“There was no second place in Vietnam—second place was a body bag.”
—Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, USMC
They left Boston at seven o’clock in the evening the day after the sniper’s last contact, following I-93 north. As they passed through Concord, New Hampshire, the rain that had plagued them all day stopped and they maintained a steady sixty-five-mile-an-hour pace. In Franconia, they turned onto Route US 3 and followed it to Bethlehem, then took back roads to Route 16.
Hours of staring through the windshield made Houston’s eyes burn with fatigue. The country road wove through Berlin and Errol and some of the emptiest country Houston had ever seen. This was a place where you could get as lost as you wanted. For the first time in his life, Houston wondered what it would be like to move to a place like this and leave city life behind forever. Houston thought that under normal circumstances, he could find comfort in the mountains. However, on this trip there would be no comfort.
The route Rosa had told them to follow led them deep into the woods of Maine’s Oxford County—a place so remote that if the generator ran out of gas, there would be no daylight. It was an ideal place for them to play their deadly game unbothered for as long as it took to end it.
They had the night and the road to themselves, so far from civilization that they had not passed a single vehicle since stopping for fuel and coffee in Errol, New Hampshire. Houston’s headlights cut a tunnel of light through the darkness that pressed in on all sides. A huge moth splattered across the already mired windshield. “At least we’re helping with pest control.” Houston checked his mirror to see if Winter and O’Leary were keeping pace. The trailer and boat they towed forced them to maintain a slower speed than Houston would have liked. However, the boat was crucial to their plan and was therefore a necessary evil.
Anne didn’t respond to his comment. She stared out the side window and saw nothing but her own face reflected in the black background.
“What’s bugging you?”
She sighed. “I’ve been thinking maybe we shouldn’t have included Jimmy O and Gordon.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Mike, they’re criminals. We shouldn’t associate with them—let alone involve them in this.”
“In spite of our differences, I trust Jimmy with my life—yours and Susie’s too.”
“I think you already have.”
“I know you still don’t completely understand what it is between me and Jimmy. Let me tell you some of our history.”
“I’m all ears. There’s nothing worth a damn on the radio.”
“As you know, Jimmy and I grew up in Southie. My father was a hard worker who spent most of his life working as a baggage handler at Logan Airport. Jimmy’s old man, on the other hand, was the Irish drunk that you’ve heard about. To compound matters, he was a violent drunk. When he wasn’t drinking, Paddy O’Leary was a great guy—the problem was that Paddy was not often sober.
“By the time Pam was fourteen, she no longer looked like a gawky adolescent and Paddy was starting to take an unnatural interest in her.”
“Why didn’t her mother stop him?”
“By that time, Paddy had beaten Moira down physically and emotionally and she was barely able to take care of herself, let alone her kids.”
“All she had to do was report him to the state. They would have intervened.”
“This was the seventies, and women of our parents’ generation didn’t do that sort of thing. They had been raised by their mothers and the church to keep quiet, obey their husbands and be good wives. Back then anything that went on inside the home was always kept secret.”
Anne folded her arms across her chest. “Hmmmmmph. Thank God those days are long over.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. How many domestic violence calls have we been on where the wife refused to press charges? Instead, they insist that he’s really a good man and it was her fault for making him so angry that he lost control.”
Anne was staring out the side window again. After a few seconds, she faced Houston. “Do you ever get tired of dealing with the world’s underbelly? There are times when I feel so dirty from dealing with the sewer rats we encounter that no soap is strong enough to make me feel clean.”
“Yeah, I think that sooner or later all cops do. But getting back to Jimmy and me . . . He and Pam started hanging out at my parents’ place. Pam and Maureen were pretty much connected at the hip and Jimmy and I fed off each other. We found it easier to show our wild side when we were together. They virtually lived at our house, which in its own way was dysfunctional too, but nowhere close to what they faced in their own home.”
“That’s understandable.”
“It all came to a head during Jimmy’s and my junior year in high school. That’s a year I’d never want to relive. The courts had ordered the integration of the Boston schools and forced busing on us. Jimmy, Pam, Maureen, and I were assigned to the worst school in the city.”
“I remember the Southie riots.”
“That was nothing compared to what was happening in the schools. The black kids who were bussed into Southie and the white kids who were bussed into their neighborhoods had to fight for their lives every day. Not a day went by where Jimmy didn’t get into an altercation over someone saying or doing something inappropriate to Pam or Maureen. Some of the fights were brutal—then there was Jimmy’s appearance. His severe acne led to a lot of harassment.”
