Fourth Victim (22 page)

“It’s a mistake,” Dan Litzki said, puffing out his chest with false bravado. “The girl in the office fucked up. Never happened before.”

Healy took the photocopies of the twin tickets from Steve Reggio’s box and slid them across the table. “Take plenty of vasoline with you, asshole. Sorry, poor choice of words.”

“What’s the matter now, Litzki?” Hoskins growled, poking his meaty index finger into the driver’s chest. “What was that about a mistake?” Hoskins cupped a hand around his ear. “I’m not hearing nothing.”

“Here’s the deal,” Joe said. “The Suffolk PD don’t want you. They want Jimmy Mazzone. Hoskins here wants to know every fucking detail about how he does this, who does what. Everything. You leave out one fucking detail and Hoskins is gonna drop the hammer on you so hard, you won’t know what hit you.”

“But—”

“But nothing!” Healy screamed. “If you don’t flip, there are six other Baseline drivers we can call. In fact, how do you know you’re the first driver we’ve talked to? You don’t think one of them is smart enough to trade Mazzone for themselves. Maybe one already did.”

“Okay, just let me call in with truck trouble,” Litzki said. “This is gonna take awhile.”

Hoskins let Litzki get his cell phone, but pressed the muzzle of his weapon to Litzki’s neck as a friendly reminder not to warn Mazzone.

“Marie, listen, I’m heading into Lake Grove,” Litzki said. “The truck’s giving me a little trouble. I’m gonna check it out, so call the stops after the Lake Grove one and tell them I’ll be running thirty minutes behind. No, I don’t need road service. I can handle it.”

Healy copied down everything Dan Litzki said, had him read it, and sign it.

“You mention this to Jimmy or anyone else at Baseline and you’re fucked. Understand?” Hoskins asked, but it wasn’t a question. “Remember, you have no way of knowing whether we’ve talked to the other drivers already. This gets back to Jimmy in any—”

“I’m not gonna say a word. You think I’m gonna cut my own throat for Jimmy Mazzone?”

“Get outta here.”

“Wait a second,” Serpe said, interrupting Hoskins’ send off. “Just two more questions.”

Litzki blanched. “What?”

“You worked for Jimmy a long time, right?”

“About fifteen years. Why?”

“Any of the other drivers that were killed ever work for Baseline?” Serpe asked.

“The nigger.”

“Cameron Wilkes?”

“Uh huh, about eight years ago, but he worked for everybody at one time or another.”

“Okay, get the fuck outta here.”

When the door closed behind Litzki, he had taken all remaining doubts with him.

“Tomorrow?” Joe said. “Tomorrow. Healy?”

“Tomorrow.”

T
hursday’s tomorrow was now two yesterdays ago. The world had twice turned and they had gotten what they wanted or what they thought they had wanted; a jagged shard of it anyway. Jimmy Mazzone was dead. But that taste in their mouths with their morning coffees wasn’t victory. It wasn’t justice and, ultimately, it wasn’t even the truth. Those things were sweet and right and warm. For Joe Serpe, Bob Healy, and Tim Hoskins, this was as far from any of that as you could get without teleportation. It was brooding, bitter, empty.

The headline proclaiming the death and the inches of vague half-truths that ran down the column beneath it were hard to take. It was meant to look like suicide. That was their intention all along and suicide is what the cops were calling it, what the press were calling it; a second family tragedy for the Mazzones. It had been an execution, the tragedy of it extending far beyond the boundaries of any one family. What the three men now realized was that even had Jimmy Mazzone acted as they had hoped, like a man instead of a selfish coward, it would still have been an execution. What does it matter who actually pulls the trigger?

Some kid from the reservation spotted Jimmy Mazzone’s body caught on the reeds in Poospatuck Creek. It was only a few hundred yards from where Albie Jimenez’s truck had been found six weeks earlier. Even from the shore, the kid could see the hole in the top of the dead man’s head. The .38, one bullet missing from its cylinder, was found on the opposite shore, where, the cops theorized, Mazzone had knelt down before pulling the trigger and toppling into the water. Jimmy’s car was found close by. His wallet, watch, rings, and keys were neatly piled on the driver’s seat. There was no note, not in the car, anyway.

