“Maybe he was.”
“Maybe. What did Marie say?”
“She’s suspicious, you know.”
“About us showing up?”
“That too, yeah,” Hoskins said. “But it’s more than that. I think she’s a smart cookie and she don’t like the timing of how everything worked out. Plus the old man’s been drinking a lot since the fiancé was killed. Temper’s been a little short too. I think maybe he’s smacked her around a little.”
“You think she knows about the double stamping?”
“She knows. You see her face when you congratulated her on the sale? The woman almost had a fucking canary.”
“Drop me back at my car,” Serpe said.
“Why?”
“It’s been too long since my last confession.”
The priest was a hearty man in his early thirties. He had clear blue eyes, thick crooked lips, and peasant teeth. He had the hands of a farmer and a straightforward, friendly manner. His Polish accent matched his Polish name. His hand swallowed Serpe’s before giving it back.
“I am Father Dudek. You asked to see me.”
“I did.”
“How can I help you, my son?”
“I don’t think you can.”
“Please, we are here to help. I know is sometimes difficult what you have to say, but God’s Holy church is love.”
Father Dudek wasn’t trained by the priests and nuns at Joe’s old school and church in Brooklyn. Those folks had a very different concept of God’s Holy church.
“Do you remember Stevie Reggio, Father?”
Dudek withered. “I remember the young man, may the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on his soul.” He crossed himself. “What is this about?”
“I own Mayday Fuel, Father, so I knew Stevie a little bit. He seemed like a good kid, but I know he was troubled at the end of his life.” Dudek’s face showed the truth of Joe’s words. “Toni Mazzone told me he had been coming to you for advice and you were his confessor.”
The priest’s blue eyes were wary and rightfully so. “This is true what you say, but I—”
“Let me finish, Father. I’m Catholic … at least I used to be. So I know you can’t talk to me about what you and Stevie discussed, but could you listen to a story I have to tell?”
“A story?”
“Do you like the movies, Father Dudek?”
“Yes, very much. It was one of the reasons I was so happy to come to America, to see the truth behind the movies. But I don’t underst—”
“You said the word yourself, Father: truth. The story I have to tell you is like one of those movies when in the beginning it says that the movie is based on the truth.”
The confusion went out of the priest. “I will listen. Come sit with me.”
Dudek genuflected and crossed himself as he entered the church from the rectory. Serpe refused. There was only so far he was willing to go. After his brother’s death, he and the Almighty weren’t on speaking or genuflecting terms. They sat in a pew close to the altar, Christ’s eyes involved with his own pain.
“Please, my son, begin.”
“The story goes like this, Father. When I first started working in the oil business, I was hired by a man I respected and grew to love. He took me in, made me part of his extended family. He placed faith and trust in me, so when he asked me to do certain things that I didn’t understand, I did them out of a sense of love and honor. Over the course of the years, I fell in love with this man’s daughter and we were engaged to be married.
“I was offered a partnership in the business after the marriage, but by then I had come to understand that the things I had been asked to do by this man I so loved and honored, were both illegal and immoral. They placed everyone I loved in danger from the law and placed my soul in peril. I was terribly conflicted because if I went to the police with what I knew, I would lose not only my job, but the woman I loved and her father would no doubt go to prison.
“So I went back to the one place where I knew I could find solace and advice, I came to the Church. After weeks of soul searching and guidance from a priest I had come to trust, I decided to do the right thing under the law and under God. I decided that nothing was worth the price of my soul and that I had to tell the authorities. If my fiancée loved me, she would stand by me. I made peace with my decision. But most cruelly, just after coming to the decision, I was robbed and murdered. Eventually, the police found the man they believed had killed me.”
“Yes, it is a sad story.” The priest’s eyes were rimmed in red. He fought to hold back his tears. “But I still don’t see what you want from me. I don’t—”
“Maybe, Father, that’s because the story’s not over.”
“There is more?”
