“Last stop. Whose turn?”
“Yours.”
They got out of the car and strode into the office. The name of the motel didn’t matter. Whether it was the Blue Fountain or the Spinnaker or the Lighthouse, these places were all pretty much the same-long rows of low slung concrete boxes with beds, bathrooms, and porno channels. The offices were interchangeable as well. The one at the Blue Fountain was no exception. It featured more bulletproof glass than a small bank. There were signs posted all over the place explaining everything from acceptable means of payment to how to use the hot tubs. It kind of reminded Joe of the Suffolk County Jail, only less inviting.
“Hey!” Joe rapped on the glass, holding up the replica of his old detective’s shield that Marla had retrieved from his dresser.
The sloe-eyed, middle-aged man at the desk was so intimidated he nearly fell asleep. He did put his magazine down as a small concession to Joe and Bob’s presence.
“Can I chelp you, officers,” the desk clerk asked in a vaguely Russian accent.
“Detectives!” Serpe corrected.
“Vatever. You are long vay from chome, no? You are New York City police.”
“A long way from home,” Serpe mocked. “Look who’s talking. Where you from, Moscow?”
“Kazakstan.”
“Thanks for the geography lesson. You ever see this guy here?” Serpe asked, sliding a copy of Frank’s picture through a slot in the partition.
He didn’t bother looking. “No.”
“Look at the picture, comrade!” Healy barked.
He looked this time. Healy thought he saw a faint, fleeting glimmer of recognition in the clerk’s eyes, but he couldn’t be sure. It was just a flash.
“No.” He slid the picture back out.
“You’re sure?” Joe said.
“Many people come to motel. Ve look at their money not their faces. They return key, don’t steal towels, is all ve care.”
“How many other people work the desk?”
The clerk had enough talking for the time being and held up two fingers.
“Okay, I’m gonna leave this picture with you to show the other clerks,” Joe said, jotting down his cell phone number on the back of Frank’s photo. He slid it back through the partition. “Anyone remembers anything, have them give me a call. You mind if we look around, talk to the housekeepers?”
“Go, but don’t bother the guests.”
“Thanks.”
They walked down the four rows of rooms. Only ten had cars out front. They found the housekeeper, a fat, sixty year old woman from Guatemala eating in one of the vacant rooms. She was no help, spoke more Russian than English, and she didn’t recognize Frank from Frank Sinatra.
As they walked back to Healy’s car, Joe hesitated in front of one the rooms. Healy was worried Serpe might be getting sick again.
“What’s up? You okay?”
“Yeah, my head’s feeling a little better, but that’s not it. Forget it. I thought I had something, but it’s gone. I guess my head’s gonna take some time to unscramble.”
They continued on, leaving behind the black SUV parked in front of room 217.
Back in Healy’s car and heading to Serpe’s apartment, they got down to discussing their favorite desk clerk from Kazakstan.
“So?”
“I think he’s full a shit,” Healy said. “I thought he recognized Frank.”
“Me too.”
“So, okay, let’s see what we got. Frank’s cheating on his wife. Maybe he’s getting blackmailed, maybe he’s not. Toussant’s murdered, if not by Frank, then by his gun. He’s willing to take a murder rap to protect someone, but you don’t think it’s his wife.”
“You sound skeptical,” Joe said.
“Sorry, Joe, but it doesn’t hang together. It seems like there’s two, maybe three completely separate things going on here and I don’t see how you can tie them up in any way that makes sense.”
“I know.”
“You may not wanna hear what I have to say next,” Healy warned.
“Never stopped you before.”
“Bottom line?”
“Bottom line.”
“You don’t need any wild theories, magic bullets, or anything else to make sense of it.”
“Then what do I need?” Joe asked. “To believe Frank did it.”
Joe crashed: too tired to think, almost too tired to breathe. There is a dimension of the womb in the surrender to exhaustion. He surrendered, falling into bed and letting the warmth and comfort of his weariness wash over him, pull him under and consume him. But only one sleep lasts forever and tonight was not the occasion for his. No, tonight he would be spit out, returned to finish what he had started.
When he opened his eyes he noticed the answering machine light flashing, flashing. He checked the clock. It was 9:27. His headache, though not completely gone, was now of human proportion. He almost smiled. He’d had sinus headaches worse than this. He had lived through those.
He pressed play.
You have two messages. First message:
It was a woman. Marla? Not Marla, Tina. She was crying, but not just crying. It was worse than crying. She was choking. Fighting herself, forcing herself to speak, to try to speak. He could make out her saying Joe. She didn’t seem to be able to get beyond his name. Click.
Second message:
Same as the first, but Tina was winning the battle. If not winning, then fighting herself to a standstill. “Joe,” she said more clearly now. “Frank tried to…” That was as far as she got for ten seconds or so, choking up again. “He tried to hang himself. In jail, he tried to hang himself. They airlifted him to Stony Brook.” Click.
Joe grabbed his keys and ran out to the driveway. Twenty seconds later, he was back inside dialing a car service.
Pete Jr.’s demeanor was more like the night they first met at Jerry’s Joint. Healy remembered a department shrink once using the term “flat affect.” Well, that seemed to pretty much sum up the face Strohmeyer Jr. was showing the world this evening. It was more than just his expression, or lack thereof. He barely spoke to Bob. And for two hours they drove the streets of Farmingville and Ronkonkoma in the kind of silence long-married couples grow accustomed to.
“I’m sorry about last night, kid,” Healy said in hopes of getting the ball rolling.
Another half-hour passed before Pete Jr. made a sound. The silence and his own fatigue had lulled Healy into a kind of stupor. That, and the fact that he wasn’t as familiar with the streets in this part of Suffolk as Serpe might be, were responsible for him not noticing the kid had strayed off course.
They had turned north off Horseblock, up a huge hill and down the other side. Eventually they came to a wide, well lit boulevard Healy guessed was Middle Country Road, but further east than he tended to travel. The kid doused the headlights and let the car drift to the curb. He killed the engine. If there was something special to see, Healy was missing it.
“That’s the Blind Pig,” Pete Jr. said, pointing across the street.
If that was supposed to mean something, once again Healy failed to recognize its significance. Because of last night and his long day of checking out motels with Joe Serpe, he already felt off and slow-witted.
“I love her, Bob. I try not to, but when I try it just gets worse.”
Now Healy caught on. They were parked across the street from the bar where Cathy worked. Junior was obsessed with her. Bob had been in the same place once upon a time. Many years ago, he had stood across the street from an old girlfriend’s house, watching, praying, planning. Most men had been there. Men are fragile things.
