What You Break

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “I love you, Maggie. Make me proud of you.”

  “I will.” She cleared her throat, hesitated, then said, “Any progress with . . . things?”

  “No lying between us, right?”

  “No lying.”

  “No, in some ways I feel like things are getting farther away from me. I haven’t heard from Slava in days, but I haven’t had any threats, either. And my other thing . . . I really don’t know what’s going on there.”

  “I love you, Gus Murphy.”

  “I love you, Magdalena. Go practice your lines. I’ll call you tomorrow to check on you.”

  “Only if I don’t call you first.”

  And that was the end of our conversation, my bladder reminding me that happiness can delay things for only so long.

  After I was done showering, shaving, and getting dressed, I picked my phone back up. During the long periods of last night’s downtime, I’d spent hours on the Internet, searching for absolutely everything I could find about Micah Spears. I mean everything, and not one thing I could find predated 1973, so he had to have changed his name. That said, I couldn’t find any official record of the name change. But I wasn’t calling Asher, not yet. He said he’d check into it and I trusted he would. I had no choice, anyway. Short of dropping in on every local county clerk and digging through their records, Asher was my only option.

  No, I was calling Charlie Prince. The time had come, I decided, to pay a visit to Rondo Salazar. To see for myself if his silence was unshakable and absolute. Nothing else I was doing seemed to be getting me anywhere with the murder of Linh Trang. I don’t know what seeing the murdering piece of shit was going to do to help, but it was worth a shot. It wasn’t that I wanted to stare into the killer’s eyes, to see into his soul. Not at all. That was bullshit for books and movies. I wasn’t interested in his soul, if he even had one. I had stared into killers’ eyes before and seen nothing, learned nothing. I figured it was either going to see Salazar or going back to the Spears family—who were unlikely to receive a visit from me with open arms—and trying to piece together whatever fragments of what LT’s movements had been on the day of her death or starting from the absolute beginning. The thing was, piecing her movements together without knowing exactly where she had been killed felt like it would be impossible. Finding out where she had been killed was key, but there was nothing, not a single word or indication in the murder book that even hinted at where Salazar killed her.

  “Prince,” he said, picking up on the third ring.

  “Gus Murphy. I’m calling in a favor your partner owes me.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. How you feeling?”

  “My ribs have felt better and I got a fist-size bruise on my belly, but I’ll live.”

  “You sure you wanna go to Riverhead? I mean, this Salazar is a real motherfucker and he won’t talk to you.”

  “Probably not, but go ahead and set it up anyway. Sometimes you gotta see for yourself. You know what I mean.”

  “I do. Give me a little while and I’ll get back to you.”

  I clicked off and spent the time reading through the file again, this time making sure to look at the crime scene and autopsy photos.

  48

  (WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON)

  I had been to the jail in Riverhead before, but not as often as you’d think. Unless you’re on a special detail or squad, uniformed cops spend most of the time with prisoners at their precincts or at the courts. Transporting prisoners after their arraignments or to and from Riverhead or Yaphank once they were in the system was the job of the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office. The same office that was in charge of the jails. I was glad not to be so familiar with the place. It was a max-security facility and about as welcoming as a third-degree burn.

  Charlie Prince had made it all happen quickly and got back to me within fifteen minutes. There were four times during the day when you could visit prisoners: 2:30, 4:00, 6:45, and 8:15. Charlie had given me the choice. Although I knew I’d be cutting it pretty close, I’d picked 2:30. I wanted to get it over with and to give myself some time to do a little digging before my shift on the van if Rondo Salazar gave me anything to work with. I wasn’t optimistic that he would. I mean, there wasn’t a single indication that he would speak to anyone about the case and there was nothing magical about me. I had no secret words to say, no presto change-o, no abracadabra, to loosen his tongue. He didn’t know me. I’d be just another Anglo fucking cop to him. I don’t know what I was thinking, but by the time I pulled up to the booth at the entrance to the jail compound, it was already too late for thinking.

  I gave my name to the sheriff’s deputy in the booth, told him why I was there, and who I was going to visit. He didn’t react, just told me where to park and waved me on. That said a lot about a place like Riverhead. Not even the mention of a killer like Rondo Salazar raised an eyebrow. There were several Rondo Salazars inside. Some worse than others. Some men who had beaten crying babies to death. Men who had raped, tortured, and strangled women. Rondo Salazar was special, but only to me. And then only because of who his victim had been. That said a lot about me and about the rest of us, too. We had grown so used to violence that as long as it didn’t touch us, we weren’t horrified by it. Or if we were, not for very long. The sad thing is, as any cop with a brain in his head and a heart beating in his chest can tell you, it does affect us, me and you, every one of us, even if we pretend otherwise.

  I parked the Mustang in the lot to the left of the building under an array of solar panels. These things were turning up in parking lots all over the island, like at the Deer Park LIRR station and the state office building complex in Hauppauge. I’m sure they seemed like a good idea. Many things did on paper or in planning. These solar arrays were wonderful until a foot of snow slid off a panel onto your head or sheets of rain soaked you if you stepped out the wrong side of one. Luckily for me it wasn’t raining, nor had it snowed in two months.

