What You Break

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  56

  (FRIDAY MORNING)

  By the time I’d gotten back to the hotel, I was dead tired. Adrenaline rushes are great until the rush is gone and the exhaustion takes over. I had called Maggie from the parking lot. Told her I loved her and assured her everything would be all right. I knew one part of it was true, the part about loving her. I didn’t have any idea if everything would be all right. That all depended on people and things out of my control. Control! I used to think I had control of my life. Then again, I used to believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I guess I got past those myths by the time I was six. The myth of control persisted into my forties. I kept checking my cell phone for a call back from Slava. I might just as well have expected Santa and the Tooth Fairy to be waiting in the lobby for me with a sack of toys and a shiny silver dollar.

  I neglected to tell Maggie about my evening. I didn’t want to go through the whole bloody saga of Micah Spears. I still couldn’t quite believe it myself. And as I listened to Maggie tell me how much she was looking forward to the start of rehearsals in the morning, I realized I hadn’t even bothered asking Judge Kaufman for Spears’s real name. I’m not sure it would have mattered. Whatever name you knew him by, whatever shape he took, the devil was still the devil. The devil. It was almost funny. Somehow it was a lot easier for me to conceive of the devil than to conceive of God. All I had to do was live in the world to find proof of the devil. I’d just had an evening full of proof.

  “Gus, are you okay?”

  “I’m tired, but why are you asking?”

  “You were laughing, kinda.”

  “Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you at all.”

  I’d gotten off the phone quickly after that because I could feel myself shutting down.

  I zombie-walked through the empty lobby and was glad to see no one was at the front desk. I wasn’t in the mood for more conversation. When I got upstairs, I took off my jacket, unstrapped my holster, and literally fell into bed. I must’ve turned the TV on, too, since it was on when I opened my eyes. I was disoriented, thinking I was late for something—I didn’t know what—and jumped up onto the floor. I remembered that feeling from when I was a kid and would wake up on a Sunday morning thinking it was Monday and that I’d missed the school bus.

  Then I remembered where I was and who I was and ached like I’d been shot as the last few years flooded over me all at once. The call. The hospital. The wake. The burial. The raging and the pain. The blame and the mourning. The grief and guilt. Annie’s affair. The divorce. Krissy’s self-destruction. Tommy and TJ Delcamino. Kareem Shivers. Pete McCann. Jimmy Regan. Richie Zito. And now there were more bodies on the pyre. Some fresh. Some old and nearly forgotten. Some paid for. Some not. I had suffered through a few of these everything-all-at-once moments since John Jr.’s death. I wondered how Lagunov would have assessed my calm and resourcefulness if he had been there to witness my moment on the cross of recent history.

  When I caught my breath, I checked the time. Five thirty-seven. I felt much better than I had when I’d fallen into bed, but the panic had taken a bite out of me again. I shut the TV off, got fully undressed, went to the bathroom, and came back ready to sleep. But I noticed the message button on the hotel phone flashing red. Had I slept through the call or had I been so spent when I fell into bed that I’d just missed it? It was beside the point now. I listened to the message.

  Gus, it’s Lara. You know, Lara from Gyron. Please call me when you get this. Please, it’s really important. Something’s not right. Call me on my cell when you get this. Whenever you get this. On my cell.

  She ended the call by giving me her cell phone number, but she needn’t have bothered telling me something wasn’t right. I could hear it in her excited, breathless whisper. The problem was that she didn’t give me a clue as to what wasn’t right and where it wasn’t right. I was guessing it was at work, but that’s all it was, a guess. I listened to the message again, this time taking note of when she left it. She’d called only about ten minutes after I’d left for my mystery date with Judge Kaufman. It had been my experience that when people tell you to call them whenever you get a message, that they mean it. So that’s what I did. After five rings, the call went straight to voice mail. I hung up and dialed it again to try and wake her up. Same result. It was my turn to leave a message. I didn’t want to make her anxiety any worse by leaving a worried message or to make too much of her message.

  “Hey, Lara, it’s Gus Murphy returning your call. It’s early and I’m going to get some more sleep, but call me whenever.” I clicked off and put the phone on the nightstand.

  The next time I opened my eyes, I knew where I was and who I was and there was only that little sting I always felt in my chest where my whole heart used to be. The sun was peeking through the curtains and the clock told me it was nearly eleven. The sun was a nice change of pace from last night’s misting rain. It would have been grand if my cell wasn’t buzzing. I didn’t figure it was Maggie. She’d be in rehearsals by now or meeting up with her castmates. That left Slava or Lara. It was Lara’s number, but the person at the other end of the line wasn’t her.

  “Gus?”

  “Al Roussis? What the fuck are you—”

  I didn’t finish the sentence because there would only ever be one reason for Al Roussis to be calling me on Lara’s phone. He knew by my sudden silence that I had my answer and let me absorb the reality of it.

  “How?” I asked.

  “Looks like a home invasion. She was raped, beaten to death, and robbed. The place is a mess. She’s a mess.”

