Where It Hurts

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “Please, Dad, for me.”

  “But your mom will bring Rob and—”

  “Just bring whoever you’re seeing,” she said, a smile flashing across her face. “And don’t even lie to me.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Dad!”

  “‘We’ll see’ is the best I can do.”

  I watched her get into her car and drive away into the blur of headlights on Stony Brook Road. I was feeling a lot of things as I turned for my car, but mostly relief that Krissy seemed to be reclaiming her life. I wasn’t ready to proclaim it a done deal. I’d have to see where we all stood after the holidays. All in all, I was feeling okay. And one added benefit to where Krissy had taken me to dinner was the restaurant’s proximity to the Smith Haven Mall. If I was ever going to do Christmas shopping, this was it.

  38

  (THURSDAY NIGHT)

  I was still feeling pretty good when I headed out of Macy’s, shopping bags in hand. That lasted until I got to where I’d parked. There, leaning against the rear bumper of my car, was a man in his late twenties. He was dressed in a green flannel shirt, down vest, Levi’s, and work boots, but he had cop written all over him. Maybe it was the military haircut or the uniformlike way his clothing hung on his six-foot, hundred-eighty-pound frame. He had a belligerent smirk on his face, one that hinted at underlying violence. The belligerence was especially evident in the eyes. They were the angry eyes of a man always spoiling for a fight. I knew the type.

  “Pretty girl, your daughter. Those all for her?” he said, tilting his head at the bags in my hands, his voice full of implied threat. “Be a shame if some stranger came around bothering her about shit she had nothing to do with. Like if someone approached her after leaving the Chinese restaurant or even followed her home. She woulda been pretty easy to follow. Maybe next time.”

  I fought the instinct to drop my bags and kick the shit out of this guy because I sensed that was exactly what he wanted. Maybe I’d give in to him, just not yet, not until I got what I wanted first.

  “A real shame,” I said, picking up on his threat, “because then you’d have to deal with me.”

  But even as I spoke, I was distracted. The closer I looked at this guy, the more familiar he seemed.

  He laughed a sneering, unpleasant laugh. “Tough guy, huh?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what, tough guy?”

  “On what a guy who’s on the job is doing leaning against my car and talking shit.” My voice was less than neutral, but not threatening.

  “I know all about you, Murphy. You got a big rep, but you just seem like a bag of leaves to me. Weak and sorry because grieving’s taken the heart and balls out of you.”

  This guy was really pushing me hard, but I wasn’t that easily goaded.

  “You talk a good line of shit, junior,” I said with all the condescension I could muster. Then I raised my right hand and flapped my fingers against my thumb. “And you talk a lot.”

  That got his attention and he came at me. He didn’t charge me. He wasn’t quite at the point of losing his mind or throwing a punch, but he was getting there. He stepped up real close to me. He was well built, for sure, though I was bigger. The size difference was magnified by his proximity to me. Then it clicked. I knew who he was. I’d seen his photo at his grandfather’s house. I felt an involuntary smile spreading across my face. He saw it. He didn’t like it, but it sure as shit unnerved him.

  “What the fuck you smiling at?” he growled, trying hard to get his feet back under him.

  “I know all about you, too, Pauly. You really are the hothead everyone says you are, Martino. How’s the Marine Bureau these days? The bluefish behaving themselves? Giving out speeding tickets to the porgies?”

  That did it to him. I could have sworn the stiffness went out of his spine there for a second. I’m sure I must’ve imagined it, but I knew I had him now.

  “You stay away from my grandfather,” he shouted at me, his distorted face turning a bright red. “He don’t have nothing to do with what happened to that mutt Delcamino. And neither should you, asshole. Take this as a warning from a brother to a brother, stay outta this. You think you know what’s what, Murphy, but you got no idea. The shit’s deep and you’re about to be up to your nipples in it.”

  “Okay, Pauly, you know all about it. Enlighten me.”

