“I’d say so. This was about a year ago.”
The coffee seemed to turn bitter in his mouth. “Yeah, almost exactly a year.”
“And how were things between you and TJ after that?”
“Not so good. I only saw him once after that. He called me a few times when he was high, swearin’ he’d get me my money back, sayin’ we should get together and shit, but it never happened. I guess he felt bad about how it went down and gone to shit and how we got the crap beat outta us. I mean, I cared about losing all the money—who wouldn’t, right? And I didn’t like the beatin’ I took, but it wasn’t all his fault. We were buds forever, you know? And the whole thing kinda woke me up. That’s when I got a straight job. Workin’ across the street . . . it’s not much, but it’s something. Freddy and Meri, they’re all right.”
I understood that. Boy, did I ever. I was glad to hear that the shithead had some ability to reflect on his life and make a change.
“You say you only saw him once again. When was that?”
Ralph actually got teary-eyed and had to gather himself before he could speak. “The week he was killed, maybe a day or two before. He showed up at my folks’ place, outside my bedroom window at, like, three in the morning. It was really weird.”
“How so?”
“He was really high and he looked like he’d taken another beatin’. He had a black eye and his bottom lip was all swollen and shit.”
“Did he want something, to borrow money or to hide out or anything?”
Ralph shook his head and smiled a goofy smile. “No. That’s the thing. He brought me money. Twelve thousand bucks. He said it was to pay back the money he lost me on the drug deal, plus interest.”
“Where’d he get twelve thousand bucks?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. All he would say is that he’d hit a fuckin’ jackpot and made the score of a lifetime. He said that the twelve grand was just the beginning, that the two of us would be flush for a long time.”
“Did he explain any—”
He shook his head. “Nope. I’m just telling you how it was.”
“What about his face?”
“He said it was no big thing, just part of the price he had to pay for the score.”
I didn’t like it. “That’s all he said?”
“Man, I was still half-asleep and I was happy to get my money back. I didn’t know that was the last time I was going to see him. If—” He choked up again.
“Okay, okay. Take a minute.”
After he collected himself, he stood again and said, “I really got to get back to work.”
“One last thing and then we’re good, Ralphy.”
“What?”
“Did you tell any of this to the cops?”
If derisive laughter had a defining sound, Ralph O’Connell was making it.
“Cops! What cops? Nobody ever talked to me about this or nothing else. I know you think I’m stupid, but I’m not that dumb. I know TJ’s dad musta given my name to the SCPD, but nobody came knockin’. And I sure as shit wasn’t going to them. Hey, fellas, you wanna hear about our fucked-up drug deal? I mean, come on.”
“If they had knocked, would you have told them what you just told me?”
He shrugged. “Some of it, yeah. I wouldn’ta told them about the drug deal or nothin’ like that, but I woulda told them something.”
That much I believed.
I stood up, too, and offered him my hand. “Okay, Ralph, thanks. I appreciate you talking to me this way.”
He shook my hand and said, “I hope you find the fuckers who hurt TJ that way. He was the best friend I ever had and I’m never gonna have a friend like him again. I know he was a fuckup, but nobody deserves to die like that.”
I handed him a card from the Paragon, one with my cell number written on the back, and told him to call me if he could remember anything else that might help or if he wanted to talk. He just kind of nodded and left. I followed a few minutes later.
I considered going back through the Manor and stopping in for a word with Freddy, but decided I wasn’t up for it. I did have to go collect Father Bill at some point before heading in for that night’s shift. I’d also had enough sadness, enough looking back and behind me for one day. As I walked around the Manor, I looked up to see where the sun was. It was lower in the sky, having taken its false promises toward New York City and points west.
