Fourth Victim (7 page)

T
he temperature was warmer than had been predicted and as the sun rose it seemed ready to preview its spring muscles. The firetrucks were parked on the concrete outside their bay doors. The guys at the firehouse were thrilled to interrupt their washing and waxing to make a new friend. No one asks questions of a man bearing donuts and coffee. And there was an added bonus; a Suffolk cop from the 4th precinct. His white and blue unit was already parked in the house’s side lot when Healy pulled in.

As he bullshitted with the guys from the house and the cop, Healy kept an eye on the doings across the street. At 7:00, a guy pulled into the body shop’s lot and parked his gray Acura in a corner spot. He was in his fifties and walked with the stooped grace of a man who had done the same hard job for many years. To Bob it seemed there was a sort of resignation in the man’s stride. Dressed in the now familiar green coveralls of Epsilon Energy, he carried a metal ticket box and his Hagstrom maps in one hand, a tall cup of 7/Eleven coffee in the other. 7/Eleven coffee: the oil man’s breakfast of choice. When he disappeared around the back of the body shop, Healy excused himself from his new pals and walked across the street.

The Epsilon guy was just getting into the cab of a 2000 Mack cab-over with a 3000 gallon tank. The truck was cleaner than any oil truck Healy had ever seen and it started right up without the grumble and coughs of Mayday’s aging fleet.

“Nice, clean truck,” he called up to the cab.

“You want buy it?” the driver shouted over the din of the diesel.

“You the owner?”

“Couldn’t sell it to you if I wasn’t.”

The man stepped down from the cab, approaching Healy cautiously. It didn’t escape Healy’s notice that the guy’s right hand was tucked out of sight.

“You might not want to let me think you’ve got an unregistered firearm there behind your back,” Bob said, pointing.

“I don’t give a shit what you think, but if it makes you feel better, it’s registered,” he said, showing Bob the blue finish on the short-barrel. 38. “Funny thing, you know. I’ve owned Epsilon for about fifteen years, another oil outfit for ten before that, and not once has anybody come up to talk to me about how clean I keep my equipment at seven in the morning.”

“I see your point.” Healy held his hands up in surrender. “I just wanted to say I was sorry to hear about your driver, Albie.”

The man put the. 38 at his side. “Sorry about the gun, but I’m a little nervous these days.”

“You’ve got cause. I’m Bob Healy from Mayday Fuel. You talked to my partner on the phone yester—”

“Joe Serpe. Seemed like a nice enough guy.”

“I’ll tell him you say so. I live in town and, like I said, I just wanted to come over and express my condolensces.”

The man rushed back to the truck, put the revolver away, and came back to Healy with his right hand extended. “Jack Peterson. Again, sorry about the gun.”

“No problem.” Bob shook his hand. “You talked to Joe so you understand that we’re looking into what’s been going on with these murders. We both knew the fourth victim from the job.”

“Good. The asshole the Suffolk PD’s got in charge didn’t exactly inspire my confidence. Didn’t strike me as a man who could find his own dick to piss with.”

“Hoskins is an asshole, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t cooperate with him.”

“There wasn’t much I could tell him anyway. Albie was a great guy. Had no enemies that I knew of, not that I knew many of his amigos. We deliver only on the North Shore, so I didn’t figure anything like this was gonna happen to him. I mean, all of my stops are in good areas and all my customers are good people.”

“You mean white people.”

“You wanna put it like that, okay, yeah, white people. I got nothing against nobody, but look for yourself where these murders happened. C’mon, you think a Jewish doctor from Commack and the guy that owns the Italian restaurant from Smithtown are killing these drivers? You know how many times some crackhead nigger stuck a gun in my face when I was delivering down in Bay Shore in the eighties?”

“Not much fun getting a gun stuck in your face, no matter who’s doing it.”

“Sorry again about the gun.”

“I’m not judging you, Jack. I just wanna stop the killing.”

“Okay.”

“One question about Albie. You said he was paying to bring his family up from Mexico, that he put money down on a house, and that you were looking to sell him the business. That’s a big nut to carry for an oil man, any oil man, even for a hard working one. You sure he wasn’t going down the South Shore or out east doing some deliveries for cash? They did find him in Mastic.”

