“So when you killed Monaco and the other guy you were murdering strangers?”
“Not exactly strangers. I mean, I knew them from the terminal and Lugo’s. I recognized their faces, but I didn’t know them. That’s just who showed up. Luck of the draw, I guess.”
“They wouldn’t see it that way.”
“Big mistake, killing Monaco,” Joe said. “That got me interested.”
“Maybe, yeah … I guess. He was gonna be my last. My fucking luck!”
That was the end of the conversation until they dragged him out of the car at Poospatuck Creek. Serpe handed the .38 back to Hoskins and Hoskins handed it to Jimmy.
“Go do the right thing,” Hoskins said.
That’s when the hope went out of Mazzone’s eyes. Healy laid it out for him.
“Here’s the deal. We got two of your drivers’ sworn statements explaining how you pre-stamped tickets for years and how you paid them an extra ten bucks a stop when they used those tickets. With time, they’ll all flip. We got your signed confession. Go in there and do yourself,” Healy said, pointing at the hard, brown reeds. “The Gastrol sale goes through. Your wife and daughter grieve, but come out rich on the other side and with loving memories of you. You don’t go in there and it’s gonna get ugly, Jimmy, very fucking ugly.
“First person we show the confession to is gonna be your daughter. How do you think she’ll react when she hears her dad murdered her fiancé and three innocent men? I wouldn’t count on any Father’s Day cards coming to your cell block. Okay, so maybe you are a cold-hearted bastard and you’re willing to lose your kid and live the rest of your life in a concrete cell. But we know your wife helped you with the pre-stamps, so she’ll do federal time. The IRS doesn’t like being cheated. They’re funny that way.”
Jimmy Mazzone swooned. His legs got rubbery, his eyes rolled up into his head, and he flopped down in a pile. An invisible hand had reached into him and snatched out his skeleton. Worse, when he came to, he was crying. The perfection was gone. Jimmy Mazzone needed killing and he wasn’t going to do it himself.
“Get outta here!” Hoskins barked at Healy and Serpe. “Take my car.”
“But—”
“No. Out!” He tossed his keys to Serpe. “This is my thing. If I had done my job right to begin with, we wouldn’t be here. I can handle this better on my own. Go!”
They drove far enough away to get out of Hoskins’ line of sight, but no further. Having come this far, they could not escape the fallout by running. The shot echoed through the night, but the splash of Mazzone’s body did not. The weight of a man’s sins adds nothing to the sound of his fall. No porch lights popped on. No sirens interrupted the background rush of the wind. Gunshots in the night were not unique on the banks of the Poospatuck.
When Hoskins came back from the creek bank, Serpe picked him up. If he was looking for a thank you in the cop’s expression, he didn’t find it. Killing, even for the right reasons, came at a bigger price than any of them expected. There was no talk on the ride home. A line had been crossed from which there was no going back.
[Confessional]
REQUIEM
Hoskins died in June. Healy read it in the Sunday paper and called Serpe about it. The three of them hadn’t spoken since just prior to the moment Hoskins walked Mazzone down to the creek that night in late February. What was there to say, really? Murder made for many things, but not for lasting friendships. Hoskins’ funeral was sparsely attended and Joe couldn’t help but remember the night he’d gone to the funeral home for Rusty Monaco. This was much the same; most of the people present were there out of a sense of obligation. Seemingly few beyond the requisite police honor guard felt obliged. There were no tears.
On their way out, Serpe and Healy ran into Hoskins’ former partner, Detective Kramer. Kramer had worked the hose monkey case with Hoskins and they’d parted ways shortly thereafter.
“Tim didn’t bring out the best in people. He didn’t inspire love. I’m surprised anyone showed up, especially you two,” he said, shaking their hands. “I never had anything against you, Serpe, but Christ, Tim just hated you.”
“I got my reasons for being here.”
“Stupid stubborn prick,” Kramer said, shaking his head as the coffin was wheeled toward the hearse. “He just stopped his treatments. The asshole just gave up.”
