Hose Monkey (3 page)

She sighed as she always sighed when he first slid inside her. Just the sound of her, that soft sigh, the very thought of it could drive him to distraction. Even now, after thirty years together, he got hard imagining Mary’s sigh. He had been no saint, straying every few years only to be disappointed at the results, always returning to Mary’s side. Sometimes he lay paralyzed in bed in the dark and silence, wondering if Mary knew of his dalliances. If she did, she never let on. He was lucky to have her.

His arm fell across vacant air. Mary was gone. The sheet was cold where his wife had once slept. The best part of Bob Healy’s day had come and gone in the span of a few breaths. The time between semi-consciousness and the realization that Mary was dead were the only pain-free seconds of his life. It had been six months now since he and the kids had buried her, but he hadn’t adjusted to the loss. He wondered if he ever would. Some weeks were better than others. Days would go by without a misstep and then he’d dream of her or smell her perfume on a woman passing him in the aisle at Waldbaums. For the first few months, he’d lied to himself that his transition would have gone more smoothly had the kids still lived at home, but nothing on God’s green earth could smooth over the loss of Mary.

This morning, Mary’s side of the bed was particularly cold. The whole bed, the covers, the pillows, too, were icy. Bob touched the tip of his nose.

“Christ!”

He stumbled over to the thermostat, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes so that he might read the temperature. It was 58 degrees in the house. When was the last time he’d checked the oil? Bob Healy was truly lost without Mary. He couldn’t balance a checkbook. He hadn’t even written more than a handful of checks until six months ago. He hadn’t ever shopped for food or socks or underwear, for that matter. Although checking the oil tank was his responsibility, it had been Mary who would make a notation on the calendar and remind her husband.

As he trundled down the old wooden stairs to the basement, Bob could feel a case of the ‘maybes’ coming on. It always happened this way when he’d go into a spin over Mary. First came the hurt and then the maybes. Maybe if he hadn’t put in his papers. Maybe if he hadn’t ruined so many other cops’ careers. He always feared there’d be a price to pay for his years in Internal Affairs, for the cops who’d chosen suicide instead of facing disgrace and jail time, but he thought he’d be the one picking up the tab, not Mary. Of course he understood it was completely irrational for him to connect his work to Mary’s pancreatic cancer. God, as cruel as Bob knew him to sometimes be, wouldn’t have done this to Mary. Still …

The red float indicator on the tank gauge was flush with the top of the tank. Empty. Just to make sure, Bob rapped his knuckles against the black steel tank. It rang hollow like the rest of his life. Upstairs, he couldn’t find the number of the oil company. Calling for deliveries was Mary’s job. Not anymore. Disgusted with himself, frustrated at his ineptitude, he reached for the
Pennysaver.
He flipped to the pages where all the oil companies advertised.

“Eeny, meeny, miny, mo …” he recited, “my mother says to pick this one!”

Saturday, Late Afternoon
Valentine’s Day
February 14th, 2004

 

M’AIDEZ

 

T
he faint ghost of the winter sun was hanging low over the western L.I.E. The smell of snow mixed in the air with that of diesel exhaust. Joe Serpe was done for the day.
Say Hallelujah! Say Amen!
All told, he’d done twenty-five stops, loaded twice and pumped 3,453 gallons. At ten bucks a stop and ten a load, that was a neat 270 bucks cash in his pocket. It was a lot more in Frank’s pocket, of course, but Joe didn’t sweat that the way the other drivers did. He could do the math. With prices the way they were, Frank was grossing between fifty and sixty bucks a stop. Multiply that times three trucks and it’s a nice chunk of change.

Sometimes, Joe enjoyed listening to the other drivers grouse about how much profit Mayday Fuel Oil, Inc. took in on a winter Saturday. It was an October to April ritual, a weekly big boys bitch-fest at Lugo’s Pub in Ronkonkoma. Joe would just smile, empathetically nodding his head every now and then to show he was still listening. Sure, Frank made good money, but he had taken the risks, bought the trucks, rented the yard and office, paid for advertising, etc. At Lugo’s, Joe would drift off trying to calculate how many millions of dollars he and his partner Ralphy had logged into evidence over the years. The numbers were staggering. He didn’t like thinking about Ralphy.