27
(TUESDAY, LATE MORNING)
Driving the Paragon courtesy van was, at least at the beginning, suicide prevention. Yesterday had proven as much to me. When I first started driving the van, I would have never been able to bear going to a viewing or to see the spot where John’s lurking heart defect had taken him away from us. Back then, the job of driving the drab and faceless guests to and from the hotel was a way to hold the walls back from closing in on me. Even so, there were times it almost didn’t, times when the walls nearly touched. Times when I’d been the sad cliché of the drunken ex-cop sitting for hours at the edge of his hotel bed, alternating between the bottle and the barrel of his gun. Like I’d told Pete McCann when he’d tried to warn me off, running wasn’t in my nature. That didn’t mean running didn’t tempt me. Sometimes, temptation is the only thing a man has to hold on to.
It wasn’t that I thought pulling the trigger would take me to a better place. I didn’t believe in better places or those horseshit Mitch Albom books where you have reunions in heaven with the blissful dead. Where you are magically forgiven for your sins, your guilt stripped away so you don’t have to feel shitty for the harm you’ve done. A few well-meaning friends had given those books to Annie and me, saying they would bring us comfort. Well, no. My faith in God, heaven, and rainbow-coated unicorns named Sparkles had vanished a long time before my son’s death. You don’t really understand the insidious nature of faith until you lose it. And once I saw faith for what it was, I never wanted it back.
That’s what Bill and I had argued about when I picked him up outside Smudge’s dingy little house in the North Bay Shore. Bay Shore was like a lot of towns south of the LIE on the island. Between Montauk Highway and the water, it was quite beautiful, with some kickass mansions to rival the ones on the more famous Gold Coast. Places that had thriving little downtown areas with restaurants and shops. But wander a little farther north, up past Sunrise Highway toward Brentwood, and Bay Shore’s resemblance to West Egg or East quickly dissolved. Not unlike Huntington Station, whole swaths of Bay Shore had fallen prey to drugs and gangs. Smudge lived on a side street off Fifth Avenue in a tiny shitbox of a house that looked like it had been a drug den or a grow house. Half the windows were covered with plywood and the other half were coated with a filthy yellow film. I was glad that I picked Bill up in front and didn’t have to go inside.
Outsiders don’t get Long Island; most New Yorkers don’t understand it. They can’t see past the beaches and the sound, the Hamptons and the Gold Coast, the country clubs and the marinas. But most of the island isn’t about Gatsby. A current of poverty and violence roils beneath the surface here, too. A lot of senseless blood gets spilled. What off-islanders see is the 24-karat gilding along the edges where the money flows, not the fool’s gold in the middle where the rats race as hard as in the city and where the stray dogs lie in wait.
Bill sighed when he got into my car. “Poor man.”
“No kidding. I bet you he can count the happy days in his life on one hand.”
“You were right about him, Gus. He’s lost the only true friend he’s ever had in Mr. Delcamino.”
“You guys talked?”
“Some in the cab on the way over from the wake.”
“Some?”
“For the most part we prayed together.”
I blew air through mostly closed lips and shook my head at him. “So, Bill, you got him to drink the Kool-Aid, huh?”
“Nothing
of the sort. He’s a devout Catholic. Went to mass before coming to the viewing earlier. Goes every day.”
Now I was really shaking my head in disgust.
Bill said, “Care to put that into words for me, Gus?”
“Christ, Kilkenny, you sound like my shrink. He’s always saying stuff like that.”
“Obviously a sage fellow, but I’m interested for my own sake. What’s all the head shaking and sound effects for?”
“Did you take a good look at Smudge, Bill? Your lot are so fond of saying things like ‘Jesus is love.’ Well, where’s the love in Smudge’s life? God sure hung the ‘Kick me’ sign on him. The guy’s probably never had an ounce of love or a woman’s affection in his entire life.”
“We all have crosses to bear, Gus. You know that better than most. And the man’s had God’s love and his faith to sustain him.”
“It wasn’t God’s love or his faith that sustained him in prison, Bill. That was Tommy Delcamino.”
“God’s love comes in many forms.”
“Like in the form of petty thieves.”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“And who sustained TJ Delcamino while he was being tortured to death and his father while someone was putting a .357 hollow point through his head?”
