The Catch Page 5

  Joe was conscious of an evolving bafflement on his part, not unlike that of a trained but wearying combatant, who was fighting an urge to stand up in midbattle simply to ask what the hell was going on.

  These were not ruminations he shared. Ever.

  Lenny Chapman turned toward the small, tightly packed group and raised his radio slightly, as if it had become a pennant to follow.

  “We’re set. Surveillance has confirmed both targets. The entry team is positioning. It’s rock-and-roll time, ladies and gentlemen.”

  CHAPTER 7

  There was no more meditating on Joe Gunther’s part when Lenny Chapman gave them the signal to move out. Old soldier that he was, he hit the rear exit of the van like a paratrooper hurtling through the side dive door of a plane, as adrenalized as his younger companions.

  They ran across Dorchester Avenue, shadows on a gloomy street, startling a couple of passersby, barely catching the attention of another, and took the entry-way stairs of a dilapidated apartment building, two at a time.

  Chapman led them all the way, speaking rapidly into his radio, coordinating with the black-clad, armored entry team already ahead, who, by now, had broken down the door of James Marano’s apartment and charged inside.

  However, Joe, Sammie, and the rest of Chapman’s team, assigned to take over from the entry guys and effect the arrests, never made it to the third, top floor. Midway there, Chapman held up his hand and stopped them dead in their tracks, listening incredulously to his radio.

  “Shit,” he said, turning toward them, “they’ve flown. They had a hole in the wall to the next apartment, covered by a dresser.”

  That was all Joe needed to hear. He turned on his heel and started pounding back downstairs, Sam instinctively in hot pursuit.

  “What’s up?” she asked, breathing hard.

  “Simple,” he answered, hoping not to break his neck on the dimly lighted stairs. “They planned this out. They live on the top floor. That means a roof escape. The ICE guys’re already behind them. We should try to cut them off.”

  Either satisfied with this, or still working out what he meant, Sam didn’t respond. But Joe could still hear her boots banging on the steps close behind him, joined, he noticed, by others. It seemed he wasn’t alone in his thinking.

  Bursting out onto the street, Joe immediately led the way across before swinging around and studying the building they’d just left.

  Panting by now, he pointed to both sides, just as Chapman and a couple of others also appeared on the stoop. “Two alleyways,” Joe told her. “You take the right; I’ll take the left. Check for anything like a fire escape or maybe a jury-rigged bridge or a zip line, running to the next-door building.”

  As he spoke, he was already moving left, shouting over his shoulder. Across the street, Chapman saw what they were doing and got on his radio to get an update from upstairs.

  Joe ran back across Dorchester, aiming for his alleyway, and was intercepted at its mouth by one of Chapman’s men.

  “You have a flashlight?” he asked him.

  The man dutifully pulled a small halogen torch from a holder on his belt.

  Joe pointed upward. “See if there’s anything connecting the two buildings.”

  The special agent looked at him. “We got the fire escape covered. It’s in the back anyhow.”

  Joe simply took the light from his hand. “They would’ve known that. If they knew enough to knock out a wall, they didn’t stop there.”

  He played the beam between the buildings. Sure enough, as bright as a shaft of sunshine, the underside of a broad, pale, yellow pine plank was reflected back at them, running from the roof of Marano’s building through a window of its taller neighbor.

  “That’s it,” Joe said, returning the light and running for that neighbor’s front door. “Third floor—one of the apartments at the end.” He paused only long enough to call out for Sam.

  The lobby door was half open, on a busted hinge, eliminating the need for a key or someone to buzz them in. Joe glanced around quickly, saw the staircase leading up, and headed for it, hearing multiple footsteps pounding along in his wake.

  As he took the stairs two at a time, pulling himself along by the banister, he used his other hand to pull out his gun. From being last man in line earlier, he was now at risk of coming face-to-face with a certified cop killer.

