Hose Monkey (15 page)

“You probably will be, but you’re not now. Come on.” Healy walked Joe back to his car and help fold him into the front seat. He reached over him and put his shoulder belt on.

“Stay here. I’ve got to make some calls and get your car picked up.”

When he got back into the car, Joe seemed agitated.

“Frank’s protecting someone!”

“Yeah, you said that before.”

“I did? When? I don’t remember.”

“Try and keep calm, Joe. You got a nasty knock.”

“What happened to me?”

“You had a car accident.”

“I know that.”

“But do you remember the actual accident itself? You don’t remember a black car hitting you?” Healy asked.

“A black car? I remember leaving the jail and then … There’s like a jumble of stuff that doesn’t make any sense. What’s this about a black car?”

“You got black paint all over the passenger side of your car.” Suddenly, Joe was agitated once again. “Call Marla! Did you call Marla?”

“Marla?”

“A woman.”

“I figured that one out, but who is she, someone you’re dating?”

“Dating, yeah.”

“What’s her number?” Healy asked.

Joe handed Healy his cell phone and passed out.

When he came to, he was on a gurney being wheeled into an examining room. The lights hurt his eyes and he felt the world spinning. When he shut his eyes and the gurney came to a full stop, the spinning of the planet stopped as well. He could hear people speaking, thought he recognized Healy’s voice, Marla’s too, and a stranger’s. All he wanted was to be unconscious.

“Mr. Serpe. Mr. Serpe,” the strange voice called to him. “That’s it Mr. Serpe. Can you please sit up. Good. Good. Take it slowly. Slow.”

When he opened his eyes, he could make out Marla’s face, Healy’s and the stranger’s, a doctor, Joe guessed. But Joe had that disconnected feeling again, like he was locked away in a bunker in his own head watching himself watching. He could feel one eyelid being pulled back, his eye forced to follow a beam of light. Then the same routine was followed with his other eye. He was poked and prodded for a good ten minutes and then sent to X-ray.

“Is he all right, doc?” Healy asked. “His memory keeps going in and out.”

“Well, he’s got a concussion, but I suppose that’s no revelation to you. I’m just having x-rays taken as a precaution. I don’t really think he’s got a skull fracture. The cut is relatively minor. His memory. Let’s just say it’s not uncommon for there to be some measure of memory loss with this type of head trauma. His brain got thumped up against his skull pretty hard. He’s a little disoriented, but it’s nothing that rest shouldn’t take care of. I’ll prescribe some stuff for the pain and I’ll schedule him to either come back for a follow up visit with me or another physician.”

“As he heals, will any of his memory return?”

“I’ve got a very simple answer to a very complicated question. I don’t know. The brain isn’t like any other organ. He might regain some, but the closer you get to the actual impact, the less likely he is to recover those memories. This isn’t like TV or the movies. You don’t get whacked on the side of your head and wake up perfectly oriented and remembering everything clearly.” The doctor regarded Healy with suspicion. “Why are a few minutes of memory loss so important? It says here that Mr. Serpe received his injuries in a routine traffic accident.”

“Exactly,” Healy said. “He smacked his car into some trees and it’s probably not important. I was just wondering if maybe another car was involved that might have left the scene. That’s all.”

The doctor seemed satisfied with that explanation and excused himself, saying he’d check up on Joe when he came back from X-ray. Marla, who had sat quietly as Healy questioned the doctor, approached Bob. They had shared only a few words before Joe was brought in to be examined.

“I never got a chance to thank you for calling me,” she said.

“No problem. He asked me to call before he conked out.”

“Are you a friend of Joe’s?”

Healy laughed. “I’ve got a very simple answer to a complex question. I don’t know what I am to Joe.”

Now
she
laughed. “I guess that makes two of us. How do you guys know each other?”

“We were both city cops once.”

“Were you a detective like Joe?”

“Yes and no.”

“What does that mean?”

“I was a detective, but not one like Joe.”

Marla opened her mouth to ask another question, but Healy cut her off.

“Listen, can you handle it from here? I’ve got somewhere I really have to be.”

“Sure. And thanks again, Mr. Healy.”

“Bob.”

“Bob,” she repeated, smiling. “I don’t know Joe very well, but I know him well enough to say you must mean something to him for him to call you first.”