“Ah, shit!” he screamed at the cell phone buzzing and beeping in his pocket. He had been schooled by the other drivers on the art of the tactical lie, but had chosen to ignore their advice. Now he was going to pay the price for that decision. He had done enough lying as a cop. In the end, it was what had ruined him and Ralphy both.

“Listen,” one of the Lugo’s crowd had advised early on, “call in when you’re headed toward your last stop and say you’ve already done it and that you’re almost back at the yard. Otherwise, if an emergency call comes in, you’re screwed.”

True enough. In boxing, it’s cool to be the last man standing. In the home heating oil business, the last man standing is fucked.

“Yeah, Ma,” Joe picked up. The dispatcher was Frank’s mom. Some drivers called her Mrs. Randazzo or Donna, but Joe, his own mother long dead, just called her Ma.

“Oh, Joe,” she rasped in her two-pack-a-day voice, “I hate to do this to ya, but I misplaced a stop before and the guy just called back looking for his delivery.”

“Can’t wait till Monday, huh?” Joe asked, already knowing the answer. “It’s beginning to snow out here.”

“Sorry, Joe, he’s out and he’s a new customer.”

Yeah, sure, Joe thought, they’re always out. It was one of those convenient lies people told to make sure you’d come in a hurry, or, when things were really busy, to make sure you’d come at all.

“Okay, Ma, lemme pull over here and get a ticket.”

“The name’s Healy,” Ma said when Joe gave her the go ahead. “H-E-A-L-Y. He’s at 89 Boxwood Avenue in Kings Park, off 25A. It’s a fill up at the two hundred gallon price. Cash. The fill’s on the right side of the house up the driveway. You copy that, Joe?”

He copied all right. Not only was he stuck doing another stop, but it was way the hell up on the North Shore. That’s why Ma had sounded so guilty. Delivering oil is dangerous enough in perfect weather, but in the snow, in the dark. Forget about it! If you think controlling a skid is fun in your family car, try it in a Mack truck sometime. He pulled away from the curb and began slowly backtracking his way over the L.I.E., through Hauppague and Smithtown, up Landing Avenue, down Rose Street and onto 25A.

Fifteen slippery minutes later he was in Kings Park. Kings Park was a cute little town whose name had nothing to do with royalty and everything to do with the now shuttered psychiatric hospital that bore the same name. The hospital was established as an offshoot of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, hence the Kings in Kings Park. The town had grown up around the extensive hospital grounds situated on an inlet of Long Island Sound.

Joe turned onto Boxwood, his eyes trying to focus on some address, any address, just to establish the odd numbered side of the street. That was no mean feat at night with the snow piling up on the ledge of the tugboat’s side windows and mirrors. Old Macks are great trucks, but their heating and defrosting systems are for shit. About a quarter of the way up Boxwood, Joe caught a number on a mailbox. 43. Bingo!

89 Boxwood was a neat split ranch—gee, what a surprise on Long Island. Normally, he would have parked the truck, gone to the front door and confirmed the delivery. He was too tired, too pissed-off to do his normal routine. He popped the air brake, put the truck in neutral, flipped on the PTO and shifted into third gear. He set the meter, primed the pump, yanked the hose over his shoulder and walked up a stranger’s driveway for the twenty-sixth time that day. It was days like this Joe most regretted complaining to Frank about the kid. Cain wasn’t a kid, not really, but his being retarded made him seem like one. Christ, he was a good two inches taller than Joe and strong as an ox for someone so reedy thin. Country strong, Frank called him. Retard strong; Dixie, one of the other drivers, was less kind.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like Cain. He did. Joe was the one who gave him the nickname King Kong. It fit—Cain Cohen, King Kong. The perfect moniker for a hose monkey. Even now as Joe shlepped the hose, he smiled thinking about the kick the kid got out of the nickname. He was so proud of it. The thing was, Cain drove Joe a little nuts. When they stuck to subjects like sports, they were okay. In fact, it kind of reminded Joe of riding the streets with his first partner, but you could only talk so much sports and Saturdays could be very long days.

