The Water's Edge

by Daniel Judson

  When he was within Miller’s earshot, he said, “You’re on your own, Tommy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Spadaro kept walking, was obviously not planning on stopping. “Roffman and Mancini are going to talk to you in a minute.”

  “Wait. Where are you going?”

  Spadaro stopped short. “Home. I’ve done my part, apparently.” He glanced back, then said to Miller, “Something’s not right. The chief is up to something.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like I’d fucking know. Listen, if you don’t mind, I’d like to know what Roffman wants from you. I’d like to know something. Who knows, maybe we can help each other out.”

  Miller thought about that, then nodded and said, “Yeah, okay.”

  “Watch your back,” Spadaro said. He took one last look at the cops gathered behind him. An outsider, looking in. Then he left without another word, headed back up Holzman, walking fast.

  Miller watched him go, then looked at Roffman and Mancini. Roffman was talking again, Mancini nodding. The detective wasn’t paying attention to Miller at all now. After a moment, Mancini turned away from Roffman, pulled his cell phone from his coat pocket, made a call. Roffman looked directly at Miller then, gestured toward an unmarked sedan parked along the canal’s edge, just a few yards behind Miller. Miller nodded and started toward it.

  The canal locks were closed, the water slow-moving, its rippled surface steely under the lights. Miller faced the water and listened to the small waves lapping on the concrete wall of the channel as he waited for the chief of police to meet him.

  He stood as still as he could, his mind reeling just a little. He felt as if the edge he was standing upon now wasn’t mere feet above tranquil waters but instead hundreds of feet, thousands of feet, in the night sky, up in those relentless currents of buffeting winds, as cold as space, racing like frantic ghosts high above Long Island.

  “This won’t take long,” Roffman said.

  He had reached Miller, was standing beside him, facing him. Miller continued to look out over the canal, his hands deep in the pockets of his field jacket. He didn’t turn to face Roffman, kept his left shoulder pointed toward him. He didn’t know which was more of a concern to him—hiding his condition from the man or not having to look at him. Probably both.

  “What do you want, Chief?” Miller said.

  Roffman nodded toward the sedan. “C’mon, let’s get in.”

  “I’m fine here.”

  “I’m not,” Roffman said flatly.

  He was looking around, checking his surroundings. Miller caught this from the corner of his eye. It was clear by the way Roffman was searching the area that he was checking to see if there was anyone around—anyone other than his people—to see him talking with Miller.

  “C’mon, it doesn’t have to be this way,” Roffman said. “Get in and we’ll talk. Like I said, this won’t take long.”

  He walked to the sedan, opened the back door, waited for Miller. Scanning, still, but not as blatantly as a moment before. Head held still, his eyes moved as casually as possible—toward the bridge to the south, the darkened restaurant on the eastern side of the canal, and the bridge to the north, the Sunrise Highway bridge. All the areas that offered clear views but were not secured by his cops. Miller waited a moment, then stepped away from the canal’s edge and climbed into the sedan. Roffman swung the door closed behind him. It sealed more than shut. He walked around the back to the other side, opened the door, got in, pulled the door closed. Again, it sealed tight, cutting off the sound of the waves and the hiss of the occasional car crossing over the nearby bridges, all the subtle noises of the canal on a wet night.

  Just the two of them now, sitting side by side in silence.

  “I appreciate you coming,” Roffman said. He had dark hair and a mustache, the face of an intelligent—if not forever doubting—man. But maybe that was the administrator in him, this expression a means of ensuring that those beneath him worked always for his approval. You wear a mask long enough, it becomes you, Miller thought. It was hard to tell how much of this was a well-practiced act and how much of it was the actual man, but really it didn’t matter either way to Miller. Roffman was little more than an abstract idea in his life now. Miller had every intention to keep it that way. He owned his building outright, paid his taxes, rarely strayed far from his end of Elm Street, what was for him a sovereign state. Roffman had no reason to want anything from him, or to give a damn about him. He lived his days now, or so it seemed at certain times, with this ambition, and this ambition only, in mind.

  And yet, here he was, confined in this small space, smelling the man’s cologne, close enough to hear the man breathe, no choice but to look at his skeptical face. Almost . . . fatherly.

  “Why the hell am I here?” Miller said.

  “First things first, Tommy. I need to know if you happen to have a recording device on you right now.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Spadaro said he didn’t see you grab anything as you got ready. Of course, you’re a resourceful type and might keep something in your coat, a just-in-case kind of thing. You mind if I check?”

  Miller raised his arms. They felt heavy, as if he had just lifted weights. “Knock yourself out.”

  Roffman patted the four pockets of the field jacket, felt nothing. Miller lowered his arms as Roffman leaned back into his seat.

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” Roffman said, “so I’ll get to the point. I could use your help with something.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “You will be.”

  Roffman reached into the pocket of his coat, pulled something out. Miller glanced down, saw from the corner of his eyes a thin stack of Polaroid photographs.