  “Oh, fuck! Her daughter! She has an autistic daughter. Is she—”

  “She wasn’t here, Gus. A neighbor says the kid started living in a group home in January.”

  This is where most people would have said “Thank God.” I passed on the opportunity. Tough to thank a God who is okay with what had been done to Lara, but had, in a moment of divine largesse, kindly spared her daughter.

  “Gus, I need to talk to you . . . officially.”

  “Can we do it off-premises?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why don’t I come over there? Where is there?”

  He asked, “You don’t know where she lived?”

  “Is that the first official question, Al?”

  “If you’d like it to be, yes.”

  “I knew where she worked, but not where she lived. She also used to come into the club.”

  “No, Gus, I don’t think here is a good idea. They’ve taken her away, but . . . don’t come here.”

  “What’s the time frame?”

  “ME says between nine and eleven last night. Why?”

  “You know why. Because you’ll want to know if I have an alibi. And yes, I have about the best alibi you’ve ever heard.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Give Judge Kaufman a call.”

  “Julius Kaufman? What were you two doing?”

  “Discussing jurisprudence. What else?”

  “This isn’t funny, Gus.”

  “I’m not trying to be. Let’s just say the judge and I had a private matter to discuss that doesn’t concern you. He’ll tell you the same.”

  “Okay, but I caught the case and there’s still stuff I need to know. Meet me at Antics Pub on Hawkins Avenue in Ronkonkoma in an hour. It’s close to you.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  I knew a lawyer who liked to say to juries that he was dumb but not stupid, and that the ADA was treating them as if they were both. I felt that way at the moment. Suffolk County may not be the Garden of Eden, in spite of what local real estate brokers might tell you. We had our share of violent murders, but I thought it was a little bit too much of a coincidence that two women who worked at the same company should be brutally murdered within months of each other. And since Rondo Salazar couldn’t have done it, I knew it had to
be somehow connected to Gyron. But how? Why? There was that question again.

  57

  (FRIDAY NOON)

  Antics Pub was on Hawkins Avenue just north of Exit 60 on the LIE, next door to a PSE&G substation, and across the street from a funeral home. Cozy. Antics was somewhere between a low-rent shithole and a passable dive. It had come into the world as a single-family house that, with middling success, had been turned into a bar-restaurant. The only decent meal I ever had there was on St. Paddy’s Day. Then again, it was tough to fuck up corned beef and cabbage. But it was a local mecca for the cheap-beer-and-cigarette crowd.

  I got there a few minutes before Al and found a booth for us by the front window. A waitress came over the minute I sat down. She wore black slacks that fit her five years and ten pounds ago and a top that showed too much sagging, tanning-salon cleavage. Yet none of that is what caught my eye. She had the look of surrender about her, a look I had seen in Lara’s face, a look I had seen on many women’s faces at the club. The expression that said she had gotten as far as she was ever going to get and if this was as good as it was going to get, well, then do as you will. It wasn’t resignation, exactly. No, it was surrender. She had been pretty once, my waitress, maybe beautiful, but too much sun, too many Marlboros, too many late-night threesomes with Jack Daniel’s and last-call Romeos had taken their toll.

  “What’ll ya have to drink?” Her mouth made the proper friendly shapes, her hazel eyes as disinterested as could be.

  “Corona, no lime. I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “Any specials?” I asked just to ask.

  “Menu’s on the placemat.” She made a nasty face, pointing to her left. “Specials are on the board.”

  Al gave me a quick wave from the parking lot, then came in. As he was sitting down, the waitress delivered my Corona, a lime sticking out of the top of the bottle. I didn’t bother complaining about it. Al said he’d take a Corona, too. The waitress seemed pleased not to have to talk to him.

  “Are we going to eat?” he wanted to know.

  “Not me.”

  “You mind if I do?”

  “Menu’s on the placemat. The specials are on the board.”

  Al was one of those people who, in spite of an unimposing stature, could eat like a moose. On any other day I might have taken a delight in listening to what he might order. But when the waitress delivered his beer and took his order, I paid their conversation little mind.

  “Okay, Al, ask your questions.”

  He took out a pad and put a voice recorder on the table. He made some official-sounding statement that I barely paid attention to and asked me if I was aware I was being recorded and if I consented. When I nodded, he gave me a look.

  “Yes, I am aware, and yes, I consent.”

  I gave completely honest answers to his questions, describing how I’d met Lara, how many times I’d met her, the nature of our interactions, why I had her phone number, why I had called and left a message on her cell, etc. All this while he was eating his soup, Buffalo wings, salad, cheeseburger, and fries. He told me he was shutting off the recorder.

  “I called Judge Kaufman,” he said, wiping ketchup off his fingers. “He wasn’t pleased, but he alibied you a hundred percent. You wanna share with me what you were doing up there in with Julius Caesar?”

  “No.”

  “You wanna share what you think about Lara’s homicide?”

  “Truth?”

  “Truth.”

  “I’m not buying the home-invasion scenario.”

  “You would if you had seen the door busted in, the blood everywhere, and the condition of her body. She was bleeding all over the place, if you catch my meaning, Gus. It was at least two, three guys, and they didn’t treat her with much respect. Then when they were done with her, they broke her up with baseball bats. They left the fucking bats behind.”

