Hose monkey

Friday, February 27th, 2004

I t had been a long time since Joe Serpe picked up a Newsday with his twenty-four ounce coffee at the 7/Eleven on Portion Road. Sometimes he couldn’t avoid a glimpse at the screaming headlines of the New York daily rags as he passed the rack on his way to the coffee pots, but that was about the extent of his media interest. Blessedly, the tugboat had no radio and he never watched TV news. As far as he could tell, he was none the worse for his less than encyclopedic knowledge of world events.

After Vinny’s death, Joe’s life had gotten very small. He liked it that way. With his family gone and his brother dead, the outside world couldn’t touch him. He had Mulligan, his sack time with the Triple D ladies, and his work. In the last three plus years, the only aspects of his life that ever really changed were the faces of the women he slept with and the price of oil. And with oil, price was almost beside the point. It was like food in that respect. People had to eat and they had to heat.

Ossie, the Pakistani counterman, gave Joe his usual broad smile, but this morning mixed with a tinge of confusion. Joe noticed a questioning look in Ossie’s eyes. This was not lost on Joe. When he worked undercover, his life had often depended on his ability to read people’s faces. If he couldn’t detect a situation going sour from the tiniest changes in a dealer’s demeanor, all the backup in the world would have done him no good. There was less at stake this morning. As Joe slid a five dollar bill across the counter, he mumbled something about movie listings.

Serpe sat in his car, sipping his coffee, scouring the pages for word of Toussant’s arrest. Joe smiled as he turned the pages, once again enjoying the feel of the paper in his hand. Before the troubles, he had been a newspaper junkie, reading two, sometimes three papers a day. It used to drive Ralphy crazy. Suddenly aware of his pleasure, Serpe also began to realize how he had let his life atrophy. In a weird way, Cain’s murder had given Joe his life back. The long sleepwalk was over.

He had purpose. He had Marla, he hoped. And strangest of all, he had Bob Healy. Though Joe had no idea how to characterize their relationship, they definitely had one. As much as Joe liked Frank and as close as they had become, it wasn’t a cop thing. In an inexplicable way, Joe had felt closer to Healy during their silent ride from Brooklyn to Bethpage than he had felt to Frank in the whole time they were acquainted. When this all got sorted out, he’d have to have a long sit down with Healy. Not only to thank him for his help, but to finish up their business.

As forthcoming as Healy had been about what had transpired four years ago, Joe got the sense that the former I.A. detective had more to tell. Last night, and when he came to ask for help, and even at the diner that first time, Joe sensed Healy on the verge of saying something, but he seemed never to find the words. There were still details missing. Joe had questions that begged for answers, itches that needed scratching. That he and Ralphy had been targets of the I.A.B. was pretty fucking self-evident, but why, he wondered, and for how long? Who initiated the investigation? Was it Ralphy’s carelessness or Joe’s covering for him that had gotten I.A.’s attention? None of that ever came out at trial. But as ready as Serpe was to finally hear everything there was to hear about those dark days, he knew he could wait a little while longer. He had something else to take care of first.

Toussant did not make the paper, at least not Newsday. Joe wasn’t particularly surprised by this. First off, he had no idea how long it had taken the cops to track down Mr. French, there in the wilds of Nassau County. With its five golf courses, polo grounds, tennis courts and nature trails, Bethpage State Park was pretty damned expansive. If the cops hadn’t gotten to him quickly, a shrewd and desperate man like Toussant might be hard quarry, even if he was as big as a house and stank of vomit. Secondly, he hadn’t been big news to begin with. Like Healy said, the Suffolk cops had lost interest in him. Gangs had become the focus of their investigation.

And now they were the focus of Joe Serpe’s unofficial inquiry as well. In spite of what he had said to Bob Healy last night, Joe had no intention of letting this go. Group blame gave him no comfort. No, someone, a person, had killed Cain. To Joe, murder was a kind of robbery, the worst kind, the kind that takes everything away. It didn’t matter whether the killer was a Shriner, an alien, or a MexSal Saint. Responsibility lay with the individual, not with a group. Joe couldn’t help but remember Abe Hirsch, the old guy who owned the candy store on Avenue P back in Bensonhurst.

