Dennis Lehane - Gone, Baby, Gone

City cops always remind me of the grunts in old war movies. No matter how nicely dressed, they seem one step away from crawling on their bellies up the beach at Normandy, wet cigar clenched between their teeth, dirt raining on their backs. But when I look at the average Statie-the clenched jaw and arrogant turn of chin, the sun glinting off all those uniform parts built to glint-I instantly picture them goose-stepping down the autumn streets of Poland circa 1939.

Major Dempsey had removed his large hat shortly after we were all assembled, to reveal an alarmingly orange tuft of hair underneath. It was shorn to bright stubbled pikes that rose from the scalp like Astroturf, and he seemed aware of the disconcerting effect it had on strangers. He smoothed the sides with his palms, lifted the pointer off his desk, and tapped it against his open palm as his owl eyes surveyed the room with a bemused contempt. To his left, in a small row of chairs under the seal of the Commonwealth, Lieutenant Doyle sat with the police chief of Quincy, both dressed in their funereal best, all three watching the room with imposing stares.

We’d convened in the briefing room of the State Police barracks in Milton, and the entire left side of the room was commandeered by the Staties themselves, all hawkeyed and smooth-skinned, hats tucked crisply under their arms, not so much as a hairline wrinkle in their trousers or shirts.

The left side of the room was made up of Quincy cops in the front rows and Boston in the rear. The Quincy cops seemed to be emulating the Staties, though I spotted a few wrinkles, a few hats cast to the floor by their feet. They were mostly young men and women, cheeks as smooth and shiny as striped bass, and I’d have bet hard cash none of them had ever fired their guns in the line of duty.

The rear of the room, by comparison, looked like the waiting area at a soup kitchen. The uniformed cops looked okay, but the CAC guys and women, as well as the host of other detectives brought in from other squads on temporary assignment, were a color-clashing, coffee-stained collection of five o’clock shadow, cigarette-stink breath, rumpled hair, and clothes so wrinkled you could lose small appliances in their folds. Most of the detectives had been working the Amanda McCready case since the outset, and they had that “fuck-you-if-you-don’t-like-it” demeanor of all cops who’ve been clocking too much overtime and banging on too many doors. Unlike the Staties and the Quincy cops, the members of the Boston contingent sprawled in their seats, kicked at each other, and coughed a lot.

Angie and I, arriving just before the meeting began, took our seats in the rear. In her freshly laundered black jeans and untucked black cotton shirt under a brown leather jacket, Angie looked good enough to sit up with the Quincy cops, but I was strictly post-Seattle grunge in a torn flannel shirt over a white Ren amp; Stimpy T-shirt and jeans speckled with flecks of white paint. My hi-tops were brand-spanking-new, though.

“Those the kind you pump?” Broussard asked, as we slid into the seats beside him and Poole.

I brushed a piece of lint off my new kicks. “Nope.”

“Too bad. I like the pump.”

“According to the commercial,” I said, “they’ll help me jump as high as Penny Hardaway and get two chicks at once.”

“Oh, well, then. Worth the cash.”

Behind Major Dempsey, two troopers hung a large topographical map of the Quincy quarries and the Blue Hills Reservation on the wall. As soon as it was fastened, Dempsey lifted his pointer and tapped a spot midway up the map.

“Granite Rail Quarry,” he said crisply. “Recent developments in the Amanda McCready disappearance lead us to believe that an exchange will be made tonight at twenty hundred hours. The kidnappers wish to trade the child for a satchel of stolen money which is currently in the care of the Boston Police Department.” He drew a large circle around the map with his pointer. “As you can see, the quarries were probably chosen because of the myriad potential escape routes.”

“Myriad,” Poole said under his breath. “Good word.”

“Even with helicopters at our disposal and a full-scale task force waiting at strategic points around both the quarries and the Blue Hills Reservation, this will not be an easy area to contain. To make things even more difficult, the kidnappers have demanded that only four people approach the area tonight. Until the exchange occurs, we have to maintain a completely invisible presence.”

A trooper raised his hand and cleared his throat. “Major, how are we to establish a perimeter around the area and still keep from being seen?”

“There’s the rub.” Dempsey ran a hand over his chin.

“He didn’t just say that,” Poole whispered.

“He did.”

“Wow.”

“Command Post One,” Dempsey said, “will be set up in this valley, at the base of the bunny slope in the Blue Hills. From there, the top of Granite Rail Quarry is less than one minute by helicopter. The majority of our forces will be on standby there. As soon as we have word that the exchange has been completed, we will sweep out and around the reservation, block Quarry Street at both ends, Chickatawbut and Saw Cut Notch roads at both ends, seal off both the south and north exits and entrance ramps to the southeast expressway, and throw a blanket over the whole kit and kaboodle.”

“Kit,” Poole said.

“Kaboodle,” Broussard said.

“Command Post Two will be here at the entrance to Quincy Cemetery, and Command Post Three…”

We listened for the next hour as Dempsey outlined the plan of containment and carved up duties between state and local police departments. Over one hundred and fifty cops would be deployed and camping out around the Quincy quarries and at the edge of the Blue Hills. They had three helicopters at their disposal. The elite BPD Hostage Negotiation Team would be on-site. Lieutenant Doyle and the Quincy police chief would act as “rovers”-each in his own car, headlamps off, circling the quarries in the dark.

“Pray they don’t crash into each other,” Poole said.

The quarries comprised a large land mass. At the height of the New England granite boom, more than sixty were in operation. Granite Rail remained one of twenty-two that hadn’t been filled in, and the sites of the rest spread wide across the torn hills between the expressway and the Blue Hills. We’d be entering at night with very little light. Even the rangers Dempsey brought in to speak about the area admitted that there were so many trails in those hills that some were known only to the few people who used them.

But the trails weren’t really the issue. Trails eventually led somewhere and that somewhere was a small number of roads, a public park or two. Even if the kidnappers could slip through the dragnet on the hills, they’d be nabbed somewhere below. If it were a case of just the four of us and a few cops monitoring the hills, I’d give the edge to Cheese’s people. But with one hundred and fifty cops, I was hard-pressed to see how anyone planned to move in and out of there unnoticed.

And no matter how dumb most of the people in Cheese’s organization were, even they had to know that, no matter what their demands, in a hostage situation there would be a lot of cops.

So how were they planning to get out?

I raised my hand the next time Dempsey paused, and when he saw me, he looked like he was considering ignoring me, so I said, “Major.”

He looked down at his pointer. “Yes.”

“I don’t see how the kidnappers can escape.”

Several cops chuckled and Dempsey smiled.

“Well, that’s the point, Mr. Kenzie, isn’t it?”

I smiled back. “I understand that, but don’t you think the kidnappers do too?”