Fourth Victim (13 page)

T
he Little Greek Café was on Hawkins Avenue in Ronkonkoma. For years before Joe Serpe had rebuilt his life, he’d eat dinner there a few times a week. When he was done, he would head across the street to Lugo’s for an evening of Absolut and absolutely any woman who offered up her bed. The place was crowded, if not full. Maria, the waitress who had been at the café for so many years she was as much a part of the décor as the blue vinyl booths and the cheesy frescos of the Mediterranean, lit up at the sight of Joe.

“You abandoned me, no?” she said with a wink.

“You? Never.”

“You sure you’re not Greek? I think you Greek.”

“Italian, Maria.”

“I think your grandparents, they swim to Sicily.”

“Could be.”

“Is so. I feel it.”

Things had changed. Maria was a little older, grayer. The booths had a few more tears repaired with duct tape, but Maria didn’t skip a beat. Although Joe hadn’t been in for more than a year, her routine about his family tree was the same. “What happened to your head?”

“Banged it into a wall.”

She didn’t believe him. “Sure. Sure. Take any seat you want, Joe.”

“I’ll take that two-top over there by the booth. Someone’s meeting me in a few minutes.”

“A woman? I was right. You breaking my heart.”

“When you see who’s meeting me, Maria, your heart will be all better. I promise.”

“Men and their promises. Pffff!” She waved her hand. “Worthless.”

Serpe sat down, staring blindly at the menu. He was pretty spent from work and he was still suffering the after effects of the knock on his head. He was also very much on edge about Stanfill. There was nothing on the radio all day. Now he figured it would be at least Monday before someone else found the body. No lawyers, not even the strip mall variety, worked on Sundays. Once they found the body, it would be a few days until the Nassau cops worked their way through the dead lawyer’s calendar and back to Joe. The added time was anything but a reprieve. On the job, there was this detective who had to retire because of panic attacks. “It’s not the attacks themselves,” he told Serpe. “I can deal with those. It’s the waiting for them to happen that gets to me.” If he hadn’t fully understood then, Joe got it now.

Detective Timothy Hoskins fairly strolled into the café like he owned the place. Everything about him, from his sneer to his lumbering gait, a warning to the rest of the world:
I’m a badass motherfucker. Keep your distance.
Serpe knew better. Hoskins dumped himself into the seat across from Joe with a thud and purposefully scraped the chair legs along the blue and white tile floor as he pulled up to the table. He waited for Serpe to say the first word.

“Christ, Hoskins, give it a fucking rest. Don’t you ever get tired of this tough guy bullshit? We’re here to do business.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re here. I’m here to eat.”

Serpe waved for Maria to come take the order. She scowled at Hoskins as he ordered two cheeseburgers, double fries and extra raw onion. Joe ordered gyro meat over a salad and asked Maria to bring over a couple of Greek beers. She came back with the beers, some bread, and yogurt sauce. Neither Serpe nor Hoskins made a move to clink bottles. “You eat that gyro shit? It’s cat meat.”

“Meow.” Serpe ignored him, dipping his edge of pita into the yogurt sauce.

“Very funny. So, what’s this business?”

“I want copies of the files on the first four murdered drivers.” Hoskins made a show of spitting out his beer. “That’s almost as funny as the cat noise and that wasn’t too funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

“Good thing you’re paying for dinner or I’d be outta here.”

“That’s weird. I thought you were paying for dinner because me and Healy solved your case for you and you didn’t look like the total incompetent piece of shit that you are in front of the press,” Joe said, smiling the whole time. “But as long as I get those files, I’ll spring for dinner.”

“Fuck you!” Hoskins made to stand.

“Sit the fuck down or I’ll tell the press about how you had nothing to do with closing the case on Albie Jimenez, Debbie Hanlon, and Hank Noonan. How do you think you’ll look on the cover of
Newsday
giving back your medal and commendation?”

Hoskins snarled, but he sat down. “I ain’t got ‘em yet. Besides, you don’t have the balls.”

