Where It Hurts (6 page)

(THURSDAY, EARLY EVENING)

T
ommy D. hadn’t told me the name of the place he worked, nor had he given me the address, but when I stopped at a local 7-Eleven for coffee, an oil truck driver told me Picture Perfect Paving and Masonry was the only such company in that part of Holtsville. He took a map out of the cab of his truck and showed me where I’d find it.

Right around where Union Avenue turns into Long Island Avenue is one of those ugly patches we Long Islanders like to pretend don’t exist. A place where the dirty work gets done by brown-skinned men and the Tommy Delcaminos of the world. They did the dirty work so we could live with clean fingernails and enjoy pretty green lawns. Picture Perfect’s yard was tucked in among the landscapers and home heating oil companies, and sat in the shadows of the Nicolls Road overpass. A quarter of a mile east of the Northville oil terminal and the PSEG power plant, it was also on the glide path to one of MacArthur’s runways. And as I drove east down Union, an orange-bellied Southwest 737 roared overhead.

It was a little after four thirty when I pulled up to the yard, night falling all around me in the heartless way night falls at the edge of winter. There is danger in the darkness. Cops know it. Kids know it, too.
We work so hard to convince them it’s silly to be afraid of the dark, but it isn’t silly at all. Fear of the dark is a matter of survival. It’s smart to be wary of the dark. We evolved as prey as much as predator. Prey knows there are eyes that can see you through the darkness. That there are claws and fangs and pointed beaks, bodies built to blanket themselves in blackness. Monsters do come out at night. I’d witnessed it for myself.

I parked along the fence and walked through the still-open gate. The yard was what I expected it to be. There were mounds of variously sized and colored pebbles. Stacks and stacks of red bricks and pavers, gray concrete blocks, Belgian blocks, big slabs of bluestone, hunks of granite, hills of sand and pea gravel. The largest pile was of black asphalt, and the air stank of it even in the cold. Parked to my left were a couple of Mack dump trucks, three Bobcats, a beat-up old front-end loader, its once bright yellow paint now faded and chipped. There were two small steamrollers parked side by side and three tar-stained asphalt boilers. All of the equipment was covered in a fine layer of dust.

At the back of the yard were three raggedy structures: two trailers propped up on concrete blocks and a steel equipment shed way off in one corner. I figured one of the trailers, the darkened one, was the office and the other, the one with the lights and TV shadows flickering on inside, was the one Tommy Delcamino lived in. Parked next to that trailer was a dinged and dented old Chevy Malibu, its rear bumper held on with duct tape and prayer. The tires were flat and the rear window was a sheet of cloudy plastic.

There wasn’t much external light in the yard. Just one sulfur lamp perched high atop a pole behind the two trailers that bathed the area in a sickly yellow glow. With each step I took, darkness seemed to shrink the lighted patch of the yard until it was only a small triangular island in a night-black sea. The only noise came from the cars buzzing by along Nicolls Road. Then I heard something else. The tick-tick-ticking of a cooling car engine. I took a few more steps before it dawned on me that the ticking could not possibly be coming from the Malibu.

I stopped dead in my tracks. I don’t know why another car being
there should have bothered me, but it did, a lot. I mean, in spite of the darkness, it wasn’t that late. The gate was still open. Then I realized that everything except the flickering shadows from inside the one trailer seemed so unnaturally still. It felt as if this little corner of the world itself was holding its breath. Two decades on the job had taught me to distrust stillness. Quiet, calm, they were different. They were products of nature or circumstance. Stillness was a matter of willful imposition. Something wasn’t right. I squinted my eyes, searching for where the car with the cooling engine was parked and from where the trouble might come. I knelt down slowly as if to tie my shoe, but to actually retrieve the little Glock 26 I was carrying on my ankle.

Then, just as I thought I saw the silhouette of an SUV beyond the boundaries of the yellow light, over by the side of the equipment shed, the stillness erupted into a jumble of voices, flashes, and thunder.

“No, don’t be shootin’ him,” a man screamed, his voice angry. “Don’t!”