“I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
“Do you recall what you said when we walked into Jimmy’s bar the other day?”
“That I felt like a Jew in Mecca?”
“Imagine spending five days a week feeling that way.”
Anne pondered his words but remained silent.
“It was during that year that Paddy went crazy. In a drunken rage, he beat Moira so bad she had to be hospitalized for a couple of weeks.”
“What happened to him?”
“Paddy disappeared. He just fell off the face of the Earth one night. He was seen doing beers and shots in a bar until shortly after midnight, then nothing. It was like he had been abducted by aliens. He’s never been seen nor heard from since.”
“Nobody has any idea where he went?”
“I’ve always believed one person knows Paddy’s whereabouts.”
Anne turned in her seat and glanced back at the headlights of the vehicle following them. “I think I know where this is going . . . ”
“I’ve never been able to prove anything, but Jimmy was out and around that night and has never told a soul where he was. I’ve asked him about it any number of times and his answer is always his patented Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.
“Shortly thereafter, he dropped out of school. Still every day when Pam, Maureen and I got to school, he was standing outside the school-yard making sure we were safe.”
“Did he still visit your parents’ home a lot?”
“No. Pam stayed close to Maureen and of course me. Jimmy drifted away and took care of his mother and Pam. He did that until Moira passed away and Pam and I married.”
“Having all that responsibility must have been tough. Was he working? As a dropout all he’d get would be minimum-wage work.”
“Jimmy has never worked for minimum wage. I’m certain that he joined Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang. I know he boosted cars, ran numbers and did any number of things.”
“Including hits?”
“Anything is possible, except there was one thing he refused to get into—drugs. He saw firsthand what addiction does to families and shied away from trafficking.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Well, it was true back then. I’m not too sure about now though. Let me tell you a story. It was the summer of ninety-nine, my first year as a detective.”
Boston was on the verge of exploding. It was the hottest, most humid day in the hottest summer since the weather bureau had started tracking that type of data. The temperature had hovered around 100 degrees for eight days and the humidity was a constant ninety percent; the heat index had been around 120 for seven days. Even darkness brought little relief to those without air conditioning; the city was at its breaking point and crime had escalated to an all-time high. Drive-by shootings were hourly events and gang-warfare erupted over minor incidents. Days and nights were so oppressive that the population started having fond thoughts of February’s biting cold.
Houston was on his first stake out as a detective. He and his partner, Wilbur Addams, were parked out of sight in a dark alley, where they sat quietly in their unmarked car. Their shirts were soaked through with sweat and plastered to their backs. The ripe, sickening stench of rotting garbage filled the air.
“Smell is bad enough to gag a maggot,” Addams said.
Houston glanced at him. “Now there’s a visual I could have gladly gone without.”
Jimmy O’Leary had told Houston that he suspected a large quantity of dope was going to change hands at one of his warehouses—estimated at over two million dollars street value. At first Houston was surprised that Jimmy O would sell out another mobster, but then it was drugs—O’Leary hated anything related to dope and the people who dealt in it.
They had been observing the warehouse, sitting in the oppressive heat and humidity for over three hours. During the time they had watched, Addams made several trips outside, ostensibly to inspect the area, or so he had said. Houston knew better. His partner was a drinking problem looking for a place to happen and the only thing he checked out was the scotch whiskey he carried in his ever-present flask. Houston was surly and it was not entirely due to the heat and humidity. More pressing issues drove him crazy—for instance the prospect of chasing a perp in the dark with a drunken partner as backup.
Addams straightened up. “Look,” he said, pointing as a van turned the corner at the far end of the block.
The truck crept along the block of storehouses. It slowed, almost stopping in front of each building on the street, its driver peering out the passenger window, as though looking for an address.
“Let’s get ready.” Addams got out of the sedan.
Houston stepped from the car, avoiding a pile of garbage, and joined Addams in front. As the vehicle got closer, neither spoke nor moved. They remained as still as two statues until the Ford Econoline stopped in front of the building across from them. They watched the driver get out and unlock the door. He was cautious and looked in all directions before entering the building. Houston was glad they had parked back in the alley away from the ambient illumination of the streetlights. The driver seemed satisfied that he was unobserved and turned to the building. He fumbled for a key and then after a few seconds opened a door and went inside. An interior light came on, then a rusty latch ground in protest and the overhead garage door finally lifted—several times it caught on something in the tracks as it opened. The driver returned to the truck, and slowly drove it into the warehouse.
