Where It Hurts (17 page)

(WEDNESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON)

A
fter checking back in at the walk-in clinic to have my calf wound dressing replaced, I drove down to Massapequa to have coffee with Bill Kilkenny. I hadn’t seen the poor man in a year, and now I was making myself as hard to be rid of as his own shadow. I don’t suppose he minded. I could have handled it over the phone, but the thing about Bill was I liked being around him when we had our chats. And the words weren’t always the most important aspect of our conversations. Not
his
words, at least. It was often his facial expression or his body language that had the most impact on me. Sometimes, just the way he arched his eyebrows were his way of screaming at me,
Pay attention to this part, Gus. Pay attention carefully.

The diner was on Sunrise Highway and Bill was already seated at the booth when I walked in. He was chatting up the waitress, asking her about her kids and her ailing husband. That was Bill. My bet was he was pals with everyone who worked in the place, front of the house and back. Probably half the regulars, too. It was his nature to listen, to give support, to comfort. Although he was fond of prescribing big doses of Jesus and the church, even when he didn’t quite have faith in them
himself, he wasn’t ever pushy about it. And he’d never tried it with me. When we first met, he’d understood my needs better than I did.

“Well, honey, God bless,” he was saying to the waitress, patting her forearm as I approached. “I’ll be by to visit your husband tomorrow. Ah, here’s my friend now. He’s a coffee man. Half-and-half, too.”

“Any pal of Father Bill’s is a friend of mine,” she said, gesturing at the cushion across from the ex-priest. “I’ll be right back.”

I slid in. “Guess I’m not the only one who can’t get used to you without your former title.”

He smiled a sly smile.

The waitress dropped off my coffee and creamers. I plinked the pink packets of sweetener with my index finger, ripped off their tops, and poured white powder into the black coffee. When I added the half-and-half and looked back up, Bill was staring at me.

“What?”

“Something’s changed in you, Gus. To the good, I think.”

Was I that easy to read?

“I met someone.”

“I knew it. Good on you. Tell me about her.”

“Maybe some other time, Bill, if that’s okay?”

“Of course. Of course. What is it you’d like to talk about?”

I took a swallow of coffee. “Are you still close to Jimmy Regan?”

“We were quite close. Less so since I’ve shed the collar and before he took over the department. Why do you ask?”

“Because his name came up today.”

Bill put his hand to his face, rubbing the slight stubble on his cheek. “How so, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Sure you can ask. I was speaking to the people who live near where Tommy Delcamino’s son’s body was discovered. It appears that Jimmy Regan showed up at the kid’s crime scene and not so long after it was called in.”

“I take it that his being there was somehow extraordinary.”

“It’s not unheard of. You know, when a cop gets shot or something like that. Or sometimes, if there’s good publicity to be had for the department, the chief will show. But not usually for the murder of a low-rent car thief and drug user. His showing up for that, yeah, Bill, that’s unusual. Especially when it happens in a precinct where that kind of thing doesn’t often happen. You don’t want to call attention to yourself and the department. You just want to make it go away as fast as you can.”

“I can see that, but you know Regan,” Bill said, shaking his head. “If there’s a chief who would show, it would be him. He’s not a man to shy away from bad press if he thought his cops needed him to be there. The man’s never shied away from a tough spot in his life.”

“I know. Maybe there was a good reason for him to be there.” I shrugged. “I admit that. I mean, what I’m hearing is secondhand memories from people who were recounting events from August.”

“There you go, then.”

I shook my head. “If that’s all there was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Bill said, “There’s more?”

“Maybe.”

He was confused. “Maybe?”

“From the first time I mentioned Tommy Delcamino or his kid’s case to anyone on the SCPD, I’ve been treated like a leper.”

“Surely you’re exaggerating.”

“No, Bill, I wish I was. I’ve been warned off and threatened by a whole bunch of detectives, including friends. I had a friend tell me straight out that I was poison and that word had filtered down from on high not to speak to me. You’ve been around the department longer than I have. You know how that works.”

“I do indeed. Did this friend of yours mention Jimmy Regan by name? Did any of these men?”