Joe was about ten when he became aware of the funny numbers tattooed on old man Hirsch’s forearm. When he asked his dad about it, Joe Sr. explained about the concentration camps during WWII. A few years later, Joe got up the nerve to ask Mr. Hirsch about the camps. Initially, the old jew was shocked that this skinny little Italian kid should be so interested in the camps.

“Nazis, Nazis, everybody blames the Nazis,” Hirsch had said. “Vas is a Nazi but a man in a uniform? It was men killed us, not Nazis. I blame the men, not the uniforms.”

Until Healy had spoken about the potential gang involvement, old man Hirsch’s words had never quite struck home. Now, at this late date, he understood. Maybe Cain had interrupted this Reyes kid spray painting the trucks. Maybe he had killed Cain. Maybe he had some help. Joe had his doubts. Whereas Cain was no match for a guy like Toussant, he’d give almost anyone else a hard time. In any case, Joe was going to find out. He put the paper down, shifted into reverse and headed east down Portion Road toward Farmingville, where it turned into Horseblock Road.

There in front of the convenience store on Horseblock Road stood a hundred squatty, brown-skinned men, their mouths and nostrils pumping clouds of foggy breath into the air like little chimneys. There were few hats in the crowd to cover the heads of uniformly black hair. Many of the men wore inadequate clothing against the biting cold. The standard uniform seemed to be a denim jacket over a hooded sweatshirt, dirty jeans and dusty work boots. No gloves but work gloves. Some men wore uncomfortable smiles. Some laughed as a hedge against the grind. Mostly there was blankness in the round faces of these men descended from Aztec, Incan, Mayan, and Spanish blood. But in their eyes Joe Serpe thought he spotted a toxic mixture of hope and bitterness-the incremental destruction of one leading directly to the other.

Joe had seen this spectacle several times as he often began his days with a few deliveries in Farmingville or Selden before doubling back west into Brentwood and Bayshore. But he had never before taken the time to witness it. Before today these men had simply been part of the scenery, not unlike the mailboxes or utility poles he passed as he drove from stop to stop. Now they had been transformed from things to people. Each had a name. Each had a heart and blood and a story.

Serpe parked his car and watched as pickup truck after pickup truck pulled to a nearby curb. A white man would get out of the truck, talk to a chubby man at the curbside, then bark something at the huddled brown men. The heavyset man would translate. Hands would go up in the crowd. The white man would wade through them like a rancher culling his herd. He would select one, two, three of the men. These were the lucky ones, the ones who would work ten hours for lunch, a hundred bucks cash and maybe a cervesa at day’s end. The luckiest of the lucky would ride in the pickup cab with the contractor. The others would secure their sweatshirt hoods, lift their futile jacket collars and hunker down together against the bed walls of the pickup.

Joe wasn’t close enough to hear, but he didn’t have to be. He understood the nature of these transactions. This was a shape-up right out of “On the Waterfront.” Scenes just like it were being repeated with increasing regularity all over Long Island. There’s always a hungry market for cheap labor and just below our southern border were millions of impoverished people eager to cast themselves into its maw. There wasn’t a landscaper, contractor, builder, concrete man, roofer, or mason on the island that didn’t avail himself of their services. They came cheap, worked hard, didn’t bitch. You didn’t have to pay their taxes, supply insurance or follow safety

regulations. They were like little brown-skinned fuck you’s to OSHA, Social Security and the IRS.

Across the street from the shape-up, close to Joe’s car, were a second group of about ten people, very angry people. This group was comprised of an equal number of white men and women ranging in age from twenty-five to sixty-five. They were better protected against the weather, if only by their rage. They spat a constant stream of insults, slogans, and taunts across Horseblock at the workers. They carried a mixture of printed and handmade signs which bore slogans like:

AMERICA FOR AMERICANS

MEXICO FOR MEXICANS

or

CHEAP LABOR= LOSS OF JOBS, LOSS OF PRIDE, LOSS OF COUNTRY

or

STAND UP TO THE BROWN TIDE RESIST THE SILENT INVASION

And those were the friendly ones. A man with a bullhorn stepped into the midst of the ten angry citizens, adding his voice to theirs and fuel to the fire.

