An odd couple, of course—a lifelong rural cop with a hodgepodge education and an affluent, city-born, liberal lawyer, currently staff counsel for the state’s most powerful environmental lobby. Over the years, Gail had fought for women’s causes, the protection of children, to help the downtrodden, and to keep the planet healthy, working variously as a chronic volunteer, a selectman, a political advocate, and even briefly as a deputy state’s attorney. She’d made it her business to know what made people tick and how to win them over.
I therefore conceded her take on Sammie. “How is she?”
“Fine, now—in total denial. Ready for combat.”
“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”
Gail’s face softened. “Joe, she wasn’t the only one who thought you’d died.”
I reached over and took her hand in mine. “I’m sorry. When did you hear about this?”
“Kunkle called me on a cell phone when you were all still on the mountain. He didn’t want me to find out listening to the news. He also wanted me to know there was a chance. Good thing, too, because later the press had you all but buried.”
“You’ve been here a while, then.”
Her expression cooled once more. “Yet again, yeah.”
I didn’t respond. Our life together hadn’t been overly peaceful in that respect. This wasn’t the first time she’d come to see me in a hospital, or the first time she’d had to keep her own company for hours or days, wondering if I’d pull through. The toll had cost us both.
“Are we okay?” I suddenly blurted.
Gail looked at me, visibly startled, and then laughed, leaned forward, and kissed me again. “I’m sorry—yes, we’re okay. If I didn’t love you so much, I wouldn’t be so angry. I’m just a little frazzled—and being a hard-ass.”
She looked out the window at the snow. “I don’t tell you often enough what you mean to me, Joe,” she said softly.
“I don’t expect you to,” I told her. “I was just making sure, that’s all.”
But she was shaking her head. “No, it’s the least I can do. You give me freedom when I need it and support when I crash and burn. Sometimes I feel all I give you back is a hard time.”
“That’s not true. You tell me the truth. That’s why I asked what I did.”
She squeezed my hand. “You don’t have to worry—not from my end. I’m bugged about this job keeping me in Montpelier for so long, though. It’s tougher than I thought it would be. I miss you a lot.”
There was a discreet knock at the door, and Gary Smith stuck his head into the room. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said and began to retreat.
Gail stood quickly to stop him. “I have to get a cup of coffee. You can have him till then.”
Gary watched her pass him without comment but then raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Gail Zigman,” I explained. “My unofficial better half. How’s Mike?”
Smith took a few steps into the room and stopped, looking awkward. “Fine. Barely limping, already.”
The conversation stalled.
“Well, then,” I tried, “I guess it wasn’t such a bad deal after all. You get anything from that severed hand yet?”
He seemed lost in thought and looked up at me suddenly, as if dragged from some reverie. “What? No. The lab’s still working on it. Your contact at the Sûreté in Sherbrooke came through, though—Gilles Lacombe. Asked to meet with us.” He finished walking to the foot of my bed, grabbing the rail as if it separated him from a great fall. “I wanted to thank you for covering my butt.”
“I did?” I asked, momentarily lost.
“From what I heard, you told the inquiry team this morning you were the one who held us up on the ledge—till we were caught in the whiteout. You implied you didn’t follow my recommendation to leave when the leaving was good.”
“I did slow us up,” I countered. “Using the ice axes as crowbars took too long.”
He compressed his lips a moment, pondering whether to accept my gift or not. Being the oldest, the novice climber, and the injured party all in one, I’d known shouldering most of the blame wasn’t likely to result in any reprimand from the inquiry team, and in fact they’d been gracious to a fault. It hadn’t been a great sacrifice on my part—I’d been as aware as everyone of the closing weather, and I knew that both Woodman and Smith were judging themselves far more harshly for this near-miss than any disciplinary board could.
Smith’s appreciation showed in his response. “Still. I wanted to thank you. I should’ve had ropes—should’ve gotten us off in one piece. It was my responsibility.”
“Which is why you got Mike to safety instead of risking all three of us looking for me,” I said. “I know what those kinds of situations are like, Gary. I wish I didn’t, but they tend to crop up.”
“How long you been a cop?” he asked unexpectedly.
“Over thirty-five years.”
He nodded, as if coming to terms with the argument in his head. “You have a good reputation. I’m sorry I was a jerk before.”
“You didn’t know what I was up to.”
He smiled then. “I still don’t—not really. This VBI thing doesn’t make much sense to me.”
