Fourth Victim (3 page)

“We can put him in the cab with us.”

“Yeah, that’ll work great, especially if the cops pull us over. ‘Sorry officer, never mind the dead wetback in the tarp. He’s just sleeping.’ “

“Then what the fuck are we gonna do?”

“I’m thinking … Okay, I got it. Help me lift him up on top of the tank. We’ll wedge him in there between the rail and the hatch.”

Joe Serpe was a tough motherfucker. Ask anyone who knew him or cut too closely across his path. And he was a smart guy in that feral kind of way, but he wasn’t much of a deep thinker. Deep thinking and cop work didn’t go together like hand in glove. Oil delivery and deep thinking was even less well-suited. But since Marla came and went, he had changed.

He now dreaded the part of the day between the end of work and sleep. Earlier in the day he had the business to worry about. At night he was too exhausted to beat himself up. This is when the guilt got to him. It wasn’t guilt over losing her exactly. Guilt over loss, Joe Serpe had long ago learned, was a colossal waste of time. No it wasn’t that. It was that he had ruined her.

He needed to get out of the house before the walls closed in.

They pulled Albie Jimenez’s truck over to the prearranged spot by where they’d left their car. After their earlier missteps, things had gone smoothly. They hadn’t been stopped on their journey south and east across Suffolk. No one had even seemed to notice them. It’s not like oil trucks were a rare winter sight on Long Island. Now all that remained was for them to retrieve the body from the top of the tank and dump it.

“Here, take the flash and get up there. I’ll follow you up.”

“Fuck!” “What is it?”

“Jesus Christ!”

“What the fuck is it?”

“You better get up here, man.”

“I’m right behind you. What the—”

“He ain’t here.”

“I can see that, shithead, but where the fuck did he go?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“Dead men don’t fly. He
was
dead, right?” “I think so.”

“What do you mean, you think so?”

“I mean, I think so. We smashed his head up pretty good. He wasn’t moving or nothing.”

“Did you check his pulse?” “Did you?”

“Do I look like a fucking doctor?”

“Do
I?”

“Nah, you’re right, he was dead.”

“Maybe he fell off. We hit some pretty good pot holes.”

“Fuck!”

“Yeah, come on, let’s wipe the truck down and get the fuck outta here.”

L
ocated only a mile or two from the big fuel depot in Holtsville and in close proximity to most of the oil companies in central Suffolk, Lugo’s Bar was a natural hangout for the area’s oil drivers. Joe Serpe didn’t go to Lugo’s much anymore. It had once been his home away from home; the place where he’d troll for women whose desperation and loneliness was exceeded only by his own. He thought meeting Marla would put an end to all that. Now he wasn’t so sure. Even with Marla gone, Joe didn’t think he had it in him to go back.

These days Serpe only went to Lugo’s with Healy and their drivers after a rough shift or to celebrate a good week. Delivering oil was a tough job with a lot of downside, no perks, and even fewer guarantees. Medical benefits consisted of prayer and the first aid kit on your truck. Needless to say, company loyalty was in short supply in the oil business. So when a boss had the chance to reward his drivers with little things—an extra fifty bucks here and there, a free dinner, drinks, tickets to a ballgame—he was smart to take advantage of it. Serpe had learned to be generous to his employees from Frank Randazzo, the former owner of Mayday Fuel. Joe had learned everything he knew about the business from Frank. It was Randazzo who gave Joe a job and threw him a lifeline when no one else would touch him. More than anyone else, he had helped salvage Joe’s life after the loss of his job, family, and brother. Unfortunately, Frank was unable to save himself.

Frank had gotten mixed up with the Mafiya—the Russian Mob—and had been blackmailed into selling off Mayday to a front company. If it had just stopped there, with the extortion, Frank might still be alive and Joe Serpe’s world might have been a very different place. But it hadn’t stopped there, not at all. A retarded kid who worked for Mayday as a hose monkey—a laborer who pulled the oil hose from the truck to the house and back again—had sneaked into the oil yard one night and witnessed illegal truck transfers of black market oil. The Russians caught and murdered the kid. It was Joe Serpe who found the kid’s battered body at the bottom of a tank and Joe who, in the end, found his killers. Frank, guilt ridden over his role in the hose monkey’s death, tried to hang himself. He botched the job, lingering for months in a coma before finally succumbing. Though it had all happened less than a year before, it seemed to Serpe several lifetimes ago.

The thing was that Joe felt pretty naked at the moment, walking into Lugo’s without Healy or his guys along for company. There were still some drivers around, but it was close to that time when the oil men headed home and the night crowd filtered in. Serpe spotted four drivers from SafetyNet Oil at one corner of the big square bar. They had a wall of empty tall boys in front of them and were laughing it up pretty good. Didn’t seem like they were too broken up over Rusty Monaco’s murder or too worried about meeting a similar fate.

“Gentlemen,” said Joe.

They nodded hello, raising their beers in salute. “Another round here,” Joe said to the barman, gesturing at the empties.