“They wouldn’t. And I’m not saying it was him, but it was somebody. This stuff doesn’t come out of thin air.”

Bill didn’t speak right away. He rubbed at his stubble a bit more as he considered what I’d said.

“It’s bad math, Gus. You’ve got two over here and you’re adding it to two over there and coming up with four, but it sounds like five to me. I know Jimmy Regan too well to believe he would do anything to thwart someone trying to do the right thing. Now, I’m not saying Jimmy’s a saint. By no means is the man a saint, but he was born to do right and has always tried to do right.”

I felt silly now. Speaking to Bill about this had seemed like a good idea, but even as I was saying the words, I knew I’d made a mistake. How often in life do things sound like good ideas in your own head, then when you utter them aloud . . . This was one of those times.

“I know that, Bill. I’ve met the man, too. I know his rep.”

Father Bill reached across the table and patted my forearm much as he had patted the waitress’s. “No harm in discussing it. Like I said, Jimmy’s no saint. What man is? But when it comes to the job itself, I think he’d sooner eat his gun than do anything to disgrace the shield. No, Gus, I think you’re looking for demons where there are none to be found.”

“Maybe so, Bill. Maybe so.”

“Besides, what possible interest could Jimmy Regan have with Tommy or his boy? Jimmy has been off the street for many years.”

“I suppose I was hoping you could explain that to me?”

Bill and I had a laugh at that. We had a second cup of coffee—I would have no trouble staying awake for my shift tonight—and then I offered to drive him home. He thanked me, but said he’d prefer to walk. That walking helped him think. Before I left, though, he squeezed my hand hard and grabbed my arm with his left hand.

“You must tell me about this woman soon.”

“Casey,” I said.

“Casey, is it?” He smiled so broadly it made my cheeks ache. “You must tell me about fair Casey.”

“I think I need to get to know her a little myself first.”

He nodded. “And, Gus . . . welcome back to the living.”

I thought about saying something and decided not to. He let go of my hand and arm.

I sat in the front seat of my car, watching Bill through the diner window. He was chatting once again with the waitress. But really I was thinking of that last question he had asked me. It’s funny how you can have a million thoughts and ideas of your own and a simple question can clarify everything. Was there a connection between the Delcaminos and Jimmy Regan? And if there was, what could it be? But I reminded myself not to go off on tangents, that even if I could establish a connection between Chief Regan and the Delcaminos, so what? So what if the chief had shown up at the wooded lot on that August night? I heard Doc Rosen’s voice in my head. I had to stop looking at the wriggling fingers and turn my focus back down on the street. Because it was down on the street where the violence and dark magic was done. I had to stop staring at Jimmy Regan and take a closer look at Kareem Shivers. There was also another name in Tommy’s black-and-white composition book that needed my attention. And I didn’t need any help from Alvaro Peña or anyone else on the job to tell me about the man who bore the name Frankie Tacos.

(THURSDAY MORNING)

S
ince I’d gotten involved with this mess, it seemed I was destined to tour Suffolk County’s warts and wormholes. And by wormholes I didn’t mean portals for time travel but places where human worms burrowed in to hide themselves from the light. Rusty’s Salvage Yard on Long Island Avenue in Deer Park was just such a garden spot. Shouldered in among other salvage yards, concrete yards, body shops, and trucking companies, Rusty’s wasn’t any uglier or filthier than the other businesses along that stretch of road that flanked the Ronkonkoma line of the Long Island Rail Road. I pulled into the cracked concrete lot and right up to the shack that served as the front office. Behind the shack, rising up three stories into the sky, were metal storage racks crammed with wheels and windshields, car hoods and trunk lids, headlamps and taillights.

For some reason I couldn’t put my finger on, I knew Rusty’s. Then, after I parked and made my way through the front door of the office, I remembered. And when I remembered, I got pretty fucking steamed. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Rusty’s owner had been indicted for selling off scrap metal from Ground Zero, scrap metal that still contained human remains. There were some hefty fines levied, but no one went to
jail for it because almost all the scrap was recovered. That and the fact that the owner, a real piece of shit, disappeared. The cops found his body in a concrete-filled oil drum on the side of the Belt Parkway. It was a well-known secret that many of the salvage yards in the New York metro area were actually owned by one Mob family or the other.

