The Front (10 page)

“Even a yacht once,” she adds. “Guy wanted the insurance money, claimed the boat was stolen, trailered it up here and had it crushed into a cube.”

His iPhone again. He checks caller ID. Number
Unknown.
Lamont's number comes up that way. He answers, and
Crimson
reporter Cal Tradd's voice is in Win's ear.

“How did you get this number?” Win says to him.

“Monique said I should call you. I need to ask you about the Janie Brolin case.”

Goddamn her.
She promised nothing was going to be released to the media until the case was solved.

“Look, this is important,” Cal goes on. “I need to verify you're on special assignment, and there's a Boston Strangler connection.”

“Go screw yourself. How many times I got to tell you I don't talk to reporters. . . .”

“Have you been listening to the radio, watching TV ? Your boss is furious. Someone leaked all this, and my suspicion is it's the governor's office. I won't name names, but suffice it to say, I know some of the idiots who work down there. . . .”

“I'm not verifying anything.” Win cuts him off, hangs up on him, says to Stump, “It's all over the news.”

She says nothing, is busy driving and swearing at the GPS. It tells her to make a legal U-turn.

Stump parks in an alley where they have a good view of DeGatetano & Sons, a scrapyard with mountains of twisted metal behind fencing topped with razor wire.

She says, “You see where we are?”

“I saw where we are before we got here. You must think I spend all my time hanging out in Cambridge coffee shops,” Win says.

Tough-looking customers are pulling up in trucks, vans, and cars, all loaded with aluminum, iron, brass, and, of course, copper. Eyes are furtive, guys filling grocery carts, pushing them inside the machine shop, vanishing into a noisy darkness.

“An unmarked Taurus in an alleyway?” she goes on. “We may as well be a Boeing 747. Maybe we should pay attention to our surroundings, because they're sure as hell paying attention to us.”

“Then maybe you shouldn't be so conspicuous,” he says.

“That's what deterrents do. They're conspicuous.”

“Right. Like chasing off cockroaches. Scare them from one corner to the next until they end up at the corner they started from. Why did you bring me here?”

“Chasing off cockroaches is exactly the impression I want people to have—want them to think I'm after petty thieves. Construction workers, installers, contractors, these dirtbags who pilfer metal from construction sites. Some of it scrap, a lot of it not. Bring it here, no IDs, no questions asked, paid in cash, the clients they rip off have no idea. Remind me never to remodel or build a house.”

“If you're in and out of here on a regular basis, how come you need the GPS?” he says.

“Okay. So I have a terrible sense of direction. Don't have one at all.” The way she says it, it sounds like the truth. “And I'd appreciate it if you kept that to yourself.”

Win notices a thin person in baggy clothes, a baseball cap, climbing out of a pickup truck piled high with copper roofing, pipes, dented downspouts.

“Disorganized crime is what I call it,” Stump says. “Unlike the old days when I was growing up in Watertown. Everybody knew each other, would be eating in the same restaurant with the Mafia—same guys who remember your grandmother at Christmas or buy you ice cream. Truth be told? They kept the streets clean of scumbags. Burglars, rapists, pedophiles? They'd end up in the Charles River with the heads and hands cut off.”

The thin person he's watching is a woman.

“Organized crime was a good thing,” Stump continues. “At least they had a code, didn't believe in beating up old ladies, carjackings, home invasions, molesting little kids, shooting you in the head for your wallet. Or for no reason at all.”

The thin woman pushes two empty carts toward her truck.

“Copper. Currently going for about eight grand a ton on the Chinese black market.” Stump abruptly changes the subject, looking where Win's looking. “You beginning to understand why I brought you here?”

“Raggedy Ann,” he says. “Or whatever her real name is.”

She's filling a cart with scrap copper.

“Super Thief,” Stump says.

“That whack job?” Win says in disbelief.

