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.”