“Look, even if I didn’t trust Albie—which I did—I’m a meticulous person. What, you think only my trucks are clean? Look at my coveralls, for goodness sake; clean like new. From the day I started as an owner, I’ve been a hard-on about paperwork. I made my guys keep mileage logs. I check the odometers every night. I keep records of every gallon of number two oil bought, pumped, and spilled and of every gallon of diesel used to run the trucks. Since the cops impounded Albie’s truck, that’s the most time that rig has spent out of my sight since I bought her. Whoever buys my equipment from me will know everything about it. So if Albie was running side jobs and stealing my oil to do it, he was either a magician or a criminal genius.”

“Fair enough,” Healy said. “I guess you better get on the road. Glad we met and, again, too bad about Albie.”

“No sweat.” Peterson turned to go back to his truck.

“Jack,” Healy called after him.

“What?”

“I’m looking to get my daughter’s fender fixed. Noonan’s Collision any good?”

“Used to be before the father moved to Ft. Myers last year. Now his kid runs it.”

“What’s wrong with the kid?”

“Take a look inside the shop. I gotta go.” With that, Jack Peterson closed the cab door, put the Mack in gear, and rumbled by.

When the truck was gone, Healy walked around front and took a look through the glass of the shop doors. The reasons behind Peterson’s less than ringing endorsement of the body shop were painfully evident. Loose tools, uncovered paint cans, body filler cans were all over the place. The tape job on the Subaru in one of the bays was careless and uneven. Very sloppy.

“Can I help you?”

Healy turned to face the heavyset blond Serpe had described to him the night before. The splint on her hand was hard to miss even with it down at her side.

“Yes, hi, I was just talking to the oil guy and he recommended you guys to fix my kid’s Honda. Dented fender.”

She flashed the smile Joe had mentioned. “No problem.”

“I don’t know about that. We’ve got a five hundred dollar deductable.”

“Like I said, no problem. We’ll just bury it in the estimate.” Nice, Healy thought, offering to commit insurance fraud before your first cup of coffee of the day. They exchanged pleasantries while she opened the shop, turned off the alarm, and flipped over the OPEN sign.

“Almost seven-thirty on a Saturday morning. Must be a busy day. I’m surprised you guys don’t get in earlier.”

“Yeah, I know, but the boss lives out east and—” “The Hamptons?” Healy cut her off.

She laughed. “The Hamptons, that’s pretty funny. Nah, Mastic. Hammer ain’t a Hamptons kinda guy.” “Hammer?”

“Hank Noonan. His dad owns the place.” “When will he be in?” “Before nine,” she said. “Thanks. I’ll be back.”

Her tiny silhouette was backlit by the early morning sun. She was sitting on the hood of his car as he came around the side of the town house. There was a big sports bag on the ground at her feet. She looked so small and pale; her hair limp and dull. Some of the life had been bleached out of her. But when she smiled at him, he thought he recognized a trace of the woman he’d fallen in love with. He was slow to approach her, reminding himself to look closely, to make certain he was seeing her and not the her he wanted to see. It was no use.

“Hi,” she said, tears in her eyes.

“Going somewhere?”

“Away, yeah.”

“Where?”

“Just away.”

“You need some money?”

She hesitated. He took all the money he had out of his wallet plus the fifty dollars he used as a bank and folded it into her hand.

“If you need more, call me,” he said. “If you don’t wanna call me, call Bob. If you need me, I’ll come get you.”

“I know.”

“You sure you won’t tell me where—”

“Shhh.” Marla put her index finger across his lips and then wedged herself into his arms. “Just let met go, Joe.”

“Okay.”

“You know I miss this smell sometimes, the way it stays on your work clothes even after you wash them.” “Heating oil?” “Crazy, right? But I do.” “Crazy.”

“It’s Saturday morning, you’ve gotta go,” she said, gently pushing him away.

“I love you.”

“I know you do. I’ve gotta go.”

He stood and watched her disappearing around the corner of the town house. As she went, Joe searched for signs of the fifty-first gallon in her gait.

Bob Healy was pretty used to the Blue Wall of Silence. He’d banged his head against it for over twenty years. Cops didn’t give up other cops; that was the myth. Yeah, and the Mafia had
omerta,
their code of silence. The reality was a lot less romantic. Healy had never made a big case without the cooperation of other cops and one look at the state of the American Mafia revealed that the RICO statutes were a lot more persuasive than
omerta.
What Bob Healy didn’t expect to find was a conspiracy of silence amongst the owners of body shops, but that’s pretty much what he’d run into.