“Try me.”

“Maybe you don’t give a shit about yourself, but you wouldn’t do it to Healy’s brother, the ADA. Never mind how I would look. He wouldn’t look too good neither.”

“And how do you think the DA and the Commissioner will look, Hoskins? The two of them would look worst of all. Who do you think would catch the shit for that? Not me. What could they do to my rep that hasn’t already been done? I’m a private citizen, a disgraced cop, remember? You keep playing chicken with me and you’ll find out what that feels like, being a disgraced cop. You wouldn’t last five minutes without having people to bully or a badge in your pocket to bully them with. You’d eat your gun before the ink was dry on your papers.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, you said that. Listen, thanks to me and Healy, you’ve had a good streak, but it won’t last. Another driver gets killed and people will start paying attention again. They’ll also notice that you haven’t picked up Burns yet for the Hanlon and Noonan murders. I’m sure
Newsday
will be only too glad to remind the good people of Suffolk County. I’ve lived here long enough to know they don’t like murderers running around the county.”

Hoskins leaned across the table. “What is it you really want?”

“That’s simple. I want to find out who killed Rusty Monaco.”

“The guy was a piece of shit. He probably deserved what he got, the cunt.”

“Did I hear you right?”

“You heard me right. He was a worse cop than you. He probably had it coming.”

“Even if he did, I want the files. So here’s the deal. Get me copies of the case files. If Healy and me find the killer, we turn it over to you. You get the glory and I find out who killed Monaco. Tough deal to pass up when there’s no downside for you.”

Hoskins considered it, running his fingers along the stubble on his cheeks.

“Keep your fucking deal,” he said, standing up. “And keep your food too.”

“Too bad, Hoskins, because I won’t be the only one going to the media.”

“Who—”

Just then, Gigi Monaco slid out of the booth behind the table Hoskins and Serpe were seated at.

“I believe you know Georgine Monaco,” Serpe said to the detective.

“So my big brother was a piece of shit and a cunt who had it coming to him? Mr. Serpe warned me about you. He was right, you’re not even trying to solve my brother’s murder,” she said loudly enough so that the other diners were beginning to pay attention. Hoskins noticed them noticing.

“You heard wrong. That’s not how it is.”

“No?” Gigi held up a hand held digital recorder. “Should I play it back so everyone here can listen?”

“Forget it,” Hoskins said, but didn’t sit back down.

Maria delivered the food to the table.

“Sit down and eat,” Serpe said.

“I got no appetite to eat with a rat.”

“I wrap it for you to go,” Maria said to Hoskins.

“I got a better idea. Stick it up his ass.” Hoskins intentionally banged into the table as he left. All the food spilled onto the floor, the thick white dishes smashing when they hit the tile.

Maria was still screaming at him even as the door shut behind him. Joe Serpe didn’t understand Greek, but he didn’t have to. Tim Hoskins was a detestable man in any language. Maria refused Joe’s help in cleaning up the mess. Serpe put two twenties and a ten on the table and left.

“So, I guess that didn’t go how you wanted it,” Gigi said, as Serpe opened the car door for her.

“Don’t sweat it. He’ll get me the files. If he wasn’t going to get them, he’d’ve stayed and eaten to rub my face in it. That shit with the breaking dishes, that’s just what bullies do.”

“I know, my brother was one.”

Joe Serpe didn’t say a word as he closed the car door.

T
he Nellie Bly Houses were four depressing, twenty story beige brick towers, that jutted up into the Brooklyn skyline like a grouping of amputated middle fingers. Healy shook his head at the sight of them. You didn’t have to be a philosophical sort to wonder about the thought processes of the men who had created this vertical ghetto. He told Blades as much.

“Ghetto,” she said, snickering. “There’s a word you don’t hear much in the twenty-first century. Next you’re gonna start talking slums and shit.”

“I don’t mean ghetto like that. I mean it like warehouse. It’s just backwards.”

“I guess I understand.”

