As this was one of the rooms with a boarded-over window, I felt fairly safe in turning on the overhead light. When I flicked on the switch, that glad expression on my face went to the place where smiles go to die. The dead man wasn’t Smudge. I’d gotten that much right, but I wasn’t happy to see whose body it was. The detective who had pulled me over on the Sag was sprawled across the worn, shiny carpeting in front of me with two bullet holes in the fabric of his khaki-brown trench coat. Those two shots had probably gone right through his heart. There was a pillow on the floor there next to him, its yellowed linen case badly charred by contact with the muzzle of the weapon that had fired the two bullets into the dead man’s chest. I had to get out of there, but not before I did a quick check to make sure Smudge wasn’t dead somewhere else in the house.
He wasn’t anywhere in the house, but I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t dead someplace else. I chose to believe he had gotten away or hadn’t been home at all. I didn’t want to think that he had killed the detective in the bedroom. I didn’t have time to stand around contemplating the possibilities. It seemed to me that someone was as busy tidying up his loose ends as he was trying to retrieve his stolen drugs. I was a loose end. Richie Zito was another. Maybe Frankie Tacos, too, if he wasn’t in the middle of this himself. But when I pulled away from Smudge’s house, headlights off, I headed to Wyandanch.
56
(LATER MONDAY NIGHT)
I drove past Lazy Eye’s house. It was as dark as Smudge’s had been. There was no car in his driveway. There were no cars anywhere near his house that I could see. I didn’t figure Slava’s beat-up old Honda was likely to be associated with me or be on anyone’s radar. Well, the only person who might be able to connect Slava’s car to me was in a shitty little house in Brentwood with two bullet holes in his chest. So I parked down the block, facing Lamar English’s house, and waited. I intended to wait as long as I had to wait or, in truth, as long as I could last. It was cold out and I hadn’t stopped for coffee or to take a bathroom break.
I listened to the radio and quickly got bored. The music was all either music my parents had listened to or as interchangeable and disposable as plastic razors. The news stations repeated the same stories over and over and over again without adding a single new detail. But the worst by far was sports talk radio, listening to Riley from Toms River complain about the Knicks to an arrogant host who seemed far more interested in condescension than discussion.
I sat there remembering how, as a cop, I had such mixed feelings about the cold and the snow. How bad winter weather was great at tamping down crime, sometimes even bringing it to a complete halt for days at a time, but how it created other problems and nightmares, nightmares often as terrible and as tragic as murder. There were the traffic accidents, of course. The fools in the big SUVs who forgot that four-wheel drive helps you get through the snow, but doesn’t help you stop in it or help you survive collisions with trees. The church vans hitting patches of black ice, speeding up their passengers’ reunion with their creator more effectively than any prayer service ever could. The worst were the house fires, though. The poor families using the range or kerosene heaters in enclosed spaces. The smell of fire-ravaged human flesh and hair. The stink of melted plastic. The burnt baby bodies I would never get out of my head. I remembered the fireman’s mantra: Probably smoke inhalation. They almost never burn to death. As if that was of any help.
And then, about two hours after my vigil had begun, just as I was about to run the engine again to get some heat into the car to prevent my feet from going totally numb with cold and inactivity, a pimped-out Chrysler 300 appeared at the corner of the street. Ground-shaking hip-hop, window-buzzing bass destroyed the silence of the night as it rolled down the block and pulled into Lazy Eye’s driveway. I waited in my car until I was sure it was the man I was waiting for. I wouldn’t be able to clearly see his face, certainly not his eyes, from where I was parked, but I figured it was a safe bet that if he had a key to the house, it was him.
The car door flew open and the music stopped. Silence returned to the night. A short, almost two-dimensionally thin African-American man got out of the Chrysler. He was dressed in a hoodie over a flat-billed baseball cap—I couldn’t make out the team logo—baggy jeans and boots. He reached back into the car and pulled a nickel-plated Desert Eagle, a ridiculous weapon that looked foolish even in the hands of a big man, and stuffed it down the front of his pants. He folded the front of his hoodie over the handle of the weapon. Christ, I thought, if this was Lamar English, he was doing everything possible to call attention to himself. He scanned the night as if to make sure there were no threats close by. He didn’t seem to take note of Slava’s Honda, or if he did, he didn’t seem to care. He took some keys out of his hoodie pocket and popped the trunk. He scanned the night again. Satisfied, he reached into the trunk and removed two densely packed, black plastic garbage bags. He leaned them against the rear bumper of the 300 and closed the trunk.
I was satisfied, too. This had to be Lazy Eye and my bet was there was a good sixty pounds of marijuana in those garbage bags. As I threaded my fingers through the Civic’s door handle, a new set of headlights appeared at the corner. There was nothing particularly threatening or noticeable about them, but if a car came down the block as I was approaching Lazy Eye, he would spot me coming. I didn’t want him to see me coming, especially if he had any skill with and willingness to use the Desert Eagle stuffed down his pants. As silly a weapon as it was, it had bullets the size of a grown man’s thumb. Even an off-center hit could tear you apart. Sorry. One bullet wound at a time was about all I could deal with.