  But his exposure was short-lived. Against Sam’s and Lenny’s youth and motivation, he didn’t have a chance of leading any foot pursuit for long. By the time he’d reached the second-story landing, all three of them were looking like a Ben-Hur chariot race, metaphorically wheel-to-wheel. Joe was bringing up the rear only about ten steps behind.

  Chapman, at least, had the courtesy to say in passing—even if he wasn’t breathing hard— “Nice move, Joe. Quick thinking.”

  Quick, perhaps, but not perfectly timed. Above them—appearing and vanishing so fast it seemed more like an apparition than an actual sighting—the outline of a man peered down at them, followed by the slamming of a door.

  The three cops saw it at the same time, since they were all looking up the stairwell for something to happen. Chapman was the one to yell out, “Federal agents. Do not move,” albeit to no avail.

  At the third-floor landing, they barely paused at the door to the hallway beyond. Chapman kicked it open, huddled just inside its protective angle, and then, pointing his gun where he looked, he quickly risked a glance in both directions.

  A shot almost immediately reverberated down the hallway. No bullet hit nearby.

  “You okay?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah,” Chapman answered. “Looked like Grega, shooting from an apartment at the opposite end of the corridor from where they crossed on the plank. They must have multiple hideouts, all strung in a line. He’s probably the one we saw.”

  “Any sign of your entry team?” Joe asked hopefully.

  Chapman gave a very quick update on his radio, heard someone say, “We’re on the bridge now,” and then turned to Joe. “We’re running out of time,” he said.

  He then did as Joe might have once—clipped the radio to his belt, took his gun in both hands, quickly checked again outside, and, getting no explosive response, slid fast and low into the hallway. He began jogging toward the apartment where he’d last seen Grega—Sam and Joe in close backup.

  Joe was not a happy man. Keen as he was to take Grega, the risks of running down a hallway full of closed doors—any one of which could open behind them—seemed ill advised at best. Sadly, however, that had suddenly been rendered moot. Now, it was all about backing up Lenny Chapman, and keeping everybody alive if possible.

  At the apartment door in question, Chapman jumped to its far jamb, flattened against the wall, waited a second for Joe and Sam to position themselves opposite him, and then pounded on the door from the side.

  He didn’t get to say a word before two more shots splintered the door where his hand had been, the rounds thudding into the wall across the way.

  Simultaneously, a door far down the hallway opened to reveal two members of the ICE entry team, at last arrived from their travels across midair. Joe was relieved to see Chapman motion to them to join their understrength trio.

  As the entry team leader drew near, he cocked his head toward the bullet-punctured door. “Wild guess—you want us to kick that in?”

  “You’re good, Arnie,” Chapman complimented him, fading back with the two Vermonters.

  The team quickly positioned itself, destroyed the door, and charged into the apartment, shouting at the tops of their lungs, Chapman, Joe, and Sam hot on their heels.

  The place was obviously specifically used for this purpose—a backup residence with minimal furnishings, a thick layer of dust, and a window leading out to the fire escape. After ensuring that the apartment was clear, everyone hit the escape ladder, half heading down, and the other half going for the roof. Joe joined the upwardly bound, betting on a runner’s primordial instinct to head for the high ground.<
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  His choice proved correct moments later. Their quarry, in a mirror image of his brief appearance at the top of the stairs earlier, once more stuck his head over the edge of the roof and looked down at them. Only this time, he was armed.

  “Gun,” shouted one of the people at the front of the line.

  But there was nothing anyone could do with such short warning and in such tight confines. The shot cracked out, accompanied by a blinding flash from the gun’s discharge, and Joe heard one of the leaders grunt and drop back onto the next person in line.

  Without hesitation, several answering shots came from the group, and there was an almost mad rush to get by the wounded man, and the one tending to him, in order to reach the roof. Joe and Sam were now third and fourth in line.

