“Why say that when we know you do?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“Come on, Debbie. We know the shop’s in trouble, that you guys are on credit hold with all your suppliers. We know that Hank’s been in trouble with the law and that Billy’s done hard time.”
“So what? That don’t equal killing nobody.”
“Look, it’s not hard to figure. Hank’s cash poor and desperate. Billy comes to him and says he’s got a way to fix that in the short run. With all these oil drivers getting killed, what’s one more robbery? Maybe they didn’t mean to kill Albie and things just got outta hand. Maybe the guy put up more of a fight than they expected. We understand how it can happen. It happens that way a lot. If that’s what happened, you need to tell us so we can tell the DA.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, nervously combing her hair back as she had at the shop. “I got nothing to say to you guys.”
“This is an unofficial visit, Debbie.” It was Healy’s turn again. “Next time it won’t be. You talk to us now and we can protect you, keep you completely out of it. Maybe you can save Hank and Billy a few years inside. Frankly, I don’t give a shit about them, but I do about you.”
“You sound like every guy I was ever with before I sucked his cock. They all care about you until they come. Then afterwards I turn back into the fat girl. So get outta here. I got nothing to say to you.”
Joe grabbed her broken finger away from her hair. “We didn’t do this to you, Debbie. Remember that.”
“I told you, I slammed it—”
“—in a car door. Yeah right.”
“Get out!”
“Debbie,” Joe said, squeezing her finger a bit, “I don’t know which one of them you’re hot for or which one broke your finger, but they’ve killed before and they’ll kill again to protect themselves. If you’re not gonna talk to us, be smart, don’t go to them and tell them we were here. Bob, give her a card.”
Healy handed her one of his old cards from the job, his home and cell numbers written on the back. “Call me, Debbie, anytime,” he said. “I’d like to be able to do something for you.”
“Why don’t you just ask me for a blow job. It’d be easier.” She ripped the card to pieces and threw them in the air like confetti.
“That was dumb, Debbie, and that scares me,” Healy said, giving her another card. “You’re not dumb. Let us help you. And watch what you say to these guys. My partner’s right. Once you start killing, you might as well keep going.”
She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t rip up the card either, slipping it into her back pocket.
Serpe made it a point to smoke his tires as he pulled away from the curb. They wanted to show Debbie Hanlon that the cops couldn’t get away from her fast enough. They’d gone fast, but not very far. Serpe eased up behind Healy’s car parked two blocks away on Ridgewood.
“How long you think it took her to get on the phone?” Healy asked.
“What’s the world record?”
“I don’t know, but I think she just set it.”
“We better get back over there. Don’t forget to park down the block on the opposite side of the street. Shut your headlights off and let the car roll to a stop.”
“You know, Joe, most of the time it doesn’t bother me, you’re treating me like I wasn’t a real cop. But remember, I was good enough to put people away who knew all the rules and all the angles. I was good enough to get you and your partner. Try and keep that in mind the next time we’re working on something like this together,” he said, sliding out of the car and leaving that balloon of poison gas in his place.
Serpe didn’t know what to say, but even if he had, it was too late. Healy was in his own car and gone. What Joe did know was that the time was fast approaching when him and Bob Healy were going to have to have that talk they’d both been avoiding for months. You could float that balloon of poison gas only so many times before someone took a pin to it.
It didn’t take long for the push they gave Debbie Hanlon to rebound. A little before 9:00, a fully pimped out Ford F-150 with a low rider suspension sped down Tulip and came to a stop in front of number 47. If the array of neon chassis lights, lime green and purple paint job weren’t quite conspicuous enough, the earth rattling thump thump thumping of electronic bass that pounded out of the pickup’s cab was guaranteed to get everyone’s attention. The bass was so overwhelming, it completely swallowed up the throaty rumble of a Harley from the next block over. When the Ford’s driver killed the ignition, Serpe’s teeth were still vibrating.