“He must’ve had his reasons.”
Kramer opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He shrugged his shoulders and left.
They found William Burns’ body, what was left of it, anyway, in a sand pit out in Rocky Point. When Serpe and Healy first heard about it, they thought that maybe Hoskins had taken his new role as the avenging angel too much to heart. But when the autopsy results were published a few days later, they were relieved to know that it hadn’t been Hoskins at all. Burns’ broken femur and ankle had never knitted. Apparently his drug running biker buddies liked the color of his money, but not his baggage. The medical examiner said that because there was a lot of sand in his lungs and because his hands were badly mangled that Burns had probably been buried alive. There was a time when that might have made Serpe and Healy feel better. That time had passed. Debbie Hanlon and Hank Noonan were still dead.
The Sunday following Hoskins’ funeral, Joe went to church service for the first time since his brother died. He’d only gone then because the FDNY had made the arrangements. He waited around until the church had emptied and the priest was done saying his goodbyes on the front steps.
“Do you remember me, Father Dudek?”
It took the priest a second, but the light of recognition eventually came on.
“The friend of Steven’s,” he said, unsmiling.
“Something like that, yeah, I was wondering, Father, could you hear my confession?”
Dudek began to make excuses, but he could see in Serpe’s eyes that none of the excuses would do. And he had to confess to being curious himself.
“Come with me.”
They took their places in the box. Joe felt as comfortable as if he were trying on his coffin for size, but he knew he had to get through it.
“It’s been a long time, Father.”
“Do you remember the words, my son?”
“As if I could forget. But there’s something I wanna talk about first before you hear my confession.”
“Certainly.”
“These are the names I want to say to you. Khouri and James Burgess, Albie Jimenez, Debbie Hanlon, Hank Noonan, Bogarde Defrees, Edgerin Marsden, Carter Blaylock, Cameron Wilkes, Brian Stanfill, Rusty Monaco, Finnbar McCauly, Stevie Reggio, William Burns, Dave … I forget his last name.”
“Many names, my son.”
“Names of the dead, Father. All murdered. All sewn from the seeds of one mindless act. I can’t understand that.”
“It is not important for you to understand it, my son. Have faith that there are reasons beyond our ability or need to understand. It is why we must put our full trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“I was a detective for a long time, Father. I have seen many things that would make you physically ill. I arrested a grandmother who sold her thirteen-year-old granddaughter for twenty dollars worth of crack. She stood there and smoked it and watched the dealer and his friends gang rape the girl. I had a little trouble believing there was a higher purpose in that.”
The priest was silent.
“I’m ready to confess my sins now, Father.”
“Please, my son, go on.” Dudek’s voice cracked.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Serpe rammed ahead, not willing to wait for the priest’s mumbled blessing. “It has been too long since my last confession. A few months ago, I helped kill the man who murdered Steve Reggio.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean you—”
“You don’t need to understand, Father. I just wanted you to know that I helped answer your prayers.”
Joe Serpe walked out of the confessional and never looked back.
TONY SPINOSA is the pseudonym of Edgar-nominated Reed Farrel Coleman, and is the follow-up to Hose Monkey. Learn more about Reed and Tony and www.reedcoleman.com.
If you liked The Fourth Victim check out:
Hose Monkey
SODA CAN
Joe Serpe just assumed there was no more, that things had moved well beyond loss and grief, beyond worsening. He was only about an hour from learning there’s always more and there’s always worse.
He felt like the leftovers from autopsy class. Mulligan, the last thing he had left to show for fifteen years of marriage, was pawing the empty Absolut bottle, pawing at it then pouncing on it. But it wasn’t the cat or the scraping of the bottle as it rolled over the gritty linoleum floor that had slapped Joe out of his stupor. That honor went to the phone.
“Fuck!” He propped himself up on one elbow. Trying to sit would have ripped him in two. Still, it would have been easy enough to reach over and slide the volume switch to zero on the answering machine. He didn’t move. Instead he counted the rings, his lips moving silently, the numbers resonating in the fog. Two … Three … Four … The voice that filled the room was not his own.