  He poked me in the chest. “You’re playing with fire here. People are gonna fuck you up if you don’t back off and get back to driving your van and living in that flea-bag hotel.”

  “People. What people?”

  “Powerful people,” he said, then seemed to regret saying it.

  “What people? Jimmy Regan?”

  He didn’t react, at least not the way I hoped he would. He just kind of made a face at me like I was crazy or something.

  “Just stay away from my granddad and leave it alone.”

  I wasn’t ready to stop pushing him, not yet.

  “What people? People like you?” I laughed at him and he knew it was at him. I shook my hands in mock fear. “Gee, I’m shaking in my shoes.”

  That did it. He was girding himself to throw the punch I think he’d wanted to throw from the second I walked up to my car. It wouldn’t’ve taken much for me to push him over the edge, but even an idiot would know that Martino had been put up to this and I was no idiot. Someone was yanking his chain. Someone who knew Martino had a bad temper and a short fuse. Maybe the person behind this figured that I’d catch a beating or that any damage Martino might do to me would be enough to make me reconsider what I was doing. Of course Pauly Martino would lose his job in the process, but puppet masters don’t worry about the damage to their marionettes. Martino probably wasn’t worried about it, either. Then again, he wasn’t thinking straight. Hotheads seldom do until it’s too late.

  I nodded over my shoulder at the light pole right behind me. He noticed and hesitated.

  “What?”

  “There’s a CCTV camera up there aimed at this section of the parking lot,” I said. “Whatever happens between us will be digital, and digital is forever.”

  “So what?” He looked right past me directly at the camera.

  “You know what, or at least you should know what. You throw that punch at me and you’re done. You’d be suspended and off the job like that.” I snapped my fingers. “You’d be lucky not to do time for assault. I’d be bruised, but you’d be fucked.”

  Some of the air went out of him, though he immediately tried to pump his rage back up. He failed. Maybe I had gotten through to him and he realized that he’d come this close to ruining his police career and possibly his life. I wasn’t satisfied to leave it there.

  “I don’t know who put you up to this, but whoever it was didn’t give a shit about you or your granddad, Martino.”

  “Shut up! Just shut up. Nobody put me up to this.” He was angry at me, sure, but there was doubt in his eyes where rage had been only seconds ago.

  I pulled a Paragon card out of my wallet and stuffed it in his vest pocket. “Remember, Martino, whoever put you onto me was willing to let you blow yourself up just so you could throw me a beating. You feel like sharing, call me at that number.”

  “I already told you, nobody put me up to this,” he repeated, only louder and less convincing. He turned to walk away, then stopped and looked back. “Remember what I said. Leave my family alone and stay outta this shit, Murphy. I’m telling you for your own good.” He yanked the Paragon card out of his pocket, looked at it, and shoved it back into his pocket.

  As I drove back to the hotel, something occurred to me that made me pull to the side of the road. I understood how Martino found my car at the mall. He’d followed me from the Chinese restaurant. But how had he known I was at the restaurant in the first place?

  39

  (THURSDAY NIGHT)

  When I got bac
k on the road, I worked out a way to move ahead. I would need someone’s help. Who? I’d worry about that later. But until I got to the hotel, I had to keep calm. So I did something I very rarely did anymore: I listened to the news. Since the day John died, I’d pretty much given up on current events. I mean, you hear things, but I never sought out information. Never watched or listened to the news. Never read the newspaper past the sports pages. Never went to the business center computers in the lobby to scan the home page for updates. At first it was that I didn’t think I could bear to hear about anyone else’s tragedy for fear of breaking down all over again in sympathy. That wasn’t it. Not for a second. It was that I wasn’t interested in anyone else’s tragedy. Fuck them, I thought. Fuck them. My pain wins.