“Let’s go,” Addams said.
“Wait.”
“Why?”
“Let’s give it a few minutes. He wouldn’t have to unlock everything if there were anyone else in there. He’s waiting for someone . . . ”
“All right, but this asshole better not get away.”
Houston could barely discern the features of his partner’s face in the shadows created by the dim light of the sole working streetlamp. He couldn’t see the details of his partner’s face, but experience told him all he needed to know about what was going on in Addams’s mind and how he was going to act. “Will, keep cool,” he said.
“I hate these fucking leeches,” Addams said. “They suck the blood out of anyone who buys their shit.”
Another truck rounded the same corner as the first and slowly cruised down the street toward their position.
“This could be them,” Houston said.
He and Addams retreated to the rear of their car and squatted there, trying to minimize the possibility of the oncoming vehicle’s headlights illuminating their faces.
The Chevy stopped in front of the open garage door and three men got out. In a manner similar to that of the first driver, they quickly scanned the area, looking for anything that might interfere with their business. Seeing nobody, two of the men entered the building, leaving the third as sentinel. Once his companions were safely inside, the guard reached inside the truck and retrieved an assault rifle that Houston thought was an M-16.
“I’ll call for backup.” Before he could grab the two-way radio’s handset, Houston knew Addams was already on the move. Through the rear window Addams’s bent figure disappeared around the corner of the warehouse that hid them. Damn him, Houston thought. He quickly called in their location, requested backup and then ran after Addams.
Before Houston could catch up with him, Addams had traveled the length of the warehouse, trotting as fast as he could without making unnecessary noise. In short time, Houston saw him reach the end of the building, draw his pistol and turn left, disappearing from sight.
Houston accelerated until he too reached the corner, hoping to overtake Addams before he bolted across the street. He was too late. He rounded the corner and saw that his partner had already crossed the street and approached the target building from the rear. Since he had been given no alternative, Houston followed.
Houston shadowed Addams down another narrow alley to the access road that served the warehouses from the rear. He peered in both directions and once he was certain that the way was clear, he continued until he too was behind the building where the deal was to go down. For the first time since he had left the car, Addams looked for his partner. When he saw Houston creep around the back corner, he raised his right hand and pumped it up and down—the infantry signal to hurry up. When he reached Addams, Houston motioned to him that he needed a few seconds to regain his breath. Addams nodded that he understood. Houston crept to the corner and ventured a look.
The lookout leaned on the van’s left front fender, his back to Addams, cradling the assault weapon in his arms. He seemed to be enjoying the evening as he smoked a cigarette.
Addams grinned at him and Houston realized his partner was enjoying himself.
“Keep your cool, Will,” Houston whispered, repeating the warning that he had given his partner earlier.
Addams didn’t acknowledge the warning. Without a word, he slipped around the corner of the building, his pistol trained on the sentry. Houston barely heard him say, “Police. Don’t move.”
The lookout froze for a second and then threw his cigarette to the ground with a curse. “I’ll be a son of a bitch!” He raised the rifle and Addams shot him in the chest. Before the gunshot had ceased echoing, there was shouting inside the building. Houston ran to the guard and bent down to check on the man. He placed two fingers on his carotid artery checking for a pulse. He was dead.
Houston crouched beside the truck and watched Addams holster his service pistol and pick up the discarded assault rifle. A shot rang out from the door of the warehouse. The round smashed through the front window of the van, spider-webbing it. Addams spun and fired. The bullet slammed into the shooter, who stepped backward and fell against an empty garbage can. The metal walls of the half-empty warehouse acted like a waveguide and amplified the sound of the gunfight. Houston heard cursing and people running inside the warehouse.
Houston ran to Addams’s side and grabbed his arm. “If you weren’t in such a rush to be a fucking hero, things like this wouldn’t happen.”
“Okay, no reason to go postal over it. I want these bastards.” Addams turned his attention back to the building. “Cover me. I’m going in.”
“You’re nuts, Will. By now they’ve probably split.”
“Maybe they have, maybe they haven’t.” Addams darted inside the door and another shot rang out.