The drivers groaned and grumbled, making noises about having to get home. Two of them actually got up and left.

Stan Brock shook his head. “Newly—fuckin’—weds! Jesus Christ, they’ll learn, right Joe?”

“For their sakes, I hope so,” Joe agreed.

Brock was a rough motherfucker with a gravelly voice and the scarred face of a boxer with more heart than skill and more balls than brains. His face didn’t lie. He had been the kind of middle weight opposing managers liked to throw against their fighters because his hands were slow and his chin was hard. Still, he’d kicked more ass than all the men in Lugo’s combined. Serpe knew it. So did everyone else in the place. Hard as he was, Brock was a good guy and a lifer. When they buried him, there’d be a hose and nozzle sticking out of the coffin.

“I’m outta here too,” said Paulie Falcone, shaking Joe’s hand and slapping Brock on the shoulder. “Some other time, Joe, okay?”

“No problem.”

“I guess that just leaves me and you,” Stan said, patting the stool next to him. “Park yourself.”

Joe sat. The bartender, who’d already uncapped five bottles of Coors, scowled at Serpe and the newly vacated seats. “Try not to cry about it, pal. I’ll take care of it.”

“Don’t mind him,” Brock said loud enough for the barman to hear, “his pussy’s sore.” That got a laugh from everybody but the bartender. “So what’s shakin’, Joe? I don’t see you around here so much no more.”

“Busy trying to keep my head above the shit.”

“Wrong business if you don’t like shit in your nostrils.”

“Tell me about it, Stan. Much harder to run a business than it looked from the other end of the hose.”

“Never wanted to be the boss of anything in my life. Tough enough being the boss of me.”

“I hear that.”

Brock turned to face Serpe. “So what are you really doin’ here?”

Joe thought about being coy with Stan, but decided that would be a waste of time. He knew the ex-pug was smarter than he appeared. On the job he had learned that brains and wisdom came in all kinds of packages and that stupidity often came in the gift wrapped boxes. So he answered Stan straight:

“Rusty Monaco.”

“Asshole.”

“I see you knew him.”

“Enough to not wanna know him better.”

“Aren’t you being a little harsh on the dearly departed?”

“May he rest in peace.” Brock crossed himself. “What’s the interest?”

“We were on the job together a little bit and I owed him.”

“Seems somebody took care of the debt for you,” Stan said.

“Wasn’t that kind of debt.”

“Money’s easier.”

“Only time it is,” Joe said. “I’m taking a little unofficial look into the murders, so anything you know or hear about them.”

Brock knocked down his beer in a swig, stood up and shook Serpe’s hand.

“Thanks for the beer, Joe. Somebody’s gotta catch this motherfucker. Drivers are nervous out there and nervous people do stupid things. All we need is for some panicked driver to shoot a customer or some guy walking up to a truck to ask directions. We’d all be fucked.”

“Yeah.”

“If you find this guy before the cops, you call me first. I ain’t hit the heavy bag in alotta years.”

Joe watched Brock amble out of the bar. When Brock disappeared, Serpe turned to ponder the three opened bottles of Coors. The barman seemed to be pondering the same thing.

Bob Healy moved through the gym at St. Pat’s in a bit of a daze. He’d met his wife at a CYO dance back in Brooklyn about a million years ago. He could almost feel his arms assuming the shape of Mary’s young body, feel her wayward hairs brushing against his cheek as they slow danced. He thought he smelled the grassy scent of her perfume and, putting his fingers to his lips, imagined the bittersweetness of her sweat when he kissed her softly on her freckled neck. Even the squeaks of his shoes on the gym floor and the sight of the retracted basketball backboard brought Mary back to him. But when he saw the man standing at the podium, the reverie was over.

In his late forties, Suffolk County PD Detective Lieutenant Timothy Hoskins was a hulking man with a jowly red-face and a cruel sloppy mouth. His irises were the vacant blue of a sled dog’s and his lazy left eye only heightened the effect. His brown suit jacket was shiny at the elbows and it had probably fit him once, ten years and thirty pounds ago. But it wasn’t Hoskins’ looks or ill fitting clothes that bothered Healy. It was the man’s black heart.

Last year, when the hose monkey was killed at the oil yard, Hoskins had been the lead detective. By nature, detectives get very territorial about their cases and don’t often appreciate unsolicited “help” from civilians. They appreciate it even less from ex-cops. And when those ex-cops are an Internal Affairs detective and a disgraced legend who drives an oil truck, they really get surly. It didn’t much help that Hoskins was related to Ralphy Abruzzi’s wife. Hoskins had made their lives miserable. And given that they had publicly embarrassed Hoskins by breaking the case, his attitude toward them wasn’t likely to have mellowed in the intervening months.