  And what I heard on the news did nothing to convince me that I’d missed a thing. Death and tragedy were still everywhere and they came in all shapes and sizes. I was about to shut the radio off when a story caught my ear. It was about a candlelight vigil being held for a Smithtown girl, a high school junior who had OD-d on heroin. I shook my head, thinking about what her parents must’ve been going through. What surprised me, though, was my anger. How it was still there. How fresh it was. Who was I angry at? At the girl for being so stupid to throw her life away. At her parents for letting her. At the universe for robbing me of my son. I was even jealous of the girl’s parents in the same way I think I’d been jealous of Tommy Delcamino. There were answers for them to get. There was a cause for them to march about. There was a place for their hurt and grief and anger.

  What really got my attention was the sound bite of the police official discussing the rash of overdoses in Suffolk County and what his department was doing about it. That man was Jimmy Regan. You could hear the emotion in his voice, the commitment and determination. Maybe a little bit too much Jameson as well, but hell, he was entitled. I’d always heard drink was a bit of an issue for him and that’s what I assumed Father Bill had been referring to when he said that Regan was no saint. Jimmy Regan wasn’t hiding from the spotlight, wasn’t waiting for the ugliness to pass. No, instead he was out in front of it, giving a voice and face to the department. Here he was again: first through the door. Still . . .

  I parked right out front of the Paragon, just past the main entrance. The lighting was brightest here and would afford me the best chance of finding what I was looking for. I popped the trunk, removed the shopping bags of gifts, retrieved an old blanket, and took out the big Maglite flashlight I kept in there for emergencies. When I first got on the job, a Maglite was as effective a weapon as a nightstick. You put somebody down with one of those, they didn’t stand up and ask for another. For the moment, though, I wanted to use the big flash for the purpose for which it was originally manufactured.

  I stretched the blanket on the ground by the rear driver’s side tire, lay down on the blanket, and aimed the flash directly into the wheel well. Nothing. I repeated this three more times at the other three tires, but failed to find what I was sure I would find. I got the tire ramps out of the trunk and drove the front wheels onto them, so I might comfortably get under the car to look. Nothing. By the time I’d driven off the ramps and put them and the blanket back in the trunk, Slava had taken notice.

  “What for you are looking, Gus?” he said to me, a kind of wary yet knowing expression on his ugly face.

  “Nothing,” I lied, disgusted. “Forget it.”

  “Get back blanket. Open car door. Give to me flashlight.”

  I figured, What the hell, and did as he asked. He’d surprised me once and saved my ass. Maybe he had a few other surprises in his bag of tricks. He laid the blanket on the ground near the rear passenger door and got on his knees. Two minutes later, a film of sweat covering his forehead, he stood up. There was a self-satisfied, gap-toothed smile on his face. The flashlight was in his left hand and in his right was a black plastic box about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

  “For this, Gus, is what you are looking? Tracking device. Under front passenger seat. No one is ever looking there.”

  “No one but you. How did you—”

  But all Slava did was shake his head no. Don’t ask.

  “Okay,” I said, “I won’t. Secrets, right?”

  He handed me the black box, a veil of sadness falling across his face. “And shame.”

  “How would you like to make a few hundred extra bucks?”

  His face lit up, then the wariness returned to his expression. “How I am making this money?”

  I asked, “You have a car?”

  He nodded. “Like me. Not so pretty but is working good. What you want Slava to do?”

  “To follow my car around tomorrow to see—”

  “If someone is following you, no?”

  “Exactly.” I laughed. “My guess is that I don’t need to teach you how to follow me without being spotted.”

  He was shaking his head again, smiling. “I teach you, maybe.” He winked.

  “Yeah, I figured. You seem to know a lot about this stuff.”

  He shrugged. “Some things, yes. Too much things I am knowing.” There was that sadness again.

  We exchanged cell phone numbers.

  “I’ll call you when I’m—”

  He shook his head. “No call to Slava. Act same like always. Do as you do.”

  “Okay. One more thing.”

  “Yes, Gus?”

  After memorizing the brand and model number of the tracking device, I handed it back to him. “Put this under the seat where you found it.”