  As I walked to the building entrance under a bright sun it was hard not to notice how the areas bordering the paths had been beautifully landscaped. Maybe the landscaping had been done in the hope it would draw your eye away from the endless coils of razor wire at the tops of all the fencing. Or maybe it was to remind visitors just how close they were to the Hamptons. Somehow I doubted that was it. I didn’t imagine the people inside—prisoners or corrections officers—spent much time contemplating the polo matches or regattas that took place just a few miles east of where their days ticked by, slowly. Sure, the COs went home to their families after their shifts, but I couldn’t help but think it had to rub off on them a little. Inside is still inside. My grandma on my mother’s side, a rigid woman in a black dress, full of disdain and superstition, was fond of saying that if you danced with the devil long enough, it was the devil who changed you, not the other way around.

  “You’ll see, John Augustus Murphy, you will see,” she would say, wagging her finger, with unmistakable glee in her voice.

  It was never surprising to me that my poor mother was so reticent and shy.

  At the end of the path, just before you got to the main entrance, there was a drop box for contraband. If people used their senses to begin with, we could build smaller prisons. But they don’t. Basically the contraband drop box was a reminder to visitors that once you walked into the jail, you could end up in a cell yourself if you were carrying drugs or a weapon. You could toss whatever it was that you shouldn’t have been carrying in there without penalty. It was sort of like that warning sign on the road about the last exit before the toll, only the toll here was much more costly.

  Inside the door was a visitors’ waiting area, with benches lined up like church pews and a TV up in one corner. There were rows of gray lockers in which visitors would place all belongings not allowed within the visiting area. Most prominent was a raised counter, behind which three COs sat, checking IDs and surveying the waiting area. The co
unter was raised up for a reason, the same reason a judge’s bench was raised. Height equals authority. But I wondered if the people in authority ever considered how it made the people on the other side of the bench or counter feel. No one likes being looked down upon. No one. And the people here visiting loved ones probably didn’t need any extra motivation to resent or hate authority or “the man.” The place had a purgatory feel.

  The purgatory pews were crowded with black and brown faces, with a few white ones sprinkled in here and there. Most of them were women, many with kids. Many of the kids crying or crawling along the benches, some running around the room. The expressions on the women’s faces were frighteningly blank. Been here. Done this. Let me see my man and get the fuck gone. There were some tears, too. Tears in the eyes of mothers or wives or girlfriends who hadn’t been here before, who didn’t know the drill, who hadn’t practiced the look. It was the kind of place for tears. I’m not saying that the guys inside didn’t deserve to be there, most of them did. They knew the price to be paid for doing what they had allegedly done or if they didn’t, they should have. It’s the price everyone else paid that was hard to take, the price paid by the people in the visitors’ waiting room with me. What had they done?

  It didn’t really matter. The citizens of Suffolk County had a low tolerance for crime and an even lower one for criminals. Maybe because their taxes were astronomical and they paid their uniformed services so well, they wanted to get the full bang for their bucks. Whatever the reason, the DA’s Office got the message loud and clear. Their conviction rate was something like ninety-five percent. If you were poor, black, or Hispanic, their conviction rate was even higher. Once they charged you, you were pretty much fucked. It’s why Suffolk County was known as Suffering County and why Asher Wilkes had switched teams.

  One of the corrections officers at the desk recognized me. “You’re Gus Murphy, aren’t ya?”

  I nodded, trying to figure out where I knew him from or if I knew him at all. He could tell I didn’t have a clue by the look on my face. I wasn’t the only one who could read faces. It was important for COs to nurture that skill. They spent their entire working lives in a hostile environment where one careless moment could end your life.

  “I’m Joey Pezzullo, Ralph’s little brother. We played a season of softball together back in the day.”

  Ralph Pezzullo and I had been on the job together. He had already been ten years on when I was assigned to the Second Precinct. He’d long since retired. I reached up and over the counter and shook Joey’s hand.

  “How is that hard-on brother of yours? Still a prick?”

  Joey laughed. “Down in some buttfucksville town in South Carolina, playing golf and getting fat.”

  “You give him my regards, okay?”

  “I’ll do that.” Then his expression changed. I knew the look and knew what was coming, but I had to let him say it. “Oh, shit, sorry, Gus. I heard about your boy. My condolences. How you holding up?”

  “I’m surviving. It’s better now than it was.” I changed the subject. “Listen, Joey, I’m carrying and I didn’t want to leave it in the car.”

  He smiled. “No problem.” He reached out his hand. “Give it here. I’ll locker it for you. Just come collect it on your way out.”

  I bent down, removed the baby Glock from my ankle holster, and handed it to him.

  Joey took it. “Who you here to see?”

  “Rondo Salazar.”

  “That piece of shit?” He made a face. “Why?” he asked, his voice low enough so that only I heard him.

  “Doing somebody a favor, a relative of the vic’s.”

  Joey shook his head. “He won’t talk to you, you know.”

  “So I’ve been told, but I gotta see for myself. Charlie Prince, one of the detectives on the case, he set it up for me.”

  “No problem, Gus.” He looked at his watch. “Go over there by the scanner now. We’re gonna get started here any second.”

