Where It Hurts (12 page)

(MONDAY, MID-MORNING)

M
arsden Brothers was on Larkfield Road in East Northport. I knew it well because for the last ten years of my time in the Second Precinct, it was in my patrol sector. I’d driven by the tired old aluminum-sided building several times a shift without giving it much thought. Cops don’t get many calls to respond to funeral homes. At least I didn’t. And when I walked through the doors and onto the somber patterned carpeting, it was the first time I’d ever seen the inside of the place. What did it matter, first time or thousandth? The thing is, my knees went weak. That’s why I was glad Father Bill had agreed to come with me to the viewing. We both knew walking into a place like this would be a tough test of my resolve. In any case, Bill propped me up until I could force some string back into my legs and spine.

I think maybe Annie was right. I was a coward. Over the last two years I’d missed several funerals of family and friends. At first I didn’t bother making excuses, hoping that the grieving family would understand my reluctance to be present. Then as time passed, I would make excuses about work or illness or whatever I could think of at the moment. Eventually I stopped making excuses and sent flowers instead. I’m sure there were people out there really upset with me, but talk about
impotent bullets. What could their disappointment do to me that life hadn’t already?

It was a viewing only insomuch as you could view Tommy’s coffin. The lid was closed. I expected it would be. With half of his head missing when I found him, I figured it would be a lids-down affair. And it wasn’t much of an affair at that. Besides Bill and me, there was Smudge, Richie Zito, Al Roussis, and his partner, Dan Hellman, a guy I only knew a little bit. I’d asked Bill along because I wasn’t sure I could manage this without a shoulder to lean on.

There was a shabby priest on hand as well who looked more interested in staying awake than in giving his blessings to the dead or solace to the living. It had been Zee on the phone to me the day before as I was pulling out of St. Pat’s. He said he had made arrangements to bury Tommy, that as his friend it was the right thing to do. Who was I to argue the point? Male bonding is an irrational thing. It was impossible to know exactly why Richie felt close to Tommy or why he felt obliged. For Tommy’s sake, I was glad he had someone to look after him in death.

I made the rounds, shaking hands and making introductions. Al and his partner hung back, but it was hard to hide in a big room with so few people in attendance. Al knew Bill and, like me, couldn’t help calling him Father Bill. That was how everyone connected to the Suffolk County Police Department knew him and thought of him. One of Bill’s strength was intuiting when to be present and when to fade. One look at Al Roussis and something told Bill it was time to fade, to make small talk with the shabby priest or take a trip to the men’s room. Dan Hellman did not possess Father Bill’s intuition and had to be told to disappear.

Al said, “Dan, give us a minute.”

Hellman, good-looking in a bland sort of way, made a face, but did as was suggested to him.

“I thought you said you weren’t involved with this mutt, Gus. Now you show up here.”

“Until Zee called me yesterday afternoon, I had no idea about this. I mean, Christ, Al, I found the poor schmuck. I think maybe his coming to me in the first place got him killed.”

I knew I shouldn’t have said that even as the words were leaving my mouth, but the past two years had left me less guarded about what to say and when to say it. I’d never liked hiding or lying, though the job sometimes imposed the need to do those things on you.

His eyes got big. “What makes you say that?”

“Just a feeling,” I lied, shrugging my shoulders. “Look, he comes to me on Tuesday and he’s dead on Thursday. Maybe I’m just doing the math, but I was bad at math.”

“Just a feeling, huh?” He was shaking his head, disbelieving. “So, you have any feelings about why coming to you might’ve gotten him killed?”

“His kid.”

“What about his kid?”

“My guess is that the dad’s murder is connected to the kid’s murder,” I said.

“Believe it or not, Gus, even my rocket scientist partner figured that one out.”

“I didn’t say it was the most brilliant idea since sliced bread. You asked me if I had a feeling and I answered the question.”

“You’re right. Sorry. I guess the question I should have asked is, do you have a sense of how the father/son murders are connected?”

I lied again. “No.”

I wasn’t even sure why I lied. I wasn’t usually a reflexive liar. I wasn’t even usually a liar. It would have been easy enough for me to tell Al about Kareem Shivers. About this thing he claimed Tommy Delcamino had, the thing he’d thought I had, and probably suspected I still had. The thing that, if I was to believe Shivers, someone else apparently thought I had, too. I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t like having my integrity questioned. Or maybe I felt some sense of obligation. If I’d only heard Tommy out . . . If I’d only been kinder . . . If I hadn’t kicked
his ass out of the Paragon . . . If. If. If. Or maybe it was that my life had been so valueless for the last two years that I wanted to hang on to something. I’d explore that with Doc Rosen when we met again after the holidays. For now I had to deal with it myself.

“So you don’t think your old house getting tossed is connected to this?” he said as if he’d thrown a live grenade into my lap.

I tossed it back at him. “Word gets around fast. I seem to be a popular subject of discussion around the squad room water cooler these days. Things musta changed a lot since I put in my papers.”