“I’m afraid so. You see, a man and his partner who both used to be detectives and who own an oil company, they kept looking at the murders of the oil drivers. What they discovered was that the man blamed for the murders, though guilty of many crimes, was innocent of these murders. That the person who actually murdered me was my father-in-law to be. That he also killed three other innocent men to cover his tracks. And now not only is the man free of the murders, but he is on the verge of making windfall profits from the fruits of his sins.”
Father Dudek’s face went from sadness to rage, pure and unadulterated. This was more like it, Serpe thought, a face he recognized from his days in school. Priests were human too.
“This story is true?”
“My part is,” Joe said. “But I can’t—”
“Excuse me, my son. I must go pray.”
“For what, Father Dudek? What will you pray for?”
“For vengeance and forgiveness.”
Serpe, Hoskins, and Healy sat waiting for the Baseline truck to pull up to Hoskins’ house. Serpe and Healy had already done this ritual at Bob’s house a few hours earlier. Now as they waited, Serpe recounted the story of his visit with Father Dudek.
“Vengeance and forgiveness, those were his exact words?” Healy asked.
“His words. But I can’t do justice to the look on his face. I had the story cold.”
Healy shook his head in disbelief. Then got up to break the spell. “I’m having more coffee. You guys?”
“I’m in,” Hoskins said. “It’s on the counter next to the stove.”
“So how long did it take Jimmy Mazzone to show up at his office after you dropped me off?” Joe asked.
“His truck pulled in almost at the same time I got back there. He was moving at a pretty good clip too.”
“And you parked your Crown Vic across the street?”
“Right where the prick could see me,” Hoskins said. “The wife and daughter too. When he pulled the truck back out of the yard, I stayed behind him, right in the center of his sideview mirrors like you showed me. Every time he looked back, I was there. He sped up or slowed down, I kept the same distance. When he made stops, I parked down the street just ahead or behind him. At the last stop I followed him to, he tried walking up to the car. I let the fuck get within about ten feet, then I pulled away. You shoulda seen the look on his puss.”
There was a knock at the door. “Baseline Energy.”
Joe laughed. It had been a long time since he was on this side of an oil delivery, and now he’d gone through it twice in one day. Too bad for the driver, he was about to deliver something other than oil.
Hoskins got up and went to the door. Opened it. Driver showed Hoskins a delivery ticket. Hoskins showed him his shield. The driver took his coffee light and sweet. Both Serpe and Healy recognized him from Lugo’s. His name was Dan Litzki.
Litzki was forty, stocky, and currently scared shitless. Perfect.
While Litzki sat down at the table, Serpe retrieved the ticket box from the cab of Litzki’s truck. There were three sets of twin tickets. There was a fourth matching set. One, the blank one he’d showed Hoskins at the door. The other a perfectly pre-stamped, two hundred gallon ticket. Both had Hoskins’ address filled in
at the top.
“How much time you figure you’ll do behind these pre-stamped tickets?” Hoskins asked, not bothering to wait for an answer. “You know you’ll do more time for tax fraud than the other charges? That’s federal time, dickface. No plea bargains. No parole. The IRS doesn’t like getting fucked.”
“You know what the worst part is, Hoskins?” Joe said. “It’s that Danny boy here didn’t even make much money from the scam. Mazzone made the money, but Danny’s the one gonna take it up the ass in federal prison.”
“It’s a mistake,” Dan Litzki said, puffing out his chest with false bravado. “The girl in the office fucked up. Never happened before.”
Healy took the photocopies of the twin tickets from Steve Reggio’s box and slid them across the table. “Take plenty of vasoline with you, asshole. Sorry, poor choice of words.”
“What’s the matter now, Litzki?” Hoskins growled, poking his meaty index finger into the driver’s chest. “What was that about a mistake?” Hoskins cupped a hand around his ear. “I’m not hearing nothing.”
“Here’s the deal,” Joe said. “The Suffolk PD don’t want you. They want Jimmy Mazzone. Hoskins here wants to know every fucking detail about how he does this, who does what. Everything. You leave out one fucking detail and Hoskins is gonna drop the hammer on you so hard, you won’t know what hit you.”
