Hose Monkey (13 page)

“What about it?”

“How fucking stupid do you think I am, Snake?”

“Got an hour?”

“That’s right, have a laugh, but I know things. Maybe your boss—”

“Ex-boss,” Serpe corrected.

“Whatever. Maybe he did kill the nigger. The evidence sure points that way. Personally, I don’t give a shit—as far as I could tell, he needed killing. But Frank Randazzo didn’t find Toussant on his own, not unless they teach skip-tracing in truck drivers’ school. Do they teach you that there, Snake?”

“I didn’t go to school.”

“Yeah you did, the school of the streets. The best kinda school. The kinda school where you learn to track people down who ain’t interested in being found. So, you gonna let Frankie boy twist in the wind like you let Ralphy twist or, for once in your miserable fucking life, are you gonna stand up and take the rap?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Okay, Serpe. Just like I thought. You’re still a cowardly cunt. Just remember I gave you a chance to do the right thing here. I’m gonna nail your ass to the wall. Remember that.” Hoskins turned to walk away.

“Hey Hoskins,” Joe snapped at him.

“What?”

“I want you to remember something, too.”

“I’m listening.”

“The time’s gonna come when this shit will all be cleared up. And when that happens, I want you to call your dentist.”

“What the fuck you on about now? Why should I call my dentist?”

“Because if you talk to me like that again, I’m gonna kick your teeth out through your ass. Remember that!”

Joe turned, walked back inside his apartment and slammed his door shut.

Monday Evening
March 1st, 2004

 

A SCRATCH, A BLEMISH, A SMALL CUT

 

H
ealy showed up. There was never any doubt that he would. But as he approached the VFW hall, a frail looking woman in her late sixties walked up to him. She handed him a slip of paper with an address on it. “What’s this?”

“I recognize you from this morning,” she said. “You’re the one that got into a shoving match with the wetback.”

“That was me.”

She pointed at the slip of paper. “It’s a precaution against the media. They try to come to our meetings all the time, distort our point of view. You go on over to that address. You’ll be okay.”

“Thanks.”

Ten minutes later and two villages away, Bob Healy found himself outside a run-down tavern on a dead end street. It was an old fashioned bar built out of the first floor of a house. The flickering neons in the front window were collectors items, touting beers like Ballentine Ale and Rheingold. The wood sign in the parking lot had made a lot of termites happy for a long time. The place was not called the Dew Drop Inn, but it should have been. It’s actual name, Jerry’s Joint, was such a disappointment.

In any case, the parking lot was full and cars lined both sides of the curb, halfway up the street. There was a burly, linebacker type at the door collecting the strips of paper the woman had handed out at the VFW hall.

“Paper,” he barked at Healy.

Bob patted down his pockets. “Left it in the car.”

“Go get it!”

“I’ll be right back.” He started for the car. “Wait!” Pete Strohmeyer called out. “Come on back, Bob.” Healy turned around to see Strohmeyer standing next to the linebacker.

“He’s okay, son,” Strohmeyer vouched. “Let him in.”

“Thanks.”

“Thank you. See you inside, Bob.”

Jerry’s Joint harkened back to old Suffolk County, before it had been transformed from potato and sod farms to golf courses and vinyl-sided McMansions. There was a dart board, a pool table, and enough taxidermy on the walls to please the most ardent hunter. There were black and white pictures of roadside produce stands, men on fishing docks astride their catches of the day, clean-shaven men in military dress. The bar itself was strictly 40s and 50s: Bakelite and Formica. The stools were chrome and red vinyl.

The pool table had been shoved to one side and a few rows of folding chairs had been neatly arranged in front of a rostrum. A red, white and blue banner hung on the wall behind the rostrum.
DON’T TREAD ON ME
formed the top half of a circle in the middle of the banner.
AMERICA FOR AMERICANS
formed the lower half of the circle. At the center of the circle was a silhouette of the flag being raised at Iwo Jima.

But this wasn’t a clan rally. No crosses were burning. No one was foaming at the mouth, no one was chanting racist slogans. There was no shouting at all, or even much drinking, as far as Healy could tell. What Healy saw was a room full of people not unlike himself: white, middle-class, and confused. They were worried, unprepared for the changes in their corner of the world. When these people had purchased their homes ten, twenty, thirty years ago, they couldn’t have imagined a scenario where a forgettable little hamlet in central Suffolk County would become the focus of national attention.

He didn’t sense hate in the room, but fear. He understood that fear was like heated metal, something that in the hands of a skilled smithy could be molded or cast into almost any shape. Given the right conditions, fear and hate weren’t so far apart.