“How so?”

“Come on, Al. We’re talking two homicides here, four months apart, and a break-in. Different precincts, different squads, and everybody seems interested in my business. When I was on the job, there were times the right hand didn’t know what the left was doing. Shit, there were times the index finger didn’t know what the thumb was doing. What, is the department issuing daily updates on me or what?”

He ignored that. “Whatever.”

I took that as my cue to walk away, but I didn’t get too far.

“Listen, Gus, you wanna fuck around with Lou Carey and that asshole Paxson, be my guest, but don’t get in my way.”

“Fair enough, Al. Just a few things, since you didn’t return my call.”

“What?”

“The ballistics. What killed Tommy?”

Roussis thought about that for a second. He didn’t owe it to me to tell me anything, but under the tough-guy shit he was pulling today, he really was a good guy.

“A .357 Magnum, hollow point.” Al threw his chin at the closed coffin. “You saw what it did to him.”

“I did. And the other bullets, the ones fired at me?” I asked.

“Nine mil. Standard stuff.”

“Good thing. If my leg had gotten hit by the ammo that killed Tommy, I wouldn’t be standing up so well. How about my—”

“You’ll get a call on your weapon. Not my responsibility.”

I shook Al’s hand. He shook it back, but didn’t let it go.

“What?”

“I know you’re holding back, Gus. Don’t. Come clean and walk away. In any case, walk away.”

“That a threat, Al?”

“That’s good advice from an old friend, is what it is. Walk away.”

He let go of my hand and I walked away, but only as far as the other side of the room.

“This was good of you to do, Zee,” I said to Richie. He was painful to look at, hunched up and gnarled as he was. His eyes were red, but not from tears.

“He didn’t have many friends in this fucking life, Tommy. I know what that feels like.”

“What about the Maniacs?”

“That was different. Sure, I had some friends with the Maniacs . . . that was different,” he repeated himself. “I used to think the Maniacs was family, you know, but it was business. A different-looking kinda business from the outside, but it was business. Fuck them guys.”

I wasn’t going to argue with him, and besides, he didn’t seem interested in talking anymore. I nodded for Smudge to meet me out in the hallway.

When he did, I noticed his eyes were red, too, and not from medical marijuana. I’d spoken to this guy only once and for not more than ten minutes, but I knew he had really loved Tommy Delcamino. I think he was probably the only person in that room who was there out of love and not from some sense of obligation or guilt. I was glad Tommy had one true mourner. Everyone deserves at least that.

In his own way, Smudge was as hard to look at as Zee, maybe harder. To look at him was to know his history. To know he’d been bullied and picked on and rejected his whole life. When I looked at him, I just knew that I was right to have given up on God. No perfect being could ever hang the burden on Smudge that had been hung on him. No one would swoop in to rescue him. Love wouldn’t find its
way to him. He was born fucked, would live fucked, and would die the same way.

“Thanks for being here,” he said in his nasally lisp.

“Sure. I’m glad to be here.”

He smiled what passed for his smile.

“Listen, Smudge, do you know if Tommy was hiding something valuable? Do you know what it was?”

“Nah. Nuh-uh.” He shook his little head furiously.

I didn’t believe him.

“You sure?”

Now he was nodding his head as fast as he had shaken it before.

“Okay. I’m glad Tommy had a real friend like you.”

This time when Smudge smiled, it was broader. He didn’t care about his malformed mouth or the giant birthmark or anything. Then he dissolved into tears.

I patted his shoulders and walked back into the viewing room. I pulled Father Bill over into one corner.

“How would you like to play cop for a day, Fa—Bill?”

Kilkenny lit up like he’d just won the lotto. “Ya bet, Gus.”

“That little ugly guy I was just talking to.”

Bill’s face saddened just at the mention of Smudge. “What about the poor man?”

“I think he knows more than he’s saying, but I don’t know what it is that he’s not saying.”

“And what is it, Gus, you propose I do about that?”

I smiled at him. “C’mon, Bill, no one has to school you on talking to the bereaved. And trust me, that man has lost the only friend he’s ever had in this world. Talk to him.”

Bill understood what I was saying beneath the words.
If you could deal with my grief, Bill. If you could get me to talk to you after John died, you can deal with anyone.

He nodded. “I’ll call you when I need you to come fetch me.”

After we spoke, I went and did the thing I most feared to do in
coming here. I put my knees to the kneeler before the coffin. I wouldn’t cross myself. I wouldn’t do that for anyone, not ever again. I apologized to Tommy in my own head, but I wouldn’t mouth the words. I knew it was a waste of time. That Tommy was beyond the reach of my apology and that there was no God to hear my silent thoughts. But some things are worth doing just because there’s value in the things themselves. And when I stood up, the shabby priest made some noises to the others about saying some prayers. I didn’t bother sticking around. I had a place to go, a place I never wanted to go to. It was a day for
that.

