Roses Are Red

Chapter Ninety-Two

The meeting started out very badly. Detective Weiss from NYPD Internal Affairs took it upon himself to speak for the rest of us. Weiss found it necessary to start at the begi

It was excruciating. I badly wanted to interrupt him, but I didn't. Every time Weiss asked another question or launched into a senseless diatribe criticizing Macdougall, I nudged Betsey's foot under the table. To punctuate a couple of embarrassing exchanges she kicked me in the shins.

Macdougall finally had enough of it too. "You fucking suck! "he blew up at Weiss. "You people are a joke. It's about your gut, Weiss, not covering your fat ass. You're wasting my time. Let somebody else ask the questions."

He glared at Weiss, who still seemed not to get it.

"You're asking all the wrong fucking questions, asshole." Macdougall finally stood up and shouted at the top of his voice," You're godawful at your job, you suck, you're wasting everybody's time!"

Macdougall then stomped over to a grimy window that was covered by a heavy metal screen and bars. His lawyers trailed after him. He said something, and they all laughed. Ho, ho, ho. What a crack-up Brian Macdougall was.

The rest of us sat at the conference table and watched them. Betsey consoled Weiss, tried to keep up a united front.

"Fuck him, "Weiss said with unusual clarity and brevity," I can ask him anything I want to. We bought that son of a bitch."

Betsey nodded at Weiss. "You're right, Harry. He's arrogant and he's wrong. Typical detective, "she said," Maybe he would respond to Detective Cross. He doesn't seem to like IAD."

Weiss shook his head at first, but then he relented. "Fine, whatever it takes. Whatever works with this asshole. I'm a team player."

"We're all team players," she said and lightly patted Weiss's arm. She was good. "Thanks for being open to the suggestion."

Macdougall came back to the table, and he seemed calmer. He even apologized to Weiss. "I'm sorry. Nerves are a little frayed, you know."

I waited a couple of seconds for his apology to be accepted by Weiss, but the IAD man never said a word. I finally began. "Detective Macdougall, why don't you tell us what you have that's important. You know what you have to tell. You also know what we want to hear."

Macdougall looked at both of his lawyers. He finally smiled.

Chapter Ninety-Three

"All right, let's try that approach. Simple questions and simple answers. I met with the so-called Mastermind three times. Always down in Washington. Each time I saw him, he gave us what he called' traveling expenses," That was fifty grand a trip, which made it well worth our while, and also caught our attention, piqued our interest.

"He was very, very buttoned-up. Thought everything through. Knew all the angles. Knew what he was talking about. And he told us right off that our cut of the action would be fifteen million dollars. He was very credible when he talked about Metro Hartford He had a concept and a plan that was extremely detailed. We felt it was workable, and it was."

"How did he know about you?" I asked. "How did he contact you?" Macdougall liked the question, or made it seem as if he did. "There's a lawyer we use sometimes. "He looked at the lawyers on either side of him. "Not these two gentlemen. He contacted our other lawyer. We don't know exactly how he knew about us, but he knew what we did, how we worked. That's useful information, Detective Weiss. Make yourself a note. Who would know about us? Somebody in law enforcement? A cop? One of ours, Detective Weiss? An agent with the FBI? A cop from DC? Maybe somebody in this room? It could be anybody."

Weiss couldn't control himself. His face was red. The collar of his button-down white shirt looked a couple of sizes too small. "But you already know who it is, Macdougall? Isn't that right?"

Macdougall looked at Betsey and me. He shook his head. He couldn't believe Weiss either. "I'm coming to that, to what I know, and what I don't know. Don't underestimate the information that he knew about us. He knew about Detective Cross. And about Agent Cavalierre. He knew everything. That's important."

"I agree with you," I said. "Go on, please."

"All right. Before we agreed to the second meeting, we were doing our best to find out who the hell this so-called Mastermind was. We even talked to the FBI about him. We made whatever contacts we could make. We found out nothing. He left no trail.

"So we get to meet number two. Bobby Shaw tries to follow him after he leaves the hotel. Shaw loses him."

"Which makes you think he might be some kind of cop?" I asked.

Macdougall shrugged. "It definitely crosses our minds. Meeting number three is about whether we are in or out. Half of thirty million dollars we already know we're in. He knows we're in. We try to negotiate a better cut. He laughs, says absolutely not. We agree to his terms. It's his way or we're out.

"He leaves the hotel after the meet. We've got two men following him this time. He's tall, heavy, dark beard but we think it's probably a disguise. Our two guys almost lose him again.

"But they don't lose him. They're very lucky. They see him go into the Hazelwood Veterans Hospital in DC. He doesn't come out again. We don't know what he looks like, but the Mastermind went in there and he stayed. He didn't come out."

Macdougall stopped talking. He let his eyes go slowly down the line from Weiss to Betsey to me.

"He's a mental patient, guys and girl. He's at Hazelwood Veterans Hospital in Washington. He's on the mental-health ward. You just have to find him in there."

Chapter Ninety-Four

FBI agents were immediately dispatched to Hazelwood Veterans Hospital. Files on every current patient, and also the staff, were being pulled and would be evaluated. The Veterans Administration was blocking access to the patients themselves, but that wouldn't last very long.

I spent the rest of a very long day crosschecking copies of files on employees and customers of Metro Hartford against patient records as they became available from Hazelwood. Thank God for computers. Even if the Mastermind was at the hospital, no one knew exactly what he looked like. His half of the thirty million dollars was still missing. But we were closer to him than we'd ever been. We had recovered nearly all the money from the New York detectives. Only a couple hundred thousand was still missing. All the detectives were trying to play Let's make a deal."

That night around nine-thirty, Betsey and I had di