Don't Look Twice (9 page)

T
he federal prison in Otisville, New York, was in the foothills of the Catskills, about ninety minutes from Greenwich. It housed mostly midlevel felons, drug dealers, and prisoners shuttling to trial in Manhattan. Not exactly Florence, Colorado, or Pelican Bay.

But someone had gone to a lot of trouble to keep Nelson Vega away from the old neighborhood.

Hauck and Munoz stowed their guns at the entrance in the administrative building, and the assistant warden, Rick Terwilliger, met them and took them through a network of checkpoints to the facility's Secure Housing Units, SHUs, the maximum-security detention pod.

“Don't let the street punk act fool you, Lieutenant. If you read Vega's file, you already know he had a couple of years of college. A stint in the army. He tests high. He's been very active in his own defense.”

Hauck asked, “What kind of contact is he allowed with the outside world?”

“He's permitted unmonitored phone calls and outside visitors three times a week. Mr. Vega is merely in a holding status here. To this point he has not been convicted of any crime.”

Which, Hauck knew, didn't mean Vega wouldn't be the first crime figure who continued to run his day-to-day operation from jail.

“Nonetheless, we look at Vega as a very dangerous man. This is a person who had no qualms about trying to gun down a Connecticut state trooper in the process of committing a felony.”

They arrived at a secure, bolt-locked room with a tiny window on the door.

“You can record your conversation, if you like. But I ask you not to transfer anything to him physically or it will have to be confiscated.”

Hauck looked in. A guard with a Taser was positioned behind Vega.

“You're about to meet ground zero of the human race, Lieutenant. Ready? I hope you didn't eat before coming…”

The warden nodded to open the door.

Vega was in an orange jumpsuit, seated at a metal table. He had a smooth, chiseled face, tattoos on his neck, a shaved head, a scar that ran from under his nose to his upper lip.

A uniformed guard who looked like he could bench-press most of South America stood in the corner with a stun gun tucked in his belt.

Hauck took a seat in one of the chairs across from him. “I'm Lieutenant Hauck. This is Detective Munoz.”

Vega showed his wrists, making a show of the rattling of chains. “Sorry if I don't shake hands.”

“I'm the head of detectives in the town of Greenwich, Connecticut, Mr. Vega. We're here to talk with you about a drive-by shooting that took place there last Saturday morning, at an Exxon station in town. A bystander was killed, who turned out to be a prosecutor out of the U.S. Justice Department in Hartford. Are you familiar with this incident, Mr. Vega?”

“Jeez, I heard the price of gasoline is sky-high out there,” he said, shaking his head, “but
that's
a bit crazy, no?”

“The shooter was Hispanic,” Hauck went on, ignoring the remark, “and wore a red bandana over his head. Are you getting where I'm coming from, Mr. Vega? As he drove away, he shouted the name of a local girl. Josephina Ruiz, who, it turns out, was a teenager from Bridgeport who was accidentally drowned last summer at a public pool. Is any of this starting to ring a bell?”

“Sorry to bring you all the way down here, Lieutenant.” Vega jangled his chains. “But in case you hadn't noticed, my alibi's pretty tight.”

“We know your alibi's tight, Mr. Vega. Later on that evening, another Hispanic male, also in a red bandana, was observed tossing a package into a Dumpster in Stamford. Inside the bag was a Tec-9 automatic that turned out to be the murder weapon.”

“You making some kind of a fashion statement, Lieutenant, with all these bandanas? 'Cause if you are, I know I can fit you out in one just right.”

Vega blew a kiss at Munoz. “What about you,
jefe
?”

Hauck went on, placing a hand on Freddy's forearm to hold him back. “The vehicle spotted at the Dumpster in Stamford was a tricked-out Jetta with a blue and red cross on the back. The car was traced to a Hector Morales in Hartford. Mr. Morales is from the same town in the Dominican Republic that you hail from, has a rap sheet that reads like a novel, and is a known member of the DR-17 gang.”

“You come here with some kind of question to ask me?” Vega rocked back. “'Cause I don't mean to be rude or anything, but, you know, it's like almost time for
Ellen
and I was hoping to get in a little dancing. Got it? Talking to the police, without a warrant, ain't exactly a credo with me.”