(MONDAY NOON)

I
drove up Larkfield Road and turned right onto Bellerose Avenue. As I got close to Vets Park, it came back to me, all the worst of it. My heart felt like it was clawing its way out of my chest. My hands were wet on the wheel and the pulse in my head was hammering. I was blind for the tears as I pulled into the narrow parking lot in front of the basketball courts. The sun burned alone in the sky against a wall of cloudless blue, its rays sharp as a serrated edge. But the sun was a liar, for although it hurt my eyes to stare into its featureless face, it gave me no warmth, no comfort. The parking lot was empty. There was no comfort in that, either. The courts were deserted, the half-moon backboards and nets swaying in the nasty December wind.

I could not get out of my car. I told myself I wanted to. I
did
want to, but I was inert, my hands glued to the steering wheel. If there were only some kids around, if only there were a hoops game, if only there were some sign of life, it might have been easier. Instead there was only the wind. I’d come to hate the wind. I’d been to John’s grave many times. At first, all I did was cry at St. Pat’s. When I ran out of tears, there came the months of silent rage. Then came the long talks with his
headstone. The ones I thought I would never have. I felt so foolish that first time, looking around to make sure no one was close enough to hear me or see my lips moving. Then I stopped caring. Why not? I’d stopped caring about everything else. Then came days like yesterday. Silent days, standing with the caretaker.

But this wasn’t his grave. This wasn’t the church. This wasn’t the funeral home or the hospital. Those were all places where his body had been. Places where all that was left of John was bone and flesh in the shape of my son, but wasn’t my son. By the time he got to the hospital, he was somewhere else. Somewhere in the wind. His memories, his sense of humor, his love and anger, his smarts and his fuckups gone. Just like that—gone. What was left of him lived now only as pieces of the people who had known him. And when we were dead and in the wind, he would be forgotten. That was still the hardest part to take, that he would be forgotten so soon.

Don’t tell me about photos and videos, about how we live on in those things. It’s a lie. Go get out one of your parents’ photo albums, one with their parents and grandparents in it. Look, really look carefully at all the faces of the dead. Sure, you may recognize your great-grandparents, but you might not. Even if you do, what of their relatives, what of their friends? What of the faces unrecognized? That is our future, our shared destiny: all born to be forgotten.

Then I was out of my car, walking up the short concrete steps to the courts. I leaned my head against the metal fencing, trying not to look at the red, green, and white painted courts. All the years of play had worn the paint down to blacktop from baseline to foul line. Dillon Donovan, John’s best friend, had told me how it happened and explained just where it happened, too.

John had come down with a rebound and was taking the ball back, dribbling out to the three-point line when he went down. We thought he slipped or something. Maybe that his knee gave way, you know, but he wasn’t moving or nothing. When I went over to see what was up with that, he wasn’t
breathing, Mr. Murphy. I swear. I checked. He was already gone, I think. It was on the second court, you know, the one we always played on, the one closest to Larkfield.

I’d never come to see where it happened, not because it was where he died, but because it was the last place he was alive. Until I kneeled in front of Tommy’s coffin, I hadn’t been sure I could handle it. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to. I stared out at the court through the fence. He’d died just a few feet away from where I stood on the other side of that fence. I looked out at where he had taken his last breath. I shook my head. I didn’t walk out onto the court. I didn’t say anything. I was numb. I turned and stared up into the sun, using my hand as visor. I turned away and let the cold wind wash over me. And then I forgave it for carrying my son away from me forever.

I sat in my car for a few minutes, trying to find what was left of me. I’d done some difficult things in my life, but being here, at these courts, was nearly as hard as watching a group of faceless, nameless strangers lower my son into the ground. When I was fully aware again, my cell phone was in my hand and I could hear muted ringing in my ear. I’d called someone. I wasn’t sure who, exactly. Then there was a voice.

“Dad . . . Dad . . . are you there? Mom, I think Dad butt-dialed me.”

“No, Krissy, sorry,” I said, maybe too loudly.

“Are you okay? You sound weird, Dad.”

“I’m fine. I’m fine.” I said it twice to convince myself. “I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice.”

“Are you sure you’re fine? You sound spacey. Is everything all right?”

“No, but I’m better now.”

“Where are you? Mom and I can come get you.”

“No, Krissy, definitely not. I’m good. Please leave your mom out of this. She’s not real pleased with me just now.”

“Yeah, I heard. That’s fucked up, Dad, about John’s room. Mom spoke to Mrs. Sherman. We’re going to go over there later and, I don’t know, fix his things up.”

“Krissy.”

“What?”

“I love you. I love you very much.”

There was silence from her end of the phone, but it was very loud, full of grief and heartache. The three of us had become experts on such silences.

“Listen, kiddo, I’m not gonna lecture you about anything or tell you what to do with your life, but please stop and think the next time you mean to do something like you did last week. We have all lost so much already. It’s just got to stop sometime.”

The silence dragged on, and then, “Okay, Dad, maybe you’re right.”

“I love you, Krissy.”

“You, too, Dad.”

I hung up after that. What else was there to say?