The guy at the counter looked the part. He weighed four hundred pounds if an ounce, the skin of his jowls hanging off his jawbone like sheets of flesh-colored wax. His face was covered in salt-and-pepper stubble and something that he probably thought looked like a mustache. The fat man was dressed in a blue and gray flannel shirt the size of a tent. It didn’t look or smell like it had ever been washed. I guess he was afraid of shrinking it for fear of not being able to get another one that size.

“Frankie around?” I asked.

The fat man didn’t look up from the newspaper he was reading, using his index finger to follow along. His lips moved as he read, silently sounding out the big words. Even from across the counter, I caught whiffs of his breath. Yesterday’s coffee and thirty years of cigarettes, it smelled worse than his shirt.

Finally, he said, “Huh?”

“Frankie, is he around?”

He lit up a cigarette, blew out some smoke. “Which one?”

Progress.

“Frankie Tacos.”

He looked up at me, his eyes barely visible in the folds of his Shar-Pei-like face. “Who’s asking?”

“See anyone else standing here? I’m asking.”

He ignored that.

“What kinda parts you looking for? We got every kinda Honda, Toyota part you could want.”

“Good for you. I’m not looking for parts. I’m looking for Frankie Tacos.”

“Huh?”

We were back to that again. Sometimes it really sucked not having a badge anymore. Flashing tin tended to cut through the bullshit. But I wasn’t a cop and I didn’t want to pretend to be one. I’d pulled it off with Mr. Martino only because he was old and didn’t hear me too well through the storm door. As thick as the fat man was, I didn’t think it would work with him. So I did the next best thing to cut through the bullshit. I took a twenty out of my wallet and put it on top of the paper in front of him.

I said, “Maybe that’ll help your hearing.”

“Frankie Tacos . . . yeah, I think I heard that name somewhere before.”

I put up another twenty. “The first one was for your hearing. This one’s for your memory, but that’s all the help you’re getting from me, Jabba.”

“Joba was my favorite Yankee, but they fucked him all up with them stupid rules and yanking him in and outta the pen. Ruined his arm. I woulda gone to Detroit, too, even if it was to freakin’ Detroit. What a fucking shithole, Detroit.”

I didn’t have time to point out the irony of a guy like him sitting in a junkyard, calling Detroit names. Nor was I willing to explain that I was talking about Jabba the Hut, not Joba Chamberlain, the former Yankees pitcher.

“Frankie Tacos,” I repeated, reaching for the twenties.

Jabba’s hand moved quicker than I expected and he snatched up the bills. After he did, he took the cigarette out of his mouth and pointed over his shoulder with it.

“Come around the counter, go t’rew this door here, and you’ll find him in the engine shack. That’s the red steel building. He got his own office in there.”

“Thanks.”

Frankie Tacos was right where the fat man said he would be, at a desk in a small office inside the red steel building. The building was full of car engines in all states of dissection and disrepair. When I
knocked at the open office door, the man at the desk looked up at me and I immediately recognized him as Frankie Tacos. His colorful moniker had nothing to do with Mexican food, but with his family name: Tacaspina. His father was Frankie “Spins” Tacaspina Sr., the man who had been running the carting business in Smithtown and Brookhaven for the Piazza family. The carting business, like the salvage business, had long been run by the Mob.

“Yeah,” he said looking up at me, “what can I do for you?”

I put a photograph of TJ Delcamino on his desk. He didn’t flinch. The son of Frankie Spins wouldn’t.

“Suffolk PD or DA’s office?” he asked, a smirk on his face. “You’re no Fed, that much I know.”

“How?”

“You ain’t wearing a tie and you don’t look like you got a metal rod permanently stuck up your ass.”

We both laughed.

“Suffolk, retired,” I said, a smile still on my face. “Name’s Gus Murphy. You recognize the kid in the photograph?”