“Oh, she's a thief, all right. But not the one I'm after. I want the guy who's doing the major hits. Stripping buildings of plumbing pipes, downspouts, roofing. Ripping off miles of wire from power lines, construction sites, breaking into telephone trucks. Maybe his real deal is drugs—taking the money and buying oxys, then reselling them on the street. These days going for around a dollar a milligram. Drug crimes lead to other crimes, finally lead to violence. Including murder.”

“And you think your Super Thief 's unloading the stolen copper here,” Win assumes.

“Somewhere around here, yes. At this particular fine establishment? Probably one of many he uses.”

He watches Raggedy Ann, says, “An informant, I assume.”

“Now you're getting it,” Stump says.

Raggedy Ann pushes her cart, doesn't seem the least bit uncomfortable, as if she belongs in the dangerous world of Chelsea scrapyards.

“What makes you think it's the same person doing the major hits?” Win asks.

“A detail consistent in most of the big jobs. I believe he's taking pictures. We've recovered the packaging from disposable cameras, always the same brand. A Solo H-two-oh. Waterproof with a flash, go for about sixteen bucks in the store—if you can find them. And on the Internet for six or seven. He leaves them at the scene in plain view.”

The mansion on Brattle Street. The vandalism, the missing copper downspouts and gutters, the ripped-up copper plumbing, and the Solo H
²
O disposable camera box in the kitchen of a house where Win found evidence he fears was planted, evidence that might lead to him. He almost tells Stump about his stolen gym bag, but doesn't. How the hell does he know who's doing what? He's caught in a web of connections, and the spider at the center is Lamont.

He says, “Any prints on the camera packages you're finding?”

“No luck. The typical reagents didn't work on the paper, and superglue didn't develop any prints on the plastic. But just because you can't see a print doesn't mean it isn't there. Maybe the labs will have some luck, because they certainly have more space-age instruments than I do. If they ever get around to it.”

He almost asks if she's ever heard of an LLC called FOIL, but he doesn't dare. Lamont spent more than an hour inside that abandoned Victorian mansion. Who was she with? What was she doing?

“Let me ask you something, for the sake of speculation,” he says. “Why would your copper thief take photographs at his crime scenes?”

“The first thing that comes to mind,” she replies. “He gets off on it.”

“Sort of like your bank robber who maybe gets off on leaving the same type of note every single time? Gets off on flaunting himself, letting everybody know he's the same guy doing all of them and not leaving a fingerprint or even a partial, even though you can see in the surveillance tapes that he's not wearing gloves?”

“Are you suggesting it might be the same guy doing all of this? The bank robberies and the copper thefts?” she asks skeptically.

“Don't know. But perpetrators who flaunt their crimes and taunt the police aren't your average bear. So to have two crime sprees in the same geographic area at the same time, and both have what appear to be the MO I'm describing, is extremely unusual.”

“Didn't realize you're a profiler, in addition to all of your other talents.”

“Just trying to help.”

“I don't need your help.”

“Then why am I sitting here? You could have told me this Raggedy Ann weirdo is an informant so I'd understand why I should stay away from her. You didn't need to show me.”

“Seeing is believing.”

“You going to tell me her name, or am I supposed to call her Raggedy Ann for the rest of my life?”

“You won't know her for the rest of your life. I can promise you that. I'm not telling you her name, and here are the rules.” Stump looks across the street. “You've never seen her before, and she's never seen us and has no interest. We're down here because I just happened to drop by. No big deal. As I've explained, I do it from time to time.”

“I assume you're going to act as if you don't know her, either.”

“You assume right.”

Raggedy Ann pushes the cart inside the shop.

“The guy who runs this yard is Bimbo—biggest juicehead in Chelsea. Thinks he and I are pals. Come on,” Stump says.

Eyes are on them from every direction as they get out of the car and cross the street. The shop is filthy and loud, men cleaning and separating metal, cutting it up, stripping it of nuts, bolts, screws, nails, insulation. Tossing it in piles, clinking and clanking. Raggedy Ann parks her cartful of copper on a floor scale, same kind used in morgues to weigh bodies, and a man emerges from a pigsty of an office. He's short, with heavily gelled black hair and a steroid body, bulky as a bale of hay.