The kid was a little too preoccupied with that Japanese anime crap. And the kid could fool you. He sometimes seemed almost bright, but Joe had learned there was a limit to the kid’s range. There was just some stuff that Cain couldn’t get no matter how many times you explained it to him. That wouldn’t have been bad if the kid wasn’t so freaking curious. He asked a million questions and it was one of these questions that had finally gotten to Joe.

“Why is Frank’s company called Mayday, Joe?”

“Cause Frank thought it was a good name that people would remember.”

“Why? It sounds like a stupid name to me. What does May have to do with oil? It’s hot in May and we don’t deliver a lot of oil in May.”

“Mayday’s got nothing to do with the month of May, Kong.”

“Then what’s it mean?”

“It means ‘help me.’ Even though we spell it m-a-y-d-a-y, it comes from the French
m’aidez,
m-a-i-d-e-z, which means ‘help me.’”

“But we don’t speak French in America, Joe, so that’s stupid.”

After about a half-hour of going round and round, Joe had cut off the discussion. That night he went to Frank and asked for the kid to be taken off the tugboat. Two months had passed since then. Cain had gotten over his initial hurt, but Joe still felt shitty about it. He had come to the realization that the kid’s questions were painful echoes from his own life. His son, Joey, now fourteen and living with his mother and stepfather in Daytona Beach, had always been a curious kid. Worse even were the echoes of Vinny in the kid’s questions.

Joe hooked up the nozzle to the fill pipe. He was about to start for the front door, when he heard a storm door slam shut and footsteps coming his way.

“Fill up?” Joe shouted.

“Whatever she’ll take,” a man answered back, his footsteps growing louder as they grew nearer. “I shoulda checked the tank a week ago, but … There’s alotta things I shoulda done.”

Joe said nothing. He heard this lament or versions thereof several times a day. He slid the trigger open and got a strong vent whistle. The homeowner was standing right behind him now. Joe didn’t bother looking up. He wasn’t interested in making friends and influencing people. He just wanted to get done.

“I really appreciate your coming so late.”

“No sweat,” Joe lied through clenched teeth.

“This weather sucks, doesn’t it?” the customer asked. “My wife used to love the snow. Me, I got no use for it.”

“Oh God,” Joe muttered to himself, “a fuckin’ talker.”

“Did you say something?”

“No, nothing. Yeah, this weather sure does suck.”

“It must be rough for you, working in this shit. No?”

Suddenly, a chill rode the length of Joe Serpe’s spine. There was something about this guy’s voice, the way he phrased things that was eerily familiar. Frantically, he searched his memory, trying to recall the customer’s name. The whistle weakened, the tank almost full. Joe did not take notice as he tried remembering Ma spelling the name out for him. What was the name? Now, the whistle died completely. Joe did not slap the trigger shut. There was a loud gurgling in the vent pipe, oil rising up fast. Healy! Christ almighty! Joe snapped back into the present, smacking the trigger closed. Only a few drops of oil sputtered out the vent pipe turning the virgin snow beneath the color of cherry ices. The customer seemed not to take notice.

“Okay,” Joe said. “I’ll write you up and meet you at the front door.”

“Good. I’ll get the cash.”

Joe did not turn to look as Mr. Healy retreated. Instead, he looked at the fresh footprints as he carried the hose back to the tugboat. When he removed the ticket from the meter, Joe noticed his hands were shaking. No, he thought, it had to be a different Healy. There must be hundreds of Healys on Long Island. Joe filled in the totals, laughing at himself for being such an idiot. He felt like some brokenhearted teenager who runs into an old girlfriend. He walked up to the door, bill in hand, an embarrassed smile on his face. He knocked at the storm door.