“When we first met, I understood your bitterness, Gus. And I certainly understood your loss of faith, but surely you are a different man now,” Bill said, his voice rich with yearning.
“I lost my faith a long time before John died. You know that.”
“But for you to look at a fella like Smudge and know he still has faith—”
We were at a red light and I raised my hand like I was on traffic duty. “Bill, I’ve missed these little talks of ours, but did you find out anything from Smudge that will help me find who killed Tommy or his son?”
Bill flushed a little. “Sorry, Gus, I suppose I was getting a bit carried away there.”
“No apologies necessary.”
“He was raised by his maternal grandparents. Never finished high school and has been in and out of trouble of one sort or another his whole life.”
“That’s all well and good, Bill, but—”
“Patience, Gus, I’m getting there. I believe him. I don’t think he knows anything more than what he’s told you. I could be wrong, mind you. He is wary even of me.”
“Do you think he’s afraid?”
“For a man like him, fear is second nature. It hurts to say so, but I think he lives in fear and it has always been so. Whether he is more afraid of something specifically now, I can’t begin to say. He has faith, but very little else. Does that help you at all?”
“In a general way, yeah, it does. I may have to circle back to him and have a heart-to-heart about his pal Tommy, but for now I have other fish to fry.”
“Do you mind if I were to see him again? He does seem so alone in the world. Priests, even broken-down old ex-priests, understand loneliness better than most.”
“Sure.”
But that was yesterday and I’d moved on from Smudge and my lack of faith to Kareem Shivers. Unlike Bill’s chat with Smudge, mine with Ralph O’Connell had opened up some doors for me. He might not have realized it, but Ralph had finally given me something to work with. Actually, he’d given me a lot. Now it was time to see what I could do with it.
28
(TUESDAY, LATE MORNING)
Exit 50 on the LIE puts you onto Bagatelle Road, a thoroughfare of two divergent natures. Just off the LIE, you’re in the prosperous bedroom community of Melville. Melville is a new-money town of large houses—most tasteful and lovely, some not so much—three-car garages, cobbled driveways, swimming pools, cabanas, manicured lawns, and fancy gardens. People still worked for their money here, but not at McDonald’s. No, they were more apt to own the McDonald’s. Go a few miles south along Bagatelle and you’re in the heart of Wyandanch. Wyandanch, where TJ and Ralphy’s drug deal had gone wrong, was a poor, largely African-American enclave and the busiest area the SCPD dealt with. While it wasn’t nearly as dangerous or crime-ridden as East New York in Brooklyn, it was about as rough and dangerous as Suffolk County got. So it was no wonder to me that many of the folks who made it out of Wyandanch, whether they were doctors or lawyers, ballplayers or boxers, hip-hop performers or professors, moved only a couple of miles north up Bagatelle. It was a way to stay close and yet be a million miles away all at once. Kareem Shivers had bought into that notion, too.
I’d done a little checking up on Mr. Shivers after dropping Bill off in Massapequa. I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling I’d gotten when Ralphy was describing the two men who had provided the gun and muscle for Lazy Eye. They sounded an awful lot like Jamal and Antwone to me. So I put in a call to Detective Alvaro Peña. You want to know anything about drugs and/or gangs in Suffolk County, Peña is the man. Drugs and gangs often went hand in hand, and Alvaro had served on just about every drug and gang task force the SCPD had formed over the last fifteen years. Problem was that as much as I wanted to talk to Alvaro, that’s how much he didn’t want to talk with me.
“What’d you do, Gus, fuck the chief of detective’s wife or something?”
“What kinda shit are you talking now, Alvaro?”
“No shit, Gus. You are bad medicine, bro. You’re more radioactive than Fukushima.”
“And how did this word come down? They send out a memo about me?”
“Come on, man. You know how it works. Word comes down how word comes down. You’re off limits. You don’t know who first whispered in whose ear, but the word gets spread and it’s been spread about you. I’m hangin’ up now.”