It had all come together perfectly. They had him cold, painted into a corner from which he could not retrace his steps nor build out. Jimmy Mazzone called Hoskins early on Friday morning to set up a meet. That part was easy enough. With Joe Serpe and Tim Hoskins’ visit to his office to question his wife and daughter; with the photocopies of the pre-stamped tickets from Stevie Reggio’s truck left behind in an envelope; with Hoskins’ less than subtle shadow in his sideview mirrors, it was understandable that Mazzone had figured he was being set up for blackmail. That’s just how Hoskins’ played it too. This wasn’t about jail time or justice. This would be just another business transaction. Jimmy Mazzone had to believe the bloodletting was done. His mistake.

It didn’t take Jimmy long to figure out that he had figured it wrong. Too late to do him any immediate good and he knew it. He saw it in their eyes. They saw it in his. He went along quietly, fooling himself, making the most human of mistakes. He let himself hope. Hope put the bullet in him. Hope was the cruelest thing humans did to themselves. Serpe wondered if Stevie let himself hope before Jimmy put a cap into the back of his head.

“What do you guys want?” Mazzone kept asking Serpe and Hoskins as they drove toward Mastic. Healy followed in Jimmy’s car. When they didn’t answer him, Jimmy gave them options. “Look, the Gastrol deal is worth millions. I’ll split it with you, if that’s what you want or I’ll just give my business to you. I’ll sign it over to you right now and you can take it all. Just let me walk away.”

“You wanna walk, huh?” Hoskins said. “Four murders is a lot of blood to walk away from.”

At first, Jimmy tried denying it.
He didn’t know what they were talking about. They had it all wrong. They were confused.
He could see he was playing to the wrong crowd and shifted from denials to excuses.
It was all an accident. It was a mistake. It was Stevie’s fault. Once one was dead, he had to keep killing. He had no choice. If he could undo it, he would.

“Sign this,” Serpe said.

“What is it?”

“It’s a full typed confession.” Mazzone balked. “No way.”

“You don’t sign it, you’re fucking dead,” Hoskins said. “He’s right, Jimmy. You sign this, we got you by the balls. Whatever we want from you, we know we’ll get it because we got this.”

“No. You’re gonna kill me anyway.”

“You just guaranteed it. Pull over, Hoskins,” Serpe said, shoving Hoskins’ drop piece .38 into Mazzone’s ribs. “This place is as good as any for this piece of shit to die.”

Mazzone signed the confession. Joe checked the signature to make sure Jimmy hadn’t gotten cute. Serpe folded the confession, placed it in an envelope, and flipped it over the seat to Hoskins. They rode in silence for a little while, then Jimmy got talkative.

“It really was Stevie’s fault. He just couldn’t let it be. Just another two months. Two lousy freakin’ months until the lawyers firmed it all up with Gastrol. Toni and him woulda had half a mil as a wedding gift, but no. Outta all the guys in this business my daughter’s gotta fall in love with, she had to find St. Stevie. Asshole.”

“But how’d you find out about what he was thinking of doing?” Joe asked.

“Show you what a schmuck the kid was, he came to me himself. Told me he’d gotten the phone numbers of the IRS, of Suffolk Weights and Measures, of the DA’s office. He said his priest advised him to come to me and ask that I do the right thing, that it was only fair to give me a chance to set things straight. Teach you to listen to a priest. Priest cut the kid’s throat for him.”

Now Serpe understood Father Dudek’s reaction. The words vengeance and forgiveness rang in Joe’s head like untuned bells.

“Good thing it wasn’t your daughter that came to you,” Hoskins said.

Mazzone looked nauseous after that and didn’t seem so talkative anymore, but Joe wasn’t quite finished.

“How’d you pick the other drivers?”

“Just tell me how much you want and let me go home.”