“But—”
“But nothing!” Healy screamed. “If you don’t flip, there are six other Baseline drivers we can call. In fact, how do you know you’re the first driver we’ve talked to? You don’t think one of them is smart enough to trade Mazzone for themselves. Maybe one already did.”
“Okay, just let me call in with truck trouble,” Litzki said. “This is gonna take awhile.”
Hoskins let Litzki get his cell phone, but pressed the muzzle of his weapon to Litzki’s neck as a friendly reminder not to warn Mazzone.
“Marie, listen, I’m heading into Lake Grove,” Litzki said. “The truck’s giving me a little trouble. I’m gonna check it out, so call the stops after the Lake Grove one and tell them I’ll be running thirty minutes behind. No, I don’t need road service. I can handle it.”
Healy copied down everything Dan Litzki said, had him read it, and sign it.
“You mention this to Jimmy or anyone else at Baseline and you’re fucked. Understand?” Hoskins asked, but it wasn’t a question. “Remember, you have no way of knowing whether we’ve talked to the other drivers already. This gets back to Jimmy in any—”
“I’m not gonna say a word. You think I’m gonna cut my own throat for Jimmy Mazzone?”
“Get outta here.”
“Wait a second,” Serpe said, interrupting Hoskins’ send off. “Just two more questions.”
Litzki blanched. “What?”
“You worked for Jimmy a long time, right?”
“About fifteen years. Why?”
“Any of the other drivers that were killed ever work for Baseline?” Serpe asked.
“The nigger.”
“Cameron Wilkes?”
“Uh huh, about eight years ago, but he worked for everybody at one time or another.”
“Okay, get the fuck outta here.”
When the door closed behind Litzki, he had taken all remaining doubts with him.
“Tomorrow?” Joe said. “Tomorrow. Healy?”
“Tomorrow.”
[Pennysaver]
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20TH, 2005
Thursday’s tomorrow was now two yesterdays ago. The world had twice turned and they had gotten what they wanted or what they thought they had wanted; a jagged shard of it anyway. Jimmy Mazzone was dead. But that taste in their mouths with their morning coffees wasn’t victory. It wasn’t justice and, ultimately, it wasn’t even the truth. Those things were sweet and right and warm. For Joe Serpe, Bob Healy, and Tim Hoskins, this was as far from any of that as you could get without teleportation. It was brooding, bitter, empty.
The headline proclaiming the death and the inches of vague half-truths that ran down the column beneath it were hard to take. It was meant to look like suicide. That was their intention all along and suicide is what the cops were calling it, what the press were calling it; a second family tragedy for the Mazzones. It had been an execution, the tragedy of it extending far beyond the boundaries of any one family. What the three men now realized was that even had Jimmy Mazzone acted as they had hoped, like a man instead of a selfish coward, it would still have been an execution. What does it matter who actually pulls the trigger?
Some kid from the reservation spotted Jimmy Mazzone’s body caught on the reeds in Poospatuck Creek. It was only a few hundred yards from where Albie Jimenez’s truck had been found six weeks earlier. Even from the shore, the kid could see the hole in the top of the dead man’s head. The .38, one bullet missing from its cylinder, was found on the opposite shore, where, the cops theorized, Mazzone had knelt down before pulling the trigger and toppling into the water. Jimmy’s car was found close by. His wallet, watch, rings, and keys were neatly piled on the driver’s seat. There was no note, not in the car, anyway.
It had all come together perfectly. They had him cold, painted into a corner from which he could not retrace his steps nor build out. Jimmy Mazzone called Hoskins early on Friday morning to set up a meet. That part was easy enough. With Joe Serpe and Tim Hoskins’ visit to his office to question his wife and daughter; with the photocopies of the pre-stamped tickets from Stevie Reggio’s truck left behind in an envelope; with Hoskins’ less than subtle shadow in his sideview mirrors, it was understandable that Mazzone had figured he was being set up for blackmail. That’s just how Hoskins’ played it too. This wasn’t about jail time or justice. This would be just another business transaction. Jimmy Mazzone had to believe the bloodletting was done. His mistake.