I unthreaded my fingers from the door handle and waited for the car to pass, but that’s when things went to shit. The headlights turned off. An engine revved. Tires squealed. I wasn’t the only person to notice trouble was coming. Lazy Eye yanked up the front of his hoodie and stuck his hand down into his pants. He was nervous, though. Fumbling the handle of the Desert Eagle, he couldn’t get a grip on it until it was way too late to do him any good. I’m not sure it would have done him any good anyway. As the other car approached him, the night exploded in artificial thunder and very real fire. One second Lazy Eye was upright. The next second he wasn’t.
I waited a beat to make sure the car wasn’t going to make another pass at its target. When I was sure, I got out of the Honda and raced over to where Lazy Eye was. It was him, all right. His left eye aimed at a very different angle than his right. It wouldn’t matter now or ever again. Death was an equitable master. Once you crossed the threshold, no man or woman was more dead or less dead than another. And that threshold was one Lamar English had most definitely crossed. He’d been hit in every part of his body, including the face. Bits of his shattered teeth poured out of his wrecked mouth in a stream of blood and saliva. The coppery, metallic scent of blood was still heavy in the air, as was the intense smell of burnt marijuana. The hot lead had ripped through the bales of pot as well as the dead man’s flesh.
I ran back to Slava’s Honda and got out of there as quickly as I could. There was no doubt anymore about loose ends and inconveniences being tidied up. For me it was no longer a matter of if, but when. I suppose it had always been so. Death is never a matter of if. Murder was more a question of when.
57
(LATER MONDAY NIGHT)
I was lucky Harrigan’s was empty when I stuck the muzzle of my Glock under the barman’s Adam’s apple and told him I had to see his boss for Zee’s own good. I had tried asking politely to no good effect and my threshold for bullshit was at a record low.
“The last people you wanna call are the cops,” I said to the bartender when he told me Zee was in his office waiting. “Believe me when I say if I hear a siren coming this way, I’m gonna come back out here and beat the piss outta you.”
He shrugged, but I couldn’t tell if it was that he was unafraid or if he just didn’t care. The net result was the same.
Zee
was where he was the first time I’d come into his office, seated behind his desk, the haze of a recently smoked bowl hanging in the air like a disoriented ghost. It was the second time in less than a half hour I’d smelled the earthy burn of high-quality marijuana. There was something different about Zee this trip, and I didn’t mean the unwelcoming expression on his weathered face. Only his gnarled left fist was atop his desk. My guess was his right hand was in his lap, aiming a sidearm at me. Probably a .45, I thought. Something with a lot of stopping power, but nothing as ridiculous or unwieldy as a Desert Eagle. No, that wasn’t his style. Besides, there was no way in his condition that he’d be able to handle a weapon as heavy as an Eagle. I didn’t blame him for being leery. He’d kicked me out of the place during my last visit and I’d just forced my way in here by sticking a gun in his employee’s neck.
“I come in peace,” I said, raising my hands above my head as I entered. “All I wanna do is talk.”
“First put your piece on the desk, then we’ll see about talking.”
I did as he asked, laying the little Glock on the desk in front of him.
“I thought I kicked your ass outta here for good.”
“You did.”
“So why the fuck are you back?”
“If you’d bothered taking one of my calls, I wouldn’t be. You mind if I sit?” I asked, throwing my thumb at the chair facing his desk. “It’s been a long, strange night.”
He nodded. I sat.
“You don’t need to be holding that piece on me, you know?”
He smiled a malevolent half-smile. “That’s kinda not up to you, Gus.”
“What is it, a .45?”
“Something like that. Whatever the fuck it is, just know it’s big enough to blow a nice hole in you if you do something stupid.”
“Look, Zee, I came here to warn you to watch your back.”
He sneered at me. “I’ve been watching my back since I come out of my momma’s pussy.”
“Should’ve been a poet.”
“Lotsa shoulda beens and shoulda dones in my life, Gus. Poet was never one of them. Used to play me some guitar when I was young, though.” He held up his misshapen hand. “Good thing I didn’t chase that career, huh? Tough to play with my hands all fucked up the way they are. Maybe when I get out to the desert I’ll have a go at it again. Have someone break my bones and cut my tendons, then have them reset and sewn back together in the shape of an F chord. That chord’s a real pain in the ass.”
“You gotta live long enough to make it out there, Zee.”
“All right, say what you’ve come to say. I’m in a charitable mood ’cause I’m outta here by the end of the week.”
“I know why TJ and Tommy were killed.”
Zee’s eyes got big in spite of himself, and there wasn’t a hint of skepticism in them. He knew I wouldn’t have come here if I was just talking out my ass.
“I’m listening.”
When I was done explaining to him about TJ and the stolen drugs, the retired dentist with the mostly missing head, and the dead men I’d come across earlier, he told me to come collect my gun off his desk. And I heard the thud as he dumped his weapon into one of the drawers. Afterward, I saw his right hand for the first time since I’d walked in. As he lifted it up, he flexed his fingers and grimaced. It hurt to witness it. I could almost hear his bones crackle and creak.
“That’s fucked up. So you think the kid stole a load of heroin and now it’s payback time?” he asked, sitting back in his chair and lighting up another bowl. “But why now, four or five months after it happened?”
