Cain didn’t pick his head up until Frank and Joe had locked the yard gates behind them. He listened to their cars pulling away. His heart was still racing from when Joe had heard him slip. Joe had shined the flashlight right over his head. That Joe hadn’t seen him filled Cain with a kind of pride. His special hiding spot was so good that not even a real detective could find him. When the swell of pride vanished, Cain began to panic.
He knew Frank wouldn’t fire him if he could just talk to him. Frank understood better than anybody the way it was with Cain, how he acted bad sometimes. The thing was, he hadn’t wanted to talk in front of Joe Serpe. He thought Joe was still mad at him from when he had Frank take him off the tugboat. Frank swore up and down that Joe wasn’t mad at him, that he had problems of his own. But Cain was smart enough to know people didn’t tell the truth sometimes when they didn’t want to hurt your feelings. He also knew that like his parents, people got rid of you when they were mad at you. Or, like Mr. French, they just hit you.
Now what was he going to do? He was getting so cold and hungry and everybody was going to be mad at him. Cain knew what would happen if he didn’t get back to the group home soon. They would call his parents and they would get real mad. The people at the home were probably already mad, because they got in trouble when the tards ran away. Sometimes, no matter why you ran, they sent you to a new place. They couldn’t do that to him, not this time. He had a real job, one he loved. He had Frank.
Cain noticed that tears were pouring out of his eyes and his nose was so stuffed he could hardly breathe right. He was shaking, his chest heaving. The thought of losing everything he had worked so hard for was too much to take. He had finally found a place where he belonged, where his being slow didn’t mean so much. Cain knew there was only one thing to do. He had to get back to the home. That’s what Frank would want him to do, to be a man.
Then, just as he began to crawl out from his special hiding place, he heard a rattling from the big padlock and thick chain that held the gate shut. He heard voices. He scooted back in his secret niche and listened. Now he knew what to do to set things right. No one would be mad at him anymore.
It was near 11:00 when Frank and Joe shook hands goodnight.
“Shit,” Frank said, trying to focus on his watch. “It’s Valentine’s Day. My wife’s gonna kill me. I hope those roses I sent her will do the trick.”
“Good luck.”
“You’re pretty fucked up, Joe. You gonna be okay to drive?”
“It’s only a few blocks. I’ll be fine.”
“Famous last words.”
“God wouldn’t let me off that easy, Frank.”
“See ya Monday morning.”
“Monday,” Joe repeated, beginning to walk to his car. “Hey,” he stopped, calling to Frank. “You ever hear from the kid today?”
“Nah.”
“I still feel bad about throwing him off-”
“Forget it, Joe. Get some sleep.”
Cain’s eyes fluttered. Face down in a few inches of yellow-dyed diesel, he should have been coughing but couldn’t. He wasn’t breathing very well either. It was the weirdest thing. He knew he should be in a lot of pain, but he just wasn’t. He had been beat up real bad, so bad he couldn’t remember much. He was cold mostly. Only his head hurt a little. He knew he should have been scared, but he wasn’t.
He had better get up, he thought. He couldn’t move. His hands and feet wouldn’t work. Now he panicked. He tried screaming.
“Frank!”
But when he opened his mouth, diesel rushed in. He couldn’t cough. He was drowning from inside and out. His eyes were stinging and the taste of the diesel was hard to take. His tongue was thick and slow.
“Frank!” he tried again.
Again the diesel rushed in and he couldn’t spit it back out.
He moved the only part of him that worked anymore. He banged his head against the tank as hard as he could, hoping morning had come and that Frank or Joe could hear him. He split his scalp wide open, his blood mixing into the diesel.
Silence.
He stopped banging. Even if morning had come, no one would be there. It was Sunday. The panic was gone.
Thursday,The Day of the Funeral, February 19th, 2004
B ob Healy didn’t bother waiting to get back into the house to unfurl his Newsday. Normally he’d check the sports headlines before scanning the front page, but the Knicks could wait. No, there was a story he’d been following since Monday morning when he saw the first reports on News Channel 12. It was tragedy enough that the poor retarded boy had been murdered and tossed into an oil tank to rot, but there was another aspect of the case that Healy couldn’t get his head around. Initially, he hadn’t made the connection between the victim, Joe Serpe, and Mayday Fuel.
Then it clicked.
The murder was headline material again today:
NO LEADS
Funeral Later Today
Bob Healy crossed himself. Seeing Joe Serpe on Saturday had gotten to him. Maybe it was because that day had been so cold, so haunting, so full of Mary’s absence. For whatever reason, Healy had taken Joe Serpe’s appearance at his doorstep as a sign. He had wanted to talk to Serpe on Saturday, to say some things that needed to be said, but old ways die hard. Healy couldn’t help but treat Serpe with the practiced condescension he’d cultivated over his years in Internal Affairs. Before Healy could change his tune, Serpe’s truck was rumbling down the street.
He hadn’t slept at all well that night, going over his cases in his head. Until Mary’s death, Healy hadn’t been much of a second-guesser. It didn’t suit him or his career in I.A.B. But since he had seen Joe “the Snake”, all Bob had done was second-guess himself. In a lightless, lonely bedroom in the midst of a snowstorm, there’s time enough to dissect the individual molecules of a case; time to rehash every decision, every question, every unkindness.
Healy went to Mass the following day, confessed his sins, took communion. He went on Monday as well, but found neither solace nor answers in the words of the priest nor in the serenely frozen face of the crucified Jesus. Then, when he got home and flipped on cable to see the story of the murder in the oil yard, Bob Healy knew what he had to do. He would have to meet with Joe Serpe. Not only was it the right thing to do, but Mary would have demanded it.
He scanned the articles in the paper, ignoring his cooling coffee. There it was, the detail he’d been searching for. He tore the article out of the paper, put his mug in the sink, and went upstairs to shower. He had to be at Mass in twenty minutes.
Joe and Frank came in separate cars, but they met in the parking lot at Kaplan Brothers. Joe was surprised to see Frank alone. He had just assumed Frank would bring Tina.
“The wife’s not feelin’ too good,” Frank volunteered before Joe had a chance to ask.
It was a lie. Joe could see it in Frank’s face, could hear it in his voice. He knew it was a lie just like he knew it was a lie when his snitches would look him right in the eye and swear they weren’t using or dealing. It was pro forma. I say X and you say Y. I cha cha and you cha cha cha. Joe sometimes wondered why people went through that song and dance bullshit. He wasn’t pointing fingers. He had been just as guilty of it as anyone. Maybe it was a basic human instinct, he thought, the need for preliminaries before the main bout.