“We are being invaded, degraded and infiltrated,” he bellowed. “And the worst, most unholy part of it all is that our own government, the men and women we elect to represent us, have sold us out for a plate of rice and beans. Do they care that with cheap labor comes costs to our schools, our hospitals? Do they care that these people come with their violence, their gangs? Ask your congressman, your state senator, your governor, ask them if they are aware that these people are here illegally. Of course they know. They admit it. But what do they do about it? They want to take your tax dollars and build these invaders a hiring hall. How dare they? How dare they?”

Joe lost interest in the demagoguery. He felt sorry for everybody except the asshole with the bullhorn, who, Serpe was willing to bet, had come from out of state. He was sure the people in town had some valid worries and complaints, that most of them probably wanted nothing more than to lead quiet, peaceful lives watching their kids and property values grow at a healthy clip. He also had little doubt that the men across the street would have liked nothing more than to go back to their families, to warm weather, and to steady work.

As badly as he felt for the parties involved, this wasn’t his fight. He had the kid’s murder to worry about. Joe waited for the traffic to pass and made a u-turn across the wide boulevard. It was his turn to choose men from the crowd, but not to clear a lot or put on a new roof. What Joe wanted was information.

“Two men,” he said, wading into the crowd. “Speak English. Good English.”

Some of the hands that shot up with Joe’s first demand, went down just as quickly at the second. All the men eyed Joe with suspicion. Sure, the yankee looked like a working man in his Carhartt jacket, stained coveralls, Mack baseball hat, and boots. He walked like a working man, maybe even smelled like one, but his car was all wrong. Two years back, a few of the day laborers were lured to a deserted work site and nearly beaten to death. Then, only a few months ago, some neighborhood kids had set one of their houses on fire. They didn’t need the protesters across the street to remind them they were targets. Nor was Joe under any illusion that he was fooling any of these men, but he also understood the allure of money. He had little doubt that these guys had taken precautions.

Joe was presented with a group of about ten men from which to choose. He didn’t realize how ill-prepared he would be for the task. There was nothing in his past that would have readied him for it. He couldn’t give a quick English exam or ask which of the men knew the most about the Latino Lobos and the MexSal Saints. It reminded him of the time he’d had to pick out his mother’s coffin. There he was in the basement of Gargano amp; Sons, the funeral director in tow. How do you choose, he wondered? You can’t kick the tires or take it for a test drive. Caskets didn’t appreciate in value like diamonds or real estate. In the end he’d picked one based on price and the fact that the coffin matched the wood of his mom’s living room set.

Joe pointed randomly at two men. “You and you. Come on.”

Both men smiled cautiously, but hesitated. Understanding their reluctance, Serpe removed a dollar bill from his wallet and a pen from his jacket pocket. He scribbled his name and license plate number down and handed the dollar note to the heavyset man at the curbside who seemed to be in charge of the shape-up. The man smiled. He didn’t need an explanation and nodded for the two men Joe had selected that they should go ahead. As they drove away, Joe noticed the people on the other side of the street giving him the finger. He couldn’t hear what they were screaming, but it didn’t take a mind reader to figure it out.

“So, what are your names?” Joe asked, as the waitress left.

“Jose and Hose B,” the younger of the two men joked.

“No, really,” Joe prompted.

“Miguel,” the older man piped up. He was probably thirty, but looked forty.

“Paco,” said the younger. Joe figured him for twenty, tops. “What’s your name?”

“Joe.”

“Hey, Joe, what kind of work you got for us?”

Miguel glared at Paco. Serpe guessed this must have been a breach of day laborer etiquette. You don’t want to scare off the man paying your way by making him think you were picky or couldn’t do certain kinds of jobs.

“To tell you the truth guys, I just wanna talk,” Joe confessed, peeling off two one hundred dollar bills, but not handing them over.

“Talk?” Paco was curious, never taking his eyes off Joe’s money.

“I’m a writer,” Joe lied. “I’m interested in what your lives are like, where you came from, what-”

“Work,” Miguel interrupted, “not talk.”

Paco ignored Miguel. “Talk about what?”

“Look, in this country we all came from other countries, right?” Joe leaned across the table as if he were sharing secrets. “When my people came over from Naples, there were men here who took advantage of them. That’s what I’m interested in. The men who take advantage of you guys, the gangs like the MSS and the Lobos.”