  “Living the good life these days, huh?” Roffman said.

  Miller didn’t answer.

  “It certainly looks like the good life to me. Retired before thirty. The rent you collect from that restaurant pays your property taxes, keeps you fed and warm. What more could a man want, right?”

  What man didn’t want more than that? Miller thought.

  Roffman sorted through the photos in his hand. Four of them, from what Miller could see. He shuffled them like playing cards.

  “How long ago did you give up your license?”

  Miller said nothing.

  “Like I said, Tommy, there isn’t a lot of time. You have your reasons for disliking me, just as I have my reasons for not trusting you. I think we’re both clear on that part. But the sooner you cooperate, the sooner we’ll be done here. The sooner we’re done here, the sooner you’ll be free to go.”

  Miller took a breath, let it out. Finally, he said, “I gave up my license two years ago.”

  “And you haven’t been doing any unlicensed work, right? Off-the-books kind of things, favors for friends?”

  “No.”

  “Why would you, though, right? It’s not like you need the money. And it’s not like you have a lot of friends or leave your apartment all that much.”

  Miller looked at him. There was no need, by the look on his face, to say what was now on his mind.

  Roffman nodded, almost apologetically. “You’re a pretty easy man to keep track of,” he said. “So, you’re out of the business, right? No back-road work, nothing like that.”

  “No.”

  “Good.” Roffman sorted through the photos, picked out one, held it up for Miller to see. “I’d like to know if this guy looks familiar to you.”

  Miller glanced at the photo. It was a close-up of the face of a dead male. White, in his twenties. He had been beaten, but not so much to have made the face unrecognizable.

  After a moment, Miller said, “Never seen him.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Roffman showed a second photo. Just like the first one. White male, in his twenties, face badly beaten.

  “How about him?
”

  Miller glanced at the face, the eyes swollen shut, the cuts in the skin. He shook his head. “No.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yeah.”

  Roffman looked at the photos, put them back on the thin stack with the others. “There are some things you don’t ever expect to see,” he said. “You know. Even as a cop, you don’t expect to see them, they’re just not part of . . . I don’t know . . . modern life.”

  Miller waited, saying nothing.

  “About three hours ago these two men were hanged from that bridge over there.” He pointed through the window, toward the train bridge. “Hanged by their necks. Like a lynching. I’ve seen pictures of hanged men, but I never expected to see the actual thing. It’s . . . disturbing, somehow.”

  Miller looked toward the bridge. Nothing there now, of course. He tried to imagine that. Supposed to be a fucking sight to see, Spadaro had said.

  “Suicides?” Miller asked. His doubt was audible.

  “No.”

  “What tells you that?”

  “A witness saw one of the victims being lowered down by two men. Not pushed, so his neck would break at the end of his fall. Lowered down, nice and easy, so he’d strangle.”

  Again, Miller waited.

  “Of course, we don’t really need the witness to tell us this wasn’t some suicide pact,” Roffman said.

  “Why not?”

  Roffman removed the two remaining photographs, held them up side by side. Miller looked at them but couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  These weren’t close-ups of the faces like the two previous photos but rather full body shots of the victims stretched out on the wet access road. Their hands were missing, had been cut off at the wrists.

  “They weren’t bound in any way,” Roffman said. “I can’t help but imagining these poor guys, you know, out of reflex, reaching up to grab the rope tightening around their necks, nothing there but two bloody stumps. Jesus, just the thought of it.”

  Miller turned away from the photos. He thought then of the beaten faces.

  “Were their teeth knocked out?” he said.

  “No.”

  “So this wasn’t done to conceal their identities.”

  Roffman nodded. “It seems that way. The rain, of course, washed away any footprints up on the tracks. Some blood remains, but not a lot.”

  “You think the hands were severed up there.”

  “The statement from the witness indicates that. He saw one of the two men making what sounds to me like hacking motions right before they lowered the victim down. And we found fresh cut marks from some kind of hatchet in the wooden ties. I imagine the hands are somewhere in the Shinnecock Bay by now.”

  Miller looked toward the slow-moving water. “Were the locks open when this happened?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then they’re probably out in the Atlantic by now.”

  “We’re getting some divers from the coast guard to search the bay, just in case. It’s going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack, though.”

  “Any identification on the victims?”

  “Oh, yeah. No problem there. No cell phones, but wallets, with everything we’d need to know who they are.”

  “Money, too?”

  “Yeah. In fact, one of the victims had over two hundred dollars.”

  So not robbery, Miller thought. It was doubtful that anyone would go to such lengths just to steal a cell phone or two.

  “Whoever did this clearly wanted the identities of their victims to be known,” Roffman said.

  Miller almost didn’t want to ask. “So who are they? The victims, I mean?”

  “One is named James Michaels. He has a record, one bust for stealing a car two years ago. The other is named Richard Romano. He has no record at all. Both of their driver’s licenses have upstate addresses, so we have nothing local to check out. At first we assumed, because of their ages, that the upstate addresses would belong to their families.”