“
My question,
Nelson”—Hauck leaned forward, trying to cut through the prisoner's smirking glare—“is what connection was there between DR-17 and Josephina Ruiz? This thing won't be going away, Mr. Vega. I can put together a case right now against Morales that ties you in as an accessory after the fact. If it turns out Morales was in contact with you while you were in here, maybe more. The FBI's all over it. A federal prosecutor was gunned down, Mr. Vega. If he wasn't the intended target, then you don't need that kind of attention at all, do you? Not on top of all you're facing here.”

“Lemme get this straight.” The gang leader bunched his lips and nodded. “You come all the way down here like Homeland Security and try to scare me with some kind of TV
Law & Order
rap. You must've brought something with you, bro.”

“Just some good sense, to get this off your back.”

“That's all?”

Hauck shrugged. “How 'bout I toss in an Xbox 360? That do the trick?”

Vega's eyes sparkled. “That and an Escalade STS, maybe—to take me home. Shit, what show have you been watching, man? You think I need juice from any of you? Mr. big shot Greenwich detective? You think I'm gonna roll on my man because you come down here with your little badge and tell me you're gonna smooth out my way with the FBI?” Vega shifted around to the guard. “Hey, Leon, you better stun me now, bro, because I don't think I can sit and listen to this no longer. You know you ought to be on Leno, Lieutenant, because you are a fucking riot!”

When he turned back, Vega's laugh had quieted and his grin was gone. “Now you copy this, bro—I don't need your fucking juice. I don't need you to smooth anything out for me. You think you got it all sized up? Well, here's
my
juice: When I'm outta here, when I'm back home and you're still scratching
your heads trying to put together two and two, you come to me and I'll smooth it all out for
you.
You copying
that,
bro?”

He laughed again, glancing back at the expressionless guard. When he turned back, Hauck grabbed the gang leader by the wrist.

“I leave, and the next time I see you it won't be
Ellen
that's on your mind.”

“Oooh, you scare me,
niño.
” Vega grinned.

Hauck got up. Something wasn't right here and he was starting to sense what it was. “One more thing. The woman at the restaurant. Who turned in the gun. Annie Fletcher.”

“Who?”

“She's off-limits now. She's out of it. For good. You understand, Vega?”

“Not sure I know exactly what you're meaning.” Vega looked back at Hauck with a smile.

“This is what I'm meaning.” Hauck leaned forward and took the man's wrist. “One of your boys ever threatens her again…Demonstrates a sudden urge to try the crab cakes or maybe check out where she lives…I don't care if a goddamn water glass falls off the bar in the wrong way…I'll tear your head off. You understand? I'll rip your little network so wide open, the nickels and dimes will fall out on the floor. You hear what I'm telling you, Nelson? You copying
that,
bro?”

“Yeah.” The gang leader pulled his wrist out of Hauck's grip. “I'm copying, Lieutenant. So let me get this straight…” He leaned in close and pretended to be interested in something. “This mean that Xbox is off the table?”

“You don't get it, do you, Nelson?” Hauck went to the door. “I'm gonna find out why that prosecutor had to die. Sooner or later, I'll be back on you for it.
That's my credo
.”

O
utside, Freddy Munoz turned to Hauck as soon as they got to the parking lot. “What the hell was going on in there?”

It wasn't adding up to Hauck either.

“Why does a guy who's on the hook for fifteen to twenty in a federal jail laugh in our faces like we're a couple of high school bus monitors? What was it he said? ‘When I'm out of here you can come to
me,
if you're still trying to put two and two together…'?”

Vega didn't need any help. From any of them.

“You know what I'm thinking, Freddy? I'm thinking we can look for a year for some kind of connection between Josephina Ruiz and DR-17 and we're never gonna find it. Because it's not there. Vega was doing a favor for someone. He knows he's never going to face those charges. The man's protected. That's what that act was about.”

Someone had needed someone killed, and they used DR-17 to do the job.

That's why they shouted out “Josephina” at the scene. Why they left the newspaper article in the truck for them to find.

The whole thing was set up to only look like a retaliation.

“We're looking under the wrong manhole cover. Who the
hell wipes away a sheet like that? Who gets accorded that kind of protection?”

They stood there staring at each other from over the car.

“Jesus, Lieutenant, the guy's a CI!”

A confidential informer.
Or people were in bed with Vega—the right people.

Hauck smiled. “Which one of us is supposed to be the high-priced honcho here, Freddy?”