This time Serpe clicked the hammer back when he stuck the .38 in Mazzone’s ribs.

“I picked Wilkes because he was a soft target. One man operation with nobody watching his back. I put in a call from a payphone in a 7/Eleven parking lot. Then all I had to do was wait. Besides, he knew that I’d been double stamping on and off for years. He was one less potential witness. The other two …” he drifted off.

“What about the other two?”

“The Pennysaver.”

“What?”

“I looked in the Pennysaver to get numbers,” Mazzone said. “You know, the oil page. You run an ad in there every week too. I couldn’t kill off everyone who used to work for me. I realized Wilkes was a mistake, that a sharp cop might trace back his work history and connect him to me.”

Serpe could see Hoskins screw up his face in the rearview mirror. Tracing work histories wasn’t something he’d bothered to do.

“So when you killed Monaco and the other guy you were murdering strangers?”

“Not exactly strangers. I mean, I knew them from the terminal and Lugo’s. I recognized their faces, but I didn’t know them. That’s just who showed up. Luck of the draw, I guess.”

“They wouldn’t see it that way.”

“Big mistake, killing Monaco,” Joe said. “That got me interested.”

“Maybe, yeah … I guess. He was gonna be my last. My fucking luck!”

That was the end of the conversation until they dragged him out of the car at Poospatuck Creek. Serpe handed the .38 back to Hoskins and Hoskins handed it to Jimmy.

“Go do the right thing,” Hoskins said.

That’s when the hope went out of Mazzone’s eyes. Healy laid it out for him.

“Here’s the deal. We got two of your drivers’ sworn statements explaining how you pre-stamped tickets for years and how you paid them an extra ten bucks a stop when they used those tickets. With time, they’ll all flip. We got your signed confession. Go in there and do yourself,” Healy said, pointing at the hard, brown reeds. “The Gastrol sale goes through. Your wife and daughter grieve, but come out rich on the other side and with loving memories of you. You don’t go in there and it’s gonna get ugly, Jimmy, very fucking ugly.

“First person we show the confession to is gonna be your daughter. How do you think she’ll react when she hears her dad murdered her fiancé and three innocent men? I wouldn’t count on any Father’s Day cards coming to your cell block. Okay, so maybe you are a cold-hearted bastard and you’re willing to lose your kid and live the rest of your life in a concrete cell. But we know your wife helped you with the pre-stamps, so she’ll do federal time. The IRS doesn’t like being cheated. They’re funny that way.”

Jimmy Mazzone swooned. His legs got rubbery, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he flopped down in a pile. An invisible hand had reached into him and snatched out his skeleton. Worse, when he came to, he was crying. The perfection was gone. Jimmy Mazzone needed killing and he wasn’t going to do it himself.

“Get outta here!” Hoskins barked at Healy and Serpe. “Take my car.”

“But—”

“No. Out!” He tossed his keys to Serpe. “This is my thing. If I had done my job right to begin with, we wouldn’t be here. I can handle this better on my own. Go!”

They drove far enough away to get out of Hoskins’ line of sight, but no further. Having come this far, they could not escape the fallout by running. The shot echoed through the night, but the splash of Mazzone’s body did not. The weight of a man’s sins adds nothing to the sound of his fall. No porch lights popped on. No sirens interrupted the background rush of the wind. Gunshots in the night were not unique on the banks of the Poospatuck.

When Hoskins came back from the creek bank, Serpe picked him up. If he was looking for a thank you in the cop’s expression, he didn’t find it. Killing, even for the right reasons, came at a bigger price than any of them expected. There was no talk on the ride home. A line had been crossed from which there was no going back.

H
oskins died in June. Healy read it in the Sunday paper and called Serpe about it. The three of them hadn’t spoken since just prior to the moment Hoskins walked Mazzone down to the creek that night in late February. What was there to say, really? Murder made for many things, but not for lasting friendships. Hoskins’ funeral was sparsely attended and Joe couldn’t help but remember the night he’d gone to the funeral home for Rusty Monaco. This was much the same; most of the people present were there out of a sense of obligation. Seemingly few beyond the requisite police honor guard felt obliged. There were no tears.