The driver got out of the cab and looked around with distracted eyes that didn’t seem to notice Joe sitting in his dark car a bit further up the block. Hank Noonan was a runty looking white boy dangling a cigarette from his lips and ill-fitting jeans from his hips. He wore a flat-billed Yankee’s cap with the NY logo skewed to the left of the hat and a silver satin jacket, NOONAN’S COLLISION stitched in red across the back. He ambled over to the blond’s front door with a gait that was part gangsta, part gangster, but mostly ridiculous. Serpe waited until Noonan went inside before calling Healy.
“Guess that’s Noonan, huh?” Healy asked.
“Gotta be.”
“What a clown. When you figure Burns to show?”
Before Healy even finished his question, Joe got the sick feeling in his belly that, unlike his hunches, was never wrong.
“What does Burns drive?” Serpe was screaming into the phone, but couldn’t help himself. “What does Burns drive?”
“What are you shouting—”
“What does Burns drive?”
“An old Harley chopper, why?”
Serpe was out of his car and running across the street,. 9mm in his right hand. Seeing this, Healy was out of his car too, weapon drawn, running to the house. Serpe was at the end of the driveway when a rapid succession of six or seven flashes lit up the front bay window. Each flash came with a loud bang. Joe froze for a second, just long enough for Healy to catch up and for darkness to settle back over the inside of the house.
“Fuck.” Joe whispered. “Take the house.”
Serpe, tucking the Glock into the pocket of his leather jacket, headed for the fence to the backyard. Before getting wounded, he’d have been able to put his hands on the cross bar and vault it. Now he was forced to slowly scale the four foot high cyclone fence and make sure to land on his good leg. Over the fence, between the house on one side and an overgrown hedge on the other, it was hard to see more than five feet ahead. But he heard a rapid thudding of footsteps and the distinctive groan and chinking of cyclone fencing as it strained against the weight of someone slamming against it.
Pulling the gun out of his pocket as he went, Serpe took off toward the back fence. His toe snagged on a hedge root and he went sprawling, the gravel chewing up the clenched fingers of his gun hand and the palm of his other. As he fell, there was a flash, a bang, something hissed and whistled over his head. Serpe rolled quickly to his right, pressing himself as tightly to the outside wall of the house as he could. There was a second flash, a bang, and the gravel spit up at him. His mouth was dry and his heart was pounding out of his chest.
There was no third flash. The fence groaned again and, as Serpe rolled over, he could just make out Billy Burns straddling the top of the six foot tall backyard fence. As Burns swung his other leg over the fence, Serpe made a desperate run at him. He missed, but the force with which Joe hit the fence sent Burns flying. He hit the concrete patio in the adjoining backyard with a nasty thud and something snapped; more likely a bone than branch.
Burns screamed in pain and ran, cursing loudly as he went. Serpe tried to climb the fence to go after him, but the blood on his hands made it slow going. Just as Serpe finally got to the top of the fence, Burns’ Harley roared to life and this time there was no thumping bassline to dampen the rumble. By the time Serpe had one leg over the fence, Burns was gone. When he got down off the fence, he found an old Ar
my issue Browning. 45. He left it where Burns had tossed it and limped through the open backdoor of the house.
Walking through the kitchen, he saw Bob Healy at the opposite end of the hallway that connected the kitchen and the living room. Healy was kneeling over Noonan, pressing a blood soaked bath towel down hard on the man’s chest. Debbie Hanlon’s lifeless body, arms straight out in front of her like Superman in mid-flight, lay in the hallway between them. There was a dark splotch almost dead center between her shoulder blades, one on her lower back, and a nasty little red crater in the back of her head. Her pretty blond hair wasn’t so pretty or so blond anymore. There was a big pool of blood beneath her. Serpe didn’t want to think about what those. 45 slugs had done to her on the way out.
“He’s still alive,” Healy said breathlessly. “Call the cops.”
Even before Joe dialed 9-1-1 on his cell phone, he could hear sirens filling up the night. He walked over to Debbie Hanlon and retrieved Healy’s card from her back pocket. Odds were, she wasn’t going to have used it anyway. Now it was a sure bet.