He found a seat in the last row of folding chairs. There was a pamphlet on the seat just like the one Strohmeyer had given him that morning. Healy picked it up, shoved it in his pocket. Almost before he was fully settled, a woman sat down next to him. She was a handsome woman, with unpretentious gray hair that fell to her shoulders. Healy had always admired women who didn’t try to hide themselves. She had clear blue eyes and a proudly lined, unmade-up face, a pert nose and cushy lips. God, he thought, how long had it been since he even noticed another woman’s features?

“Hi, I’m Barbara,” she said, nervously offering her hand to Healy. “Christ, I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

He took her hand. “Bob Healy.”

“A pleasure.”

“What did you mean about not knowing why—”

“Because I’m sympathetic to these day laborers, but I’m worried about my house. My husband died eight months ago and—”

“Sorry.”

“Thank you. But he didn’t leave any insurance and the house is basically all I’ve got.”

“Do you work?”

“Home Depot as a cashier. It’s okay, I guess, but I’ve got a girl in college and we’ve borrowed against the house. If the property values plunge, I’m screwed.”

Healy could hear the strain in her voice. He imagined Barbara was like most of the other folks in Jerry’s Joint, embarrassed. They were here because they didn’t know where else to go. It’s easy to judge people, put labels on them, but labels are often wrong. Now he almost felt guilty for his charade.

“How about you?” Barbara asked. “What about me?”

“Why are you here?”

“I guess the short answer is because I had a run in with one of the Mexicans this morning and I was invited to come. The real answer is that since my wife died, I’ve been kind of adrift, worried about the same kinds of things you are.”

“Sorry about your wife. What happened?”

“Pancreatic cancer.”

“My Jimmy had a stroke.”

Oddly, they smiled, both realizing that neither could have imagined having a conversation remotely like this only a year ago. “Listen to us,” Bob said.

But that’s where their conversation stopped. A rotund man stepped up to the rostrum and called everyone to order. The bar quieted down as people filled in the empty seats. Behind the fat man and in front of the banner stood Pete Strohmeyer and the man he’d called son. Now that the linebacker was standing in the light, Healy could see just how menacing he really looked. Everything about him was square, from his head to shoulders to chin. He had those blank eyes, both penetrating and empty all at once. Healy could also see that his left arm was bandaged up pretty good, so that white gauze swallowed up his hand, wrist, and half his forearm. If the linebacker’s arm was in that bad of condition, Healy thought, he’d hate to see what the other guy looked like.

The fat man started with some prepared remarks about the sad state of affairs in their community. While on the one hand they were being overrun by illegal immigrants, they had been systematically abandoned by the police, the I.N.S., the politicians—every branch of government on every level. Throughout this entire ordeal, he continued, there had only been one group that had been steadfast in its support of the locals. Only one group that had helped them organize, mount resistance, and protest. Only one group who had shown them a way not to be helpless, given them hope. Naturally, that group was America for Americans.

Pete Strohmeyer stepped up to the lectern, thanking everyone for their attendance and for the fat man’s kind words. He was in his element, his face fairly glowing. Strohmeyer spoke not only with an elegance and ease, but with fire and focus.

“You have been abandoned. You have been sold out. Your worth has been minimized, the value of your lives and property degraded. You have been labeled, manipulated, used, chewed up, and dismissed. Why? What did any of you ever do except work hard, raise families, follow the law, pay your taxes and stand with your hands to your hearts during the Pledge of Allegiance? What sin did you commit other than to want to preserve your small piece of the American dream? Even that dream is a lie, because they’ve taken the promise that is the birthright of everyone born in this country and sold it for a plate of rice and beans to people who want only to take from this country and not give back, people who don’t appreciate its values, people who want to suck dry the vitality of our nation and then spit on us.

“Well, folks, to borrow the sentiment from a famous movie, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. I don’t take it anymore. I’ve done something about it. About five years ago I helped found an organization that is a levee against the tide, that is the lone sane voice in the din of lies. That organization is America for Americans. Let me tell you a little something about how we started, why we started, and what we want to do for and with you.

“First off, we need to get something straight. What you’ve got here in your town on Long Island is a scratch, a blemish, a small cut. My son and me are from the once great state of Arizona. And let me tell you something about Arizona. The problem we have there is no blemish. It’s a cancer, a festering infection, a gaping sore. We have been invaded, swept up in a brown tide of people who come to Arizona to steal our jobs, deal drugs to our children, piss on our flag, and send their illegally made funds back home.