  “I think it was meant to look like a home invasion gone out of control just like Linh Trang Spears’s murder was meant to look like some random encounter gone wrong. This is about something going on at Gyron, where they both worked. I’m sure of it, Al. That’s what Lara’s call to me was about. She must’ve found something out. Maybe she stayed late at work and didn’t want to say anything for fear of being caught . . . I don’t know.”

  “Any proof?”

  I shook my head.

  “I didn’t think so. That doesn’t mean I won’t check it out. You know I will. But frankly, I have to check out the guys she dated, her ex, the men she met at your club. You know how it works, Gus.”

  “But when you get around to Gyron, they’ll know you’re coming.”

  “They always know I’m coming.”

  “Can you get search warrants? There’s an area of the factory they call the box, that—”

  “Search warrants! Based on what? You’re getting way ahead of yourself here. C’mon, Gus. We’re talking two separate homicides of different natures, committed by different assailants with different MOs in different locations months apart.”

  “I think it might have something to do with their finances. Lara said they weren’t really busy anymore, but the factory manager is driving around in a hundred-grand Maserati.”

  “Saying they weren’t as busy as they used to be isn’t exactly an accusation of wrongdoing. And no offense to the lady, but she was a receptionist.”

  “But Linh Trang wasn’t. She worked in accounting.”

  “Gus, like I said, I’ll do my job. I’ll check it all out, but it’s not going to happen overnight. I have to work the case the way it presents itself to me, and how it presents itself to me right now is as a home invasion, rape, robbery, and murder. You get something concrete, something I can use, and I will make the quickest fucking U-turn you’ve ever seen. But until then . . .”

  I wanted to argue with him, but it would have been a waste of time. He was right and he was the Homicide detective. I was a courtesy van driver who had worked patrol with the occasional plainclothes assignment. Last year, that thing with Tommy Delcamino and his kid, I kind of stumbled into that and found my own way. I’d made headway mostly out of luck and stubbornness. I supposed if I wanted the evidence Al was talking about, I would have to do it again. The difference between Al and me . . . I didn’t have to play by the rules.

  “Okay, Al, you’ve gotta follow where the evidence leads you. I get it. Then let me let you get back to it.”

  “I’m glad you’re off the suspect list. You know there are plenty of guys on the job who want to hurt you because of Pete and Jimmy Regan.”

  “Believe me, I know,” I said, rubbing my belly where Tony Palumbo had tried to put his fist and foot through me. “Now get outta here and do your job. I got this.”

  “You sure?” he asked, already slipping his jacket back on.

  “As long as you keep me updated on the case.”

  “Fair enough, Gus. Take care. I’ll get these guys.”

  He had a great clearance rate, but still I couldn’t help but wonder how many times those words had been uttered and how many times the implied promise in them had gone unfulfilled. I watched Al walk past me and get into his car, my mind churning the whole time.

  “I’ll take this when you’re ready,” the waitress said, dropping the check.

  “Wait.”

  I gave her the cash and told her to keep the rest. It was a nice tip, but not even twenty-five percent got a rise out of her. At this stage, I wondered what would.

  As I was leaving Antics, I saw a Newsday on the table next to me, the front page facing up. There were booking photos of young, hard-looking men with facial tattoos staring blankly into oblivion. But more than their photos, the headline caught my attention:

  ASESINOS ASSASSINATED

  GANG VIOLENCE IN SMITHTOWN

  58

  (FRIDAY AF
TERNOON)

  That did it.

  I had all the ingredients called for in the recipe, but not the recipe itself. There had to be a connection between Gyron Machinery, the Asesinos, and the murders of Linh Trang and Lara. There had to be. I couldn’t see what the connection was, not yet. I was close, though, otherwise why come after me, why murder Lara? Charlie Prince had been right, after all. It was definitely my poking around that had started the chain reaction, but what I couldn’t see before was that my turning up at Gyron had been the catalyst.

  As I drove, guilt whispered Lara’s name in my ear, each whisper louder than the one before it until the crescendo of her name was deafening. Even the jet engines overhead as I pulled into the Paragon lot seemed to me to be screaming Lara’s name. Although as a cop and a basically rational human being I understood that the only persons responsible for Lara’s murder were the men who killed her, it was going to be hard, if not impossible, for me to absolve myself. A chorus of discordant what-ifs joined the din of guilty accusation. What if I hadn’t gone to Gyron? What if I hadn’t been a wee bit flirtatious with Lara? What if I hadn’t bought her drinks at the club? What if . . . What if . . . What if. If I thought it would have helped, I would have clapped my hands over my ears. I knew better. Eventually the chorus would die down, but the whispers would never leave.

  “Gus!” Felix shouted to get my attention as a hurried through the lobby. “Gus.”

  His voice broke the spell, at least temporarily. I was glad of it. I retraced my steps back to the front desk.

  “What’s up?”

  “A man called for you after you left this morning. I asked him if he wanted to leave a voice mail message on your room phone, but he refused.”