Bob Healy ignored the phone and threw his empty coffee cup at the TV screen.
“Come look at this shit!” he screamed to Serpe. “Five days later and they’re still going. Now they got Debbie’s mom on camera, collapsing in front of the funeral home. Look at the poor woman. These media whores have no shame.”
“Shame? No one has shame anymore, or haven’t you noticed?” Joe said, clicking off the TV. “Come on, answer the phones. We got a business to run.”
Serpe had long ago learned how to ignore the press. For years after the Abruzzi trial and Ralphy’s subsequent suicide, Joe stopped reading the papers, listening to news radio, or watching TV news. He blamed the media—not without some justification—for blowing up his marriage. TV reporters at his front door became as much a fixture as the statue of the Virgin Mary on his lawn. Reporters followed his wife to work and his son to school. As he once told Healy, “If you think all news is bad news, it’s worse when it’s about you.” But Bob Healy was a news junky and could not look away.
Although the murders of Debbie Hanlon and Hank Noonan and their connection to the oil driver killings was not quite a grand slam like the Amy Fisher/Joey Buttafuoco debacle had been, the local media were doing a major circle jerk over the story. And they would keep at it until the next best thing came along. With Iraq War fatigue in full swing and no one wanting to read yet another story about suicide bombers at the fruit market or hear about one more of our own killed by a roadside bomb, a nice local story of murder and betrayal was just what the doctor ordered. So the TV and radio stations and papers had given the story the full Shakespeare-Ringling Brothers treatment.
With leaps of faith and fiction, but few facts, they had woven the relationship between Hanlon, Noonan, and Burns into a love triangle with wheels. Poor Debbie had been cast as Long Island’s low rent Desdemona and Burns as Iago on a Harley. Noonan, a buffoon his whole life, had, in death, been miraculously transformed and thrust into the roles of both Cassio and Othello. None of the casting nor the mechanics quite fit, but the press never let the facts get in the way of a good story. They had long since traded in their honor for entertainment value. Perhaps the most egregious bit of miscasting was their portrayal of Detective Tim Hoskins as a real life Sherlock Holmes. Highly placed, unnamed sources inside the Suffolk County PD had let it be known that Hoskins was up for a medal. And Alberto Jimenez, the only really tragic figure in this whole mess, was forgotten by Monday morning, his memory washed away like the blood off the pavement of Old Northport Road.
“Still …” Healy growled.
“Let it go until the TV movie comes out.”
“It’s eating at me, Joe. It’s eating at me.”
That was another thing Healy was unaccustomed to; the guilt. Joe knew all about the guilt. First with Ralphy and then with Marla, he’d had to learn how to bear that cross. With Debbie, he had a few rough days, but he’d come around.
“Look, partner, remember what you told me your brother said. Burns would have killed the girl and Noonan soon enough. He wasn’t gonna split his profits with them and they were the only ones who could’ve fingered him for Jimenez. We gave her a chance to save herself and she fucked up by calling Noonan. I know it’s harsh, but if she had just come clean with us …”
“We didn’t go to save her.”
“That’s true,” Joe said. “But we threw her a line and she didn’t take it.”
“Maybe she didn’t know how.”
“Maybe. You gotta face it, Bob, there’s plenty of guilt in this life we deserve to carry. There’s no need to go looking for extra weight.”
“Sounds nice, but I don’t think it’s going to help me sleep.”
“Sleep. I gave that up a long time ago.”
With the weather having turned cold and snow in the forecast for the weekend, Serpe and his drivers were as busy as they’d been in weeks. Healy couldn’t answer the phones fast enough. So when his cell buzzed in his jacket pocket, Serpe just assumed it was Healy calling with another stop.
The weird thing about people and weather was that sub-zero temperatures didn’t seem to panic them much, but the mention of snow sent them into oil-buying hysteria. Of course, folks had it exactly wrong. Snow didn’t burn oil. Low temperatures did. It was like that stupid bread and milk phenomenon. The weatherman predicts a Nor’easter or a hurricane and people who haven’t touched a slice of white bread or had a glass of milk in thirty years, rush out to the supermarket for milk and white bread. Joe Serpe wasn’t complaining nor was he feeling bad about it. Oilmen were pretty low on the totem pole of businessmen who profited from people’s stupidity.
Serpe pulled to the curb and answered the phone.
“Hello,” he barked over the noise of the engine.
“Joe … Is that Joe Serpe?” It was a woman’s voice.
“This is Joe.”
“Hey,” her voice brightened, “it’s Georgine Monaco.”
“Hey yourself. What can I do for you Gigi?”
“You busy tonight?”
He was surprised to hear himself say, “Not that I know of. Why?”
“Let me buy you dinner.”
“Okay.”
“Come by my apartment around eight. I got something to show you.”
“Sounds good.”
She gave him her address and hung up. The phone buzzed again before he could get it back in his pocket. This time, it was Healy calling with another stop.
Now that the phones had finally slowed down, Bob Healy took full advantage of the opportunity to torture himself. He clicked from news channel to news channel, hoping to catch a still shot of Debbie Hanlon or footage from the funeral. What he got instead was footage of Noonan’s tearless father, a my-son-had-it-coming expression pulled across his hard face, yakking at a row of microphones. He could see the man’s lips moving, but the father’s words were drowned out by Healy’s own disgust. The elder Noonan seemed more upset that his son had ruined the business than by his murder.
The phone rang again and Healy thanked God for it, aloud. He turned his back to the screen and picked up.
“Mayday Fuel, how can—”
“Detective Healy?”
“Not any more.”
“It’s me, Detective Hines.”
“Blades?”
“Your memory works good for an old man.”
“Very funny. What’s up?”
“The D-O-I.”
“The what?”
“The Department of Investigation.”
“What about it, huh?” Healy asked.
“I’ll give you two guesses who put the lockdown on Rusty Monaco’s files.”
“What would the New York City Department of Investigation want with a retired detective’s files?” Healy said. “Strange how that retired detective turned up dead.”
“Funny how I was thinking that same thing.”
“You know what they say about great minds.”
“Yeah, that they don’t believe in coincidences,” she said.
“Blades.”
“What?”
“Do we know what DOI was looking at?”
“I’m working on that now. I got some friends over there.”
“IAB detectives have no friends.”
“You may be old, Healy, but I didn’t think you was blind.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“My friends over there are special friends, if you hear what I’m saying.”
“Blades, I think you and my business partner would get along. The first thing he asked me about you was if you were cute.”
“And what did you say?”
He ignored the question. “Let me know when you get something.” Healy put down the phone and turned back to the TV.