"Suit yourself," he said, without the resentment she'd expected.
He aimed the car at the downhill exit and swept onto Canal.
"Right there," she pointed at a battered phone under a nearby streetlight, the better to photograph by.
But Dancer kept up his speed. "Change of plans," he said, oozing the pleasure of someone springing a surprise. "I got a deal going that'll look like Fred and Ginger all over again. We'll be so hot, Rivera'll shit his pants."
He drove past the gas station and turned right on Fairground Road.
"Pull over, Bill," Sam yelled at him. "Don't you screw around with this. This is our shot, goddammit. Pull over." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Manuel sit forward in his seat, getting ready to act if necessary.
Bill pushed Sam's hands away from the steering wheel. "I know it's our shot, stupid. That's why I'm doing it. I'm the contact guy, remember? This is my job. I'm not going to screw around selling to a couple of needle freaks in town after town all over southern Vermont. That's stupid. Score once, score big, and blow Rivera's socks off. He won't even be on his second sitcom before we drop a bag of cash at his feet in an hour and a half."
He laughed and glanced at her. "Face it, Greta, you got the brains for some of this-I give you that. But I know this turf. I set it up while you were jerking around with Johnny boy, or whatever the hell you were doing up there." He patted his pocket. "Cell phones work just fine, and nobody is listening in. Trust me."
Unfortunately, she did. There wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that any agency in Vermont had the cash, the equipment, or even the know-how to grab a cell phone signal and do anything more than triangulate its source. Their first buy on their first outing on her first detail as an undercover was just about to go wild.
* * * * *
"Joe," the voice crackled in his earphone, "they just blew by the pay phone. Gatekeeper didn't look happy."
Joe straightened in his seat and pressed the earphone to his ear. He was sitting in a van parked nearby. They'd agreed to use Gatekeeper instead of Sam's name just to be safe. "Define unhappy."
The voice belonged to Lester Spinney. He and Joe were the only ones on this detail, testing the waters and lending Sam moral support. Traditionally, a deep undercover is on his or her own, except for checking in with control on a regular, preset basis. This time, however, because the operation had come together so fast, Joe had asked Rick McCall if he could baby-sit Sam's first outing. McCall had agreed but had limited them to Brattleboro only, not wanting to risk exposure.
"Just that. Dancer's at the wheel and he turned right onto Fairground. I think she's just pissed off. There's a third rider, by the way. Somebody in the back seat. I'm following them now."
Joe slid in behind the wheel of the surveillance van and pulled into traffic, driving down Canal toward South Main, which eventually looped around to meet up with Fairground Road. That way, he and Spinney were coming in from opposite directions.
"You get a look at the third rider?" he asked.
Spinney's voice was calm, as always, almost conversational, despite everyone being off the game plan by now. That was one thing about Spinney. Gunther had no idea what had been distracting him lately, but in a crunch, the man was as steady as a tree trunk.
"Nope. Just a shadow. We've passed the high school and the town garage, now heading toward the far end of South Main."
This was the same street where Henry Jordan had first spotted Roger Novelle-a magnet for this kind of activity. "I'm coming in from the far end," Gunther told him. "Don't crowd them."
* * *
Bill Dancer pulled over to the side of the street and extracted his cell phone again. Sam watched him, torn over what to do. He did have contacts. It was possible he had set something up that would reflect well on them. Her plan had been to deal to people she and Joe had set up all down the line, hoping both to keep the heroin out of circulation and to cover themselves legally-even deep undercover, she was still a cop and could not sell drugs personally. But this was now Bill's play. She was off the hook in the eyes of the law.
Maybe this could work.
"Hey, Bobby," Bill was saying into the phone. "How's it hanging, bro? I got the stuff if you got the time."
He laughed at whatever response he heard. "No problem, dude. Be there in five. Start countin' out the money."
Dancer put the car back into gear and resumed driving down South Main, but slowly, his eyes on the house numbers. "There it is," he said finally, pulling over, killing the engine, and, Sam noticed, leaving the key in the ignition. "Everybody out."
Sam and Manuel stepped onto the sidewalk and looked around as Bill popped open the car trunk and retrieved Rivera's bag. South Main was an interesting mix of homes and apartments, some middle-class, many far less fortunate. This entire part of town was largely overlooked by Brattleboro's citizenry, acknowledged only when one of the street's several bordering cemeteries was put to use or when a high-profile crime was committed here. But unlike many low-income neighborhoods, this one was also low-profile-the signs and symptoms of its status were easily missed by motorists who used South Main as a shortcut to elsewhere. There were no boarded up or gutted buildings, no gangs of kids loitering around spruced up BMWs. This wasn't Holyoke. It wasn't a hot spot. It was a remote way station on misery's course into the hinterland. Too many of the people who lived here were either victims or transient opportunists, with no more plans of empire building than making enough bucks to see them through the day-or buying enough dope to minimize the pain.
With a bright, cocky smile, Bill Dancer strode by them with the paper bag, heading toward a ramshackle, two-story building with a sagging front porch. "Let's go make some money."
For the first time, Sam and Manuel shared a connection, glancing at each other, he with raised eyebrows, she with a shrug, followed by simultaneous smiles, before they swung in behind the subject of their nervous amusement and climbed the steps to the porch.
They were met at the door by a grim-faced bearded man with his hand under his shirt and his eyes on the street behind them. He placed his free hand flat against Bill's chest and stopped him at the threshold.
"Not so fast."
Bill sounded incredulous. "I just called, for Christ's sake. Lighten up. Bob said to come ahead."
"And now you stop," the man said, "until I tell you different."
He looked at the other two. "You stay outside while I check him out."
He grabbed Bill by the shirtfront and began dragging him inside.
"The bag," Sam quickly said.
Catching her meaning, Bill back-passed the bag to her as he vanished through the door.
In the few moments it took the bearded man to check Bill for weapons or wires, Sam whispered to Manuel, "I don't like this divide-and-conquer shit. If anything goes wrong, we grab the product and run."
Manuel spoke for the first time since they'd met. "What about your friend?"
"If this goes wrong, he's on his own. I got bigger fish to fry than that loser."
The door reopened and the doorman motioned to her. Sam handed the bag to Manuel. "See ya."
The bearded man pulled her by the arm into a small room off the entryway and pushed her up against the wall, holding her there with one hand hard against her breast.