They parked Healy’s car and walked around to the back of Building #4; the building from which fifteen year-old Bogarde DeFrees either fell or was pushed. Healy pointed at a thick hedge that marked out a border between Building #4 and a sad little playground of moot see-saw anchors, swingless swings, and holes in the black rubber mats where slide support poles used to sit.

“There used to be a wrought iron fence right here where he landed. They replaced it with these bushes, I guess. It was pretty fucking gruesome with the kid impaled on the fence. Blood was everywhere and the fence was all twisted from the force of the impact. And I only saw the crime scene photos.”

“These?” Blades said, opening her copy of the file.

“Those.”

“He fell pretty far away from the building.”

“That’s why the detectives who originally caught it, pretty much thought the kid was pushed or thrown from the roof. If he just fell, he would have landed closer to the footprint of the building.”

“Mighta jumped.”

“Yeah,” Healy agreed, “that could account for it too. Now you see why we had a nightmare making a case. Without eyewitnesses or forensics to prove Monaco tossed the kid … And it wasn’t like the young Mr. Defrees was an untroubled victim here. He was pretty well familiar with the arcane workings of the child welfare system and the juvee institutions this fine city has to offer. He’d spent a few overnights at the Kings County Psych unit too.”

“Even if Defrees was a gangsta or a total head case, it doesn’t justify murder.”

“You’re right, but I’m just trying to point out how hard it was to make a case.”

They walked around to the central commons, a quadrangle of asphalt paths and green-painted concrete wedges meant to imply lawns. They were marked off with short poles and slouching runs of chain between them. There was a big patch of blank concrete fill in the middle of the quad where a full-size bronze likeness of Nellie Bly, the world famous 19th century journalist and adventurer, had once rested. Where the statue had got too was anybody’s guess. She always did suffer from wanderlust, that Nellie Bly. The main entrances to the project buildings were set at the extremes of the paths.

“So what were Monaco and McCauley doing here in the first place?” Blades asked as they made the turn around Building #4 for the commons.

“Guy in the building tipped off the local precinct about a fence operating out of an apartment on the top floor. Of course the guy who ratted out the fence had bought a stolen credit card himself. Problem was, the card had been cancelled and the fence had a strict no money back policy. When McCauley and Monaco came to arrest the fence, a woman on the floor came screaming that there was some sort of commotion going on in the stairwell leading up to the roof. Monaco told McCauley to stay with the prisoner and went to check it out. What really happened from that moment until the time Bogarde DeFrees hit the wrought iron twenty stories down is still pretty much unknown.”

“What was Monaco’s story?”

“He found blood in the stairwell and a bayonette at the base of the steps. He made his way up to the roof access door, which had been pried open. When he came out onto the roof, he didn’t see anyone. Eventually, he found Bogarde DeFrees hiding behind a vent shaft. Monaco said he told the kid not to move, but that DeFrees pulled a gun on him and ran. Monaco gave chase. He claimed the kid was running at a pretty good clip, stumbled, and went over the side.”

“Too easy,” Blades said. “All too pat.”

“Hey, I’m with you, but the prints on the knife were DeFrees’ as were the prints on the nine millimeter.”

“The blood on the steps?”

“African-American male, type O, but not DeFrees’. Never identified. The assumption was the blood belonged to the other party who was mixing it up with DeFrees in the stairwell.”

“So Bogarde DeFrees was armed with both a knife and a gun, but DeFrees ends up dead and this guy he was fighting with … what happened to him? Did he have like a
Star Trek
cloaking device or something? Because if the pictures and diagrams in the file are right, he would have had to have run past Monaco to escape.”

“We never found the other guy,” Healy admitted. “Monaco contended that they musta both gone up to the roof when they heard him approaching and that they split up once they got up there. The assumption is that after DeFrees went over the side, the other party slipped back down off the roof.”

“Bullshit.”

“Well,” he said, “let’s see if we can prove it now. We couldn’t four years ago.”