“Good question. I haven’t worked that out yet. I think that maybe the party TJ took it from had given up on the shipment as a lost cause and written it off. Then, for some reason, that party got renewed hope of recovering it.” I shrugged. “But what do I really know? Christ, Zee, I’m not even sure who’s killing who or why exactly, but all I know is somebody’s busy tying up loose ends and that anyone connected to the Delcaminos seems to qualify. That means you qualify.”
“How about that asshole friend of TJ’s?”
“Ralphy O’Connell?”
“Him, yeah.”
I scratched at my cheek, thinking about it. “Good catch. I’ll give him a call when we’re done here.”
“You think TJ mighta told the O’Connell kid where he stashed the drugs?”
“Good question, Zee. O’Connell says no, but who knows? TJ and him were tight.”
“Maybe you better go see the kid instead of calling, you know,” Zee said. “What I remember of him when he came around here with TJ, he wasn’t too bright.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Seemed like a real loyal guy, but no Einstein. If he’s at work, I could see him on my way home,” I said, as much to myself as to Zee. “This thing, whatever it is, is coming to a head and fast, but you’ll be outta here in a few days anyway.”
“A few days. That all you think it’ll be?”
“Violence has a certain kind of internal momentum. It’s like an unwinding watch spring. Once you release some of the tension, you release it all.”
Zee raised his eyebrows, like maybe he was considering what I’d said. “Is that what you think’s going on here?”
“The killing’s already begun and I don’t think it’s gonna stop. I better go have that word with Ralphy now,” I said, getting up out of my seat.
“Sorry about the harsh words last time. It was a good thing of you to come here and gimme a heads-up.” He stretched out his right arm and unfurled his knotted right hand. “I appreciate the help.”
I shook it. “If I don’t see you again, good luck out west. Hope it helps with the pain.”
“Just getting the hell outta here will help with that. Adios, Long fuckin’ Island.”
And that was that.
I apologized to the barman on the way out, but his reaction was pretty much the same as it had been before. His expression was inscrutable. He looked like a man who had given up. The way I used to look every single day until Tommy Delcamino walked into the lobby of the Paragon.
58
(TUESDAY, EARLY MORNING)
By most social standards, Ralph O’Connell was a man, but the reality was that he was Ralphy, just a big dumb kid who loved his damned car and missed his best friend. It was hard not to feel sorry for him. Feeling sorry for him wasn’t going to save his ass.
“I don’t know nothin’. I didn’t do nothin’,” he kept repeating when I stopped by the Northport Manor.
“Well, kid, if you are holding anything back about the drug deal that went bad or that night last August when TJ came to see you with the money, now would be the time to tell me.”
“I swear on my mother,” he pleaded, as if swearing on your mother mattered. As if swearing mattered at all. As if it ever had.
I couldn’t count how many times guilty shitbirds with bloody hands protested their innocence to me by swearing on the souls of their children, their mothers, or their dead grandmothers. Those lies were then usually accompanied by invoking God and Christ as false witnesses. But for some reason, I believed the poor schmo.
“TJ didn’t tell you about any stolen drugs or where he got the money he gave you?”
“Nope. I’m tellin’ you, I don’t know nothin’.”
“How about the black eye and the swollen cheek, did he tell you where he got those?”
Ralph shook his big empty head. He was plenty scared. He had a lot to be scared about. I didn’t like doing it to him, but he needed to know he was in danger.
“Okay, Ralphy, get gone right now,” I said. “Get in your car and go visit some relative out of state or something. Don’t go back home to pick up clothes or anything. Just go.”
“But my folks will get all worried.”
“Call them from wherever, but don’t tell them where you are. If you ch
eck into a motel, don’t use your real name and pay in cash. Understand?”
I handed him three hundred dollars of Tommy D.’s bankroll.
“Yeah, I understand. I’m not that stupid. But I’ve got a few more hours of work.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll go talk to the boss and it will be okay. I promise you. Freddy and I go back a long way. You’ll have a job when you come home.”
The only part of what I’d told him that was true was the part about Freddy Guccione and me going way back. For all I knew, Freddy might have a cow when I told him that the kid had split and wouldn’t return for at least a few days. I just had to get Ralph out of town.
“How long will I have to stay away?”
“I don’t figure too long. Maybe you’ll be back by Christmas.”
That put a smile on his face. Good, I thought, maybe he’d come around to think of this as an adventure and not focus on the danger he was in. And maybe for a few seconds, it even worked. Then the smile vanished. The fear and second thoughts were making him freeze up on me.
“Go!” I shouted at him, grabbing him and shoving him toward the door. “Go. I’ll tell you all about how it turns out when you get back.”
Once I’d left Northport Manor and made it safely back to the Paragon, I took the added precaution of switching rooms again. I left everything except the clothes on my back, my framed photo of John Jr., and my gun where they were. I didn’t have it in me to move all my things at that hour. Besides, I only needed a place to sack out until the sun came up. I didn’t figure anyone was ballsy or stupid enough to try something in the hotel once day broke. I was wrong.
Where It Hurts Page 28