Houston peered around the sedan, looking inside the raised overhead door and saw Addams laying on the floor, a pool of blood slowly forming beside his body. One of the drug dealers stood over him and another was beside the van with his gun aimed toward the doorway. He saw Houston and fired.
Houston raced inside and dove for shelter behind a pallet piled high with flattened cardboard totes. Bullets slammed into the cardboard, sending bits of confetti into the air.
When the echoes of the gunshots faded away, Houston heard someone running up metal stairs. He ran toward the sound.
Houston raced through the building, quickly searching the aisles of shelving. He heard the scrape of a shoe and spun around, his weapon poised to shoot. A young man stood in the aisle with his hands in the air.
“Don’t shoot, man,” the kid said. “I give up.”
Houston rose from his crouch and slowly advanced. He kept watching the boy’s eyes. Experience had taught him that if a perp was going to do anything, their eyes were usually the first thing to give them away.
Suddenly, the boy’s eyes darted to the right and his right hand moved down, toward the waistband of his jeans. Houston shot him, then walked to the kid and removed the pistol from his jeans.
The boy was no more than sixteen or seventeen and was moaning and crying as he grasped his damaged shoulder. Houston grabbed the neck of his T-shirt and ripped it until he was able to inspect the wound. “That was a stupid fucking move, son.”
He dragged the teenager down the aisle and across the floor to the Ford. He handcuffed his prisoner’s uninjured arm, fastened it to the truck’s side mirror and then reached inside and pulled the keys from the ignition switch. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back.”
Houston located the metal stairs and slowly started up. He wiped at his forehead to keep perspiration out of his eyes as he peered into the darkness. The catwalk provided access to six or seven doors. There were two more gunmen in the building and they could be behind any one of the entries. Creeping along the catwalk, he heard someone running below and froze in position. The dealers had him bracketed, one on the landing and one was obviously watching the stair, which to the best of Houston’s knowledge was the only way down. He had gotten himself trapped.
Houston saw an armed man dart between two rows of pallets and turned to retreat down the stairs.
“Drop the gun.” The voice made it clear he had no other option.
“I’m a cop,” Houston announced, hoping it would make the man pause before shooting.
“So was he.” The man pointed to Addams ’s body. “It didn’t do him any more good than it will you.”
Houston vacillated, trying to decide whether he should take a chance and either run down the stairs or try to shoot the dealer before he was able to get a shot off.
“Use your head, cop. You won’t make it ten feet before I kill you. Give it up.”
Houston raised his hands and waited.
The gunman took Houston’s pistol and nudged him down the stairs. When they reached the floor, another man appeared from the rows of pallets.
“Shoot him and let’s get the hell out of here. This place will be full of cops in no time.”
Houston glanced around, trying to find an escape route. Suddenly a car appeared out of the night, blocking the door and cutting off the dealers’ avenue of exit. Houston and his captors tried to identify the new arrivals and stared into the harsh glare of the car’s headlights. Doors opened and closed and seconds later, Jimmy O’Leary and three of his men walked in.
“Maurice,” O’Leary said, “you pull that trigger and you’re dead.”
The drug dealers looked panicked. This development was not to their liking.
O’Leary reached over and took Maurice’s gun from him. “You guys using my property for illicit purposes?”
“J-J-Jimmy, we was just transferring stuff from one vehicle to another.”
“I had a feeling when you called and asked to use one of my buildings that you were moving smack. So I placed a call to an old friend. Ain’t that right, Mike?”
Houston felt his tension and fear dissipate like a single drop of rain in the desert. “Yeah, Jimmy, that’s right.”
“Mike, why don’t you put your hands down? You look kind of fuckin’ silly standing there like that.”
Houston looked at Addams. He bent over and checked for a pulse. “You may have lucked out, asshole. He isn’t dead.”
“Still gonna do time for something I didn’t do—fuckin’ Jules shot him.” Maurice licked his lips, a sure sign of fear, and sweat—not entirely caused by the heat and humidity—dripped from his chin.
“Oh, I don’t think you boys are going to do any time,” O’Leary said. “I got other plans for you—I don’t like it when you misery merchants try to put one over on me. You know I don’t do the drug thing and by using my building, you may have involved me. I got to tell you, Maurice, that don’t make me happy.”
One of O’Leary’s men stood beside the truck and looked inside. “The junk is in the van.”
“Good, leave it there. Put Maurice and Jules in their truck and take them away.”