“Thank you, Marla.” He offered her his hand. “Joe’s lucky to have you.”

She took his hand. “I think I’m lucky to have him.”

“I think you are, too.”

They met in front of Jerry’s Joint. Strohmeyer the Younger suggested they take his car the first few nights out so he could show Bob the routes he and his teams of vigilantes took. Healy agreed without complaint. Bob had already done enough driving for one day and his car smelled a little like vomit, courtesy of Joe Serpe.

They were into Farmingville within ten minutes. As he drove, Strohmeyer Jr., parroting his father, explained that their patrols served several purposes, only one of which was to bolster the citizenry’s—read that, white citizenry’s—morale, to set an example of how they could stand up for themselves. The other goals of these patrols were symbolized by what Pete Jr. called the three Ps: Protection.

Preemption. Prevention. It was all very lofty stuff that meant nothing. Healy didn’t really expect the kid to admit that the actual purpose of these patrols was probably provocation and violence.

He took a very circuitous route through town and into Ronkonkoma and back again. As he went, Pete Jr. pointed out what he called “trouble spots” to Healy. These were places known to be frequented by the “rice and bean” crowd. The trouble spots ranged in nature from bars and restaurants to churches and clinics.

Strohmeyer Jr. went on to say that at least three cars, two men in each, were out at any one time and that they patrolled the streets from sunset till about two in the morning. The AFA’s goal was to have at least eight cars on the streets and to extend the patrols until the groups for the shape-ups began forming at around six AM. Healy barely spoke, waiting for the right opportunity to begin broaching the subject of Reyes’ murder. Something he figured he’d have to do in small increments over the course of several nights.

“You’ll have to get a Nextel phone,” the kid said. “This way we’re all on one network and can communicate from car to car. We can help you with the cost of that. It’s one of the things we raise money for.”

“Great,” Bob said. “You don’t really expect much trouble on a night like this.”

“No, sir. The brown tide recedes in the cold and snow.”

Healy felt like he had his opening. “So when do you get your most action?”

The kid may have been built like a linebacker and not been very eloquent, but he was no fool either.

“Action? Look, Bob, like I said before, action is not what we’re about. We’re about–”

“I’m sorry, Pete.”

“That’s okay. My father warned me when we first started these patrols that some people would join in the hope of getting into fights. There’s a lot of pent up anger in this town and it only hurts our cause when people act stupidly.”

“I never used my weapon in anger in twenty years on the job. I guess I was a little careless in how I worded what I was saying before,” Healy explained.

“My father didn’t figure you were a hothead.”

“How’s the hand? Looks painful.”

“I can handle pain.”

“Learn that playing football?”

A prideful smile lit up Pete Jr.’s face. “Four years at Arizona.”

“Go Wildcats. You play linebacker?”

“Standup defensive end, but special teams mostly.”

“Special teams, yeah, that would explain learning to deal with pain.”

That did the trick. The younger Strohmeyer was glad to meet a New Yorker who knew college football. They discussed the bowl games and the unfairness of the BCS ratings. They talked about the draft and how little money professional football players made compared to baseball and basketball players.

“It’s not right,” Bob said.

“No, and none of the money except your signing bonus is guaranteed.”

The kid seemed all right, Healy thought. His head seemed to be screwed on straight and he was not unsympathetic toward nor unaware of the plight of the less fortunate.

“The black guys really get a bad deal,” Pete Jr. complained. “When they’re recruited they get promised a pro career, but they usually just get chewed up and spit out without really getting an education. I think if a college recruits you, they should either fund your education no matter how long it takes or compensate you, even if you get hurt or cut from the squad. Maybe then the recruiters would be more up front.”

It was not an unreasonable point of view. But Healy knew better than to make judgements based on simply liking a guy. Christ, he’d always liked and respected Joe Serpe, but he never let that effect the way he built his case against him or his partner. He remembered that he had once had a fierce argument with his dad about the trustworthiness of a neighborhood kid. His dad warned him off the kid. Bob argued that the kid was really nice and he was always respectful of his elders.

“Yeah,” his dad said, “and the English cocksuckers that tried to tear the guts out of Ireland loved their children. Didn’t make them good neighbors.”