[The Brain God Gave Me]
SUNDAY, JANUARY 9TH, 2005—EARLY MORNING
There were the four of them in the office in Hauppauge: Hoskins, Serpe, Bob and George Healy. They all looked like shit, but Serpe and Bob Healy were in the sorriest shape. Neither one had slept more than ten minutes and both had endured several hours of police interrogation. Serpe’s hands were caked with his own blood, his face scratched and dirty, his pants and jacket ripped, bloodied, and filthy. Bob Healy had almost as much of Hank Noonan’s blood on his clothes as Noonan had left in his body when the EMTs showed up. Worse for them both was the guilt over Debbie Hanlon. Sooner or later they’d go home and shower, put on fresh clothing, and get bandaged up, but they understood that they would never be wholly clean again.
George Healy laid the phone back in its cradle. “That was the DA who just got off the phone with the police commissioner. You just can’t imagine how pleased they both are with this mess. And guess whose job it is to clean it all up and make it smell sweet and look nice and pretty for the media?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “That’s right. It’s mine. Now what the fuck am I supposed to—”
The phone interrupted George before his tirade got going in earnest. Just as he picked up the phone, the fax machine behind his desk began chittering away. George spun his chair around and scooped up the fax as soon as the transmission was complete.
He thanked the person on the other end of the line and hung up.
“Well, well, gentlemen, it’s our lucky day. Noonan’s dead. He started bleeding again and crapped out on the operating table at Stony Brook.”
“How’s that make us lucky?” Hoskins asked.
“Deathbed confession, right?” Serpe said, pointing to the fax in George’s hand.
“That’s right. The little scumbag gave the three of you a going away present just before his shredded artery blew its patch. He dictated a statement to a Detective Braun,” George read off the fax. “The statement was witnessed by a doctor and two nurses and was signed by Noonan.”
“What’s it say?” Bob Healy wanted to know.
“It says that you and Serpe were right, but for the wrong reasons.”
“Huh?”
“It wasn’t about the body shop’s cash flow, at least not directly. Here,” George said, handing the fax over to his brother. “It seems that Burns knew some bikers who were raising cash to bring in loads of high quality marijuana from Canada. The minimum buy-in stake was five grand in cash, but Burns only had a grand. Debbie Hanlon put in two grand, but Noonan had nothing. He was in debt up to his eyeballs and the business wasn’t his to sell. So Burns came up with the plan to rob one of the Epsilon drivers at the end of a busy day. Noonan said the papers gave Burns the idea because they listed how much money was taken from the other dead drivers. They had the girl blow Jimenez while they checked out his route for the day and then set a trap for him. Noonan says it was Burns that beat Jimenez to death and who broke the girl’s finger to warn her about keeping her mouth shut. They thought that by leaving the truck and body over by the Poospatuck Reservation that it would get blamed on the tribe.”
“What a bunch of rocket scientists,” Hoskins said. “Jesus, if these guys had half a brain, we’d be in trouble.”
“Yeah, that’s why my brother and Serpe figured it out in three days and you had your thumb stuck so far up your ass you were gagging on it.”
Hoskins’ jaw clenched. “I had five fucking homicide investigations to deal with at once and the press breathing down my neck. Sorry, I don’t have time to play Sherlock Holmes. I was checking leads. I woulda gotten to these guys soon enough.”
George Healy slammed his palm down on his desk. “Soon enough! When was that gonna be? Don’t lower my opinion of you beyond where it is now.”
“What about tonight—I mean, last night?” Joe asked.
“Apparently, the girl got spooked,” George said. “She called Noonan, who, like the total jerk-off that he was, called Burns. Burns figured to cut his losses and killed both of them. My guess is he was probably gonna do it eventually. Noonan and the girl were the only two witnesses against him and he had the cash to buy into the marijuna deal. He didn’t need to split his take. If you two hadn’t been lurking around, he would’ve gotten away with it too.”