Miguel, distracted and disinterested up to that point, nearly snapped his neck at the mention of the gangs. He stood up and fairly ran out the door. Joe made an attempt to go after him, but Paco waved him off.

“Let him go, Joe. He was no good to you, anyway. He probably spoke five words of English and four of them were work.”

“You seem to have no problem with English, Paco. Where you from?”

“I was born in Mexico City, but I grew up in East L.A.”

Joe was suspicious. “L.A., huh? Why come out here and break your back to make the same money you could in California?”

“I like the change of seasons.”

“A comedian.”

“No comedian, but I got my reasons.”

“Like?”

“That’s my business, Holmes.”

“Holmes?”

“Yeah, like Sherlock. C’mon, man, you’re a writer like I’m Oscar de la Hoya. You got cop written all over you, but you got working hands. So what’s your deal?”

“That’s my business, Paco.”

“That’s fair. What you need to know?”

“This Reyes kid that was murdered last week, did you know him?”

“A little,” Paco said, his eager expression unchanged.

“A little?”

“We didn’t live together or hang together, but we worked some landscaping jobs a few months back, clearing leaves and shit. We drank at the same place sometimes.”

“He was nineteen and I don’t figure you’re much older. Where’d you guys drink?”

“We’re here illegally, Joe, you think anyone’s going to bust our cojones about underage drinking? Anyways, you never see white faces where we hang, not even cops.”

“And where’s it you hang?”

“A little shithole on Portion Road in Ronkonkoma called Iguana.”

Joe knew the place. He drove by it all the time. It was a bar/restaurant in a near-deserted strip mall two minutes from his apartment. There was a hand-painted sign above the threshold and there never seemed to be any cars in the parking lot.

“That’s the place,” Paco confirmed. “You should check it out sometime. The food is authentic and the beer is cold. On Friday and Saturday nights they have shows.”

“Shows?”

“It’s hard to explain. Just come and see.”

“So about Reyes, you knew him a little. Rumor is he was trying to get into the MexSal Saints. Was he?”

Paco rubbed his hand across his cheek as he considered. “Maybe. He was lost here, lonely. He was a country boy from El Salvador. For me it is easier than for most of these men. I’m more American than Mexican. You can’t understand how foreign this world is to them.”

“Was Reyes a tough kid?”

“Depends what you mean by tough. To do what we do, to live like we live, you have to be tough. Was he tough tough, violent, I don’t think so. But, like I say, I don’t know him so well.”

“Was he strong?”

“Not very strong, no,” Paco said without hesitation. “He worked hard, but he wasn’t so strong. Why you interested?”

Joe slid one of the hundred dollar bills across the table to Paco. “That’s still my business, okay?”

“Okay, jefe.”

“Can you do some checking around for me, act as a translator if I need one? I’d like to meet his roommates, his buddies, find out as much about him as I can.”

“As long as the pay is good, I’ll check around. But how will I get in touch with you?”

“Here are my numbers,” Joe said, scribbling them out on a napkin. “Call me any time. Any time!”

“I got it, Joe.”

The waitress brought their eggs, Paco eyeing Miguel’s unspoken for platter. Joe noticed, but didn’t say a word.

Bob Healy had slept well, maybe better than he had since burying Mary, but as he closed the morning paper, his coffee turned sour in his mouth. Maybe, he thought, his newfound comfort had come a bit prematurely. There was plenty of mention of the Knicks new President of Operations, Isiah Thomas. The names Bush, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz got lots of play. Yet no matter how many times he went through the paper, Healy could find no mention of Jean Michel Toussant. Unlike Serpe, Healy was unnerved by this.

Healy dialed the D.A.’s office. George was in, but didn’t give his big brother any reason for optimism. As far as he knew, the Suffolk cops didn’t have Toussant, nor did Nassau’s finest. There was a chance that the state police might have him, maybe even the park police. He’d have to check.

“Gimme an hour.”

Bob Healy didn’t like having to wait, but he had no other options. A man with all the time in the world hates waiting most of all.

Joe dialed Marla’s cell phone. They hadn’t spoken since Tuesday. Marla was right in her assessment of him. Several times during the week, he had considered canceling their date, pushing her away. But somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The thought of her made him a little lightheaded. She didn’t pick up. He left a message:

“How about Mexican food and a show? Call me. By the way, I’ve got a surprise for you, sort of.”