Bob tried to take advantage of the newly established bond between him and the boy.

“So I get that we’re out here trying to protect, preempt and prevent, but there’ve been two murders around here recently.”

“The retarded man was killed in a dark oil yard. What can we do about that? Besides, I don’t think we even patrol down that far. We don’t. I’m sure we don’t. The Reyes guy … Hey, if these wetbacks want to kill each other, they’re going to kill each other. Believe me, Bob, you’ve got no idea what it’s like in southern Arizona. You don’t want to get into the middle of that shit.”

“No, I suppose not. Watch it!” Healy screamed.

Strohmeyer Jr. still had his game reflexes and jerked the wheel just in time to avoid the man stumbling out in front of his car. He slammed on his brakes and was out of the car before Bob had even unlatched his seatbelt. Healy couldn’t believe they’d missed him. If manner of dress was any indicator, the guy lying face down in the slush was a day laborer. He sported the standard uniform of a hooded sweatshirt, denim jacket, dirty jeans and work boots.

Here it was, Healy thought, a test.

“Hey, Bob, help me turn this guy over.”

Healy knelt down opposite Pete Jr.

“Okay, slowly. I’ll stabilize his neck. If he’s badly injured we don’t want to make it worse. On the count of three. One. Two. Three.”

They rolled him gently over onto his back. His face was puffy and bruised. He was bleeding from his nose, his mouth and cuts on his cheek and above the eyes. His breath stank of alcohol.

“Bar fight,” Strohmeyer Jr. said.

Healy agreed.

Then Pete Jr. started asking questions of the injured man in remarkably fluent Spanish. As the man’s eyes were almost swollen shut, it was difficult to see if he was as surprised by this as Healy. The laborer’s answers were slurred and, from the puzzlement on Pete’s face Healy surmised, incoherent.

“He’s Mexican and his name’s Hector. That’s about all I got. Come on, Bob, let’s get him into the back of the car and call the cops.”

When they got him in the car and Strohmeyer had called it in, Healy was curious as to why he had called the cops.

“This is just the kind of stuff we want in the papers, Bob. The media hates us, but my father says that doesn’t mean we can’t use them. You yourself brought up the murders. Before these guys got here, how many murders do you think there were around here in a given year? How much gang activity? How many bar fights on a snowy Tuesday night? Like my father says, it just proves we are right. The people on this island will be overrun. The more coverage, the better. Just one thing, when the cops get here don’t mention that we are out on patrol. That’s the rule. We don’t want the cops thinking we did this.”

So far this kid was failing all the tests. He wasn’t a screed spewing, halfwit, hate monger. He really seemed to think things through. His only blind spot appeared to be his father’s teachings, which he accepted without question. He wouldn’t be the first. He had been gentle and respectful of the guy now bleeding all over his backseat. Healy couldn’t help but root for the kid.

But if he was wrong about Pete Jr., where did that leave him? Where did it leave Serpe? Maybe he and Joe had been too quick to trust the word of some shithead gang leader. The truth was that the only two people with any viable connection to Cain Cohen’s homicide were themselves dead. There wasn’t a lot here to be encouraged about. Or maybe, Healy thought, staring at Peter Strohmeyer Jr., there was.

A cop showed in about five minutes. Officer Martinez, a handsome twenty-something cop with a white smile and neat mustache, seemed almost happy to have something to do.

“Pretty quiet tonight?” Healy asked.

“This weather, shit. It’s dead out here, not even many fender benders. It’s a night for staying home, for getting under the covers with someone to keep you warm. You know what I’m saying?”

One look at Hector and the cop called an ambulance. He didn’t even bother trying to question him. Bob and Pete Jr. gave their stories, the ambulance came, and they said goodnight to the cop. When the cop left and the patrol started up again, something had changed.

“See the blood there on the backseat, Bob? That blood there is the problem. You get all these men, they come to our country. They have one purpose in coming—to make money and send it back to the sewers they came from. They’re not like your ancestors or mine. They don’t want to be Americans. They don’t bring their families. They don’t bring their women. They’re lonely with a lot of time on their hands. It’s not natural. They get shitfaced, get in fights. They take our jobs and some of them, the slick ones, the ones with a little English, they’re. They’re the real dangerous ones.”