He had gone all the way from Kings Park, to Commack, to Smithtown, to St. James, twelve shops in all, and he couldn’t find anyone willing to talk to him about Noonan’s Collision. He guessed it made sense. With all the insurance fraud and stolen parts floating around, these guys weren’t anxious to open themselves up to investigation or retaliation. That said, Healy was losing patience. And as any one of the cops he had targeted during his career could testify, that wasn’t a good thing.

He walked into Pete’s Towing and Collison on Middle County Road in St. James and asked the guy at the counter for Pete. A bald, wiry man in his forties, wearing a ripe tomato red sweater—the name Pete embroidered in blue above his heart—stepped out of the office.

“I’m Pete. Can I help you?”

“I don’t know, maybe. I was gonna bring my kid’s car here to get the fender fixed and repainted because I heard good things about your shop, but I was having a brew at TGI Friday’s at the mall and met this guy named Hank from Noonan’s in Kings Park.”

Pete’s skin turned as red as his sweater. “Yeah, and what’d he say?”

“Said you guys did shabby work, bought used parts and charged for new, and that—”

“Fuck him!” The veins throbbed in Pete’s skinny neck. “Noonan, the dad, he was a good guy, but the kid’s an asshole. We don’t ever buy used parts. People hear that, they don’t come back. We’ve been here for twenty years and we got good accounts with every car company and supplier on the island. That schmuck Noonan’s so fucked he can’t even buy sandpaper on credit.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re on credit hold with all their suppliers. He’s burnt so many bridges that the local Honda dealerships won’t even sell him parts for cash. He’s gotta go all the way down the South Shore for cash parts from Honda.”

“Amazing.”

“Yeah. I don’t know how he fucked up that business, but he did. Noonan’s was a great shop for years. Great rep, lotsa cash walking through the door, but I guess you do sloppy work, start cutting corners and word gets around …”

Healy stopped himself from rolling his eyes. Now that he found somebody to finally talk about Noonan’s, he couldn’t get him to shut up.

“This your business card?” he finally said.

“That’s it.”

“Thanks, Pete. You’ve been a great help.”

“One hundred gallons, right?”

“That’s what you ordered, Mrs. Perchico. That’s what I put in.” “Yeah, but the last few times the oil went so quick.” “Until today, it’s been pretty cold out. Oil goes faster in the cold unless you lower your thermostat.”

“You’re not shorting me oil, are you?”

“If I was, I wouldn’t tell you Mrs. Perchico, would I? But no, I’m not shorting you oil.”

“I know companies they do that sometimes, short their customers. They take advantage of old people.”

“Some do. I don’t. I hope to get old myself someday.”

“Okay, you’re a good boy. Here,” the old woman said, slipping a solitary quarter into Joe’s oil-dirty palm. “Go get yourself a cup of coffee.”

“Thanks very much, Mrs. Perchico. Happy New Year.”

Joe Serpe turned and went down the front steps before the door closed at his back. Normally, Mrs. Perchico’s routine made him want to stick needles in his eyes. She had been a Mayday customer for all the years Joe had driven for Frank and had stayed on after he and Healy bought back the company. In all that time, Joe must have made fifty deliveries to her house and every single time—regardless of per gallon price or season—she complained about the oil going too fast and asked if she was being shorted. And for his patience, Joe was always rewarded with a twenty-five cent tip for coffee. Good thing he wasn’t a Starbucks man. But today, nothing, not even bullets could get through the numbness.

After all these years of driving, Serpe had never quite gotten used to the people aspect of oil delivery. On the street, as a detective, he saw the worst people at their worst; people at their most selfish, most violent, most desperate; people who were barely people anymore. Because the stakes were so high or maybe because the adrenaline rush was so intense, Serpe never quite saw his narcotics work in terms of routine. In oil, it was all about routine, his interactions with customers were the same, always; voices on the phone, faces through doors, quarters in palms.

His invisibility was one aspect of the job he would never understand but had come to accept. Almost from the first, he noticed that no one noticed him. People paid far more attention to their mailboxes than their mailmen. That’s how he thought about it. He loved to tell Marla the stories of what people had done in front of him. To this day, women would come to the door half naked, some more than half, hand him the cash for the delivery and point out where the oil fill was on the side of the house. He had stood at the door and watched people smoke crack, shoot heroin, smack their kids, their wives, their pets. To his customers, he was as invisible as the water main or electric or cable wires. If he ran into Mrs. Perchico in the supermarket, she wouldn’t recognize him. But Joe didn’t sweat it anymore. It was just another part of the job, like dirty hands and smelly clothes.