Nevertheless, despite his soured, cynical, and angry soul, and the spousal abuse that had quite properly cost him his marriage, he’d been a cop’s cop, a man with an unrivaled sense of the street.
Perhaps predictably, his career had come to a premature end. In helping me and several New Hampshire state troopers pursue a suspect in the ski-mask case, he’d caught a high-caliber rifle bullet in the left shoulder, shattering it beyond repair. Several operations later, his entire arm permanently disabled, he’d been given the option of retiring from municipal service or taking another town job at comparable pay. He’d stunned us all by choosing the latter, thereby beginning a minor reign of terror within the library.
I knew it wouldn’t last in the long run. His style had been tough enough on his fellow cops; its prolonged effects on a group of peaceable librarians was guaranteed to end catastrophically. But he’d been working here less than six months, and as far as I knew, his co-workers so far had managed to find him isolated nooks and crannies in which to work, far from them and from any potentially horrified member of the public.
I rounded the corner of the bookshelf and watched him heft a gigantic leather-bound tome off the floor with one hand and wrestle it onto a shelf. His left hand remained, as always, deep in the side pocket of his trousers, giving his body, if not his facial expression, an incongruously nonchalant appearance.
“Hey, Willy.”
He barely gave me a glance. “Well, if it isn’t Typhoid Joe. Come by to share some of the heat you been gettin’?”
“Only if they catch us.”
That got his attention. He glared at me. “Us? To hell with you. I got enough shit on my plate without that.”
“Working you hard, are they?”
“If assholes could fly, this place would be an airport.” He turned his back to me and began flipping through a card-catalog tray he’d placed on top of a cabinet lining the wall.
“What’ve you heard about the case?”
“I read the papers.”
“What’d you think?”
“I think you’re fucked. The SA’s IDed the watch as Jardine’s and nailed down the time and place that Rosie Woll bought it for him; plus, they found Jardine’s wallet in Woll’s car, under the mat in the trunk. I think you guys better prepare for Johnnie Boy’s going-away party.”
He riffled through the card catalog with his dexterous right hand. I had to smile at the pretense: Willy Kunkle was still so wired to the street he had information the State’s Attorney’s own staff probably didn’t know about, much less the newspapers.
I resisted pointing that fact out. If I were to reel him in, I’d have to pique his interest enough to make him bite. “That’s not enough to prosecute; they could’ve been planted.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Why did Cappelli pull a gun on us?”
“Guilty conscience.”
“He says he thought we were bad guys.”
“Bullshit; he thought you were about to fry him. It was only when you didn’t press charges that he started getting imaginative.”
“What was he up to?”
He still had his back to me. “Hey, what do I know? Rumor had it he was running dope for some new guy.”
“Milly Crawford?”
Now he turned to face me, his expression quizzical. “Did you guys really find that big a stash at Milly’s, or was that all smoke?”
“It was there, and he’d been playing with it; his prints were all over it. We’re pretty sure one baggie made it to Jardine’s house.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know who was running Cappelli, but it wasn’t Milly; the man was a jerk-off. And I never heard a peep about him on the street, not tying into that kind of action.”
“Who would have supplied him the money?”
Kunkle thought about that for a moment. “I know Cappelli. He and Milly wouldn’t mix.”
During his years at the department, as Ron had pointed out earlier, Willy Kunkle made the local drug trade his specialty, getting to know the players, the supply routes, the money sources. Little of his knowledge ever resulted in direct busts, but it was an invaluable tool when it came to leveraging information from people.
“We found out Cappelli and Hanson were handing money to two Putney Road bankers, apparently for laundering. You hear anything about that?”
Kunkle chuckled. “Found out about Jake, huh? He and Cappelli definitely connect. In fact, I think Cappelli used to be married to one of Jake’s daughters.”
“Did Hanson have a specialty?”
“You know about the warehouses?”
I nodded.
“That was it, pure and simple. Mark was the transporter, Jake the storage man.”
“Neither one of them sold?”
Willy shook his head. “That’s one of the reasons we never nailed ’em. There was nothing to be gained trying to sell that shit in this town. I mean, we nailed a few small-timers, but there was a whole lot more moving through here than we ever saw, heading upstate to Rutland, Burlington, and mostly to upper-New York State, where the big market was. We never got anywhere because it just passed through. By the time I heard about it, it was history.”
“So why the change?”
He gave a knowing smile. “New players. Plus more riffraff is beginning to stick to Vermont’s famous ‘Gateway.’ We’ve not only got the best welfare check around, we’re just a short piss away from the Mass border, where the economy’s going to hell in a handbasket. That all creates a market for dope.”
“It was a lot of dope all of a sudden.”
He chewed on that for a bit. “Yeah, that’s what makes me think new players. Had it been the old crowd, they would have penny-anted their way up and would have gotten nailed before long. How’d you tumble to Hanson and Cappelli?”
As usual, he’d identified the correct button to push. “We found their phone numbers on a list in Milly’s apartment, along with those of two employees of the Putney Road Bank-and John Woll.”
There was a slight break in the conversation, which caught us both looking at our feet. Kunkle snapped out of it first. “So why’re you here?”
I hesitated. “I was wondering if you could chase this down a little further.”
His eyes widened. “You mean Milly’s list of numbers? You’re shittin’ me.”
“Nope.”
He slapped his forehead with his hand. “You’ve got to be out of your friggin’ mind. You want me-a town librarian-to go poking around in official police business, right after you and Brandt have already had your asses fried for withholding evidence?”
“No one ever mentioned withholding evidence.”
He shook his head. “Oh, well, pardon the hell out of me. Why in Christ’s name should I put my butt on the line for you?”
“I need your help.”
He stared at me, his mouth half open. “This is bullshit. Klesczewski and your other Keystone Kops can chase down four stupid names. Why do you need me?”
“I’ve got a leak in the department. I can’t go to the bathroom without everyone in the building knowing about it. I need someone on the outside, to gather information only I get told about.”
He hesitated, looking doubtful. I glanced at my watch. It was close to quitting time for him. “Let me tell you what I’ve got so far. Then decide.”
It took over an hour, still standing in the stacks out of sight, to sketch in the convoluted cast of characters and the twisted strings that tied them all together. Much of it Kunkle obviously already knew, either by intuition or by reading the paper, but mostly he kept silent apart from an occasional question.
“You think McDermott’s your man?” he asked, when I was through.
I shook my head. “Call it a pecking order, with some names higher up than others, but none of them highlighted in neon. Look, the way I’m seeing it now, some son of a bitch has spent a lot of time and effort arranging his pile of rocks just right, so that when the first one-Charlie Jardine-fell into our laps, all the others began to follow, until now we’re getting buried in an avalanche. Maybe McDermott’s being targeted just to keep us off the scent, maybe he’s the guy orchestrating this entire thing and hiding in plain sight. I haven’t the slightest idea. All I do know is that I can’t move without being seen.”