  What they saw as they cleared the roofline was wondrous and hellish, both. Under a star-speckled dome of night sky, its bottom circumference ringed by a muted blaze of surrounding city lights, a single man stood in the middle of the roof, his gun blazing in random directions as he twisted and turned, slapped by the bullets of the ICE agents hitting him.

  Crouching beside the top of the ladder, Joe watched as the silhouetted figure finally stopped its mad dance and dropped into a heap like a puppet with its strings cut.

  “My God,” he heard Sam say behind him.

  Joe rose and slowly approached the fallen man with the others, all of them still with their guns out and ready.

  But there was no movement. Caressed by the nervous hoverings of multiple flashlight beams, the body lay covered with blood, contorted as if stung by a thousand volts of electricity.

  “That one of them?” someone asked.

  Joe considered the question, suddenly realizing its significance. In this neighborhood, the dead man might have been anyone with a gun and a criminal record. Not to mention that, aside from a couple of indistinct half sightings, there’d been no solid identification of either Marano or Grega ever since the surveillance team had given the go-ahead.

  Lenny Chapman appeared beside Joe, he having opted to join the team going down the fire escape. He had a photograph in his hand.

  “Let’s see his whole face,” he requested.

  One of the men in black reached out and twisted the body’s head around while another steadied a light on it. Chapman crouched and held the mug shot up.

  “It’s Marano,” he announced after a brief pause.

  “What about Grega?” Joe asked in the following quiet.

  Chapman looked up at him and shook his head. “He was with this guy in the first apartment—we have confirmation of that. We also know that two men used the bridge over the alleyway. But I and the others saw someone jumping from the fire escape and taking off below. I’m only guessing that was Grega.”

  He stood up, put the mug shot back into his pocket, and stared down at James Marano, adding, “Regardless, it looks like Grega beat feet. Your cop killer’s still on the street.”

  Joe considered that. “Maybe,” he agreed. “But we still have the apartment to go through. Could be we’ll find something there.”

  Chapman turned slightly and gazed out over the vast cityscape all around them, glimmering like a distant grasslands fire. Far off, they could hear sirens.

  “Good luck with that one,” he said.

  CHAPTER 8

  Kevin Delaney exited his car, waited for the traffic to clear, and crossed the street, carrying a cardboard tray full of coffee cups. He’d caught a few hours of sleep at home after Cathy Lawless took over the tail he’d established last night at the Fort Kent border crossing.

  But now it was morning, his curiosity had gotten the better of him, and despite the paperwork waiting at the office and the exhaustion still scratching the back of his eyeballs, he was in the border town of Calais, almost two hundred miles from Fort Kent. That’s where Cathy and the source of their interest had settled down for the time being—in a small shopping mall consisting of several stores and two modest office buildings.

  He’d heard back on his inquiry to Customs about the van driver’s name—Eugene Didry. This he’d passed along to Cathy, even though it had resulted in no hits anywhere, implying that it had been stuck onto a well-forged passport.

  Delaney opened the back door of a delivery van and stepped inside. The air was stale, warm, and unpleasant.

  There were two people—a man and a woman—sitting in chairs mounted to the floor, facing a row of equipment attached to the wall, along with a long tinted window looking onto one of the office buildings across the parking lot.

  The woman’s face lit up at the sight of the tray. “My savior,” she said, reaching for one of the cups as Delaney reluctantly shut the door behind him.

  “Hey, Dave,” he addressed the man, “want some coffee?”

  Dave Beaubien, Cathy Lawless’s MDEA partner, reached out, took a cup, and nodded once. “Thanks.”

  Delaney smiled to himself. As far as he could tell, that constituted a full sentence for Dave—the definition of a man of few words. Of course, being partnered to Cathy almost guaranteed not getting a word in edgewise, so perhaps it was all to the good.

  “Anything?” Delaney asked Lawless.