“Where you want me to take them?”
“I don’t care, as long as I never see or hear of them again.”
“Jimmy, c’mon man, can’t we talk about this?” Sweat soaked through Maurice’s shirt and his eyes darted back and forth between Houston and O’Leary as he pleaded for his life.
“Maurice, you know how it is—if you fuck with a bull sooner or later you’re gonna get gored. Get them out of here.”
“What about the kid?” one of O’Leary’s men asked.
Jimmy O looked at the frightened boy, still shackled to the door of the Ford.
“Him too.”
Houston tried to intervene on the kid’s behalf. “Hell, Jimmy, I doubt this kid is much more than seventeen years old. Why don’t you give him a break?”
O’Leary looked at the youngster. That the kid was scared out of his wits was evident to everyone. “Can’t do that, Mike.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a couple of reasons.” O’Leary shook a cigarette out of his pack and lit it. “One, I can’t let him run all over town tellin’ people I was a rat an’ sold ’em out to you. Two, there’s an old sayin’ he should know by now: If you can’t do the time, then don’t do the crime.” He nodded to his henchmen and they dragged the kid toward the other dealers, where they dropped him in a heap.
When they tied his hands behind his back with heavy plastic tie-wraps, the kid began to shout in pain. “What the fuck is his problem?” O’Leary asked.
“Could be the fact that I shot him,” Houston answered.
“That’d do it.” O’Leary turned to the kid.
Like Maurice, the kid begged and pleaded for his life. “I won’t tell a soul, Mr. O’Leary, honest I won’t.”
As O’Leary smoked his cigarette, he appeared to be considering the boy’s plea. He flicked the cigarette butt out the overhead door. “Kid, let’s face the facts here, okay? I let you walk and in a week, two at the most, you’ll be back on the street, dealin’ smack again and I’ll just have to kill you then. We might as well do it now and save everyone the expense of havin’ to find you again.”
O’Leary motioned for his men to usher them into the Econoline. He pulled one aside, a big blonde-haired man of over six feet in height and at least 250 pounds. “Once you’re a few blocks from here, let the kid out. But Gordon, make sure he understands that if I ever hear of him sellin’ drugs again, his next trip will be to the quarry where he’ll be fitted for a pair of concrete flippers and taken for a midnight swim.”
Gordon Winter nodded, walked to the car and got into the driver’s seat. O’Leary’s other men jumped in, holding guns to the captives’ heads. Within seconds, the car was gone and it was as if it had never been there.
Jimmy O turned to Houston and grinned. “Had you goin’ for a minute there, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you’re a truckload of giggles. Now I got to get an ambulance here.”
“Go call your ambulance,” O’Leary said.
They walked out of the warehouse. Houston crossed the street and got into his car where he made an officer down call. He hung up the radio, looked out the window at Jimmy O. “I should stop this. I can’t just let you assassinate them.”
“C’mon, Mike. What I’m doing is a public service. If you arrested those clowns it would be months before they got to court, then some assistant D.A. and a public defender will strike a plea bargain. In less than six months, Maurice and Jules will be back on the street sellin’ slow death to kids. My way saves the state a lot of money . . . and it’s a final solution. B’sides, it ain’t like you got any say about it.”
They heard sirens and O’Leary walked to his car. “You be careful, Mike. The neighborhood is a lot more dangerous than it was when we were kids.” He pointed to the van sitting in the warehouse. “You guys are gonna be heroes for this bust—that’s a lot of smack in there. With your partner shot up, you’ll be okay. Once they see the dead dealer, they’ll figure the others got away and will call it a righteous shooting.”
As O’Leary opened his car door, Houston called to him, “Jimmy.”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks. I thought I was a goner in there.”
“Hey, no big deal. This is what friends are for. Maybe there will be a time down the road when you’ll be able to return the favor. See you around.”
“What happened to the dope?” Anne asked.
“I turned it in as evidence . . . wouldn’t surprise me to learn it was on the streets in two days.”
“Did you return the favor?”
“No. At least, not yet.”
“How have you avoided arresting him all this time?”
“Lucky, I guess. The captain may have had a lot to do with it. I’m certain he’d shit if he knew Jimmy was involved in this.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
Once more Houston took his eyes off the road and looked at her. “Really?”
“I think Dysart would make a pact with the Unabomber if it would bring this guy down.”