“Leave that to me,” Serpe said. “There’s more.”
“There’s more?”
“Reyes.”
“What about him?”
“George called me just before you got here,” Healy said. “And they did find someone else’s blood in the splatter samples at the murder scene, but they weren’t Pete Jr.’s. They’re from a John Doe of Slavic descent.”
“From Mr. Kazakstan and Ilana at the Blue Fountain, to Tatiyana, to the dead whore, to Reyes’ murder, to Black Sea Energy on Brighton Beach Avenue, this shit screams Russian mob.”
“So, should we bring it to the-”
Serpe slammed his hand on the table. “No! Not yet. You ever work a task force with the feds?”
“One.”
“Did they take all the credit?” Serpe asked.
“There was no credit to take. We didn’t make the case.”
“Who got the blame?”
“We did. I guess I see your point,” Healy admitted.
“Well, take my word for it, the feds’ll fuck everything up. They can’t help themselves, because even if their intentions are good, their priorities are always different than yours. Their focus is always the big picture. The second they’d get a hold of this, they’d make a deal with Scanlon to flip on his partners and we’d never find out what happened to Cain, the Reyes kid, or to Frank. And those are things I need to know.”
“But-”
“But nothing, Bob,” Joe said, waving the article about the dead prostitute in Healy’s face. “Look, these guys are already starting to cover their tracks. This chick is dead. My bet is Tatiyana will be soon-if she isn’t already. They probably had a hand in what’s going on with Frank and they tried to run me off the road and they killed my cat. If they get even a whiff that this is anything more than two washed-up ex-cops stumbling around in the dark, they’ll slash and burn any ties they have to this. No, we have to move ahead the way we’ve been going. It’s coming to a head, anyway. You go talk to that Schwartz guy today and I’ll try and find out how Scanlon went from retired fireman to oil magnate in three easy steps.”
“All right,” Healy said. “I’m willing to give it another few days, but that’s it. At some point, we’re going to need the cavalry.”
“Agreed.”
Healy excused himself, went upstairs and came back down in less than five minutes. He had a bag in his hand.
“Take this,” he said, handing it to Serpe. “I bought it for my son years ago when I hoped he might take the test to get on the job. He didn’t want any part of it or the job.”
Serpe knew what it was before he took it out of the bag.
“You know I’m not licensed to carry anymore.”
“I know better than anybody. Just take it and be careful. There’s a box of cartridges in there too.”
“Thanks, Healy,” he said placing the Glock back in the bag and tucking it under his arm. “I’ll return it when this shit is over with.”
“Keep it. If anyone catches you with it, I’ll just say you stole the damn thing.”
“Fuck you.” But Serpe was laughing when he said it.
Healy was laughing, too, as he shook Joe Serpe’s hand. “Let’s talk tonight and see where we are, okay?”
“You got it. Good luck.”
“Yeah, same to you.”
Joe Serpe pulled onto the service road along Sunrise Highway in Bayshore. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find at the Blue Fountain Motel. Somewhere in the back of his mind he guessed he hoped he’d have the good fortune to find Tatiyana working her special brand of video magic in room 217. He’d pay for her time and explain to her about what had happened to the blond. Then he’d offer to protect her in exchange for her help. But he knew it was far more likely she was already dead. And when he saw the barricades in front of the motel’s driveway, he just knew whatever slim hopes he had of finding Tatiyana alive were gone.
There was a black kid posted by the barricade, pacing back and forth in the freezing cold. As soon as he rolled down his window, Serpe got a sense of what had gone on. The smell of smoke and burned plastic still hung heavy in the air.
“They closed. Open back up Monday.”
“Fire?” Joe said to the kid.
“Man, you figure dat shit out all by youself?”
“Anybody hurt?”
“Nah, not too much damage neitha. Only a coupla rooms.”
“Let me guess, rooms 216, 217, and 218, right?” Now the kid stared at Joe with big eyes. “How you know dat shit?”
“They’re my lucky numbers, kid.”
As he pulled down Sunrise Highway, he dialed information on his cell phone. He needed to chat with Captain Kelly, Vinny’s old commanding officer.
Bob Healy was as guilty of stereotyping as the next guy. He had envisioned David Schwartz as a Hasid with a shield. But the man who stood up from the booth at the Sheepshead Bay Diner and offered his hand to Healy looked a lot like Mr. Clean. Schwartz stood a good six foot three with football pad shoulders and a thirty inch waist. He had a shaved head and a neat, reddish moustache. His jaw was square, his neck was thick, but he had a kind smile and gentle blue eyes.
“Detective Healy?” Schwartz asked as a matter of courtesy.
“You can give me my hand back now, Schwartz. Jesus, how did you ever find baseball gloves that fit?”
“Didn’t use one. Caught the ball with my teeth.”
They both had a laugh at that as they settled into their seats. Schwartz flagged down the waitress and Healy ordered coffee. The waitress rolled her eyes at him. “Cops!” she whispered to herself.
“So Skip Rodriguez tells me you need some information,” Schwartz said after the waitress delivered the coffee.
“Yeah, I’m helping out a friend that got into some shit and now he’s nipple deep in it. Another few days and it’ll be over his head.”
“I take it this shit your buddy stepped in has something to do with the Russians, or Skip wouldn’t have called me. That much I can figure on my own, but if you want my help, you’re gonna have to-”
“Black Sea Energy,” Healy blurted out.
Schwartz didn’t say a word, not immediately. The corners of his mouth and eyes, however, took a decided upturn.
“This friend of yours, he own a gas station?” the detective wondered.
“Close. He’s in the home heating oil business out in Suffolk County. How’d you know?”
“Black Sea Energy used to own a shitload of gas stations throughout the New York Metropolitan area. Now they basically do trucking and hauling and own a petroleum terminal.”
“They dirty?”
“Nope. If anything, they’re too fucking clean. They’re owned by two Ukranian Jews who emigrated here in the late 70s.”
“Connected?”
“It’s hard to tell. You’ve gotta understand, the Russian mob is organized crime, but it isn’t organized like the Mafia or the drug cartels. There really isn’t even a mob, per se, but a sort of loose conglomeration of different organizations. There’s no Carlo Gambino sitting at the head of the table or Pablo Escobar handing down orders from on high in Colombia. Although in this area many of the players are Jews, they’re not all Jews by a longshot. Many are from the former Soviet Republics like Georgia, the Ukraine, Kazakstan-places like that.
“Under the old Soviet system, the black market was a way of life. Everybody was involved in it one way or the other. Government officials were involved at every level, either looking the other way or getting their cut. Plus, it’s kind of difficult to get reliable police records from the Soviet era. Their justice system was so politicized, it’s difficult to know, even if we can obtain the files, whether they’ve been tainted, rewritten, faked…
“So you see, when two guys show up here in Brighton Beach one day and start opening up gas stations, it’s difficult to know exactly where their money came from. It’s not necessarily dirty money. Look, when my grandparents came over, they were part of a group that pooled monies from people from their old villages and made loans to start new businesses. That’s how the Pakistanis and Koreans do it now. It’s how the Turks and Arabs buy gas stations.”
“But sometimes the money is dirty,” Healy said. “Oh yeah. A load of it is dirty rubles getting scrubbed into nice clean dollar bills. The reason there’s always been suspicions about Black Sea is that one of the biggest scams the Russians used to pull was tax fraud on gasoline. Somehow, Black Sea Energy was never caught,” said Schwartz.