“You’re lookin’ a little green around the gills this morning. Rough night, Gus?”
“You got no idea, Charlie.”
“A woman?”
I nodded, not wanting to go into the whole opera of Maggie, bad memories, and the minibar. “Did Al tell you why I asked to talk with you?”
“He did. You want to discuss the Spears homicide.”
“Not so much the homicide itself,” I said. “I’m more interested in Rondo Salazar.”
“That piece of shit? Why you interested in him?”
The waitress came by before I could answer. Charlie went the whole nine yards: banana-walnut pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausages. It was all I could do not to puke just listening to his order.
“Just some scrambled eggs and whole-wheat toast.”
The waitress took a good look at me and smiled sympathetically. “You look like you could use more coffee,” she said. “I’ll make sure it keeps coming.”
The guy with the coffeepots showed up ten seconds later.
“Well, not so much Salazar himself,” I explained after Coffeepots left. “I’m more interested in why he did it.”
“Million-dollar question, ain’t it, though? Glad I don’t have to answer it on this case. Why you interested, anyway?”
I had a decision to make. I was acting like a PI on Micah Spears’s behalf, but I didn’t have a license. I didn’t necessarily have an obligation to protect my client’s identity. Even if I had, I didn’t have the right. I wasn’t a doctor, a lawyer, or a priest. On the other hand, I didn’t want to shout it to the world. So I played it halfway.
“I’m doing a favor for someone.”
He made a face, thinking about my answer. “You getting paid for this favor?”
“Sort of. Does it matter?”
“What do you think?”
“Okay,” I said. “If I do this favor, the person I’m doing it for is going to start a foundation in my son’s name and donate money for medical research.”
“Yeah, I heard about your kid. Sorry. That musta been hard on you.”
“‘Hard’ doesn’t begin to describe it. But you can see why I’m motivated to see what I can see, right?”
Charlie Prince leaned forward. “Gus, we don’t know why he did it, and that’s the God’s-honest truth. All that stuff in the papers about his being rejected and the stalking . . . we think that’s just some bullshit to sell papers.”
“Any guesses?”
“They’d just be guesses and I really have no idea.”
“Could it be gang-related?”
“Maybe, but I’m no expert on the Asesinos, MS-Thirteen, the Latin Kings, the Bloods, Crips, or any of those assholes.”
“I have someone else to talk to about that,” I said.
“Who, Alvaro Peña?”
I laughed. “He’s the man. We go way back.”
“I love that guy. Give that bastard a kick in the nuts from me.”
Cops have a twisted sense of humor and ways of expressing affection.
“By all reports, Salazar hasn’t said a word to you guys about the murder. Is that true or an exaggeration?”
Charlie held up his right hand. “No exaggeration. The prick wouldn’t even talk to his lawyer about it in our presence. He hasn’t said a word. My guess is he ain’t even talking to his lawyer when no one’s around.”
“You think that’s his choice, or that he’s been ordered to keep quiet?”
Charlie shrugged. “Anything I say would be a guess, and I have nothing to base it on.”
“Has the DA tried to get him to cop a plea to save the trouble of a trial? I mean, he sounds as guilty as guilty can be.”
“They’ve tried, but any plea would have to come with an allocution and there’s no way this motherfucka is gonna do that. Anyways, the DA wants to make an example of this guy, so the trial is a win-win for him. It won’t last very long and it will get a lot of press.”
Our food came and we ate without discussing the case. We talked some baseball, family stuff, told some stories about guys we knew whom we had both served with. The food did me some good, the pounding in my head retreating. The distraction did me good, too. It was a relief to go a half-hour without thinking about Maggie or John.
After the plates were cleared, I asked, “Have you made any progress in finding the actual murder scene?”
“None, Gus. Fact is, unless Salazar starts talking, we don’t have a shot at finding it. Maybe if we knew where he killed her, we might begin to know why. I guess that’s along the lines you were thinking.”
“Exactly. At least it would be a start. If I knew where and when, I could trace it backward to how and why.”
Charlie smiled a sad smile. “If only . . .”
“Now I’m going to ask you a tough question that you had to know I would ask. I know you won’t want to answer it. I wouldn’t want to if I was in your shoes, but I hope you will. It would really help.”
Charlie Prince nodded at me. “You’re gonna ask how me and my partner got onto Rondo Salazar in the first place, right? If we didn’t know where the murder scene was and we didn’t have a motive, how did we come up with a suspect so fast?”
“I sort of know the answer,” I said. “I know you were looking at him already for another unrelated homicide, but to get to where he was, it had to be a tip or intel from a CI. Problem is, knowing only that doesn’t do me any good. I need a name.”
“Gus, Al said you were a good man and that I’d like you. He told me you woulda made a helluva detective. He was right all the way around. But even if I had a name for you, I wouldn’t give it to you. However we found Salazar came via my partner, so that’s all off-limits.”
“Fair enough. I had to ask.”
“I know you did.”
“Who’s your partner, anyway?”
Charlie Prince suddenly looked like I’d felt when I woke up that morning and said, “Tony Palumbo.”
