Ava was from the Midwest somewheres, Ohio maybe. Anyway, Collie used to bring her over to the house for holidays when she couldn’t afford to go back home. Ava began dating this really good guy, Brad. Athletic, smart, respectful; a man not unlike you, a man with a plan. We had him over to the house, too. Frankly, I wished he was dating my daughter.
“Then in sophomore year, things changed. Collie was home for spring break. She and her boyfriend were going on a double date with Ava. Mary and me just assumed it was gonna be Ava and Brad. We got some surprise when the car pulled up in front of the house. It was like one of those weird old Chevies with a sparkly green paint job that sat like six inches off the ground. What do they call those things?”
“Out west we call them lowriders,” Strohmeyer said through clenched teeth.
“That’s it. That’s right. So, Ava and this little guy come bouncing out of the car. He doesn’t shake my hand, asks for a beer, and screams at my daughter to hurry up.”
“Did you throw the little cocksucker out of your house?”
“Didn’t have to. One look at this guy and Colleen’s boyfriend says they’re running late and that they’ll meet them at the restaurant.”
“What happened to your daughter’s friend?”
“The guy knocked her up and abandoned her. After that, we kind of lost track of Ava. I can’t help but wonder about her sometimes.”
Peter Strohmeyer Jr. slammed his good hand against the dashboard. “Fuck, that’s what I told Cathy was going to happen to her, but she won’t listen to me, Bob. She won’t even talk to me anymore.”
“You wanna tell me about it?”
“I can’t. My father says a man deals with his troubles by himself.”
“Hey, Pete, no disrespect to your father, but I’m a dad, too. I’ve made a lot of bad decisions and given my kids some awful advice. Fathers don’t know as much as you think. And besides, you’re your own man now. Don’t you think there are some things you can make your own decisions about?”
He hesitated. “I guess you’re right.”
“I’m listening.”
And listen he did.
It wasn’t a very remarkable story. Pete Jr. had met Cathy at a bar in Selden. She was pretty, bright, and worldly, more worldly than the girls he knew back in Arizona. She had grown up in Manhattan and was in her first year at Touro Law School. To keep her expenses at a minimum, she was living with an aunt in Ronkonkoma and working as a bartender on the weekends. To hear Peter tell it, Cathy was the one. The feeling wasn’t exactly mutual. She liked him well enough. The sex had been unbelievable-though he admitted to not having had a whole lot of previous experience. Healy recalled the first time he had mistaken sex for love and how deeply it had hurt. But sympathy was something he couldn’t afford to offer at the moment.
“So what happened?”
“She told me she didn’t want to date me anymore, that it was okay for us to hang out sometimes, even for us to fuck once in a while if we both felt like it.”
“What did you say?”
“What could I say? I didn’t want to lose her. And I guess I understood where she was coming from. I think she wanted-”
“Okay, Pete, she’s the best thing since Paris Hilton, but it sounds to me like you’re gonna start making excuses for her.”
“Sorry.”
“No apologies necessary, but something else musta happened.”
“I followed her. You get pretty good at it, doing this patrolling and all. And my father taught me how to be a good hunter.”
Strohmeyer Jr. explained that he spent days following her around and that he was pretty convinced their breakup wasn’t about another man. Then, on Valentine’s Day, he decided he’d try a grand gesture. He waited in the bar parking lot for the end of her shift, two dozen boxed red roses on the seat next to him, and an engagement ring in his jacket pocket. But when Cathy came out of the bar she was holding hands with this bar back, Garcia. They went to her car. He watched them makeout, watched her go down on him.
Healy thought the kid would explode. Apparently, that’s exactly what he had done. Strohmeyer yanked Garcia, his pants still unzipped, out of the car and proceeded to knock him around the parking lot. A crowd started forming and Cathy barely stopped him from killing the guy. Healy asked if that was how he had really hurt his hand.
“No. I went to her aunt’s house in Ronkonkoma few nights later to try and explain, to apologize.”
Healy felt he was almost there. Just another little push…
“Apologize! What did you have to apologize for?”
“I still love her.”
“Yeah, you still love her and some Mexican’s dicking her up the ass.”
Strohmeyer jerked the steering wheel hard right, the car bouncing off the curb. When it came to rest, he stuffed the transmission into park.
“You must have been pretty furious when she told you to get out, that she never wanted to see you again,” Healy kept at him. “I wanted to kill her.”
“But you didn’t kill her. You were out of your mind when you got back into your car. What did you do then Pete? You went hunting, didn’t you? Hunting for the first wetback you could find.”
“Get out, Bob!”
“What did you do when you found him, Pete?”
“Get out now!”
“You beat him up bad, but you couldn’t stop yourself.”
“Get the fuck out!” Strohmeyer screamed, grabbing Healy by the throat. His grip was solid steel.
Healy, always blessed with arms too long for his body, chopped his left fist down into Pete’s groin. That took the wind out of Pete’s sails, enough so that Healy could free himself of the kid’s grip. Healy pushed his back against the passenger door, but didn’t get out nor did he go for his. 38.
“Sorry, kid,” Healy apologized. “I just think you should get it off your chest.”
“I can’t,” he said, some of the color draining back into his face. “I just can’t.”
Experience had taught Healy when to push and when to stop pushing. He decided he wasn’t going to get anymore out of Strohmeyer Jr. tonight.
He extended his right hand. “Okay, I understand. Maybe you will have to deal with it yourself. Let’s forget about it and finish up the shift. Tomorrow night, we won’t even discuss it. But if you ever do want to talk about it, I’m up for it.”
Pete took Bob’s hand. “I’m sorry too. It’s just that when I think about Cathy, I get a little.”
“Trust me, kid. We’ve all been there.”
They spent the next two hours together in near silence. Officer Martinez was right, it was a night for staying home and getting under the covers with someone warm. There’s nothing like dark, empty streets to remind a man of his loneliness.
Wednesday,March 3rd, 2004
T here are phrases we hear all the time that we accept without bothering to consider. How many times, Joe Serpe wondered as he opened his eyes to a new day of excruciating pain, had he heard it said that someone was kept in the hospital overnight for observation? He had an image in his mind of having woken in the middle of the night.
Nurse, what are you doing? Observing you, of course.
Joe might even have laughed had the clamp crushing his skull loosened just a notch. Still, as bad as the pain