  “How old are they?”

  “Twenty-three. We got the numbers currently listed to those addresses and called but no one had ever heard of them.”

  “They’re from the same town?”

  “Yeah. Colonie, outside of Albany.”

  “So they were friends,” Miller said.

  “Probably, yeah.”

  “What about Michaels’s arrest form from two years ago?”

  “The address listed is one of those rental houses across from the college. According to the landlord it’s unrented right now. Apparently a lot of those houses are empty now that the college is closed. According to him he never had a lease with either name on it.”

  “Maybe Michaels had been a student at the college. Liked it out here, stayed around after. That happens.”

  “We’re checking on that.”

  “And the name on the lease for the time Michaels was supposed to be living there?”

  “Yeah, we’re on that, too.”

  Roffman returned the photos to his jacket pocket, was quiet for a moment. Then he reached into his jacket, removed from an inside pocket a clear plastic Baggie. At first Miller couldn’t see what it contained. Finally he made out what looked like a business card.

  “So the names and faces of these victims don’t ring any bells with you,” Roffman said.

  “No.”

  “Neither of them were ever clients of yours?”

  “Obviously, no. If I’ve never seen them or heard their names, how could they have been?”

  Roffman nodded. “Then we have a bit of a problem.”

  “What?”

  Roffman held up the Baggie for Miller to see.

  “We found this in the wallet belonging to the onetime car thief. James Michaels.”

  Miller looked at the card, recognized it at once.

  Tommy Miller. Private Investigator.

  Printed below that was a phone number and an e-mail address. The card was a heavy stock, gray, the lettering raised.

  “Any idea how this got into his wallet?” Roffman said.

  Miller shrugged. “No. It’s an old card, though. From four years ago.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The number is the business line of my house on Moses Lane. When I moved four years ago I printed up new cards, replaced that number with the number to a cell phone.”

  Roffman turned the card, looked at the number, then held the card up again for Miller to see. He pointed to the e-mail address in the bottom-right corner.

  “But this account is still good?”

  Miller nodded. “Yeah.”

  “So if we figure out where Michaels lived and get access to his computer, we aren’t going to find e-mails from you to him?”

  “No.”

  “Any idea how he happened to get hold of one of your business cards?”

  “One of my old business cards,” Miller corrected.

  “Any idea how he happened to get hold of one of your old business cards?”

  “No.”

  “Who did you give these out to back then?”

  “The usual. Clients.”

  “How many cards, roughly?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Four years is a long time for someone to hold onto a business card, don’t you think? And it’s not like his wallet was filled with business cards. Just the one, in fact.”

  “You said this would interest me, Chief. So far it hasn’t.”

  Roffman returned the Baggie to his inside pocket, then lay his hands across his lap and looked out his window, toward the bridge foundation, the cops around it, the yellow tape and floodlights.

  “Aren’t you curious how this kid ended up with a four-year-old business card of yours in his wallet?”

  “Not really.”

  “Yeah, well, I am.”

  “So find out.”

  Roffman smiled. “Ah, see, that’s the trick.”

  “Funny, I thought that was your job.”

 
; “For the longest time, Tommy, my job was cleaning up the mess your father had left behind. There were a lot of people in this town who were used to a certain kind of treatment. Who had paid well for that over the years, assumed they’d get the same consideration from me, didn’t necessarily like the idea that they wouldn’t. Some were determined to get what they wanted at all costs.”

  Miller said nothing, just sat there and waited for the point.

  Roffman looked again toward the bridge foundation.

  “If you kill somebody,” he said, “if you know what you’re doing, you don’t kill them in a public place, right? And you certainly don’t string them up for everyone to see. God knows there are plenty of places out here to stash a couple of dead bodies, right? The Pine Barrens out in Westhampton. The Northwest woods. Hell, take them out in a boat, miles offshore, feed them to the sharks. You don’t do this, go to all this trouble, unless you want what you did to be seen, unless it being seen benefits you somehow. Walking somebody onto a bridge, in view of two other bridges, not to mention that restaurant over there, that’s a big risk, and you don’t take risks like that unless you absolutely have to.”

  Again, Miller waited, saying nothing.

  “To me,” Roffman said finally, “it’s obvious that this is some kind of warning. From someone, to someone. It has to be. And it’s not just that those two poor bastards were hanged there for everyone to see, but that their hands were cut off first. Hacked off. In certain places in the world that’s still the punishment for stealing.”

  Miller nodded absently. So maybe it wasn’t a coincidence after all, the bodies being here, within sight of the Water’s Edge. The thought crossed his mind—how could it not?—but he didn’t grab on to it, just let it pass through and then be gone. A promise was a promise.

  Miller thought back then to what Roffman had said just a moment ago about certain people expecting a certain kind of treatment from the police, doing what it took to ensure that they got it. What exactly had Roffman meant by that? What had he been trying to tell Miller?