My head swung around from the silhouette of the SUV to where I thought the voice had come from, somewhere near the end of the darkened trailer. But that’s not where the muzzle flashed. That came from my far right, near the Malibu. I went face first onto the ground, my gun still in my ankle holster. As I flattened myself in the dirt, a bullet whined as it passed over me. The sound of the shot echoed around the yard. I lifted my head just long enough to see a second flash, and before I could react, dirt kicked up into my face. Whoever was pulling the trigger hadn’t missed me by much with his first two shots, and I wasn’t going to stick around in that spot to give him a third. I had to get out of the light and find some cover.

I rolled onto my side, brought my knees up to my chest, and grabbed the gun out of its holster. I racked the slide, swung my gun hand over my head, aimed in the general direction of the Malibu, and squeezed the trigger, squeezed it again, and again. Figuring I’d bought myself a few seconds, I ran, keeping my body as bent over and close to the ground as I dared without losing my balance. Just as I reached the hazy
border between the yellow light and the darkness, dirt kicked up at my shoes and something tore through my pant leg. My left calf was on fire and I felt my sock getting wet with blood. I hit the ground hard, the thump of it knocking the wind out of me, the Glock flying out of my hand. I palmed the ground madly, feeling for my gun, trying to catch my breath. It was no good. I heard a bang and dirt kicked up only about ten feet ahead of me. I had to move.

“Stop shooting, you dumbass motherfucka!”

There was that angry voice again, but the shooter was paying it no mind because as I forced myself up, the yard echoed with the sound of another shot. Rocks shattered over my shoulder and behind me. That helped me get a bearing on where I was and I didn’t hesitate. I about-faced and ran as fast as I could manage, my left calf aching, my sock soggy with blood. When I felt gravel beneath the soles of my running shoes, felt the hill of gravel with my palms, I scrambled to put the pile of rocks between me and the shooter.

I sat with my back against the stones, trying to calm my breathing and to collect my thoughts. That odd stillness fell over the world again. The sound of the rush-hour traffic on Nicolls Road and the thumping of my heart were all I could hear. No footsteps. No shots. No shouting. Nothing. Then an engine turned over. Tires spun on dirt. Brakes screeched. An engine revved loudly and a dark-colored SUV—a Suburban, Escalade, or Navigator—flew by me, spitting gravel, kicking up a cloud of dust that made it impossible for me to see its tags or to make out anything of its occupants. When it was through the gate, its tires squealed and it was gone.

Tommy Delcamino wasn’t in either trailer, the interiors of which had pretty much been turned inside out. I found him in the equipment shed. He was slumped forward, right arm tucked beneath him, legs splayed out before him. A big chunk of his head was missing, blood caking up on his hair around the edges of the wound. I’d seen bodies in worse shape than Tommy’s. Bodies fished out of the sound after weeks in the water. Bodies stuffed into suitcases and left in hot apartments for
days. Bodies hacked up into pieces and thrown by the side of the Northern State Parkway. But none of them was any deader than Tommy.

Bloodied bits of his skull, brain, hair were splattered all over the stacks of concrete sacks and vats of sealcoating on the shelves at his back. After passing through Tommy, the bullet or bullets had ripped through an eighty-pound bag of concrete mix. The gray powder had leaked out onto the floor and formed a cone-shaped pile behind his body. Staring at the powder, all I could think about was the grains of sand in an hourglass. Tommy D.’s hour had come and gone. Whatever torment he’d been suffering over the murder of his son was over. I didn’t bother checking for a pulse.

I retraced my steps, making sure not to touch anything, and called 9-1-1.

(THURSDAY EVENING)

T
here was no stillness, no calm, no quiet, not now, not in Picture Perfect’s yard. As far as the SCPD was concerned, the whole area, from gate to back fence, from side to side, was a crime scene. The yard was lit up like a minor league baseball field. CSU guys combed the grounds, searching for bullets and shells, photographing and printing, while the ME looked after Tommy Delcamino’s body. I was in the back of an ambulance, the open doors facing the yard. The EMT patching up my leg said the bullet hadn’t done much damage, though he gave me a tetanus shot just to be safe. He said the bullet hadn’t hit anything vital. I guess he didn’t consider a thumb tip–sized chunk of lower leg vital. He wouldn’t. It wasn’t his fucking leg.