He says something to Raggedy Ann and she drifts back out of the shop. He motions to Stump, says, “So, how's it doing?”

“Want you to meet a friend of mine,” she says.

“Yeah? Well, I've seen him somewhere before. Maybe in the paper,” Bimbo says.

“That's because he's state police, and he's been in the paper, on TV, because he had to kill a guy last year.”

“I sort of remember that. The guy who did the DA.”

“He's okay or he wouldn't be here,” Stump says of Win.

Bimbo is staring at him, then decides, “You say he's okay, I believe you.”

“Seems like he had a little problem in Lincoln. Two nights ago. Another hit, and you know what I'm saying,” Stump says.

“A lot of stuff coming in,” Bimbo says. “What got hit?”

“Huge house, four million dollars. Right before they were going to hang the drywall, someone comes in and rips out all the wiring. Now the builder's got to hire round-the-clock security so it doesn't happen again.”

“What do you want?” Bimbo shrugs his huge shoulders. “Copper don't talk to me. I got in a lot of wire the last two days, already at the smelter.”

Raggedy Ann pushes in another cart loaded with scrap copper, parks it on the scale. She pays no attention to Stump, to Win. They don't exist.

Bimbo says to Stump, “I'll keep my eye out. Last thing I want is that kind of thing going on. I run a clean business.”

“Right. A clean business,” Stump says, as she and Win walk off. “The only thing not stolen around here is the damn pavement.”

“You just gave me up to that dirtbag,” Win says angrily, as they climb back into her car.

“Nobody down here cares who you are. As long as Bimbo doesn't. And now he's cool with you, thanks to me.”

“Thanks nothing. You don't get to give me up to anybody without my permission.”

“You're now on the FRONT's turf. You're a guest, and the house rules are ours, not yours.”

“Your turf? Am I hearing a different song? Seems like as recently as this morning you didn't want me on your turf. In fact, you've told me more than once to get lost.”

“My introducing you to Bimbo's part of the game. It tells him you're with me, so if he sees you again—or anybody else does, no big deal.”

“Why would he ever see me again?”

“Always a good chance somebody will get murdered down here. So it's your jurisdiction. I just got you a passport. You don't have to thank me. And just in case you didn't understand what I meant about Raggedy Ann? Now you know I'm serious. Avoid her.”

“Then tell her to quit writing me notes.”

“I have.”

“You said she's a thief. That's how she got the copper?”

“The copper you just watched her unload wasn't stolen. I've got a contractor friend who does me a favor. I give her enough scrap to get her to Bimbo's once, twice a week.”

“Does he know she's an informant?”

“That would kind of defeat the purpose.”

“I'm asking if he or anyone suspects it.”

“No reason to. She's into everything, has been for years. A shame. Came from a really good family but like a lot of kids, got into drugs. Heroin, oxys. Eventually started tricking, stealing, to support her habit. Did two years in prison for stabbing some guy who was pimping her—mistake was not killing the SOB. She gets out of prison and was right back at it. I got her into a meth clinic, into protected housing. Long and short of it, she's valuable to me and I don't want her dead.”

As they drive past more rusting sheds, bump over railroad tracks, her cell phone rings several times. She doesn't answer it.

“I lost one a couple of Christmases ago,” she goes on. “Got burned by a task force cop who had sex with her, decided to name her in an affidavit so no one would believe her if she ratted him out. So he rats her out first. Next thing, she's got a bullet in her head.”

Her cell phone rings again, and she pushes a button to silence it. Four times now since they left the scrapyard, and she doesn't even look at the display to see who it is.

 

 

. . .

The state police forensic labs have a simple but basic protocol: Evidence you submit should be incontrovertibly associated with crime.