Where It Hurts

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  33

  (WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON)

  I found the local COPE—Community Oriented Police Enforcement—officer parked in the lot of the Lake Grove Village Hall on Hawkins Avenue. Wedged between Nesconset and Centereach, Lake Grove had no lake and no grove, but it did have the Smith Haven Mall, the largest indoor mall in the county. That counted for a lot around here. Kind of like having the biggest cathedral, only better.

  The COPE officer was yakking on her phone as I approached her unit and she adopted her best cop face—hard and falsely neutral. Beneath all your expressions as a cop, there’s a requisite air of implied threat. I’d seen a lot of Don’t Fuck with Me expressions in my time, most of them on the faces of other cops. It made sense. Your expression, the way you carried yourself, they were your first lines of defense. Having a Glock on your hip and a vest under your shirt doesn’t make you invulnerable. Most of the time you’re either outnumbered or outgunned. Sometimes both. Someone gets it in his head to fuck with you, he’s going to fuck with you no matter what.

  She sat low in the driver’s seat, her head not reaching much above the wheel. She had wiry blond hair pulled back tight in a ragged ponytail and her skin was that weird shade of orange/brown that screamed tanning salon. As I came closer to her car, she stepped out and gave me more attitude. She was taller than Casey, about five seven, and not petite. Her neck was thicker than I expected and her upper torso was severely V-shaped. That was obvious in spite of her vest. A gym rat, I thought. I don’t know. You’re a cop long enough and you get a sense of these things, of who people are beneath the things they show you.

  Everything about her body language told me not to come any closer, so I put my hands up and I smiled.

  “I come in peace,” I said.

  She laughed at that and then took a careful look at me, squinted her eyes. “You look familiar. You on the job?”

  “Retired. I was in the Second for most of the career.”

  “Then you must know Pete.”

  “McCann. Yeah, I know Pete.”

  She got that look on her face. She wouldn’t have been the first woman in the bag to fall for Pete. I thought about warning her that she’d only have a shot with him if she was with someone else. The charms of being willing and available were lost on Pete. You also needed to be taken. I decided not to go there.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Gus Murphy.”

  She got another look on her face, but this one wasn’t about Pete McCann. “I heard about your son. Sorry. That was a few years ago, right?”

  “Two. Thanks.”

  Her face changed again. She seemed almost in physical pain. “Does it get any easier, losing your kid, I mean?”

  “Easier, yeah, but never better. You got kids?”

  “A little boy, Drew.”

  I smiled. “I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t really protect him the way you think you can. Just let him live his life as happy as he can.”

  I didn’t even know where those words came from. They just seemed to force their way out of my mouth.

  She was smiling again, shaking my hand. “Corinne Durney. What can I do for you, Murphy?” Apparently, word hadn’t drifted down as far as COPE about me being off limits.

  Closer to her now, after her iron handshake, I felt pretty sure I was right about her. Durney definitely worked out. You could see by the way she held herself when she was relaxed that she was proud of her body, but not in a coy way.

  “You lift?”

  She lit up like the Christmas tree in Mr. Martino’s living room. “Not as much as I used to. Used to compete when I was younger. So how can I help you?”

  “I’m doing a little fishing around on my own these days and I was talking to Mr. Martino on Browns Road.”

  She laughed. “Guy with the Santa on the roof, right?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Nice man, too bad his grandson’s a prick,” Durney volunteered without prompting. “A real hothead, Pauly is. They threw him on the Marine Bureau to keep him away from people. So why were you talking to the old man?”

  “We were talking about the body found in the woods next to his house last August. I heard you were there.”

  Her face hardened. “Why you interested?”

  “Officially? I can’t say.”

  “Unofficially?”

  “Unofficially, I’m working for a party who’s interested in purchasing the lot and is looking for any way to drive down the price.”

  That lie came out of my mouth a little too easily to suit me, but come out it did and it seemed to work well enough.

  “Okay,” she said, “I was there that night. It was only about a month before I got assigned to COPE.”

  “How you like it?”

  She shrugged. “It’s all right. Boring sometimes, but boring ain’t so bad, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Neighborhood guy walking his mutt called it in. By the time I got to the scene, the place was already crawling with other cops.”

  “You see the vic?”

  Durney made a sick face, shaking her head as if to rid herself of the memory. “Wish I hadn’t. Kid was in bad shape. Bloody. Burnt-up. Bones sticking through the skin. He didn’t go easy.”

  “Anything unusual about the scene?”

  “Other than it was in Nesconset? Not the kind of thing we generally run into in the Fourth.”

  “I heard Chief Regan made an appearance,” I said as innocently as I could manage.

  “I guess that was pretty unusual. He got there about a minute after me and I was on scene pretty quick. But like I said, the scene was already turning into a zoo.”

  “Anybody figure out why he was there?”

  I could tell there was something she wanted to say, but she didn’t know me well enough to trust me, so I gave her a push.