“One second. Gimme a second,” a bodyless voice answered the knock.

Shit! There was that chill again. It
was
the voice.
His
voice. Just as he could not calculate the millions he had confiscated over the years, Joe could not count the hours he’d listened to that voice accuse and cajole, prompt and prod, jab and parry. He was tempted to leave the receipt in the mailbox and run, scream for Healy to send in a check.

But Joe Serpe hadn’t run from anything in his life and he wasn’t about to start now. Instead he cupped his hands around his eyes and pressed his face up close to the storm door. He looked at the framed collage of family photos on the staircase wall.

“Motherfucker!” he hissed. “It’s him.”

It seemed to take about a week for Healy to get downstairs with the money. At first, there was no sign of recognition in Healy’s faded gray eyes. The lack of recognition wasn’t lost on Joe. Maybe his invisibility was shielding him. But in his heart, Joe knew God would never pass up such a rich opportunity to fuck with his life. Sure enough, just as Healy began forking over the cash, a light went on in his eyes. Bob Healy’s pupils got small as pinheads. His mouth formed that wry, mischievous smile Joe had learned to despise.

“Fuck if it isn’t Joe ‘the Snake’ Serpe.”

Frank was finishing his entries into the computer when he noticed just how dark it was outside the office. He considered giving Joe a buzz to see how that last delivery was coming, but he decided against it. He didn’t want to insult the man. Anyone who could do buy and bust operations in the worst of the worst neighborhoods in New York City could handle a little snow and darkness. Frank had already decided to throw Joe an extra twenty for doing the stop. That would bring Joe’s pay for the day up to a nice round three hundred bucks. All in all it had been a nice payday for everyone. Besides, Frank had big troubles of his own, things he didn’t even want to think about.

Frank checked the window again. The snow seemed to be slowing its pace. Yet Frank felt unusually ill at ease. It was certainly true that he didn’t like having trucks out in the dark and that early in his tenure Joe had been a bit of a hot-rodder, but that wasn’t it. Frank loved reclamation projects, Joe best among them. Everybody who’d ever worked for him had been a reclamation project of one sort or another. There was Fat Stan the Psycho Man who had managed to get off welfare and get his life back in order while earning his keep for Mayday. What a character, Frank laughed, remembering the day he found Stan thumbing a ride outside the grounds of Pilgrim State Psychiatric Hospital.

Then there was King Kong. The jury was still out on him. He hadn’t shown up for work today. While it wasn’t the first time, it wasn’t exactly a chronic problem either. Even though the kid claimed to like working with Frank, he wondered if Cain wasn’t still feeling the sting of being tossed off the tugboat by Joe. He liked the kid a whole lot, but Frank had always been a little shaky about his decision to move Kong from working around the yard to hose monkey.

The group home was just a little ways down Union Avenue. If something went wrong in the yard, Frank could have someone from the home there in five minutes. The truck was something else altogether. It wasn’t the work itself. Christ, you could train a monkey to pull a hose to a fill and back. Hence the job title. No, it was the ‘what ifs’ that gave Frank pause. What if the driver got injured? What if the truck were robbed? What if there was a spill? An accident?

From the first, Frank understood there was potential for disaster written all over taking the kid on. The people at the home had made Cain’s history and limitations abundantly clear. The kid had always been polite and respectful around him and Joe, maybe a little less so with the other drivers. Then again, they’d been a little less respectful of him. That seemed a pretty normal response to Frank’s way of thinking. Yet Frank knew Cain had a history of sometimes striking out in anger and for going AWOL. But the kid’s goofy enthusiasm was contagious and King Kong did good work. After his latest no-show, however, maybe the time had come to admit defeat and put the kid back in the yard.

Then in the stillness of the snow and night, Frank heard the comforting low rumble of the tugboat turning onto Union. A moment later, headlights flashed through the office windows.

Frank’s words rang in Cain’s head: “When a man fucks up, he gotta take what’s comin’. A real man steps up. He don’t wait to get found out.”