  Slava laughed that snorting gasping laugh of his and touched a thick finger to his temple. “Smart man. Smart.”

  I didn’t know how smart I was, but I was a quick learner.

  40

  (FRIDAY MORNING)

  At eleven the next morning, I found myself on a barstool at Harrigan’s, sitting across from Richie Zito. We were alone. Zee told me that we’d have about a half hour of privacy, that the losers didn’t begin drifting in until around eleven thirty. He brewed up a pot of coffee. Watching him manage it was pretty painful. Everybody’s got their fears about how they’re going to die. I certainly had mine. One thing I was thankful for was that John’s death had been instantaneous, or so we were told. There were no long years of suffering and waiting. The suffering and the waiting, the dying by the inch like Zee was doing, that was the thing that freaked most people out.

  He poured me a mug and put it up on the bar. Hand as gnarled and shaky as it was, he managed to do it without spilling. He was less sure-handed with the milk. I wiped the drops of milk away with a few bar naps.

  “Sugar?” His voice was raspy and his breath already smelled of pot.

  “Sweet’N Low?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then sugar it is.”

  Zee tossed a few packets onto the bar top. “Not that I ain’t thrilled to see you, Gus, but what are you doing here?”

  Excellent question. I was there because I didn’t know where else to turn. Sure, I had Slava in place, watching my back, but I needed to talk to someone, to say the things in my head aloud to try and make sense of it. To make sense of it, I needed to speak to someone who knew the landscape, who had done his swimming in murky water. Yeah, I trusted Zee about as far as I could throw him, but if you want to learn about bottom-feeders you don’t speak to the angels. I knew he was familiar with most of the players or would at least have heard of the ones he didn’t know. And one thing I knew as a cop from the Second was that Zee’s information was almost always credible. There was also the fact that he seemed to have really cared for Tommy D., and since he’d paid to bury the man, I guessed he’d be as motivated as me to find out what the hell was going on.

  “That was a good thing you did, burying Tommy D. that way,” I said, sipping the coffee.

  He made a face. “It was selfish. When you’re alone in the world like Tommy and me wa
s, you hope someone will do you the kindness of putting you in the ground proper. I guess I’m hoping there will be someone to do me the kindness. But that’s not why you’re here, Gus. Long way to come to tell me something you could say over the phone.”

  “No, you’re right. I needed to talk to you, face-to-face. Needed to hear myself say it out loud, you know?”

  “Talk about what?” He leaned in, putting his elbows on the bar. “You find something out?”

  “Some stuff, yeah, but I can’t make it hang together in a way that gives anyone a motive for torturing TJ to death or for killing Tommy D.”

  “And you’re hoping, what? That I can supply the glue?”

  I nodded.

  He looked at his watch. “We got about twenty minutes.”

  I gave it to him. I told him about my confrontations with Kareem Shivers and Frankie Tacos. About my conversation with Ralphy O’Connell.

  “So you see what I got?” I said. “I’m pretty sure TJ raised money for this drug deal that went sideways by doing business with Frankie Tacaspina Jr. The drug deal is with this guy in Wyandanch they call Lazy Eye, whose real name is Lamar English. And I’m almost certain the guys who did the shakedown on TJ and Ralph O’Connell for the drugs and money work for Kareem Shivers. And it wasn’t even me who really even pieced this together. It was Tommy D. All I did was what the detectives who caught TJ’s case didn’t or wouldn’t do.”

  “Fucking cops!” He snorted. “No offense, Gus.”

  “In this case, you’re right.”

  “Sorry, man, I got no glue for you. For one thing, between Kareem Shivers and Frankie Tacos, you got two top candidates for the baddest badass in Suffolk. And with me a week or two from getting the fuck out of Dodge, I don’t want to cross either one of them guys. For another, yeah, you make it all sound connected, but you got no real proof, and even if you did, I don’t see the motive here, not for two murders.”