Hoskins got up close to Serpe. “Listen, cunt, no one’s here to step between us now. The Heeb ain’t here and neither is that other cunt, Healy. So it’s just you and me, boyo.”
“What about it?”
“How fucking stupid do you think I am, Snake?”
“Got an hour?”
“That’s right, have a laugh, but I know things. Maybe your boss-”
“Ex-boss,” Serpe corrected.
“Whatever. Maybe he did kill the nigger. The evidence sure points that way. Personally, I don’t give a shit-as far as I could tell, he needed killing. But Frank Randazzo didn’t find Toussant on his own, not unless they teach skip-tracing in truck drivers’ school. Do they teach you that there, Snake?”
“I didn’t go to school.”
“Yeah you did, the school of the streets. The best kinda school. The kinda school where you learn to track people down who ain’t interested in being found. So, you gonna let Frankie boy twist in the wind like you let Ralphy twist or, for once in your miserable fucking life, are you gonna stand up and take the rap?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Okay, Serpe. Just like I thought. You’re still a cowardly cunt. Just remember I gave you a chance to do the right thing here. I’m gonna nail your ass to the wall. Remember that.” Hoskins turned to walk away.
“Hey Hoskins,” Joe snapped at him.
“What?”
“I want you to remember something, too.”
“I’m listening.”
“The time’s gonna come when this shit will all be cleared up. And when that happens, I want you to call your dentist.”
“What the fuck you on about now? Why should I call my dentist?”
“Because if you talk to me like that again, I’m gonna kick your teeth out through your ass. Remember that!”
Joe turned, walked back inside his apartment and slammed his door shut.
Monday Evening,March 1st, 2004
H ealy showed up. There was never any doubt that he would. But as he approached the VFW hall, a frail looking woman in her late sixties walked up to him. She handed him a slip of paper with an address on it. “What’s this?”
“I recognize you from this morning,” she said. “You’re the one that got into a shoving match with the wetback.”
“That was me.”
She pointed at the slip of paper. “It’s a precaution against the media. They try to come to our meetings all the time, distort our point of view. You go on over to that address. You’ll be okay.”
“Thanks.”
Ten minutes later and two villages away, Bob Healy found himself outside a run-down tavern on a dead end street. It was an old fashioned bar built out of the first floor of a house. The flickering neons in the front window were collectors items, touting beers like Ballentine Ale and Rheingold. The wood sign in the parking lot had made a lot of termites happy for a long time. The place was not called the Dew Drop Inn, but it should have been. It’s actual name, Jerry’s Joint, was such a disappointment.
In any case, the parking lot was full and cars lined both sides of the curb, halfway up the street. There was a burly, linebacker type at the door collecting the strips of paper the woman had handed out at the VFW hall.
“Paper,” he barked at Healy.
Bob patted down his pockets. “Left it in the car.”
“Go get it!”
“I’ll be right back.” He started for the car. “Wait!” Pete Strohmeyer called out. “Come on back, Bob.” Healy turned around to see Strohmeyer standing next to the linebacker.
“He’s okay, son,” Strohmeyer vouched. “Let him in.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you. See you inside, Bob.”
Jerry’s Joint harkened back to old Suffolk County, before it had been transformed from potato and sod farms to golf courses and vinyl-sided McMansions. There was a dart board, a pool table, and enough taxidermy on the walls to please the most ardent hunter. There were black and white pictures of roadside produce stands, men on fishing docks astride their catches of the day, clean-shaven men in military dress. The bar itself was strictly 40s and 50s: Bakelite and Formica. The stools were chrome and red vinyl.
The pool table had been shoved to one side and a few rows of folding chairs had been neatly arranged in front of a rostrum. A red, white and blue banner hung on the wall behind the rostrum. DON’T TREAD ON ME formed the top half of a circle in the middle of the banner. AMERICA FOR AMERICANS formed the lower half of the circle. At the center of the circle was a silhouette of the flag being raised at Iwo Jima.
But this wasn’t a clan rally. No crosses were burning. No one was foaming at the mouth, no one was chanting racist slogans. There was no shouting at all, or even much drinking, as far as Healy could tell. What Healy saw was a room full of people not unlike himself: white, middle-class, and confused. They were worried, unprepared for the changes in their corner of the world. When these people had purchased their homes ten, twenty, thirty years ago, they couldn’t have imagined a scenario where a forgettable little hamlet in central Suffolk County would become the focus of national attention.
He didn’t sense hate in the room, but fear. He understood that fear was like heated metal, something that in the hands of a skilled smithy could be molded or cast into almost any shape. Given the right conditions, fear and hate weren’t so far apart.
He found a seat in the last row of folding chairs. There was a pamphlet on the seat just like the one Strohmeyer had given him that morning. Healy picked it up, shoved it in his pocket. Almost before he was fully settled, a woman sat down next to him. She was a handsome woman, with unpretentious gray hair that fell to her shoulders. Healy had always admired women who didn’t try to hide themselves. She had clear blue eyes and a proudly lined, unmade-up face, a pert nose and cushy lips. God, he thought, how long had it been since he even noticed another woman’s features?
“Hi, I’m Barbara,” she said, nervously offering her hand to Healy. “Christ, I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”
He took her hand. “Bob Healy.”
“A pleasure.”
“What did you mean about not knowing why-”
“Because I’m sympathetic to these day laborers, but I’m worried about my house. My husband died eight months ago and-”
“Sorry.”
“Thank you. But he didn’t leave any insurance and the house is basically all I’ve got.”
“Do you work?”
“Home Depot as a cashier. It’s okay, I guess, but I’ve got a girl in college and we’ve borrowed against the house. If the property values plunge, I’m screwed.”
Healy could hear the strain in her voice. He imagined Barbara was like most of the other folks in Jerry’s Joint, embarrassed. They were here because they didn’t know where else to go. It’s easy to judge people, put labels on them, but labels are often wrong. Now he almost felt guilty for his charade.
“How about you?” Barbara asked. “What about me?”
“Why are you here?”