“It will,” I said, sympathizing with his confusion. “And I’ll try to make you like the end result.”
Gail reappeared at the door, a Styrofoam cup in her hand. “Too early?” she asked.
Gary looked back at me, responding to my last comment.
“Well, so far, so good. Thanks again.” He then turned to Gail and gestured in my direction. “He’s all yours.”
She shook her head, smiling. “Not hardly, but I’ll take what I can get.”
· · ·
There were three of us in the car, heading northeast on Route 100 toward Newport and Derby Line, Vermont, and Canada beyond, to meet with Gilles Lacombe of the Sûreté du Québec in Sherbrooke—known in cop shorthand as the “SQ”—Gary Smith, Paul Spraiger, and myself. Sammie Martens had lobbied to join us, but the meeting was to be an icebreaker only, and I didn’t want to load the deck with VBI personnel. Also, Spraiger spoke French, although I’d asked him not to advertise the fact until it proved absolutely necessary.
“What did Lacombe sound like on the phone?” I asked Smith, who’d made the arrangements.
He slowed to a stop to let a small herd of cows cross from a barn to the pasture on the other side, their nostrils enveloped in periodic bursts of vapor as they plodded along. We waited until the farmer had latched the gate behind the last of them before resuming our trip. Route 100 meandered up the spine of Vermont, broad-shouldered and well maintained—a pleasure to travel at any time of year, but particularly right after a fresh snow had made everything from mountaintops to old trailers look like pictures from an art book.
“Real friendly,” Smith answered. “And he spoke decent English, too. I think we hit a nerve with Deschamps. Our Popsicle’s first name—Jean—that didn’t mean much to him, but he said the family was well known. To use his words,” and here Smith affected a thick accent, “‘We ’ave a very big file on dem.’”
“A criminal file?” Spraiger asked from in back.
I’d already been briefed on that when Smith had updated Frank Auerbach and me earlier. “Apparently,” I said. “It sounds like the Deschamps have been in business for a while.”
Spraiger looked out the side window reflectively, “Huh.”
“What?” I asked him. “That mean something to you?”
“Maybe not. Sherbrooke’s a pretty interesting town, though—a little lost between Montreal and Québec City. Magog is nearby, and a hangout for the mega-rich, but people drive by Sherbrooke barely looking out the window. It’s actually pretty big. Seventy-five thousand in the city itself, maybe double that if you throw in the suburbs. A lot of industry.”
His voice trailed off. I’d come to appreciate Paul Spraiger over the short time I’d known him. He mulled things over before shooting his mouth off, and was generally worth listening to.
“Which ties into Deschamps how?” I prodded him.
He took his eyes off the scenery and looked at me from the back seat. “Oh, I don’t know—not in any specific way. But I’d heard Sherbrooke was a Hell’s Angels stronghold—one of their biggest and most secure. I was just surprised another group was working the same turf.”
“Hell’s Angels?” Smith asked, surprised. “I thought they were mostly in Montreal.”
“They’re there, too,” Spraiger explained, “and a bunch more places. But so are a lot of others. Sherbrooke was like a haven—at least I thought so—a place to call their own.”
“The local cops must love that,” Smith laughed.
“They don’t complain too much,” Spraiger told him. “Sherbrooke’s got one of the lowest crime rates in Canada, in part because the Angels have done a number like the Mob in Boston’s North End—they’ve made it safer. The cops wish they weren’t there, of course, but they keep to themselves, run a tight operation, and make pretty sure everyone else stays out.”
“Doesn’t sound like the Hell’s Angels I know,” I murmured.
“They still have the guys with the Nazi helmets riding hogs,” Spraiger continued. “They’ve got an image to protect. But they’ve also got members who’re lawyers and accountants, wearing suits and driving Beemers. They’re big-time nowadays.”
“How do you know so much about them?” Smith asked.
“From my days at the Burlington PD. We used to bump into them coming down from Canada, selling drugs or moving weapons or money. They liked what Burlington had to offer. That got me started doing research—one thing led to another… I like digging into stuff like that.”
I returned to the topic at hand. “What do you make of there being a rival organization in Sherbrooke?”
Spraiger shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out, but I’d assume the word ‘rival’ doesn’t apply. If the Deschamps clan is a separate entity, then it probably means there’s a working arrangement of some kind. That’s the only thing the Angels would tolerate, especially there and especially now.”