This is Vinny. I’m out swallowing smoke or stout. If it’s a one-alarmer, leave your name and number and a message. If it’s a two-alarmer, call 911. If it’s gone to three alarms and you’re still in your house making this call, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye, cause you’re screwed. Have a nice day.
Joe had written those words for his brother to say. Scripts helped Vinny with his stuttering. It’s how he dealt with emergencies on the job, how he had passed the entrance test. Joe’s heart raced every time he heard his little brother’s voice. It was all that was left of him. Sure, there were pictures—hundred of pictures—and Vinny’s uniform shirts that still hung in his closet like offerings in a lightless shrine. There was his badge and his crushed helmet and the flag that had draped his coffin and the stories from the newspapers. But those were things, artifacts, fossils, as dry and meaningless to Joe as a squirrel skull dug up in the backyard. No, the message tape was alive. It was more a reflection of Vinny’s life than any object or eulogy.
September 11th, 2001 had robbed a lot of people of a lot of things, but Joe Serpe could not and would not be convinced that anyone had lost more than him. When you’re already in a place where further down looks like up, any loss, never mind that of your baby brother, is magnified, amplified a thousand fold. Few people who knew Joe, even those cops who didn’t speak to him anymore, would argue the point. It was Vinny who took him in after the divorce. Vinny who stood by him through all the departmental hearings. Vinny who stopped him from eating his gun.
Vincent Anthony Serpe was just one of three-hundred-forty-three New York City firemen killed that day. Some had died heroic deaths. Some not. From all accounts, Vinny’s was neither particularly heroic nor inglorious. He was felled by debris as he ran for cover when the first tower collapsed. In fact, Joe Serpe had been told he was lucky. Vinny’s body, at least, had been recovered intact. A lot of the men who had perished were pulverized. Their families would bury empty coffins.
Joe knew he was supposed to take comfort in a full coffin. He took none. He found the concept of closure the purist form of bullshit ever conceived by man. The way people talked about closure it was as if grief was as simple as going back to cross a forgotten “t”. Whether his brother’s coffin contained a broken torso or a sack full of rocks was of no consequence to Joe. Dead was fucking dead, body or no body. What mattered was that of the two creatures left on earth whom he loved and who loved him back, one was gone forever. Two and a half years of facing that reality hadn’t lessened the ache of it. Neither, as it happened, had the vodka.
“Mr. Serpe, this is Captain Kelly,” a booming voice poured out of the little speaker. “I was your brother’s commander. We met at his funeral. It’s Monday and I know I’m callin’ real early, but I got alotta calls to make. I just wanted to let you know that Pete Hegarty’s wife Pam’s throwin’ a second birthday party for the twins and …”
Joe half-listened to what Kelly had to say. The tone of the captain’s voice intrigued him. Clearly, Kelly was annoyed by the continuing presence of Vinny’s voice on the answering machine. Joe couldn’t have cared less. He’d stopped caring about what other people thought of him a long time ago. He’d had to. It was a matter of survival. Given the last four years of his life, caring would have crushed him as surely as the hurtling concrete and steel had killed his brother.
Joe was shocked to find the phone in his hand. “Captain Kelly, this is Joe Serpe here.”
If it had been almost anyone else from the department, he would have turned down the answering machine and gone back to his coma, but he remembered Kelly as being good to Vinny, welcoming him, mentoring him. Unlike the other hypocritical pricks at his brother’s memorial, Kelly had cried real tears. The rest of them, as far as Joe was concerned, could all go to hell. These same men who carried his coffin and called him brother in death had taunted Vinny for his shyness, his stuttering, and called him fag, retard, and Va-Va-Vinny on September 10th. Death was too big a price to pay to finally get into the fraternity.
“Hello, Mr. Serpe, I was just callin’–”
“Yeah, I know. I heard.”