Hoskins scowled, but kept his mouth shut.
“Cops picked Burns up?” Bob asked.
“Not yet, but they will.”
“Where do we go from here?” Serpe was curious.
“We,” George said, “aren’t going anywhere. My brother is going to hand over Noonan’s statement to Detective Hoskins who is going to read it until he can recite it word for word. He’s also going home to get showered and shaved and dressed in a suit that doesn’t look like it fit him when he used to hang out with Travolta and the Bee Gees. And he’s gonna be back here for a ten o’clock news conference. And during that news conference, he’s apt to say that he had suspected the crew at Noonan’s all along and that he was about to break the case when Burns took things into his own hands. He’s also going to say that he’s investigating the possibility that these suspects were involved with the other killings.”
“But that’s bullshit,” Bob said.
“Yeah, we know that, big brother, but Detective Hoskins is going to say it in any case. It’ll keep the press off our asses for a few days until it’s clear to them that the first four cases were unrelated to the Jimenez homicide. By then …” George Healy turned and glared at Hoskins. “What the fuck are you still doing here? You have the statement. Make sure you’re back up here at nine-thirty so we can go over your story.”
Hoskins hesitated, opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. He left without farewells. When he was gone, both Joe and Bob stood to follow.
“Where do you think you’re going?” George said. “Sit down!”
They sat.
“Not you, Serpe. You can wait for my brother downstairs or go home or do whatever it is you do when you’re not getting my brother into trouble.”
Joe got up, left, and didn’t look back. George paced until he heard the elevator ring and the doors slide shut.
“What the fuck are you playing at, Bob? You could’ve gotten yourself killed tonight.”
“But I didn’t.”
“Brilliant argument.”
“It’ll do.”
“No, it won’t,” George said, taking a plastic evidence bag out of his pocket and tossing it on his desk.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a favor.”
“Are we doing riddles now, little brother?”
“You tell me.”
“That’s almost funny, George.”
“You think?” He picked the evidence bag up and tossed it to Bob. “It’s a piece of an NYPD business card that one of the techs found at the scene. He told me about it before he logged it in and I asked him not to. I guess you and Serpe
didn’t get all the pieces when you cleaned up after yourselves. What did you do, flush the other pieces down the can? You realize what I’m doing could cost me my job, right? Was the card yours or Serpe’s.”
“Mine.”
“So you were both in the house before and after the homicides.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The brain God gave me and almost twenty years doing this job.”
“We were there before the murders,” Bob admitted.
“So you went in impersonating cops and. Come on, tell me. I’m already in up to my nipples. If I’m gonna get fucked, I might as well know why.”
“Both Joe and I knew there was something wrong going on in that shop, but we couldn’t be sure if it was connected to Jimenez’s murder. We also knew the girl would probably be the weak link. She seemed like a good kid, but in over her head. We figured to throw a scare into her and.”
“The ploy worked.”
“A little too well. It—no, we got her killed.”
“Noonan got her killed. He called Burns, not the girl.”
“Somehow that’s not making me feel much better.”
“Go home and get some sleep.”
“Okay.”
“Just one more thing,” George said, reaching into his desk. “Here’s your two weapons. Funny thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“In all your time on the job, I never knew you to carry two pieces.”
“I’m getting more insecure as I get older,” Bob said, a sad smile on his face.
“I figured. I know you’re way too smart to let a guy like Joe Serpe carry a weapon registered to you.”
“Way too smart.”
“Yeah, Bob, that’s what I used to think.”
“Me, too, little brother. Me too.”
[Iago]
THURSDAY, JANUARY 13TH, 2005—MORNING
Bob Healy ignored the phone and threw his empty coffee cup at the TV screen.
“Come look at this shit!” he screamed to Serpe. “Five days later and they’re still going. Now they got Debbie’s mom on camera, collapsing in front of the funeral home. Look at the poor woman. These media whores have no shame.”
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