Out the back of the ambulance I was glad to see a familiar face coming my way. Al Roussis and I went back a long ways together, all the way to the academy. He’d gotten the bump to detective several years ago and was now a part of the Homicide squad. I’d already spoken to the uniforms, but now this was Al’s case.

He poked his head into the ambulance and asked the EMT, “You almost done with this clown?”

“Pretty much.”

“Will he live?”

“That he will. The bullet just grazed him.”

Al rolled his too-big brown eyes. “That’s too bad.”

“Fuck you, Roussis,” I said, staring at my blood-soaked sock there on the metal floor of the ambulance. I decided to go without it. My running shoe was also wet with my blood, but not so much that I couldn’t wear it. I thanked the EMT and hopped down onto the street, Al Roussis lending a hand.

“Come on, Gus,” he said, “let’s you and me talk in my car.”

Al was a bulldog, though he didn’t look like one. He was slender and athletic. His downturned lips gave him an air of vague sadness, as if he were constantly disappointed at the state of the world. He was Greek through and through, and when we were in the Second Precinct together, the guys used to love to break his balls just to hear him curse at us in his dad’s native tongue. We didn’t understand a word he was saying, but we loved the music of it. Al had been at John Jr.’s funeral, so we didn’t have to go through the awkward two-step bullshit of explanations and less-than-heartfelt condolences. Our friendship didn’t mean he wasn’t going to ask me hard questions.

“I’d ask you how you’re doing, but Christ, Gus, what the fuck’s going on with you that you’re involved with a piece of shit like Tommy Delcamino?”

“Like I told those guys from the Sixth, I wasn’t involved with him.”

“Then what were you doing here? Looking for a quote on repaving your front steps?”

I gave him the same story I’d given the precinct detectives.

Al was shaking his head. “So what you’re saying is Delcamino thought you would help him out because you lost your kid, too?”

“Who knows?” I said, getting into the passenger seat of Al’s unmarked Ford Taurus. “I was so furious at him. I lost my mind when I kicked his ass out of the hotel coffee shop. I guess now we’ll never know what he was thinking.”

“I guess.”

“So your story is you came here to apologize to him?”

“My story? Look, Al, we’ve known each other a lot of years. If I’m telling you that’s why I’m here, that’s why I’m here.”

“Yeah, sorry, Gus. You know how it is with the job. Everybody lies to you about everything so that you don’t even believe the mirror when you look into it.” There was that sadness in his voice to match his expression. “Okay, so you came to apologize to him, but you weren’t thinking of helping him?”

“Like I said, I was pretty rough on him, Al. Nobody deserves to get treated like that, especially by me. I understand the kind of pain he was suffering through. I owed him some respect for that.”

“But you weren’t going to help him?” Al asked again in a tone of voice that sounded more like a warning than a casual question.

“Not that it matters now, but what if I was going to help him?”

Al put his palms up. “Relax, Gus. I was just asking.”

But that was bullshit. He wasn’t just asking and I wasn’t in the mood. I mean, I’d been shot. It wasn’t lost on me that if the gunman had been a few feet luckier with his aim, I’d be just as dead as Tommy Delcamino.

“What’s going on, Al? First Pete McCann warns me off this guy and now you. For chrissakes, the guy’s been murdered and you’re still sounding the warning alarm.”

“Gus, you’re way, way off base with that. I’m not warning you off anything and I don’t give a fuck about Pete McCann. I’m just asking questions, doing my job. And I’m trying to do it the way a friend should do it with a friend. You know, I could really be busting your shoes here. You discharged your weapon at the scene of a homicide where the vic took two to the head. I could hold you on suspicion. I
should
hold you on suspicion, but I won’t. So, come on, please just answer the questions.”

“Sorry, Al, you’re right. You’re right.”

“Can you think of any reason someone would want to kill Tommy Delcamino?”

I shrugged.

Roussis made a face. “I can’t write down that you shrugged, Gus.”

