I pointed the end of my pencil at Dennis. “What’s the bottom line on the Milly canvass?”
Dennis gave a sour expression. “Whoever killed him really did pull the rug out from under us. We’ve interviewed everyone who lives on that street, and nobody saw a thing. A few people heard things, like Dummy shouting and you coming upstairs. A woman right below Milly’s place said she heard footsteps just before the shouting, but she didn’t pay any attention to it until later, after all hell had broken loose.”
“No one heard the door to number 21 being broken?” I asked.
“Not specifically. Like I said, people heard things, but they can’t, or won’t, peg them down.”
“J.P.?”
Tyler cleared his throat. “From the evidence, it appears the shooter nailed Milly with a silenced 9-millimeter as he opened the door. He then hid in the apartment until Dummy went to the balcony, raced downstairs, broke into number 21 until you passed him on the way up, and escaped. It was a highly risky operation, successful only out of dumb luck.”
“And a pair of brass balls,” DeFlorio muttered.
“That’s a good point,” I interjected. “It did take balls, which brings up the major question here: Why did he kill Milly when he did?”
There was silence around the table, as when a teacher asks a question so apparently moronic that no one dares answer for fear it’s a trap. “So we couldn’t get to him first,” Ron finally said in a soft voice.
“That’s what I think, which might mean Milly could have fingered Jardine’s killer. Remember: That’s why we were there, to ask Milly about his involvement with Jardine. Does anybody here have a problem linking these two cases together?”
“I don’t have a problem with it, but I don’t think we should ignore the possibility that it was sheer coincidence.”
That was Tyler, of course, applying the scientific leveler.
I pointed my pencil at him. “What have you got on the dope?”
“It’s a little early to tell. The total amount of cocaine was two pounds, just under a kilo; there were nine and a half pounds of marijuana, about four point five kilos; and there were two plastic bags of Bennies, Nebbies, and Blue Birds, all mixed together.”
“What are Blue Birds?” Harriet asked, taking notes.
“Amytal-it’s a barbiturate. I sent the coke north for analysis, but from what I tested, I’d say Milly’s import was about eighty percent pure, and if the sample we found at Jardine’s came from Milly, then he was stepping on it hard, like down to twenty-five or thirty percent. Of course, in this market he could do that and get away with it. They’re used to shitty stuff.”
“How many one-ounce packets could he make that way?” I asked.
“One hundred, maybe more, but he wouldn’t sell it that way, not at two thousand dollars per ounce. He’d sell it by the gram, for maybe fifty to a hundred bucks. In those quantities, he could supply twenty-eight hundred customers.”
“And make two hundred and eighty thousand dollars?” Dennis whistled.
Tyler hesitated. “Well, that would be on the fat side, and I’m guessing a lot here. Still, he would have cleaned up.”
“I take it you got the results back on the Jardine sample?” I asked.
Tyler shook a sheet of paper before him. “This morning.”
“Is there any way you can prove Milly processed it?”
“Not prove like in a court of law, but I’m pretty sure he did. It was cut in the same proportion as the few prepared samples we found at Milly’s apartment, and they were both cut with mannitol.”
The numbers Tyler had rattled off put a depressing pall on the group. Kilos of cocaine were what Tubbs and Crockett played with on “Miami Vice,” complete with fast boats, submachine guns, and rock-and-roll theme music. Earlier, the mere mention of a single kilo in Brattleboro, Vermont, would have struck a similar fictional chord.
I turned to Klesczewski. “Ron, you’re our resident expert in drug affairs. Why would Milly need that much? There aren’t twenty-eight-hundred coke-sniffers in this town.”
“There probably are throughout the state.”
Again there was silence. The suggestion had been obvious, and the fact that I hadn’t thought of it revealed how hesitant I was to truly grasp the significance of all this.
Ron continued. “You might want to talk to Willy Kunkle, Joe. He knew the drug scene inside out when he was here. I’m just learning still.”
I nodded. He was right. Kunkle had made the town’s underbelly his specialty, applying his mercurial moods and brutal methods where we could see them least. In the office, he’d been a dark beast of sorts, sour and distrustful, supposedly given to hitting his now-divorced wife during his off hours. Many of his fellow officers had been delighted when a sniper’s bullet permanently disabled him and forced him into retirement. But Ron was right. In his way, Kunkle was an educated man, and I would have to visit him. Later.
“All right,” I said. “Here’re a few things to think about, then. Milly Crawford was sitting on enough coke to make him a wealthy man. Where and how did he get it, along with the money to buy it in the first place? Someone killed him just before we could talk to him. Why? Furthermore, assuming the drugs were part of the reason he was killed, why were they left in his apartment? Why was his death more important to his killer than a quarter-million-dollars’ worth of dope? Was Jardine the moneyman and Milly the processor? If so, then who killed them-a third partner wanting more, or a competitor? Keep all that in mind as we go along, as well as J.P.’s suggestion that we may be dealing with two separate, unrelated homicides whose coincidences are screwing us up. It’s not impossible that while Milly and Jardine were somehow linked, Jardine’s killer might merely have been a jealous husband who knew nothing about his dope dealing.”
There were some murmurs at that and some comments about both cases in general. I wrapped up the meeting by asking what else might be worth sharing before we broke up.
Harriet handed me some legal paperwork. “This is the affidavit for a search warrant for Jardine’s business records. I had Sue Davis at the SA’s office review it; she wasn’t thrilled but said that was the judge’s business. So,” she smiled sweetly, “you have an appointment with Judge Harrowsmith in twenty minutes across the street.”
I thanked her, took the papers, and checked my watch. “Ron, are you and Dennis available to grab those papers as soon as I get the warrant?”
They both nodded.
“Okay. We’ll meet back here in half an hour. I want Dennis to dig into that stuff as soon as you get it. Harriet, maybe you can help out. Call Justin Willette if you run into anything that throws you. He’s in the book under stockbrokers; he’s helped us in the past.”
We all rose and began filing out of the room. I stopped Ron Klesczewski at the door. “How did you manage with those four names on Milly’s list?”
“I got a line on Mark Cappelli at E-Z Hauling. He’s a truck driver, due back from a trip later this morning. I was planning to meet him when he arrived.”
“I might join you, if that’s all right.”
He seemed pleased. “Sure. Thomas and Atwater are still at the bank-the one listed in the directory-and I figured we could chase them down at our convenience. Hanson I still don’t know.”
“How about Jardine’s phone records?”
“I’ve got a list going. Nothing I can nail directly to…” His voice dropped and he looked around for eavesdroppers. “You know… John, but there’re about fifteen numbers that crop up regularly; most of them are women, but about a third are men.”
I shook my head. Even considering the number of people I’d come to know outside this town over the decades, I would have been hard put to collect a list that big from my long-distance phone records. Ron was going to have his work cut out for him interviewing them all, with or without help. “Is Blaire Wentworth one of them?” I remembered Plummer saying the Wentworths lived outside of Brattleboro.