  “C’mon, Durney. It’s all off the record here.”

  “The first detectives on the scene, they were pretty shocked that Chief Regan showed up. I overheard them talking.”

  “About what?”

  She shrugged again, but I couldn’t tell if she meant it. I don’t think she liked the excited tone in my voice or where these questions were going. I could see her retreating. She even took a step back.

  “I don’t know,” she said, pulling her unit’s door open. “Look, I gotta get back out on patrol. Again, sorry about your son. Merry Christmas.” She got sat behind the wheel and slammed the door shut. “It’s okay to wish you Merry Christmas, right?”

  “Sure, Durney. Merry Christmas to you and yours. And don’t worry about talking to me. Your name will never come up.” I handed her a Paragon hotel card with my cell number on the back. “You wanna talk again, let me know who those first detectives on the scene were, give me a call.”

  She took the card. “Or not.”

  “Or not.”

  She put the window back up and the car in reverse. The car rolled back a foot, stopped. She rolled her window down. “And not for nothing, Murphy, that bullshit about a buyer wanting to drive the price down . . . you gotta do better than that. That lot is designated green space. It can’t be built on. You want me to be straight with you, you should be straight with me.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Here’s some straight advice for you. Stay away from Pete McCann. Far away. He’ll fuck up your life and throw you away. Don’t let him do that to you.”

  She didn’t say anything to that, but you could see she was thinking about it. I was glad for that much at least.

  34

  (WEDNESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON)

  After checking back in at the walk-in clinic to have my calf wound dressing replaced, I drove down to Massapequa to have coffee with Bill Kilkenny. I hadn’t seen the poor man in a year, and now I was making myself as hard to be rid of as his own shadow. I
don’t suppose he minded. I could have handled it over the phone, but the thing about Bill was I liked being around him when we had our chats. And the words weren’t always the most important aspect of our conversations. Not his words, at least. It was often his facial expression or his body language that had the most impact on me. Sometimes, just the way he arched his eyebrows were his way of screaming at me, Pay attention to this part, Gus. Pay attention carefully.

  The diner was on Sunrise Highway and Bill was already seated at the booth when I walked in. He was chatting up the waitress, asking her about her kids and her ailing husband. That was Bill. My bet was he was pals with everyone who worked in the place, front of the house and back. Probably half the regulars, too. It was his nature to listen, to give support, to comfort. Although he was fond of prescribing big doses of Jesus and the church, even when he didn’t quite have faith in them himself, he wasn’t ever pushy about it. And he’d never tried it with me. When we first met, he’d understood my needs better than I did.

  “Well, honey, God bless,” he was saying to the waitress, patting her forearm as I approached. “I’ll be by to visit your husband tomorrow. Ah, here’s my friend now. He’s a coffee man. Half-and-half, too.”

  “Any pal of Father Bill’s is a friend of mine,” she said, gesturing at the cushion across from the ex-priest. “I’ll be right back.”

  I slid in. “Guess I’m not the only one who can’t get used to you without your former title.”

  He smiled a sly smile.

  The waitress dropped off my coffee and creamers. I plinked the pink packets of sweetener with my index finger, ripped off their tops, and poured white powder into the black coffee. When I added the half-and-half and looked back up, Bill was staring at me.

  “What?”

  “Something’s changed in you, Gus. To the good, I think.”

  Was I that easy to read?

  “I met someone.”

  “I knew it. Good on you. Tell me about her.”

  “Maybe some other time, Bill, if that’s okay?”

  “Of course. Of course. What is it you’d like to talk about?”

  I took a swallow of coffee. “Are you still close to Jimmy Regan?”

  “We were quite close. Less so since I’ve shed the collar and before he took over the department. Why do you ask?”

  “Because his name came up today.”

  Bill put his hand to his face, rubbing the slight stubble on his cheek. “How so, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Sure you can ask. I was speaking to the people who live near where Tommy Delcamino’s son’s body was discovered. It appears that Jimmy Regan showed up at the kid’s crime scene and not so long after it was called in.”

  “I take it that his being there was somehow extraordinary.”

  “It’s not unheard of. You know, when a cop gets shot or something like that. Or sometimes, if there’s good publicity to be had for the department, the chief will show. But not usually for the murder of a low-rent car thief and drug user. His showing up for that, yeah, Bill, that’s unusual. Especially when it happens in a precinct where that kind of thing doesn’t often happen. You don’t want to call attention to yourself and the department. You just want to make it go away as fast as you can.”

  “I can see that, but you know Regan,” Bill said, shaking his head. “If there’s a chief who would show, it would be him. He’s not a man to shy away from bad press if he thought his cops needed him to be there. The man’s never shied away from a tough spot in his life.”

  “I know. Maybe there was a good reason for him to be there.” I shrugged. “I admit that. I mean, what I’m hearing is secondhand memories from people who were recounting events from August.”

  “There you go, then.”

  I shook my head. “If that’s all there was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  Bill said, “There’s more?”

