“Gino?” was the response.
“That’s it.” The big man smiled and addressed Joe. “Gino Famolare. Used to be an electrician, till he moved up. Now he drives a truck out of the port-a long-haul man. Mob associate. A real Nicky Newark. I never pegged him for a torch, though.”
“Nicky Newark?” Joe asked.
Lil smiled as she explained. “That’s what we call the typical lowbrow Italian hood around here. They’re not made men or Mafia bigwigs. Just small-time players-workingclass Mob, if you like. They have real jobs, live regular lives, but when a favor needs doing, they can be found. We call the female counterpart Connie Cavone-it’s kind of our version of Ken and Barbie.”
Joe’s optimism was guarded. “But there’s no connection linking Famolare to arson?”
The big man didn’t seem concerned. “Not yet. Not directly. But it may not be a big reach. Rog,” he asked another squad member down the table, “remember Vinnie Stazio?”
“What’s not to remember? You’re right. They were real close.”
“Who’s Vinnie Stazio?” Joe asked.
“Big-time local torch,” Rog answered. “A legend. I thought of him when this signature first surfaced. Vinnie used to like glue and a potassium chlorate/sugar mix, too, and he was a real mechanic. Did clever work. For fast timers, he would inject sulfuric acid into Ping-Pong balls and plant ’em in the potassium. Depending on the acid’s concentration and makeup, it would take longer or shorter to melt through and ignite the mix. Amazing work.”
“What happened to him?”
Lil answered that. “Dead. Maybe fifteen years ago, he was shot by a night watchman-an off-duty Newark cop. Shouldn’t have happened. He wasn’t armed. But I guess he ran. Supposedly, he threw something at the cop, who claimed he feared for his life as a result.”
“Yeah, that was a whitewash,” the man named Rog said. “I mean, I don’t want to bust the guy’s balls who shot him. I wasn’t there. But I thought it was bogus he got off without even a loss of pay. Vinnie was at least a pro-always made sure nobody got hurt. I’m not standing up for him, but he was super careful that way.”
“Could Gino have been an apprentice?” Joe asked, his hopes slowly rising.
“It’s possible. The solve rate for arson being so low, if you know what you’re doing, it wouldn’t be surprising we never heard of you. Sure as hell Gino kept the right company if he wanted to learn the trade.”
Lil rose from the table and crossed over to where a computer was perched on a counter along the wall. “Let’s see what central records has on him, just for kicks.”
Instinctively, most of the others got up also and gathered around behind her as she typed in her request. In a couple of minutes, the screen lit up with a photograph and a history. Lil intoned what she read for those behind her and for Willy, who typically hadn’t stirred from his seat.
“Giorgino Ernesto Famolare, born Newark, 1963, middle of five kids. Father was a longshoreman, also connected. Gino was brought up in Silver Lake, attended the local schools, initially trained as an electrician…” She tapped the screen with her finger. “He still lives in the ’hood. Probably brings flowers to his mother, good boy. Two daughters, one teen, one just beyond and in college. Okay… here we go: some teenage stuff-vandalism, petty theft, trespassing. He gets older; here’s a bookmaking rap, transportation of stolen goods. Sounds like he was a runner for the big boys. Then…” She scrolled down the screen. “Nothing. Clean as a whistle.”
She pushed away from the computer, and the group around her returned to their seats. “Just another urban story,” she concluded, sitting down.
“Suggestion,” said Rog. “If you want to find out about somebody, you check out his friends. If we collect every name he was ever busted with and run their records, could be we find him lurking dirty in the background. It would give us a better picture of what he’s been up to, even if he wasn’t the one in cuffs.”
Joe nodded in appreciation. In some police jurisdictions-and clearly this was one-note was made of everyone present at an individual’s arrest, whether those extras were charged with anything or not. It was a useful intelligence tool for exactly this kind of situation. But this was the kind of homework one did on a personal case-not on behalf of some cop from out of town.
“Good idea,” Lil said. “It’ll fall to one of us to do it, though, since these guys don’t know our computers.”
“I can handle it,” Rog said immediately. “Maybe it’ll be worth a free ski pass someday.”
The big man burst out laughing. “You? On skis? I would pay to see that.”
“I would make you,” Rog came back.
“Well,” said Joe, “if not a ski pass, whatever you’d like. Our treat.”
“Yeah,” Willy added. “We’ll show you mud season, ice fishing, and fifteen ways to slide off a road.”
“Willy moonlights for the tourist industry,” Joe explained amid the startled laughter that greeted Kunkle’s comment.
“Okay,” Lil said during the short lull following. “It’s getting late. You two probably want to get settled. You have a place to stay?”
Joe answered that they were all set and gave her the name and number of the motel he’d booked from Brattleboro before setting out, to which one of the men responded, “Too bad. We could’ve put you up in Irvington for a whole lot less.”
Outside Montpelier, Vermont, in a condo overlooking the valley and the town, Gail Zigman sat in her living room admiring how the setting sun slowly abandoned each roof to the coming night, leaving the sparkling gold dome of the capitol building until last.
“How was your trip?” she asked Joe on the phone.
“Strange,” he admitted. “I still have a hard time figuring out what all these millions of people do.”
She laughed. “Don’t feel bad. A lot of them were up here today. The GMO debate is heating up, and the troops are on the march. Everybody under the dome is running around looking for the best political cover they can find. How’re the police down there?”
“Great,” he answered. “They work directly for the prosecutor’s office, which is a little weird, but they’re good people. Incredibly helpful. They pulled our chains a little, doing the city cop, country cop routine, but that was par for the course.”
“Us?” she asked. “Who’d you take with you?”
“Willy. He knows Newark from the old days.”
Gail didn’t respond immediately. Having a thorough dislike of Kunkle, she was hard-pressed to say anything positive.
Joe took advantage of the pause to ask, “What’s the big debate about GMOs anyway? I wouldn’t have thought there’d be much question.”
“Not for me, there’s not,” she agreed. “But the Monsanto, Archer-Daniels-Midland types have done a good job brainwashing my conservative counterparts. They’ve got some powerful allies quoting the corporate scripture chapter and verse and making the organics and traditionalists look like a bunch of Chicken Littles.
“The problem,” she continued, “is that the small operators are right. We can’t compete with Iowa and Kansas, so we better concentrate on turning out specialty products. Ye olde Vermont farmer and the rest. Slap a premium price on everything from milk to sauerkraut and sell it like Ben amp; Jerry’s. It’s about our only trump card and we’re about to give it up. The purchase of GMO seeds in this state has quadrupled in the last three or four years, to a half million pounds.”
Now it was Joe’s turn to remain silent. Politics was of no great interest to him, and not an advisable pursuit in his line of work. Plus, he often felt uncomfortable when Gail climbed onto one of her soapboxes. Her enthusiasm could feel like a steamroller.
As if on cue, she kept going. “I hate it that this entire nation’s agriculture policy caters only to the megafarmers far from New England and is being driven by people who have no thought beyond the bottom line. I mean, everywhere you look, the biotechnology industry lords over both scientific research and regulation, including in Vermont. Our entire food chain is being controlled by a handful of global corporations located as far away from us as they can get.