“But like you, we were abandoned. Our politicians talked out of both sides of their mouths. One of them even suggested we facilitate the illegal crossings by having regular bus service. It was too dangerous, she said, letting these poor people have to be smuggled in by unscrupulous scavengers. Well, that was the last straw. Some of my friends and I decided to fight back. We lobbied, protested, patrolled the borders on our own. We got rid of backstabbing politicians who would have used our tax money to help these unclean, uneducated, undeserving criminals steal our dream. This is how we did it …”

Strohmeyer went on like this for about a half-hour, railing against the government, the media, the brown tide, the Border Patrol, the INS, even the Catholic church for giving the illegals shelter and places to organize. As his talk progressed, his speech became more feverish, more full of half-truths, stereotypes, false statistics, and distortions. But he never strayed too far afield, always picking at the fresh scab of the audience’s fears and confusion. Near the end of the speech, Strohmeyer introduced his son, Pete Jr. Though not nearly the speaker his father was, his size commanded people’s attention.

The son echoed the father’s themes, recounting horror stories from his schooldays in southern Arizona. He assured us that as bad the invasion was for adults, it was worse for kids. He told tales of rape, robbery, special treatment for the kids of illegals at the expense of the regular students. His key theme, however, was the establishment of neighborhood patrols. He said that America for Americans had just recently started up car and foot patrols in the area and that the rise in vandalism and violence would not be tolerated.

“We can’t patrol borders here,” he said, “but we can take back the streets.” He was careful not to criticize the cops, but said they could only react to crime, not prevent it. Unfortunately for Healy, his moment in the sun was at hand. The linebacker repeated the story of this morning’s confrontation as was told to him by his father. Healy was asked to stand. He got a big round of applause. Barbara, Bob noticed, was not clapping. That done, the son asked for volunteers to join the patrols. Several men in the crowd moved forward and signed their names. Healy went too. When he turned back around, Barbara was gone.

The men signed up. The hate was passed. Money was raised. Hands were shaken and backs were slapped. The bar began to empty out. As Bob made to leave, he was stopped by Pete Jr.

“Can I buy you a beer?”

“Sure.”

“Two Buds,” the younger Strohmeyer ordered. “Sorry about not letting you in before. My father is kind of strict about following the rules.”

“No sweat. My old man was the same way.”

“Father tells me you carry a. 38.”

“A. 38. Sometimes a Glock. Sometimes both.”

“Are you a cop?”

“Used to be—NYPD detective.” Healy knew it was best to lie as little as possible. “So when do we start on the patrols?”

“Tomorrow night, I guess. I’ll have to check with my father.”

“How’d you hurt the hand?”

“Punched a wall,” Junior said without hesitation. “I got a little drunk a while ago, got into a fight with this girl I’ve been seeing up here and I slammed it into her bedroom wall. Busted and cut it up pretty good. Went to the hospital and had it looked at and—”

“Hey, son,” the elder Strohmeyer interrupted. “We don’t want to bore Mr. Healy with the details of your temper.”

“Sorry, dad. Did you know Mr. Healy was a cop?”

“Really?”

Bob tried spinning this to his advantage. “NYPD detective, Internal Affairs. My job was like what you’re doing here. I spent my career exposing traitors, people who sold their own brothers out for a quick buck.”

If Healy thought that was going to elicit a warm response from Strohmeyer, he was wrong. A “How interesting” was all he got.

“I’ll say goodnight, then,” Healy said, shaking the hands of the father and the son.

When he got outside, Barbara walked up to him. “Have you been waiting out here all this time for me?” he asked.

She ignored his question. “That’s how it starts, you know?”

“How what starts?”

“Group hate. The lies and fear. That’s how it always starts.”

“So that stuff you told me inside about your husband dying, it was all—”

“—the truth. I really am worried about my property value and how I’m gonna get my girl started right in the world, but I won’t associate with people like that Strohmeyer. I couldn’t look myself in the face. Some of my neighbors joined up and I thought I’d come see for myself what these people were really like. Now I get that my fears about them were well founded.”

“So why tell me?”

“Because,” she said, “you seem like a nice guy, and a gentleman.”

“Thank you. I—”

“Never mind. I’m just being silly. You’ve got the right to do what you want. I’m sorry.”

Disappointed, Healy felt moved to comfort her. “You’re not being silly. And you’ve got nothing to apologize for.”

“I hope you can say the same for yourself, Bob. There’s some kinds of dirt that rubs off on you and you can never get the stain out. Good night.”

“Let me walk you to your car.”

“No, that’s all right. My car’s right over there.”