  “Maybe.”

  He was confused. “Maybe?”

  “From the first time I mentioned Tommy Delcamino or his kid’s case to anyone on the SCPD, I’ve been treated like a leper.”

  “Surely you’re exaggerating.”

  “No, Bill, I wish I was. I’ve been warned off and threatened by a whole bunch of detectives, including friends. I had a friend tell me straight out that I was poison and that word had filtered down from on high not to speak to me. You’ve been around the department longer than I have. You know how that works.”

  “I do indeed. Did this friend of yours mention Jimmy Regan by name? Did any of these men?”

  “They wouldn’t. And I’m not saying it was him, but it was somebody. This stuff doesn’t come out of thin air.”

  Bill didn’t speak right away. He rubbed at his stubble a bit more as he considered what I’d said.

  “It’s bad math, Gus. You’ve got two over here and you’re adding it to two over there and coming up with four, but it sounds like five to me. I know Jimmy Regan too well to believe he would do anything to thwart someone trying to do the right thing. Now, I’m not saying Jimmy’s a saint. By no means is the man a saint, but he was born to do right and has always tried to do right.”

  I felt silly now. Speaking to Bill about this had seemed like a good idea, but even as I was saying the words, I knew I’d made a mistake. How often in life do things sound like good ideas in your own head, then when you utter them aloud . . . This was one of those times.

  “I know that, Bill. I’ve met the man, too. I know his rep.”

  Father Bill reached across the table and patted my forearm much as he had patted the waitress’s. “No harm in discussing it. Like I said, Jimmy’s no saint. What man is? But when it comes to the job itself, I think he’d sooner eat his gun than do anything to disgrace the shield. No, Gus, I think you’re looking for demons where there are none to be found.”

  “Maybe so, Bill. Maybe so.”

  “Besides, what possible interest could Jimmy Regan have with Tommy or his boy? Jimmy has been off the street for many years.”

  “I suppose I was hoping you could explain that to me?”

  Bill and I had a laugh at that. We had a second cup of coffee—I would have no trouble staying awake for my shift tonight—and then I offered to drive him home. He thanked me, but said he’d prefer to walk. That walking helped him think. Before I left, though, he squeezed my hand hard and grabbed my arm with his left hand.

  “You must tell me about this woman soon.”

  “Casey,” I said.

  “Casey, is it?” He smiled so broadly it made my cheeks ache. “You must tell me about fair Casey.”

  “I think I need to get to know her a little myself first.”

  He nodded. “And, Gus . . . welcome back to the living.”

  I thought about saying something and decided not to. He let go of my hand and arm.

  I sat in the front seat of my car, watching Bill through the diner window. He was chatting once again with the waitress. But really I was thinking of that last question he had asked me. It’s funny how you can have a million thoughts and ideas of your own and a simple question can clarify everything. Was there a connection between the Delcaminos and Jimmy Regan? And if there was, what could it be? But I reminded myself not to go off on tangents, that even if I could establish a connection between Chief Regan and the Delcaminos, so what? So what if the chief had shown up at the wooded lot on that August night? I heard Doc Rosen’s voice in my head. I had to stop looking at the wriggling fingers and turn my focus back down on the street. Because it was down on the street where the violence and dark magic was done. I had to stop staring at Jimmy Regan and take a closer look at Kareem Shivers. There was also another name in Tommy’s black-and-white composition book that needed my attention. And I didn’t need any help from Alvaro Peña or anyone else on the job to tell me about the man who bore the name Frankie Tacos.


  35

  (THURSDAY MORNING)

  Since I’d gotten involved with this mess, it seemed I was destined to tour Suffolk County’s warts and wormholes. And by wormholes I didn’t mean portals for time travel but places where human worms burrowed in to hide themselves from the light. Rusty’s Salvage Yard on Long Island Avenue in Deer Park was just such a garden spot. Shouldered in among other salvage yards, concrete yards, body shops, and trucking companies, Rusty’s wasn’t any uglier or filthier than the other businesses along that stretch of road that flanked the Ronkonkoma line of the Long Island Rail Road. I pulled into the cracked concrete lot and right up to the shack that served as the front office. Behind the shack, rising up three stories into the sky, were metal storage racks crammed with wheels and windshields, car hoods and trunk lids, headlamps and taillights.

  For some reason I couldn’t put my finger on, I knew Rusty’s. Then, after I parked and made my way through the front door of the office, I remembered. And when I remembered, I got pretty fucking steamed. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Rusty’s owner had been indicted for selling off scrap metal from Ground Zero, scrap metal that still contained human remains. There were some hefty fines levied, but no one went to jail for it because almost all the scrap was recovered. That and the fact that the owner, a real piece of shit, disappeared. The cops found his body in a concrete-filled oil drum on the side of the Belt Parkway. It was a well-known secret that many of the salvage yards in the New York metro area were actually owned by one Mob family or the other.