I understood the sick look on Prince’s face. Tony Palumbo had been a protégé of the late chief of police, Jimmy Regan, and a close friend of the late Pete McCann. Both were late because of me. Regan indirectly—he’d shot himself because I’d discovered things about his past that would have ruined his career and family. Pete McCann directly—I shot him in the neck after Bill Kilkenny shot him in the legs.
“I take it you didn’t mention our breakfast meeting to Tony,” I said.
“You got that shit right. I did not.”
“Yeah, he’s got no love for me.”
“That prick McCann had my partner snowed. Tony really loved the guy, thought he was so cool. Loved his stories about all the women he’d bedded. Even after all the rumors circulated about the bad shit he did, Tony defended him to anybody who would listen. Then everyone stopped listening.”
“Pete McCann had everybody fooled. Me, too, at least until he started fucking my wife a few months after my kid died.”
Charlie shook his head. “I don’t even know what to say to that. What an asshole. And Chief Regan was grooming Tony for big things. Now he’s got no rabbi to look out for him, nobody with any juice to pull him up. I love my partner. He’s a good man, but now he’s got this chip on his shoulder. Anything goes wrong for him or me, he blames it on the fact that the brass knows he was close to Regan. You should steer clear of him, Gus.”
“So why’d you agree to meet me?”
“Because Al Roussis is a good guy and I owe him,” Charlie said.
“And?”
“And because I wanted to know if all those rumors about Regan and Pete McCann are true.”
“Pretty much, Charlie.”
“They ran drugs?”
“Heroin, a lot of it.”
“They really murdered people?”
I nodded. “I saw Pete gun down a dea
ler in Wyandanch and stood a few feet away from Regan as he shot a barely conscious man in cold blood. Pete also killed an ex-cop and Regan confessed to me that he beat his ex-mistress to death. The body count is probably higher, but I can’t be sure. You know Father Bill Kilkenny?”
Charlie smiled at the mention of Bill’s name. “Everybody knows Father Bill.”
“You don’t believe me, ask him.”
“I believe you. I think I believed it before I even asked.”
We stopped talking after that. I took care of the check. We walked out to the parking lot together in silence and shook hands. As I turned to head to my car, Charlie grabbed my forearm to stop me.
“A CI with Asesinos connections snitched Salazar out,” he said, leaning in close to me so that only I could hear. “I don’t have a name for you. And like I said, I wouldn’t tell you if I did. You find out why that piece of shit murdered such a sweet girl, you let me know. The system may not demand a motive, but I sure would like one. No matter what people think, most of the time murder makes some kind of sense even if it’s an all-twisted-up kind of sense. This one just doesn’t. I mean, there was no sexual assault aspect to it, but it was vicious.”
It was my turn to stop Prince from going to his car. “Fair is fair. My client, the guy I’m doing the favor for, is Micah Spears, the girl’s paternal grandfather.”
“Guy creeps me out.”
I was confused. “You interviewed the grandfather? Why would you interview the grandfather?”
“Nah, it wasn’t like that. He showed up one day wanting to speak to Tony and me about the case. At first we were polite about it. We understand that families sometimes need to know stuff, to try to understand what can’t be understood. Comes with the territory. We explained that we were a hundred percent sure we had the killer, but that we weren’t gonna discuss details of the case with him. You know, we told him that if there was anything to come out, it would come out at trial. But the fucker wouldn’t take no for an answer, so we basically escorted him out of the building. When we called Linh Trang’s father to ask him to keep the old man away from us, he told us they no longer had any contact with Micah Spears and that we shouldn’t feel obliged to even talk to him. I’ll tell you what, Gus, there’s something not right with that guy. My gut tells me he’s got a dark side bigger than the moon’s.”
“I agree with you, but I’m not doing this because I like the guy.”
“I feel you, but you be careful.”
“You do the same.”
I watched Charlie Prince get in his car and drive out of the lot onto Terry Road south. I stood there for a few more minutes, frozen, thinking about everything and nothing. Then I knew exactly what I needed to do. There was someone I needed to see.
20
(TUESDAY MORNING, LATE)
John was buried in a narrow corner of St. Pat’s Cemetery on Mount Pleasant off the Smithtown Bypass. St. Pat’s was a vaguely triangular patch of grass, dirt, and mostly tasteful headstones less than a mile west of Maureen’s. He hadn’t been meant to rest here, but rest here he did. That was my doing, mine and Father Bill’s. The plan had been for us all to be buried together in the family plot in a big Catholic cemetery in Queens. But what the fuck did plans matter, anyhow? The world is cold and doesn’t care about plans or what’s supposed to be. Supposed to be. What does that even mean? It’s easy to fool yourself that plans matter right up until the moment they don’t. You tell yourself you’re in control, that the things you think, things you believe count. They count, all right. They count for shit.
And when I realized that, when that lesson was dropped on my head like a grand piano from a hundred stories up, I took control of the one thing left to me: where my son was to be buried. I didn’t want him far from me while I was still breathing. After I was dead, too, so what? Then I would be beyond caring. I didn’t want him thirty miles away from me in a place where I’d need a map to find him among thousands of other dead. Where his headstone would be just another cornstalk in a field of corn. So with Bill’s help, we wrangled a small plot in St. Pat’s. Annie hated me for it because there would be no place for the rest of us when our turns came. I think sometimes that Annie’s hate made it easier for her to spread her legs for Pete McCann. Or maybe I’m fooling myself about that. Wouldn’t be the first time. Wouldn’t be the last.