The cover story that Hines and Healy concocted was purposefully lacking in detail. Their pitch was that there was new information concerning the identity of the second party in the stairwell that day in September 2001 and that they were rechecking all the facts they had gathered back then. When people asked what that new information was, they just said they weren’t at liberty to discuss it. Hines did most of the talking with Healy hanging back and observing. Although people did seem motivated to talk, they didn’t have much to say that shed any new light on the day in question. Many simply recognized Healy and asked after him. Those who didn’t feel like talking were four years more beligerent and resentful and took the opportunity to rage against the machine.

“Well, that didn’t get us anywhere,” Healy said.

“I tell you what, you surprise me.”

“How’s that?”

“Most of those people liked you.”

“For a white cop, you mean. I musta had my moments, huh?”

“I guess.”

“It’s what, four? I’m beat.”

“Me too. Let’s go get a drink,” she said. “We’ll start on Building #3 when we get back.”

Things were different when they got back. Word had spread all through the houses about the two of them nosing around and their brilliantly vague story that had gotten some folks to open up a little, suddenly seemed a whole lot less brilliant. No one was talking now and no one was very interested in asking after Healy. Actually, this is what thay had expected in the first place and, if they’d gotten it when they made their initial canvass, neither Detective Hines nor Healy would have given it much thought. But the cold shoulders, slamming doors, and sideway glances coming now as they did, were just pissing them off. It was like a veil of silence had descended on the Nellie Bly Houses and it hadn’t happened by accident.

“Somebody put the clamp down tight,” Blades said, as they walked out of Building #3 into the fully fallen night.

“You could see it in their eyes, somebody put the fear of God into ‘em.”

“Ain’t God they’re afraid of.”

“Who then?”

“Shit, in these projects, could be any number of candidates. We’d have to know what gangs run outta here, who’s dealing outta what building.”

“You wanna call it quits for today?” he asked.

“Hell no! They ain’t talking today, not gonna be any better tomorrow.”

“Okay. Building One or Two?”

“You pick.”

Healy started for Building #1 with Hines at his heels.

They made pretty quick work of the first several floors of Building #1, though it would be more accurate to say the building made quick work of them. If door slamming was an olympic sport, there were several gold medal prospects in the Nellie Bly Houses. But when they got to Apartment 5F, things changed. The door to 5F opened wide for Hines and Healy and there was anything but silence waiting for them inside.

Based purely on the look of her, Evelyn Marsden was a bit of a caricature. She was a very heavyset black woman of fifty with dark skin, a massive bosom, and a dead serious demeaneor. Her hair was slicked and straightened; wore a too-tight print dress; carried a tattered bible in her hand. Her apartment was plainly furnished, neat as a pin, and smelled faintly of frying bacon. The walls were lined with religious-themed paintings and quilts that featured bible quotations. There were several renderings of Jesus, on and off the cross. Interspersed with the religious wall hangings were seemingly incongruous framed photos of the Brooklyn Bridge, the distant Manhattan skyline, fog over the Brooklyn skyline, shots of the concrete and asphalt quad taken from a high vantage point, black and white portraits of homeless men, fishing boats at Sheepshead Bay, the rides at Coney Island. But the thing that caught the attention of both Hines and Healy was the shrine.

Lit votives of all shapes, colors, and sizes filled the center portion of an old roll-top desk. Scattered among the candles were wooden, plaster, and metal crosses, rosary beads, prayer cards, handwritten notes, bible pages, and wallet-sized photos of a smiling little boy with missing teeth and a school uniform. He was a skinny kid, but you could see Evelyn’s face in his. On the top ledge of the desk, resting against the wall, were two 8” x 11” ornate, gold picture frames. One frame held a pastel drawing of a beatific Jesus. The other was of the kid. He was older in this shot, maybe eighteen or nineteen, more serious. The school uniform had been replaced by a sweater and a reversed Kangol cap. A gold cross was nailed to the wall just above the pictures, centered between the frames.

“That’s my boy Edgerin. These here are his pictures,” she said, gesturing at the photos on the wall. “He woulda been the next Gordon Parks had the Lord not taken him for hisself.”