Healy thought about leaving, but decided he’d find a seat far away from the little stage under the retracted basket. He wasn’t so much interested in what Hoskins had to say as he was in the chatter in the crowd. He knew Hoskins was unlikely to share any useful information about the homicides or the progress of the investigations. No doubt he would say something completely generic.
The investigations are moving ahead and we are following every potential lead.
Bob also knew what advice Hoskins was likely to give:
Don’t deliver after dark. Don’t send your drivers out alone. If you have to do deliveries after dark, have a car follow your trucks. Don’t encourage any unlicensed person to carry a firearm. Blah, blah, blah …
It was the kind of advice that would have been more helpful three murders ago, but cops are necessarily reactive and were seldom out in front of the wave. When they were, they usually drowned.

Some white-toothed local politician got up before Hoskins and did five minutes on everything from property taxes to school budgets. He managed to squeeze in a few seconds on the murders, reminding the assembled crowd that none had taken place in his district. Yeah, like he had anything to do with that. Two people—his assistant and the parish priest—applauded when he turned the mike over to Hoskins. Hoskins got as far as his title and name when a uniform stepped up to him and whispered in his ear.

“You’ll have to excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, looking equal parts relieved and dejected. “Officer Dimeola here will help you. Goodnight.”

With that, Hoskins jumped down off the stage and broke into a trot. A murmur went up in the gym, but Healy was too busy making his way to his car to notice.

Something Stan Brock said was eating at Joe. Not everyone in the business
would
be equally effected if a panicky driver shot an innocent bystander. In fact, the impact of the killings had been completely lopsided. All the murder victims had been COD drivers.

What the layman didn’t understand was that the oil business was really two businesses. There were COD—cash on delivery—companies like Mayday Fuel and there were big, full service companies like Gastrol and Mehan. The COD companies were non-union, operated smaller fleets, and catered to a lower income clintele. The full service outfits delivered oil too, but they offered a wide range of services and options to the customers. But as far as the murders went, there was one fundemental difference: COD drivers carried cash, often a lot of cash, and full service drivers didn’t.

It wasn’t a state secret. The killer knew it. And since the news media had gotten hold of the story, everyone knew it. Then why, Joe wondered, was he so irked by what Stan had said? If you were going to commit murder for money, you might as well get more than what was in a man’s wallet. Maybe that was it, the logic of it that bothered him. In Serpe’s experience, murder wasn’t logical. He’d known crackheads to kill for pocket change. But whatever it was that was bothering him, it would have to wait.

“A penny for your thoughts,” a woman cooed in his ear. Her voice was familiar, but not as familiar as it once had been.

“Hey Kath, have a seat. Here,” Joe said, handing her a bottle of Coors.

Kathleen Cummings was blond, built, blue-eyed and, in Lugo’s low lighting and loud music, it was easy to think her a catch. In the light of day, however, she was less than the sum of her parts. And as Joe discovered when they had dated, together they were even less than that. It wasn’t so much that Kath had begun to fray as unravel. Nor was it so much about her looks. She was still hot by any standard. Twice divorced, Kath was the pin-up girl for bitter pills; bitter pills washed down with inevitable disappointment.

“Thanks for the brew, Joe. I heard you were married.”

“Living with someone.” He didn’t feel like explaining about the break-up.

“To look at you, it don’t seem she makes you happy.”

Joe’s cell vibrated in his front pocket. He made a phone of his pinky and thumb and excused himself. He walked to the back exit, pulling the cell out of his pocket.

“Yeah.”

“I need you to get over here.” It was Healy. “Where’s here?” “In Mastic.”

“What the fuck are you doing in—” “Just get over here!” “Where are you exactly?”

Healy gave the location. Joe knew the spot from when he used to drive the route for Frank.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. So you wanna give me a hint?” “There’s been another murder.”

Serpe clicked the phone shut and headed back through Lugo’s to his car parked out front. Kathleen was waiting for him just inside the back door. She didn’t bother with chit chat, threading herself through his arms and kissing him hard on the mouth. He knew that no matter how he responded, he was bound to give her, if not what she wanted, then what she expected. He pulled back.

“There are guys in here that’ve given their left nuts to fuck me.”

“You’ll have to show me your collection sometime,” he said, and pushed past her.

Poor and white, Mastic was the kind of place where people who fell through the cracks landed; the kind of place where cars on cinder blocks were considered lawn sculpture and pit bulls lap dogs. But no place on Long Island is ever completely safe from the real estate speculators, not even Mastic. Yet it would be quite a while before the speculators worked their way over to the area of Mastic where Bob Healy was pacing a rut in the ruined asphalt. Then when he spotted Serpe’s car, he motioned madly for his partner to pull quickly over to the side of the road. Joe tucked his car half into the tall reeds just behind Healy’s car.

“What’s up?” Joe asked, stepping out of the car.

“Look over there,” Healy said, pointing at the small fleet of Suffolk County Police vehicles parked along the south bank of Poospatuck Creek. Just across the way, on the north bank, was the Poospatuck Indian Reservation. The Shinnecock were the Long Island tribe everyone knew about. The Poospatuck were a tiny, impoverished tribe confined to fifty ugly acres of double-wide trailers along the Forge River. The major activities on the rez were selling tax free cigarettes and crime. “You see the oil truck out there?”