“You owe me, Al, and I’ve never cashed in that marker. I’m cashing it in now. Without me, your girl’s in Riker’s instead of Rutgers.”
“I know, Papi. I know. I owe you big-time for what you did. What you need?”
“Kareem Shivers.”
There was a short but very loud silence on his end of the phone. Then, “What about him?”
“Everything about him.”
“You got a week? That’s one bad puppy there.”
“No offense, Al, but I didn’t need you to tell me that. I’ve met the man.”
“No shit? And you’re still breathing?” His voice was full of surprise. “His street handle is K-Shivs. He was a Golden Gloves champ, turned pro, but he got head-butted bad in, like, his fifth professional fight by some Russian guy. Word is the butt was intentional because the Russian was losing bad early before they went to the scorecards. Cracked Shivers’ skull and forced him outta that game and into another.”
“Drugs?”
“Bingo, Gus. Now you almost sound like a cop.”
“Fuck you. So . . .”
“First he was just muscle for the Danch Boyz. They’re like an offshoot of the Crips. But it didn’t take him too long to go from being the muscle to being the man. My guess is you can figure out how he managed that. Word is that he gets a taste of every packet of heroin and coke that gets sold in the county. You seen the latest stats on heroin deaths in Suffolk? It’s bad and getting worse, Papi. But the fucker is Teflon. Smart and brutal, but only when he has to be. He knows too much blood is bad for the cash register.”
“But you guys haven’t been able to lay a glove on him?”
“Bad pun, Gus. No, we haven’t been able to touch him. And get this shit, the bastard even has a carry permit.”
“Yeah, I know. I found out the hard way.”
“You a cat or something, ’cause you must have a lot of lives. What’s your business with this guy?”
“I’m not sure yet.” It was only half a lie.
“Be careful with him. He’s not only brutal and smart, he’s lucky . . . too lucky.”
I opened my mouth to ask the next logical question, but shut it. I knew exactly what he meant. Besides, had I asked, he
wouldn’t have answered the question.
“Okay, Al, thanks. That should do me. We’re square.”
But he didn’t let me go that quickly.
“Gus, I’m not joking around here about Shivers. Remember that Russian who head-butted him?”
“Yeah.”
“About a year after the fight, they found his body in a plastic garbage bag in front of a Russian Orthodox church in Sea Cliff. His skull was caved in, all of his teeth had been pulled out, and every bone in his body was broken. Worse than broken, they were all crushed. The Nassau County ME said they had tied off each part of the guy’s body and they had broken him apart one piece at a time. Said the Russian was a long time in dying before his skull got hammered. Don’t cross Shivers, Gus. Just don’t.”
“Strictly Marquess of Queensberry for me and K-Shivs, Al. I promise.”
I didn’t need Alvaro to tell me that Kareem Shivers was a nasty piece of work, but until we spoke I had no idea of just how nasty. Nor were the details of how Shivers had disposed of the Russian boxer lost on me. Although TJ Delcamino’s murder wasn’t an exact duplicate of the Russian boxer’s, there were a few inescapable similarities: the brutality, the broken bones, the body in the plastic bag. I tried putting all that out of my head as my tires tha-dump tha-dumped down the streets of Melville.
Except for a giant concrete and brushed aluminum monstrosity across the street from Shivers’ address, the houses on the block were an eclectic grouping of attractive homes that had been built just before the era of the faux Victorian McMansion. Many, if not all, had been expanded well beyond their original footprints, but skillfully so. There were no lean-tos or mismatched sheds, no vinyl siding or fake stone façades to be seen. Shivers’ house was a big brick Colonial with a lawn and garden that had been landscaped to within an inch of its life. Nothing about the place screamed for attention, but I’d run across men like Shivers before. They were territorial and they had a need to mark their turf as their own. Some were just more subtle about it than others.
Where It Hurts Page 14