“How so, ‘there and now’?” I asked.
“The Angels are in a squeeze. For years, they were pretty much kings of the hill. Then, several smaller competitor gangs formed an association called the Rock Machine. They’re hungry, big, and act like they’ve watched too many gangster movies. Rumors are a major power struggle is brewing, so it’s no time for the Angels to be skirmishing on their flanks. That’s what I meant about Sherbrooke—it’s behind the front lines. They’re going to be protective of that. If the Deschamps have been around awhile, like Gary was told, I’d bet their relations with the Angels are very cordial.”
As Gary worked his way through downtown Newport, there was a prolonged silence in the car while we pondered what all that might mean for us. Periodically visible between the buildings to our left, the huge, pale, frozen slab of Lake Memphremagog extended off between the mountains into Canada like a scarred cement airfield, long abandoned.
Reaching the far end of town and I-91 toward Derby Line and the border, Gary finally asked, “Why would Sherbrooke attract the Hell’s Angels?”
“Lots of reasons,” Spraiger answered him. “It’s big enough to give them something to do—strip joints, bars, discos, whatever—but not so big as to allow for much competition. It’s close to the border, but not on the priority list of the RCMP or Canadian Customs. It’s a low-profile town—working-class, industrial—not a place where too many tourists will raise a fuss about a motorcycle gang. And I suppose it doesn’t hurt that some very ritzy places, like Magog and Lake Massawipi and Mount Orford, are right nearby.
“Actually,” he added, leaning forward in his seat, his enthusiasm growing, “there’s historical precedent, too. The developers of the Sherbrooke area were American Loyalists who migrated after the Revolution turned against them—a Vermonter named Hyatt being the primary one. I suppose you could say that’s what the Angels did, too. The ones in Sherbrooke are Canadian now, but the first of them crossed the border thirty years ago or so because they thought the pickings would be easier—not to mention they wanted out of the draft during the Vietnam War.”
Gary Smith looked back over his shoulder at him. “Jesus, Paul, you’re
full
of bullshit, aren’t you?”
Spraiger smiled apologetically. “History major in college—made me chronically curious. Also drives my wife nuts.”
It no longer had anything to do with crime families and why we were on the road, but by now he’d caught my interest. “So if American Loyalists started Sherbrooke,” I asked, “why’s it totally French now?”
“The simple answer,” he said, “is railroads. Before eighteen-fifty, the town had a few hundred Anglos in it, running sawmills, tanneries, furniture factories, foundries—things that were largely powered by the hydro dams on the Magog River. But after the trains came in, the market exploded. Industry took off, workers were needed, and where the French had at first avoided the area, they now found themselves both crowded in their previous stomping grounds and attracted by the cash flow. They went from fifteen percent of the population to fifty in twenty years.
“Not that it
is
totally French now,” he added. “People think that, but there’re still small English pockets all over Québec. Lennoxville is one of them, and it’s Sherbrooke’s oldest suburb.”
“Fascinating,” Smith muttered, sounding bored. “Border’s coming up.”
The interstate ahead widened as we approached the customs check, which spanned the roadway like a line of toll booths, one of which housed a thin man with an oversized mustache.
“Good day, gentlemen,” he said in careful English. “What is your purpose in visiting Canada?”
“We’re police officers,” Gary answered for us. “Going to a meeting with the Sûreté in Sherbrooke.”
“Are any of you carrying weapons?” the man asked without further comment.
“Nope. Left ’em at home.”
He finally allowed a small smile. “Then welcome to Canada. Have a good meeting.”
Smith picked up speed, now traveling the Canadian version of I-91, Route 55. “I thought we’d have to show our badges, at least.”
“You never been over here?” I asked him.
“Nope. Never saw the need,” he said, as if to counteract Spraiger’s exuberance.
“Good place for a cheap vacation,” Paul said from the back seat, undaunted. “The U.S. dollar’s worth a bundle.”
Silence returned as we all three watched the countryside slowly change to something markedly foreign. Québec is where the Appalachians peter out in altitude, becoming a plateau that gently tilts back down toward the St. Lawrence River farther north. The sky, restricted in Vermont to whatever mountain stands nearest, here opens up, leaving the impression that you’re traveling not at the bottom of a series of geological cereal bowls, but instead across an enormous plate, bordered only in the far distance by a fringe of low hills.