“You know I do, but that’s all I’m saying without some explanation.”

So I explained.

“Look, Murphy, I don’t know who sent you my way, but I had zero to do with TJ’s killing. I liked the kid. Liked him a lot. He didn’t try to be a hard guy, you know what I mean?”

I nodded that I did.

“So who sent you to look at me?”

“His father,” I said.

“The kid’s father, Tommy D.?”

I nodded some more.

“But the old man’s dead. How’d he send you my way?”

I’d left Tommy D.’s murder out of the explanation. That he knew about it wasn’t exactly a revelation, but it told me some things about Frankie Tacos.

“So, you know about Tommy Delcamino’s murder?”

He laughed a little too loudly. “C’mon, Murphy. It ain’t exactly a state secret.”

“But you knew who Tommy was, that he was TJ’s dad?”

Frankie Tacos’ expression was shifting. Like with all real hard men, like Shivers, he could smile with half his face. I wasn’t sure I had hit nerve, but I knew that I was annoying him.

“Again, no state secret. Tommy D. wasn’t unknown to me, but now neither are you,” he said, the half-smile on his face turning predatory. “Between you and me, Murphy, the father was a bum, but the kid had some skills. I hear that there wasn’t a vehicle made by man the kid couldn’t handle. Too bad the kid couldn’t handle his drugs the same way.”

“You hear?”

His smile turned from predatory to cruel. “Yeah, you hear things. Cops, even retired ones, they hear things. No crime in that.”

“None,” I agreed. “When was the last time you saw the kid?”

Frankie scratched his cheek and gave it some thought. “I don’t know . . . maybe a week before he was killed. Sometime last August or something like that.” He shrugged. “He was in a bad way, you know?”

“Drugs?”

“Yeah, but not how you think. He looked like he needed some, and soon. His nose was running, had the chills, needed to get healthy and soon.”

“Besides that, did he look all right?”

Frankie was confused. “What the fuck does that even mean? I told you, he—”

“Did he look like he’d taken a beating? Did he have a black eye or anything like that?”

Frankie was shaking his head. “Nah, nothing like that. Why?”

“Just curious,” I said. I suppose he could have been lying about it, but it didn’t feel that way to me. “Can I ask you why he came to you?”

That stopped the conversation in its tracks.

“I thought you said you weren’t a cop, Murphy, but you’re asking a whole lotta cop questions. And why are you even here? I mean, the old man is dead. The kid is dead. What’s in it for you?”

“I’m not a cop. Not anymore. And you’re right, both of them are dead. Still, I got my reasons for wanting to know what happened to them. They might be dumb reasons, but they’re mine. No matter what they are, you don’t have to worry. I’m not wearing a wire,” I said peeling off my leather jacket, slipping my sweater off over my head, and laying them down on the floor. “I’m not trying to entrap you or get evidence. I’m just trying to find out what happened. If you wanna come check me more carefully, come on.”

Only a stupid man, one destined for prison or an early grave, would have taken my word for it and Frankie was not a stupid man. He came around the desk and patted me down, made me drop my pants, and gave me an examination that my urologist would have envied. He threw my jacket outside the office.

“Okay,” I said, slipping my sweater back over my head and zipping up my pants, “now that you’ve had a close look, can you tell me why TJ came to see you?”

“The kid came to me with an air bag to pedal,” he said as casually as if he was telling me what he’d had for breakfast. “One stinking air bag.” He shook his head, a sad expression on his face.

“Did you take it?”

“Nah. I just gave him two hundred bucks for his troubles and sent him on his way with the air bag.”

“Why’d you give him the bread?”

“I liked the kid and we’d done some good business together.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I bet. Like around ten thousand bucks’ worth of business last Christmas?”

That wiped all the friendly pretense away. Frankie’s smiles, the half and full ones, vanished. The sad expression, too. All that was left was the hardness. “Look, Murphy, I told you, I didn’t have anything to do
with the kid’s murder and I didn’t even know his old man, so back the fuck off. We’re done talking.”