“Until two days ago, I didn’t know him except to arrest the guy, and the last time I did that was what, five, six years ago? Then I had a ten-minute conversation with him and it’s not like I got any intimate details of his life. But he did time. He was a street guy. There’s a hundred reasons guys like him get killed.”

Al liked that answer better. “Absolutely. So the only thing you guys talked about the other day was his kid?”

“Pretty much.”

His pleasure with me was short-lived. “What’s that supposed to mean, ‘pretty much’?”

“Okay, yes, we only talked about his son’s murder.”

“What about it?”

“Mostly that he felt we—that the SCPD wasn’t doing its job. He said he’d given a whole bunch of names and leads to the detectives handling his kid’s case and that they blew him off. He said he’d gone over their heads, but that he got the same response from the brass as from Paxson and Carey.”

“Which was what?” he asked.

“Which was basically go fuck yourself and don’t bother us. That’s why he came to me in the first place. He didn’t know what else to do or who to go to.”

“But why you?”

“I thought it was because he figured I would help him. You know, my son died, his was murdered. Like that. But he said it was because I always treated him with some respect, but who knows how the guy’s mind worked?”

Al nodded. “How did you know that the kid’s case belonged to Paxson and Carey?”

“Because I asked Pete McCann.”

He turned to me, his face deadly serious. “See, Gus, this is where I get hung up. If you weren’t going to help the guy, why ask Pete McCann about it? Why make inquiries?”

“It’s a long story, Al, but I was in the Fourth and I had to talk to Pete anyway, so I asked. I was just curious.”

“I got time, tell me the story.”

I explained to him about Kristen getting pulled over and Pete McCann stepping in to keep her from getting arrested.

“I mean, Christ, Al, if Pete hadn’t warned me off, I probably wouldn’t even have given it a second thought.”

“Okay,” he said and scribbled some notes. When he looked up, he asked, “So the guys that shot at you, you think they were citizens?”

Citizens, that was current white-cop lingo for African-Americans. And in Suffolk County, that was almost all cops. For a while, “Canadians” was the code word. There were others. The code changed every now and then.

“I think at least one of them was black,” I said. “I don’t know about the shooter. He let his bullets do his talking. And before you ask, I didn’t see either one of them. For all I know, there might’ve been more than two guys, but I can only be sure of two. And no, I didn’t see the vehicle except that it was a big SUV.”

He shook his head in mock disgust. “Didn’t you used to be a cop? You’re as useless as sharp corners on a bowling ball.”

“Sorry, I was too busy getting shot, you prick.”

Al laughed and patted my shoulder. “Okay, Gus, we’re almost done here. Give me a minute to finish making some notes and . . .” His voice drifted off.

Something was eating at me. He had asked me all the right questions but one, so I asked him.

“What do you think they were looking for, Al?”

“Huh?” He didn’t look up, but he heard me all right. His jaw clenched.

“The guys that killed Delcamino.”

“What about them?”

“Before I found the body, I checked for him in both trailers. They were tossed and these guys were thorough. They dumped his cereal
boxes, cut all the cushions, his mattress, pulled out every drawer, turned everything upside down. They must’ve been looking for something specific.”

“Maybe.”

“C’mon, Al, what the fuck’s going on here? A few minutes ago you asked me why I thought Delcamino might’ve been killed. I mean—”

“Enough, Gus. Enough!”

“But—”

Al reached across me and pushed the Ford’s passenger door open. “It’s late. Go home. Get some rest. I’ve got what I need. I’ll call you when forensics clears your weapon and you can come pick it up.”

We shook hands and I slid off the seat. My leg had stiffened up and was killing me. I propped myself up, leaning one elbow on the open door and the other on the car roof. Al noticed.

“What’d the EMT tell you about the leg?”

“Gave me a starter does of antibiotics and told me to get a full script from a doctor. Told me to stay off the leg for a while.”

Al’s expression went from his usual vague sadness to earnest.

“Don’t listen to him, Gus. Stay on the leg long enough to walk away.”

“What’s that supposed—”

“We’ve been friends a long time, you and me. Walk away. Forget Tommy Delcamino.”

I opened my mouth to say something else, but Al stretched out, grabbed the door handle, and yanked it shut.