There was a burial going on at the opposite end of the cemetery, but what was that—fifty or sixty yards away? Less? So I parked on Mount Pleasant out of respect and walked through the far gate to John’s grave. Yet as I walked I could not help but stare at the ceremony going on, at the priest, the coffin. I could not help staring at the mourners, at their tears. I stared at those with no tears, too. At the bored and busy men checking their watches and their phones, counting the seconds until they could go, until they could get away from the unpleasant reminder of what awaited them. I always thought it strange, checking the time at a funeral. Tick . . . tick . . . tick. Then I stopped staring.
Most of the time when I came to see John, the caretaker would come over and stand by me. Sometimes we talked. Not always. And when we talked, he would tell me who had been by to visit or who had left flowers. Not today. Today he was busy at the other end of the cemetery. One thing having this odd friendship with the caretaker ensured was that John’s grave was always seen to. There were fresh flowers laid against the headstone. Flowers meant Annie had been here, probably to tell John she was getting married. Flowers were Annie’s MO. She always brought flowers. Other things, toys, books, stuff like that, those were Krissy’s doing. Me, I just tended to stand and remember. I was out of tears, out of anger at him for dying, out of words to say to him.
“What should I do, John?” said someone who sounded like me. “Maggie’s leaving and I’m afraid she’s not coming back.”
I laughed at myself. Even if John was still alive, he wouldn’t have known what to say. He was twenty when he died. What do twenty-year-olds know? Which is a different question from what they think they know. Why do we imbue the dead with wisdom? Why would they know anything the living don’t? I think it’s mostly that they can’t answer. The wisdom is in their silence.
As I was leaving the cemetery, one of the mourners going to her car stopped me. She was a handsome woman, a little older than me, perfectly made up, and somberly dressed in a dark gray dress and black shawl. Her expression was neutral. She asked me if I had a spare cigarette.
“Sorry. I don’t smoke,” I said, pointing to where the burial had been. “Who was it?”
“A business associate’s mother.”
“Sad.”
“Is it?” she said, seeming to talk more to herself than to me. “Is it always sad? For her family, it was sad, but it isn’t always sad for the family. Sometimes it’s a relief. I was obliged to be here, so was it sad for me?”
I interrupted her contemplation on sadness. “You didn’t know her?”
“Not at all. Thanks.”
She walked on, her car parked a few spaces ahead of mine.
As I sat in the front seat of my car, it occurred to me that I might be approaching my task for Micah Spears all wrong. If there was no obvious why in the killer’s behavior, maybe I should start looking at the victim more closely. Maybe she was where the secret was hidden.
21
(TUESDAY AFTERNOON)
Before I dived headlong into the too-short life of Linh Trang Spears, I had one or two last cards to play in terms of Rondo Salazar. Although they were unlikely to get me any further than I’d already gotten, I thought it was probably a good idea to see what those last chances would net me. So when I got back to the Paragon, I called Alvaro Peña.
As witnessed by my conversation with Charlie Prince, if you wanted to know anything about gang-related activities in Suffolk County, you went to Alvaro Peña. For most of his career on the SCPD, Alvaro had worked on gang stuff in one capacity or other. He’
d been on every local, state, and federal task force in the last fifteen years that dealt with gang activities in the New York metropolitan area. That meant he had sources not only on the streets of Central Islip and New York City, but on the streets of San Juan, Santo Domingo, and San Salvador as well. He also had powerful connections at the NYPD and in D.C.
“I figured you’d be calling,” Alvaro said when he heard my voice.
“How’d you figure that?”
“C’mon, Gus. How long you think it would be before I heard you been sniffin’ around about the Spears homicide?”
“There’s no surprising you, huh, Alvaro?”
“Not with this shit.”
“So . . .”
“So.”
“You got anything for me at all that’s not in the press?”
“You talk to Palumbo and Prince?”
“Charlie Prince, yeah. This morning.”
“What’d he say?”
“To call you.”
Alvaro laughed a squeaky laugh, the one he laughed when he wasn’t really amused.
“So I’m calling,” I said.
“Why didn’t you talk to Palumbo? He caught the case.”
“Palumbo was chummy with Pete and he was one of Regan’s golden boys.”
“Those are good reasons. He’d probably spit in your face.”
“Anything about Rondo Salazar on the street that isn’t public knowledge?”
“Nada.”
“Isn’t that a little unusual?”
“Very,” he said. “There’s usually a lot of bravado and dick waving connected to gang stuff, but not with this one. No one’s talking.”
“You think they’re ashamed of Salazar because of the victim and the brutality?”
I swear I could almost hear him shrug. “Maybe. I mean, the girl had no gang affiliation or connections at all. Believe me, I checked. And the Asesinos don’t usually have an issue with brutality or negative press, but could be there is so much bad press this time that they’re clamming up.”
What You Break Page 10
