David Handler - The sour cherry surprise

Oy, Quirt has just started yowling at me again. Such a set of lungs he’s got on him! Mitch, I’m not sure how long this little arrangement will last, since I do enjoy a night’s sleep now and then. Do you think you can come fetch him some time soon? If not, I’ll shove him into a carrier and bring him to the city on the train. Mind you, I’ll have to provide earplugs for my fellow passengers. But I’m game. Please advise.

Love, Aunt Bella. p.s. I don’t mean to be such a yenta regarding you and Des, but it so happens that I am a pure-blooded Jewish mother. And let us never forget that the word smother is just mother with an extra S in front of it.

To: Bella Tilllis

From: Mitch Berger

Subject: Re: Eureka

Dear Aunt Bella-I’m happy that you’ve managed to corral Quirt. But I could have sworn I already told you that Quirt will never be happy living with me here in the city. I can’t take him, Bella. Quirt’s a roamer.

And so am I, it turns out.

I wasn’t going to say anything until the deal is officially inked but the empire’s cable news network is giving me my own weekly half-hour show, complete with Miss Hawaii as my comely sidekick. I made it, ma! Top of the world! On the downside, it means I’ll be out in Los Angeles for a while, setting up a staff and so on. Actually, the newspaper would love it if I relocated out there permanently. But that’s not going to happen. I intend to stay in New York. Once the show’s up and running, I’ll be able to spend more time here. But, short term, I’m simply not going to be around. That means I’ll have to beg my assistant to cat-sit Clemmie. Throwing Quirt into the mix is out of the question.

I’m very sorry to hear about what’s happened to Richard Procter. Molly is so devoted to him. I did try e-mailing Molly again but I never heard back from her.

It’s funny about being away from Dorset. When I was living there full-time the lives of the people there seemed incredibly important to me. That’s what it means to be a Dorseteer. But now that I’ve left I don’t feel connected to them at all. I really enjoyed my time there, Bella. I’ll never forget the exquisite pleasure of sitting in a lawn chair with a cold Bass Ale watching the migratory shore birds fly by. But now that I’m back here living my normal life it’s almost as if none of that was truly real-especially Des and me. We never really made a whole lot of sense, if you stop and think about it. A black state trooper and a Jewish movie critic? How farfetched is that? If you put it in a movie nobody would buy it. And how in the hell would you cast it? Well, okay, you’d go with Halle Berry for Des. That’s a no brainer. But who on earth would play me? And don’t say Ben Stiller or we will never speak again.

Bella, I guess what I’m trying to say is that my Dorset interlude is over. I’ve moved on. You’re welcome to visit me in NYC any time. I’d love to see you-provided we talk about something, anything other than the resident trooper of Dorset, Connecticut, USA, a place that is now so far removed from my thoughts that I honestly can’t imagine what it would take to drag me back there again.

Much love,

Mitch

Her troop commander was a sagging accordion of a man named Rundle. Rundle was less than a year away from retirement. All he cared about was making sure Troop F ran friction-free. No emotional or jurisdictional conflicts of any kind. So it was not exactly a happy man who sat there behind his steel desk from them. Grumpy was more like it.

His office was small and plainly furnished. Some photos on his desk of his beloved grandkids and even more beloved fishing boat. The standard issue photo of the governor on the wall. Not much else. The Troop F Barracks practically kissed the southbound right-hand lane of I-95 in Westbrook. You never stopped hearing the interstate traffic whizzing by. If you stood over by Rundle’s window you could even watch it.

There were three others there besides Des. The supervising agent, who was a bland, buttoned-down DEA man named Cavanaugh. Capt. Joey Amalfitano, the point man for Connecticut’s Narcotics Task Force, who Des had worked a drive-by shooting with back when she was still on the Major Crime Squad. Everyone called him the Aardvark due to his huge, down-turned snout of a nose. And Agent Grisky of the FBI, who was dead wrong about the purpose of this meeting. It was not a tongue-lashing. Everyone was real polite and professional. Everyone, that is, except for Grisky himself. He was still acting all chippy when he wasn’t busy styling in his tight T-shirt and chewing gum with his mouth open.

It was Cavanaugh of the DEA who did most of the talking. “Master Sergeant Mitry, I’m afraid you’ve stumbled your way right smack dab into the middle of Operation Burrito King.”

Des sat there with her hands folded in her lap, wondering how it was the feds always came up with such cute names.

“This operation originated with some wire surveillance we had going on in Tucson,” he informed her in a clipped, quiet voice. “An informant of ours happened to be meeting a dealer at a fast food restaurant of that name.”

Okay, that answered that question.

“We’ve gotten our hooks into a major drug ring with ties to the Vargas family, Mexico’s largest cocaine trafficker in this country. Lately, they’ve started moving into crystal methamphetamine in a huge way. The why is pretty simple. We cracked down on the sale of over-the-counter cold medicines and other household ingredients that were being used to produce the ice domestically. Felt darned proud of ourselves, too. Trouble is, the Mexican traffickers immediately saw an opening and jumped right in.”

“Nobody ever said they weren’t smart businessmen,” Des said.

Cavanaugh nodded his head. “They mass produce it south of the border, then ship it into the U.S. I am talking about hundreds and hundreds of pounds of methamphetamine crystals that are crossing into this country every day. As to what happens to it once it gets north of the border, well, our investigation has led us to Atlanta.”

Right away, Des felt an uptick of her pulse.

“Atlanta’s their distribution center, okay?” Grisky put in now, chomping away at his gum. “All of the ice shipments headed for the midwest and northeast pass through there, okay?”

Des said, “Okay.” He wasn’t going to be happy until she did.

“Over the past six months,” Cavanaugh continued, “we’ve assembled a joint task force made up of the DEA, the FBI, the Connecticut Organized Crime Task Force and, most recently, Captain Amalfitano and his Narcotics Task Force. U.S. Attorney Stokes has also been involved in an advisory capacity for quite some time.”

“And why did you end up in Dorset?” Des wanted to know.

“Because they did,” the Aardvark told her, slurping from a Styrofoam cup of coffee. “Like you said, they aren’t dumb. If they stash a huge quantity of product somewhere like the South Bronx then it’s always at risk. You’re talking about a high-crime area crawling with dealers, users and various and sundry lowlifes. Maybe a rival dealer rips them off. Maybe a strung-out snitch whispers in some beat cop’s ear. Bottom line, their product is never secure and they know it. So they’ve started using stash houses in nice, quiet little towns like yours where there isn’t a whole lot of crime or drug traffic or scrutiny. It’s under the radar there. Who would think to look for three hundred pounds of crystal meth in Dorset, am I right?”

“You’re not wrong,” Rundle wheezed, putting the lie to Des’s theory that he’d fallen asleep behind his desk with his eyes open.

“Just last year,” Cavanaugh revealed, “one of the other Mexican cartels was using a lovely little village in the Pennsylvania Amish country.”