Freddy slid behind the wheel. Hauck climbed in next to him, his mind racing with thoughts he didn't much like. They'd have to look at everything, he realized.
Everything.
Not just DR-17 or Josephina Ruiz, but who it was aimed at. Sunil. Sanger.
Two plus two…
Who the real target was that morning.

Munoz started up the engine. “Something else my mother always says, Lieutenant…”

“And that's what?”

“She says, ‘I don't like it when people cover me up in shit and tell me that it's gonna make me grow.'”

Hauck looked at him. “That doesn't sound at all like your mother, Freddy.”

“No,” the detective said, pulling out. “You're right. That one's me.”

T
he man in the flat tweed cap and Burberry raincoat, the political man from upstate, sat on a stool like any customer in the busy coffee section of Stew Leonard's in Norwalk.

He was short, a little paunchy, had a wrinkly, round face and wore narrow reading glasses, his graying hair starting to thin. He had on a Shetland sweater over corduroys and Top-Siders, glancing occasionally at
The Financial Times,
indifferent to the throng of shoppers and laughing kids passing by.

The person he was expecting, in a gray North Face jacket, wound his way through the crowd. “Let's make this quick,” his friend said, pulling up a stool at the round table. “I don't like being here.”

“Relax,” the man in the tweed cap said. He pushed up his glasses. “Probably more people here right now than any place else in the state. I drive down every once in a while just for the chowder. The best around. Course, then I'm also loading up the car with the filets and lobster tails and chocolate chip cookies…”

“I don't really care about the fucking chowder, Ira,” the man in the North Face jacket said, his handsome, athletic looks just
beginning to dull into middle age. He leaned forward. “My kids are in the car…”

“That's right.” The upstate man nodded. “You still have kids at home. Private school, isn't it? Then college…”

“Ira, what is it you want, please…?”

The man in the cap took the reading glasses off his brow and folded the paper. He nodded in an obliging sort of way. “Okay,
champ…
” His expression stiffened. “Things are starting to move in a way no one's very happy with up there. There's a line of questioning I'm hearing, and if it leads anywhere…You're aware the local police have been down to visit your boy?”

“He's not my boy. I've never even met him. You didn't exactly ask me to handle a bond issue, Ira.”

“Still, it was you who arranged things to be handled through them…”

“Through an intermediary. You wanted things done, I got them done for you. That's all.”

“Why don't we just leave it that the revenge motive doesn't seem to be carrying a whole lot of weight any longer.”

The younger man stared back. “What is it you want me to do, Ira?”

“What do I want you to do?” Ira grabbed his arm. “I want you to do what you always do, guy. I want you to fix things. Isn't that what that showy new house is all about? And how you pay for your kids to go to that school?” The man's face bore a smile, but it was a smile that cut right through him, an unwavering sternness in his eyes. “You didn't think it was that six handicap we've been paying for all these years.”

“You don't understand.”

“Oh, I understand. I understand why this is a problem for you…I'm just down here to make certain
you
understand.
Because what you don't want is for certain things to come out that don't need to. What you don't want is for a certain police detective to start honing in on the wrong line of inquiry. So finesse it, shortstop. Make it go away. That's your particular skill, right? You have a backup plan. Maybe it's time to get it rolling. That's why I'm down here—the chowder notwithstanding. Are we clear?”

The man in the North Face took a napkin off the table and tore off the edges. He nodded.

“I think I'm going to need something a little more definitive than that, champ.
Are we clear?
”

Their eyes met, the government man's gaze unmistakable.

The man in the North Face felt his stomach clench. “Clear as a golf ball on grass, Ira.”

“Good.” The government man stood up and folded the newspaper under his arm. “Now what you oughta do now is head back to those cute little kids of yours. Go out, take 'em to McDonald's, kick the ball around, whatever you had planned for the day.” He opened a plastic bag and took out a box of Stew's chocolate chip cookies. “Here…rated best in the state.” He pushed it over and the younger man took it. “On me…”

“There are other people involved, you know. There's other ways for this to get out.”

“Finesse.”
The man winked amiably. “I think that's the key word here. We'll handle our end; you just make sure you do yours. What you don't want is for this sort of investigation to fly back and take a dump in
your
lap. Know what I mean?”

“Or yours,” the younger man said, angered.

“Or mine…” The government man nodded. “You're right.” He balled his napkin into his cup, crumpled them into a ball, and tossed them into the trash. “But let's just say that in this state, I'll take my chances on that one. Agreed?”