It didn’t take Jimmy long to figure out that he had figured it wrong. Too late to do him any immediate good and he knew it. He saw it in their eyes. They saw it in his. He went along quietly, fooling himself, making the most human of mistakes. He let himself hope. Hope put the bullet in him. Hope was the cruelest thing humans did to themselves. Serpe wondered if Stevie let himself hope before Jimmy put a cap into the back of his head.
“What do you guys want?” Mazzone kept asking Serpe and Hoskins as they drove toward Mastic. Healy followed in Jimmy’s car. When they didn’t answer him, Jimmy gave them options. “Look, the Gastrol deal is worth millions. I’ll split it with you, if that’s what you want or I’ll just give my business to you. I’ll sign it over to you right now and you can take it all. Just let me walk away.”
“You wanna walk, huh?” Hoskins said. “Four murders is a lot of blood to walk away from.”
At first, Jimmy tried denying it. He didn’t know what they were talking about. They had it all wrong. They were confused. He could see he was playing to the wrong crowd and shifted from denials to excuses. It was all an accident. It was a mistake. It was Stevie’s fault. Once one was dead, he had to keep killing. He had no choice. If he could undo it, he would.
“Sign this,” Serpe said.
“What is it?”
“It’s a full typed confession.” Mazzone balked. “No way.”
“You don’t sign it, you’re fucking dead,” Hoskins said. “He’s right, Jimmy. You sign this, we got you by the balls. Whatever we want from you, we know we’ll get it because we got this.”
“No. You’re gonna kill me anyway.”
“You just guaranteed it. Pull over, Hoskins,” Serpe said, shoving Hoskins’ drop piece .38 into Mazzone’s ribs. “This place is as good as any for this piece of shit to die.”
Mazzone signed the confession. Joe checked the signature to make sure Jimmy hadn’t gotten cute. Serpe folded the confession, placed it in an envelope, and flipped it over the seat to Hoskins. They rode in silence for a little while, then Jimmy got talkative.
“It really was Stevie’s fault. He just couldn’t let it be. Just another two months. Two lousy freakin’ months u
ntil the lawyers firmed it all up with Gastrol. Toni and him woulda had half a mil as a wedding gift, but no. Outta all the guys in this business my daughter’s gotta fall in love with, she had to find St. Stevie. Asshole.”
“But how’d you find out about what he was thinking of doing?” Joe asked.
“Show you what a schmuck the kid was, he came to me himself. Told me he’d gotten the phone numbers of the IRS, of Suffolk Weights and Measures, of the DA’s office. He said his priest advised him to come to me and ask that I do the right thing, that it was only fair to give me a chance to set things straight. Teach you to listen to a priest. Priest cut the kid’s throat for him.”
Now Serpe understood Father Dudek’s reaction. The words vengeance and forgiveness rang in Joe’s head like untuned bells.
“Good thing it wasn’t your daughter that came to you,” Hoskins said.
Mazzone looked nauseous after that and didn’t seem so talkative anymore, but Joe wasn’t quite finished.
“How’d you pick the other drivers?”
“Just tell me how much you want and let me go home.”
This time Serpe clicked the hammer back when he stuck the .38 in Mazzone’s ribs.
“I picked Wilkes because he was a soft target. One man operation with nobody watching his back. I put in a call from a payphone in a 7/Eleven parking lot. Then all I had to do was wait. Besides, he knew that I’d been double stamping on and off for years. He was one less potential witness. The other two …” he drifted off.
“What about the other two?”
“The Pennysaver.”
“What?”
“I looked in the Pennysaver to get numbers,” Mazzone said. “You know, the oil page. You run an ad in there every week too. I couldn’t kill off everyone who used to work for me. I realized Wilkes was a mistake, that a sharp cop might trace back his work history and connect him to me.”
Serpe could see Hoskins screw up his face in the rearview mirror. Tracing work histories wasn’t something he’d bothered to do.
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