I didn’t back off. “Okay, you didn’t do it. Can you think of anyone you like for it?”

“Go talk to the kid’s shithead friends. That bunch of morons must have some ideas.”

“I didn’t ask about his friends.”

“Even if I had an idea, I wouldn’t share it with you. I’m no rat. I don’t like rats. Rats are why my dad’s spending the rest of his life in some shithole prison in some buttfuck state in the middle of nowhere.”

“Yeah, and I thought it was because he bashed in Wally Malone’s head with a shovel for daring to open up a carting business in Medford.”

Frankie almost smiled at that. Almost. “You missed your calling, Murphy. You shoulda been a comedian or a freakin’ diplomat. You really know how to make friends and influence people.”

“I’m not trying to make friends. I’m trying to get some answers and justice for the kid.”

“Justice ain’t gonna do the kid no good where he’s at.”

“Maybe not, but maybe that doesn’t matter to me.”

“We got lotsa spare things here: rims, tires, fenders. You name the part, we got it or we can get it. Justice, answers . . . none of that shit around here.”

“None to share, not even for a kid you liked?”

“None. Not much of it anywhere around that I can see. I’m in the salvage business, not the salvation business. Don’t go confusing the two. You want salvation, go the fuck to church.”

I thought Father Bill might’ve said something similar, if not exactly in the same way. I guess I was smiling at the thought. Frankie didn’t much care for that. When I looked up, he was smiling his predatory smile back at me. He was also pressing a buzzer on his desk. I went and collected my jacket. When I was done putting it on, I heard footsteps echoing through the big steel building. Some of the footsteps were
human, some not. When I turned to look back at Frankie Tacos, I noticed he was pointing a gun at me, a .357 Magnum like the one that had killed Tommy Delcamino.

“Stick around. I want you to meet some friends of mine.” It wasn’t a suggestion. “Come on back in here.”

I stepped back inside the office. About ten seconds after I did so, Frankie and I had company. The guy holding the two pit bulls outside the office entrance was a real zipperhead with slicked-back black hair and a build like Hercules. He was a juicer with a lupine face, but I was more focused on the two dogs—one brindle-coated, the other a pure gray—straining at their leashes and eyeing me with nasty intent.

My old service Glock was in my jacket pocket and I thought about going for it. Frankie must have read my mind.

“If you came in here carrying, that was a pretty ballsy thing to do,” he said, mock admiration in his voice. “But my gun’s bigger than yours and mine is in my hand. And you’re trespassing.”

“This guy giving you a hard time, boss?” Hercules asked.

“You know, Nardo, as a matter of fact, he is.”

Nardo’s wolflike smile unnerved me as much as the growling dogs. “Should I feed him to the pups?”

Frankie’s face got serious. “Nah, Nardo. This guy is a pest, like a flea on a dog. But he does look like a guy who keeps in shape. He must be a runner. You a runner, Murphy?”

“Not really.”

“Well, that’s all about to change for you. Now get the fuck outta here and don’t let me catch you here again. Trust me when I tell you I got more friends on the job than you do. Now get lost.”

With that, Frankie sat down in his chair and picked up his phone. He was done with me and had already moved on. It was time for me to do the same. I turned and walked out of the office, but Nardo and the dogs stayed in place. When I was almost out of the building, I turned back to see Nardo and the dogs coming my way. When I got outside, I closed the door behind me.

Normally, I would’ve liked my chances. It wasn’t all that far from the entrance of the engine building to the door of the front office shack, fifty yards or so, about the width of a football field. Too bad for me, this wasn’t normally. My leg wound was healing all right, but it wasn’t totally healed and I hadn’t tested the calf by running. And there was the fact that the run, as short as it was, wouldn’t be a straight one. There were lots of narrow lanes between car chaises, axles, fenders, radiators, bumpers, and brake rotors. Loose parts like nuts and bolts and hoses littered the paths, and the base of the paths themselves was a mixture of crumbled concrete and packed dirt. No, this wasn’t going to be fun at all. At least if the dogs got to me, I’d already had a tetanus shot. I ran.