  She finished taking a long swig of her coffee before answering. “Christ, that hits the spot. Nope. Not a thing. Didry—or whatever his name is—has been inside for about ninety minutes now.” She interrupted herself long enough to point at the parking lot. “That’s his vehicle over there. Of course, that doesn’t mean he didn’t sneak out the back and take off. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Her boss raised his eyebrows. “You suspect that?”

  She took another swallow before answering. “I don’t know. There’re just the two of us here.”

  Delaney nodded at that and changed subjects slightly. “Makes you wonder why he entered at Fort Kent, just to drive all this way to another border town within U.S. lines.”

  “Doesn’t make me wonder,” Cathy said brightly. “He’s been meeting people along the way.”

  Delaney’s eyes widened slightly. “Do tell,” he prompted her.

  She turned to her partner. “Dave—you got that list?”

  Beaubien wordlessly handed her a spiral notepad. She, in turn, passed it to Delaney, explaining, “Four meets, each at the towns listed, each town being a past entry port for drugs that we know about. The people listed are either guys we saw come out and talk to this character, or they live in the houses he entered. Either way, every one of them has a history with us.”

  Delaney studied the list, recognizing everyone on it. These were not nickel-and-dime players. More to the point, they’d all been linked, circumstantially and not, to Matt Mroz’s now leaderless network.

  “You get a good picture of Didry?” he finally asked. “We’ll need to send a copy to the Canadians—see if anyone there can give us the guy’s real name.”

  Instead of answering, Dave merely patted the long-lens camera on the counter beside him.

  “Yeah,” Cathy added, “except that Didry has a beard as big as it is phony. I’d be amazed if his own mother could pick him out of a lineup.”

  Delaney gazed thoughtfully out the window and mused, half to himself, “What the hell is going on in there?”

  Alan Budney was also at a window, peering out discreetly—in an vacated, second-floor office of the same run-down mall in Calais where the MDEA team was running surveillance from the parking lot.

  “That them?” Budney asked. “The white van with the tinted windows?”

  Eugene Didry, whose real name was Georges Tatien, rose from his chair and crossed the room nonchalantly.

  “Oui—that is them,” he said in a thick Gallic accent.

  “Who are they? DEA?”

  Tatien shook his head. “Non. I do not think so. DEA is almost invisible in your state. That is MDEA, I think. Very good, but too thin with the personnel.”

  Tatien eyed his American counterpart from up close. He’d been waiting for Budney for well over an hour, sitting
patiently in his chair. Timing was routinely approximate in this line of work, so he hadn’t expected a precise arrival. But he also hadn’t expected the kind of person now before him. Drug dealers weren’t all the losers and idiots that cops liked to portray, nor were they the smooth, well-tailored sophisticates of the movies. But they did tend to fit an overall style—a little reckless, a little careless, often addicted to the product they peddled.

  Budney seemed the exception. When he’d entered the room, without apology, he’d asked, “You Didry?” After Tatien had admitted as much, Budney had followed with, “I’m assuming you were followed; did you make the same assumption?”

  It had been a deceptively elegant opener, especially to a traditional philosophe like Tatien, who shared the French fondness for oblique and indirect allusions. With one seemingly simple inquiry, Budney had questioned Tatien’s intelligence, ability, poise, and observational abilities—not to mention his trustworthiness. It had been economical and intuitive, reflective of a possibly intriguing brain. A satisfying beginning.

  Unless, of course, Budney had intended none of it.

  Georges Tatien, born rich, well educated, but too much of a risk-taker to follow society’s narrow rules, had opted for a life of courting danger in exchange for large amounts of easy, untraceable money. It gave him the thrills of the demimonde that so horrified and tantalized his peers, along with a lot of extra cash with which he did as he pleased.

  There had been frightening moments. Drug dealers were often unstable, unpredictable, and unreliable—quick to blur the distinction between loyalty and self service, and easily coerced by the police into betraying their colleagues. But therein lay a large part of the attraction for Tatien—he could flatter himself with having a psychological acuity that would keep him safe from the dealers and ahead of the police.