“Pam Hegarty wanted me to … She thinks we need to be together.”
“I can’t make it.”
“But, I haven’t given you the date and–”
“Whenever it is, I can’t make it.” Joe was regretting having picked up. His head was pounding and he could feel the tears beginning to well up. He knew he had better speak his piece and get off. “Listen, Captain, I didn’t get a chance to say this at the funeral, but I wanted to tell you that I really appreciated the way you treated my little brother. He told me how good you were to him.”
“Your brother was a fireman’s fireman,” Kelly said.
The phone was back in its cradle.
Mulligan had given up trying to slay the bottle. He wanted real food, the smell of which induced a round of vomiting in Joe the likes of which he hadn’t experienced in years.
“Fuckin’ cat,” he whispered, knowing he couldn’t afford to alienate Mulligan. Mulligan was all he had left.
Joe threw on his stinky oil clothes from Saturday. After three years working oil, he had a week’s worth of uniforms that he washed on Sundays. This past Sunday, he’d been a little too preoccupied researching the subtle differences between the flavors of Swedish and Polish vodka to care about the wash. Actually, his research had started late Saturday night. When he was first on the job, his wife used to say he smelled like a cop. That was crap. An oilman really smells like an oilman, especially in last week’s clothes. Anyway, a fresh uniform didn’t suit his mood. Nothing, not his breath nor even the snow that had fallen on and off since Saturday night, was fresh and clean. Things didn’t stay fresh in Joe’s world for very long.
The sun was just up when Joe squeezed into his Honda—Vinny’s, really. They’d repo-ed Joe’s car after the divorce—between the dump-ster and a mound of exhaust black snow. He knew it was going to be a busy day. Winter Mondays always were, especially after it snowed. People got all psychotic about running out of heating oil when it snowed. It could be ten below and people didn’t give a rat’s ass, but if the weatherman mentioned snow, people went apeshit. Joe didn’t mind busy. Busy was good. Busy meant more cash in his pocket. Busy meant no time to think. He was sick of thinking.
He was still a little unsteady when he got out of the car, the 7-Eleven coffee cup shaking in his hand. He glanced over to where the trucks were parked, making sure that Frank had sta
rted up the tugboat. That’s what the drivers called Joe’s old, green Mack. It’s air horn had been broken for years and it sort of sounded like a fog horn. The big blue Mack was running. So was the red Mack, and the International cab-over, but not the tugboat.
“What the fuck?” Joe moaned, half-stumbling into the office.
Frank understood. “Sorry, Joe, the tugboat’s off the road. The tank’s got a pinhole leak and I’m taking her over to Suffolk Welding this morning. You’re on the International today.”
“I hate that truck. It’s a bitch gettin’ in and outta that thing.”
“What can I tell you, Joe? You’ll have the tugboat back tomorrow. Listen, in the meantime, there’s like forty, fifty gallons a diesel left in the International’s tank. You better pump it off before you go load, okay?”
“Whatever.” Joe turned to leave. “Hey.” He hesitated. “You hear anything about the kid?”
“Nah,” Frank said. “It’s too early. My guess is he’s probably back at the home. You know him, how crazy he gets. He probably got all pissed off at something and freaked and couldn’t handle it. In a way, it’s good he didn’t show on Saturday. I was thinking maybe of taking him off the trucks altogether and putting him back in the yard. Now I’m sure.”
“He won’t like that shit. And he’s the best hose monkey we ever had, Frank.”
“Yeah, well.”
By the time he got out to the truck, Joe had forgotten all about the kid. He had troubles enough of his own. He placed the nozzle into the hole atop an empty fifty-five gallon drum. He primed the pump and opened the nozzle trigger on the International, but instead of the expected gush of diesel, the thick, red hose barely stiffened. He heard a slow trickling echo inside the steel drum. Maybe Frank had been wrong about there being diesel left in the tank. It wouldn’t be the first time. It’s almost impossible to keep track of inventory when you pump a hundred thousand gallons of diesel and oil a month.
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