father’s partner. Then Artie passed the detective’s exam and went to Boston to work homicide.’

‘His territory was South Boston. Two officers from Anti-Corruption have just started sorting through Pine’s old police reports, but suffice to say that a good majority of the homicides Pine investigated have at least one thread that leads back to Frank Sullivan. Before that, Detective Pine was involved with TPF during the forced busing –’

‘Excuse me for interrupting, Commissioner, but what’s TPF?’

‘Tactical Patrol Force. The unit no longer exists. It was disbanded during the late seventies after repeated complaints of officers using excessive force. You’re probably much too young to remember this, but back in ’65 Massachusetts passed the Elimination of Racial Imbalance Law. The Boston school committee, comprised mostly of white Irish Catholics, had successfully blocked the law through a decade of litigation. Then, in ’74, a Federal court judge ordered the desegregation of Boston’s public schools. We had riots all over the city – President Ford delivered a TV speech urging Boston to cooperate.’

Darby knew about the riots – had read about them during a high school history class.

‘During the first few weeks of school, the TPF was asked to protect buses delivering African-Americans to Boston schools,’ Chadzynski said. ‘Crowds of white Irish men and women threw bricks, rocks, you name it, through bus windows, at the students and TPF officers. Add to that the number of African-American groups there protesting. Needless to say, tensions were high and several officers were a bit too liberal with their nightsticks. Arthur Pine allegedly kicked an African-American man to death. I say allegedly only because the witness who came forward claiming to have seen Pine do this suddenly disappeared.’

Ezekiel said Big Red had put him in a hotel. Alone.

He said he had someone watching the hotel – someone he trusted.

Had her father trusted Artie?

‘I’m not saying Pine is involved with what’s happening now,’ Chadzynski said, ‘but, given what I’ve uncovered, I want Anti-Corruption to take a closer look at him. Until he’s been properly vetted, I don’t want you feeding him any information about these cases.’

‘And when Artie calls me, what do you want me to tell him?’

‘Tell him the truth. Tell him Lieutenant Warner has taken over the investigation. If Detective Pine has any questions, he’s to contact Mr Warner. He’s the lead on this now. You’re to funnel all information through him. When are you planning on speaking with Mr Cooper?’

‘As soon as I get back to the lab.’ Darby felt a cold place in her stomach. ‘Do I need to bring Lieutenant Warner with me?’

‘No. I’ll have him question Mr Cooper at a later point here in my office. You’re to call me after you’ve spoken with him, then file a report and give it to Mr Warner.’

‘Understood.’

Chadzynski hung up. Darby handed the phone back to Warner. He slipped it inside his pocket without taking his eyes off the road. He didn’t speak, just kept driving. She could see the tall buildings of downtown Boston looming in the distance. She stared at them and for some reason was reminded of a quote from one of her father’s favourite baseball players, the great pitcher Satchel Paige: ‘Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.’