She stopped and stared defiantly at us again. I couldn’t take my eyes away from her. No one in the room could. This made so much sense: a break coming from a family member.
“My father doesn’t realize that I’m actually a lot smarter than he is, and I’m also observant. Maybe I learned that from him. I remember when I was around ten or so, I just knew I was going to be a police detective, too. Pretty ironic, huh? Pretty pathetic, don’t you think?
“As I got older I noticed — observed — that my father had lots more money than he ought to have. Sometimes he would take us on a ‘guilt trip’ — Ireland, maybe the Caribbean. And he always had money for himself. Really good clothes, fancy threads from Barneys and Saks. A new car every other year. A sleek white sailboat parked in Sheepshead Bay.
“Last summer my father was disgustingly drunk one Friday night. I remember he was going out to Aqueduct racetrack with his running-dog detective pals on Saturday. He took a walk to my grandmother’s house, which is a few streets away from us. I followed him that night. He was too far gone to even notice.
“My father went to an old gardening shed behind my grandmother’s house. Inside the shed, he moved away a work bench and some wooden slats. I couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing, so I came back the next day and looked behind the boards. There was money inside — a lot. I don’t know where it came from, still don’t. But I knew it wasn’t his detective’s pay. I counted almost twenty thousand dollars. I took a few hundred, and he never even noticed.
“I became more observant after that. Recently, over, say, the past month or so, my father and his friends were up to something. His goombas. It was so obvious. They were always together after work. One night I heard him mention something about Washington, D.C., to his pal Jimmy Crews. Then he went away for four days.
“He got home on the fourth afternoon. It was the day after the MetroHartford kidnapping. He started to ‘celebrate’ at around three, and he was flying high by seven. That night, he broke my mom’s cheekbone. He cut her eye and could have put it out. My father wears this stupid signet ring from St. John’s. The Redmen — now the Red Storm, you know. I went to my grandma’s shed that night and I found more money. I couldn’t believe it. There’s so much money there, all cash.”
Veronica Macdougall reached under the table and hoisted up a powder blue backpack, the kind kids wear to school. She opened it. She pulled out several stacks of bills and showed us the money. Her face was a mask of shame and pain.
“Here’s ten thousand four hundred dollars. It was right there in my grandmother’s shed. My father put it there. My father was in on that kidnapping in Washington. He thinks he’s so goddamn smart.”
Only then, once she was finished telling us what her father had done, did Veronica Macdougall finally break down and cry. “I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m so, so sorry.” I think she was apologizing for his crimes.
Chapter 86
I BELIEVED HER, and I was still reeling from hearing Veronica Macdougall’s chilling confession about her policeman father. An intriguing question was whether the crew of Brooklyn detectives had “masterminded” the earlier bank robberies, too. Had they murdered several people in cold blood before they attempted the MetroHartford kidnapping? Was one of the detectives the Mastermind?
I had plenty of time to think about it during an interminable day of politicking and infighting involving the FBI, the mayor, and the New York police commissioner. Meanwhile, the five Brooklyn detectives were put under surveillance, but we weren’t given the go-ahead to bring them in. It was frustrating, maddening, like being stuck for a day on the Long Island Expressway in a traffic jam, or on a New York subway. The detectives’ attendance records were being checked against the days all of the robberies took place. Credit and spending checks were run on each of them. Other detectives, even snitches, were quietly interviewed. The money found at Brian Macdougall’s mother’s house had been retrieved and it was definitely part of the ransom.
As of six o’clock, nothing had been decided. None of us could believe the delay. Betsey surfaced briefly and reported that no progress had been made so far. Around seven, I went and checked into a hotel for the night.
I kept getting angrier and angrier. I took a hot shower, and then I leafed through a Zagat’s guide looking for a good place to eat downtown. Around nine, I finally ordered from room service. I’d been thinking about Christine and the Boy. I didn’t feel like going out. Maybe if Betsey had been available, but she was tied up, raging against the machine at Police Plaza.
I propped myself up in bed and tried to read Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane. I was on a string of books that I’d enjoyed lately: The Pilot’s Wife, The Pied Piper, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the Lehane.
I couldn’t concentrate. I wanted to take down the five New York detectives. I wanted to be home with the kids, and I wanted little Alex to be part of our family. That was the one thing that had kept me going strong lately.
Finally, I started to think about Betsey Cavalierre. I had been trying not to, but now I remembered our “date” in Hartford. I liked her — it was as simple as that. I wanted to see her again and I hoped she wanted to see me.
The phone in my room rang around eleven o’clock. It was Betsey. She sounded tired and frustrated and decidedly non-peppy for her.
“I’m just finishing up here at Police Plaza. I hope. Believe it or not, we’re set to take them down tomorrow. You definitely wouldn’t believe the bullshit that’s gone on today. Lots of talk about the detectives’ civil rights. Plus the effect on morale inside the NYPD. Making the arrest ‘the right way.’ Nobody’s willing to say these are five very bad actors. They’re probably killers. Take their sorry asses down.”
“They’re five very bad actors. Take their sorry asses down,” I said to her.
I heard her laugh and I could picture her smile. “That’s what we’re doing, Alex. Bright and early tomorrow morning. We’re taking them down. Maybe we’ll get the Mastermind, too. I have to be here at least another hour. I’ll see you in the morning. Early.”
Chapter 87
FOUR O’CLOCK comes very early in the morning. That was the hour we were scheduled to hit the homes of the five detectives. Everything was set. The politicking was done; at least I hoped it was over.
Three-thirty comes even earlier, and that was when we met somewhere in Nassau County out on Long Island. I didn’t know much about the area, but it was upscale and pretty, a far cry from Fifth Street and Southeast. Someone on the team said the neighborhood was unusual because a lot of cops and also Mafia people lived there in apparent harmony.
This was a federal case, and Betsey Cavalierre was officially in charge of the arrests. It illustrated the regard in which she was held back in Washington, if not in New York.
“I’m happy to see that everybody is bright eyed and bushy tailed this morning. Night? Whatever time zone we’re in.” She offered up a joke and got a few smiles from the troops. There were about forty of us, a mix of police and FBI, but the Bureau was definitely in charge of the morning’s raids. She divided us into five teams of eight, and I was in her group.
Everybody was ready, and incredibly pumped up. We drove to a split-level house on High Street in Massapequa. No one seemed to be up in the suburban neighborhood. A dog started barking in one of the yards nearby. Dew glistened on every manicured lawn. Life seemed good out here where Detective Brian Macdougall lived with his battered wife and bitterly angry daughter.
Betsey spoke into her Handie-Talkie. She seemed extremely cool under fire. “Radio check.” Then, “Team A, through the front door. Team B, kitchen, Team C, sunporch. Team D is backup. . . . Now. Go! Take him down!”
The agents and police detectives swarmed toward the house on her signal. Betsey and I got to watch them quickly move in. We were Team D, the backup.