  “Thanks.”

  Basically, Joey Pezzullo had put me to the head of the line. I didn’t mind. I would get through fast enough. I emptied my pockets into a tray and went through a body scanner like the ones at the airport. The CO on the other side of the scanner was about to wand me, but Joey Pezzullo called to him and shook his head to let me go on. The next piece of security I had to pass through was something called a sally port. I have no idea why it’s called that, but it was kind of like an airlock, only with bars instead of doors. There’s two sets of bars facing each other with a space in between them. One set of bars slide open, you step inside, and those same bars slide shut, locking behind you. When those bars show they are secured and locked, the bars in front of you open to let you into the visiting area. It’s a way to guarantee no one on the prisoner side of the visiting area can get into the waiting area and then out through the doors.

  On the other side of the sally port, we were met by a CO with a clipboard who matched our names to the prisoners we were scheduled to meet. The prisoners, mostly young men in yellow jumpsuits with the word VISITING printed on the back, were already behind low Plexiglas barriers. Holes had been drilled into the Plexiglas to make it easier for the prisoners and their visitors to communicate. The visiting area was arranged in a squared-off reverse S-shape that allowed for the maximum amount of visitors. The S-shape also gave the COs on either side of the glass a good view of what was going on between the prisoners and their visitors.

  The CO with the clipboard held me back as he matched names to seat numbers to the prisoner on the other side of the glass. When he was done with everyone else, he said, “You’re Murphy, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Joey P. called ahead. Says you’re meeting with Salazar. He’s not here yet. But even if he shows up, he won’t talk to you.”

  “That’s what everybody says.”

  “Anyways, I’m assigning you a place that gives you a little privacy,” he said, pointing toward the ass end of the room. “If he shows, maybe if nobody’s in earshot, he’ll do more than fart or tell you to go fuck yourself. He don’t talk much, but he likes that phrase.”

  “I’ve heard it once or twice before.”

  “If he’s not down here soon, I’ll call over to Four West and see what’s up.”

  He didn’t seem hopeful. He gave me the number and I went over to the seat farthest away from the sally port, but one which afforded me the best view of the entire room. For a brief moment, when the visitors got a look at their loved ones behind the glass, the room went eerily silent. Even the crying, fussing kids seemed to sense that this was a big moment. Then the silence vanished as they made their way over to the seats on the visitors’ side of the Plexiglas barriers. Some reached over the Plexiglas barriers to hold hands or kiss. The CO kept a careful eye on the activity but didn’t bust balls about it, at least not at first. After a minute he told everyone to sit down. Everyone sat.

  I waited, not overreacting to the fact that Salazar was MIA. I knew he probably didn’t want to meet with me and that he was the type to resist until they forced him through the door. He had an image to uphold with his gang brothers. After all, they were the ones who protected him in here, and inside you needed protection from rival gangs. Even in a max-security facility like Riverhead, prisoners would risk longer sentences and additional charges by trying to get at rival gang members. It was part of their code, part of what kept them protected by their own gangs. The first person who observed that violence begets violence was a shrewd SOB, or maybe he’d spent time inside.

  After a minute or two without Salazar showing, I got an uneasy feeling. I walked back over to where the CO was stationed to ask about Salazar.

  “I’ll check,” he said and picked up the wall phone.

  Somebody on the other end was talking to him. I could even hear some of the conversation, but I could only make out part of what was being said.

&nb
sp; “Figures,” the CO said to me after hanging up the phone. “The motherfucker chose yard even though he knew he had someone waiting for him down here. Most of the time we can’t force these assholes to come see somebody if they don’t want to, but for you, Murphy, we’ll ask real nice. Go back over to your seat. He should be down in a few minutes.”

  I turned, but before I’d taken five strides, an announcement came over the loudspeakers.

  “Cease all inmate movement. Cease all inmate movement.”

  And all of a sudden that uneasy feeling became a basketball-sized knot. Behind the Plexiglas, all the prisoners gave one another knowing looks. Some nodded in agreement. Others smiled.

  One young black guy with a shaved head, his arms and neck covered in tattoos, shouted out what all the other prisoners were thinking. What I was thinking, too.

  “Somebody be gettin’ his ass kicked.”

  A few of the prisoners laughed. All nodded again. Some of the visitors looked horrified, but most of them kept that practiced blank stare. Maybe this time with a dash of impatience. Yeah, uh huh, ain’t none of it my worry. Jus’ let me get on with my own business now. I could see the CO was back on the phone, having a lively conversation.

  “Murphy,” the CO called me over, the knot in my belly getting bigger and tighter.

  He whispered very quietly, “Somebody just stuck your boy in the throat in the yard.”

  “Dead?”

  “Not yet, but he’s making a red mess of his pretty green jumpsuit. If you’re interested, they’ll take him over to Peconic Bay hospital. From what my guy says, he doubts the piece of shit will make it there alive. There’s a shiv sticking out of his neck.”

  “You know what happened?”

  The CO shrugged. “Who the fuck knows with these clowns? Maybe he looked the wrong guy in the eye or he told somebody to go fuck themselves and that somebody was in a bad mood.”

  I left it there.