To silent agreement from both of us, he continued, “I asked Audrey to be in on this, not only because your folks, Joe, have already started her going, but because she’s well suited to this anyhow. She’s been on our detective squad three years, after an impressive start on Patrol, and she’s been running cases that overlap both juvie and drug-related crime, so she’s familiar with the field and the players. She’s also sharp as a tack.”
Audrey McGowen gave us an embarrassed half-smile, as familiar as we were with her boss’s cheerleader ways. “I thought we could start at the computer,” she said. “See if Lenny crops up anywhere. Assuming that suits you.”
“Absolutely,” I said.
O’Leary gave a friendly wave to the waitress behind the counter and slid from the booth, dropping five dollars on the table. He led us outside to the drenched parking lot, from which we formed a two-car caravan and drove west toward Battery Street.
The Burlington Police Department used to occupy two overstuffed ancient buildings downtown, finally rendered so confusing through countless remodeling that once, after a prisoner had broken away from his handlers, he was located wandering around, fruitlessly looking for an exit.
The PD’s new home is a 30,000-square-foot converted factory building dating back to the twenties, half of which later housed an auto dealership in which a murder took place-a bit of karma O’Leary was regularly moved to explain. It is modern, well organized, well equipped, and designed for a twenty-percent expansion-the largest, most up-to-date station house in the state, and a monument to the diminutive dreamer who’d made it happen amid tight budgets and low expectations.
That same man now led us to one of the parking lots near the building and, tucked under an oversized umbrella, escorted us through the front doors. In the lobby, he turned with a big smile and said, “Well, I’ll get out of your hair. I hope you find what you’re after. I know you’ll be in good hands with Audrey, and if anything comes up where I can lend a hand, don’t hesitate to let me know.” He shook hands all around and was gone, leaving Jonathon shaking his head with a smile.
“Amazing,” he said. “Welcome to my house. Have fun, but I gotta go. Every other chief I know would be on us like we were recruiters from a motorcycle gang, wondering what we were really up to.”
Audrey McGowen laughed as she took us through a white-walled maze of hallways, crisscrossed high overhead by exposed piping and electrical conduits. “Don’t sell him short. One way or the other, he’ll know everything you’ve done in here before you hit the sidewalk. He just doesn’t get in your face like a lot of them do.”
We entered a small room with several computers stationed against the walls and gathered three chairs before one of them, with Audrey at the keyboard. She spoke as she typed her way to where we wanted to be. “After Sammie contacted me about all this, I poked around a bit after hours. Norm Bouch has been renting that apartment on North Street for about three years. I found only one neighbor who’d ever set eyes on him, and he said he was a real nice guy. Nobody local seemed to know him-I checked the bar at the end of the block, and a nearby grocery store. In that neighborhood especially, that’s unusual. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, except that he either keeps a super-low profile, or never uses the place.”
She hit a final couple of keys and then paused. “Okay. These are the Intel files. We’ll start with just ‘Lenny,’ and see if we get lucky. It’s not that common a name.”
The screen rewarded us immediately, identifying Lenny Markham, age twenty-eight, living on Cedar Street. Audrey studied the few coded entries below his name and sat back in her chair, her hands in her lap.
“We may’ve stepped into something here. There’s an indicator to go through the chief of detectives before establishing contact.” Michael and I exchanged glances, the satisfaction of moments ago suddenly losing its flavor.
Burlington’s chief of detectives was Timothy Giordi, Jr. He’d been a child when I first met him. His father worked for the Barre PD, just east of Montpelier. Tim, Sr., would drive his young straw-haired son around in the front seat of the town’s sole patrol car, tutoring the boy in the ways of law and order. The kid never had a chance. From elementary school on up, all he talked about was becoming a cop. Every course he took, every summer job he considered, and finally, every college he applied to were solely to enhance his progress to that end. And to be a local cop at that.
Where other people with his motivation might have aimed at some federal agency or at least the State Police, the other legacy left to him by his father was a love of the neighborhood. Tim Giordi applied to the Burlington PD fresh out of college and had been with them ever since, receiving his present assignment just a few months before his father died of a heart attack, the result, his son had once wistfully said, of bad coffee, worse food, and a lifetime of sitting behind the wheel of that patrol car.
The three of us found Tim driving a computer instead, hunched forward in his office chair, staring at the screen as if willing it to confess. He looked up at us with obvious relief as Audrey knocked on his open door.
He rose to his feet, a wide smile on his face. “Hey, look who’s here. Jonathon, Joe, good to see you. Christ, it’s been a year or more. What’ve you been up to?”
While he spoke, he circled his desk, shook our hands, pulled chairs from the corners, and generally fussed enough to make his Italian-born mother proud. As soon as we were all seated, Audrey brought the mood to a focus by handing him a printout of what we’d found.
Tim read its contents and raised his eyebrows. “Ah,” was all he said at first, with the kind of enthusiasm one reserves for unpleasant discoveries. He placed the sheet face down on his desk and asked me, “What’s up with this guy?”
“We think he’s working for a dope dealer in Bellows Falls-part of a network. Jon and I were hoping to talk to him.”
“You’re running that crooked cop case, right? Does this tie in?”
“We think so,” Jon said. “But we’re not sure yet.”
Giordi steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “The reason Audrey brought this to me is because Lenny Markham is an informant.”
He didn’t need to say much more. I now understood both his and Audrey’s reactions. Confidential informants-CIs in police jargon-ran the gamut from the vaguely reliable bum on the corner to the shifty-eyed undercover operatives so popular in the movies. Regardless of where they are in the pecking order, however, they are jealously kept by their individual police handlers. The breaking of a case often hinges on the availability and reliability of a CI, so the officer with the most or best of them does well to tend his or her flock. Unfortunately, this attitude isn’t entirely altruistic. In a competitive market with limited upward mobility, officers see their sources as money in the bank. What everyone in that room understood was that we wanted access to someone whose handler was likely to voice a very strong objection.
Giordi checked his watch and picked up the phone, muttering, “Excuse me a second,” as he did so. He dialed an internal number and said to whoever answered, “It’s Tim Giordi. We need to talk. I just got an interagency cooperation request involving Lenny Markham. Give me five minutes to clear out my office, okay? Thanks.”
He hung up and looked at us apologetically. “I hate to do this, but I better run this by Lenny’s contact. Audrey, why don’t you introduce these two to the soda machine or something? I’ll page you in a bit.”
We filed out and followed his advice, silently marching toward the refreshment machines to stare at the offerings. There was no question that we’d eventually get access to Lenny Markham. The attorney general of the state of Vermont wasn’t likely to let a case be derailed because of some cop’s desire to keep his sources to himself. But it was a delicate matter. The spirit of interagency cooperation was still in its infancy, with everyone paying it lip service, and many privately fighting it tooth and nail. And while the AG’s jurisdiction extended to the state’s borders, his success was often linked to the vagaries of local politics.