On their way out, Serpe and Healy ran into Hoskins’ former partner, Detective Kramer. Kramer had worked the hose monkey case with Hoskins and they’d parted ways shortly thereafter.

“Tim didn’t bring out the best in people. He didn’t inspire love. I’m surprised anyone showed up, especially you two,” he said, shaking their hands. “I never had anything against you, Serpe, but Christ, Tim just hated you.”

“I got my reasons for being here.”

“Stupid stubborn prick,” Kramer said, shaking his head as the coffin was wheeled toward the hearse. “He just stopped his treatments. The asshole just gave up.”

“He must’ve had his reasons.”

Kramer opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He shrugged his shoulders and left.

They found William Burns’ body, what was left of it, anyway, in a sand pit out in Rocky Point. When Serpe and Healy first heard about it, they thought that maybe Hoskins had taken his new role as the avenging angel too much to heart. But when the autopsy results were published a few days later, they were relieved to know that it hadn’t been Hoskins at all. Burns’ broken femur and ankle had never knitted. Apparently his drug running biker buddies liked the color of his money, but not his baggage. The medical examiner said that because there was a lot of sand in his lungs and because his hands were badly mangled that Burns had probably been buried alive. There was a time when that might have made Serpe and Healy feel better. That time had passed. Debbie Hanlon and Hank Noonan were still dead.

The Sunday following Hoskins’ funeral, Joe went to church service for the first time since his brother died. He’d only gone then because the FDNY had made the arrangements. He waited around until the church had emptied and the priest was done saying his goodbyes on the front steps.

“Do you remember me, Father Dudek?”

It took the priest a second, but the light of recognition eventually came on.

“The friend of Steven’s,” he said, unsmiling.

“Something like that, yeah, I was wondering, Father, could you hear my confession?”

Dudek began to make excuses, but he could see in Serpe’s eyes that none of the excuses would do. And he had to confess to being curious himself.

“Come with me.”

They took their places in the box. Joe felt as comfortable as if he were trying on his coffin for size, but he knew he had to get through it.

“It’s been a long time, Father.”

“Do you remember the words, my son?”

“As if I could forget. But there’s something I wanna talk about first before you hear my confession.”

“Certainly.”

“These are the names I want to say to you. Khouri and James Burgess, Albie Jimenez, Debbie Hanlon, Hank Noonan, Bogarde Defrees, Edgerin Marsden, Carter Blaylock, Cameron Wilkes, Brian Stanfill, Rusty Monaco, Finnbar McCauly, Stevie Reggio, William Burns, Dave … I forget his last name.”

“Many names, my son.”

“Names of the dead, Father. All murdered. All sewn from the seeds of one mindless act. I can’t understand that.”

“It is not important for you to understand it, my son. Have faith that there are reasons beyond our ability or need to understand. It is why we must put our full trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“I was a detective for a long time, Father. I have seen many things that would make you physically ill. I arrested a grandmother who sold her thirteen-year-old granddaughter for twenty dollars worth of crack. She stood there and smoked it and watched the dealer and his friends gang rape the girl. I had a little trouble believing there was a higher purpose in that.”

The priest was silent.

“I’m ready to confess my sins now, Father.”

“Please, my son, go on.” Dudek’s voice cracked.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Serpe rammed ahead, not willing to wait for the priest’s mumbled blessing. “It has been too long since my last confession. A few months ago, I helped kill the man who murdered Steve Reggio.”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean you—”

“You don’t need to understand, Father. I just wanted you to know that I helped answer your prayers.”

Joe Serpe walked out of the confessional and never looked back.

The next day, the first Monday of summer, envelopes arrived at the offices of the
New York Times, Newsday,
the
Daily News,
and the
Post.
Similar envelopes arrived on the desks of all the local, county, and state prosecutors. There were two letters inside each envelope, both confessions. One was signed by Detective Timothy Hoskins. The other was signed by James Mazzone.