Blades and Healy stared at each other, wondering who was going to ask the question. Healy took the plunge. “What happened to your son?”

“I know it ain’t Christian of me to hold the anger and hate in my heart against you folks, but Lord, it’s so hard sometimes.”

“How do you mean?” Blades wondered.

“It’s near four years and y’all still askin’ round ‘bout that DeFrees boy. Now he been called to the Lord, but he was such a bad child, getting in all kinds of things. Y’all will never let that go, what happened to him. My boy Edgerin, he was killed not a day later, gunned down right in the courtyard, and you folks ain’t never done a thing ‘bout it.”

“Gunned down?”

“Someone walked right up to him and shot him in the head, robbed his camera and all his film, took everything he had, everything he was ever gonna have.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Healy said. “Can you give me the name of the detectives that spoke with you? Maybe my partner here can check if there’s been any progress in the case.”

Blades shook her head yes. “I will do that for you, Mrs. Marsden. And even if there’s nothing to report, I’ll get back to you. I give you my word.”

“I can’t never get past that day. Edgerin was upset about something, but I didn’t have no time to listen to him.”

“Somebody dies. Somebody close feels guilty. It’s the way of life.” Healy explained about his wife’s death and his own guilt. He may have been talking about Mary, but he was thinking about Debbie Hanlon.

“Edgerin was never no troubled boy,” Evelyn was crying now, clutching her son’s portrait to her chest. “He was blessed to always know what he wanted to be. Person knows what he wants, makes him peaceful. But that day … Lord, I just didn’t have no patience to listen. I know Jesus has forgiven me. Somehow, I can’t forgive myself.”

When the grieving mother wasn’t looking, Healy gave Detective Hines a nod that it was time to go. She winked back in agreement. They spent a few more minutes with Evelyn Marsden, taking her phone number, and reassuring her that someone would get back in touch with her about Edgerin’s case.

They did a few more floors, but it was getting late and getting them nowhere. Healy suggested they quit for the night. Blades didn’t take much convincing. They walked back to the car in silence. When they got there, all four tires had been slashed and pellets from the smashed front windshield adorned the top of the dashboard like careless diamonds.

“Looks like someone else besides Evelyn Marsden took exception to our being here,” Blades said. “Too bad they took it out on your car.”

“Yeah, too bad,” Healy agreed, trying unsuccessfully to contain a smile. “What you smilin’ at?”

“We hit a nerve.”

“That’s what you’re smilin’ at?”

“Someone’s trying to warn us off. That means somebody’s scared.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Maybe not for my car, Blades, but for us, yeah.”

It was near midnight when they got to Blades’ West Village apartment. Healy had AAA tow the car back to Long Island, to the body shop he’d had Serpe’s wrecked car taken to after Joe’d been run off the road last year. The whole time the tow driver was hitching up his car, Healy was thinking about Noonan’s Body Shop and about Debbie Hanlon. That got him thinking about Albie Jimenez and the weird paths down which crimes can take a man. Healy couldn’t believe that Rusty Monaco’s getting murdered on a dead end street in Wheatley Heights had led him back to the Nellie Bly Houses. He thought he’d left behind men like Monaco and places like the projects when he put in his papers, but if being around Serpe had taught Bob Healy anything, it was that you never really leave the job behind. “Nice place.”

“You want something to drink?” Blades asked. “A beer.”

“My apartment’s probably the size of one of your closets out there on Long Island.”

“Just about,” he confessed.

He could have hitched a ride back to the island with the tow truck driver, but decided to pass up the lift. He would only have to come back tomorrow anyway, so Blades and him could finish canvassing and talk to the local precinct detectives about Edgerin Marsden. He felt terrible for the mother. So did Blades, but like they discussed as they waited for the tow, Edgerin Marsden’s murder was, like so much else that happened at the time, swallowed up in the wake of 9/11. He couldn’t really blame the detectives who caught the Marsden case for not doing a full court press on it. Those were strange days. Everybody was in shock and operating on autopilot.