Reed Coleman - Hose monkey

“No, but I’ll ask around. Professional ethics don’t allow me to question any of the residents, and I wouldn’t in any case. But…” Marla smiled that infectious crooked smile, her eyes lighting up. “Gossip among the staff at these homes is what keeps people coming to work day after day. A lot of the staff has worked in other places, worked for different agencies. Many times they’ve crossed paths before. Maybe some of them have been on staff with Jean Michel somewhere else. Have you got a card?”

Joe laughed. “Oil drivers give out refrigerator magnets, not cards.”

Marla slid a pen and her drink napkin across the table to Joe. “Write down the numbers where I can reach you.”

He hesitated, then felt compelled to explain about Vinny’s voice on the answering machine.

“You probably think I’m nuts,” he said, sliding the pen and napkin back her way.

“No,” she said, “I think you’re mourning. There’s no twenty-four second clock for grief.”

“Christ, women and sports analogies,” he chided. “I deserved that.”

They never ordered dinner. Two rounds of drinks later, they were standing in the parking lot. The snow had stopped, but had left a thin white blanket in its wake.

“You haven’t asked to see me again,” Marla said, writing her name in the snow on the hood of the car. “I know you want to.”

“Pretty confident, aren’t you?”

“It’s not like reading tea leaves, Joe. If you’re trying to hide your attraction, you’re doing a shitty job of it.”

“I’m not trying to hide anything, but-”

“I get that this is the part where you try to push me away,” she said.

“I just come with a lot of baggage is all.”

“We all do.”

“Some more than others. I’m pretty well damaged goods and-”

“Shhh.” Marla pressed her index finger across his lips. “Damage is a two-way street, Joe.” She stood on her toes and placed her lips softly against his. Just as quickly, she pulled back. “My career is all about damage. I’m not afraid of it.”

“You can’t fix me,” he heard himself say.

“I don’t know you. And I couldn’t fix you even if I wanted to. For now, I’d just like it if you’d kiss me.”

T he tugboat seemed to glide. The stops came easy, went fast. Joe smiled when passing drivers, stuck for several minutes behind his soot belching truck, gave him the finger as they passed. And all because he’d kissed a girl. That’s as far as it had gone, as far as he was willing to let it go. They’d stood there for an hour talking, kissing again, talking some more. She thought he looked like De Niro.

“You talkin’ ta me?”

“Not ‘Taxi Driver,’ De Niro. Ich! ‘Heat’ De Niro.”

That’s what she’d thought when she looked back and noticed him at the chapel. He wasn’t about to argue the point, though he didn’t see it himself. Frankly, he didn’t care if Marla thought he was a dead ringer for a horse’s ass, as long as she was partial to horses asses.

It was about 3:00 PM. Joe had seventeen stops behind him with another seven to go. He was heading up to Commack from Bayshore along Crooked Hill Road when, just south of Suffolk County Community College, his winning streak came to an abrupt end. He had seen the unmarked Crown Vic in his sideview mirror when he passed St. Andrew, but paid it little mind. The tugboat could barely make the speed limit, let alone speed. Besides, he just figured it was an unmarked trooper on his way to the barracks along the Sagtikos Parkway.

The siren broke Joe’s reverie and the display of lights were several months too late for Christmas. Serpe pulled over to let the Crown Vic by. The Vic wasn’t having any. The cop at the wheel did a rather too dramatic skid in front of the tugboat.

“Asshole,” Joe muttered, already scrambling to get his license, the truck registration and insurance, and bills of lading to account for all the oil he had on board.

By the time he had collected his paperwork, the two cops were almost to the driver’s side door of the old Mack. Their faces were familiar and definitely unwelcome.

Detective Hoskins pounded on the door. “Outta the truck, shithead.”

Joe complied, full documentation in hand. “What the fuck?” He handed the paperwork to the detective who, in turn, handed it to Kramer.

Kramer smirked, nodded and began strolling around the truck.

“Gotta love Suffolk County, they even make Homicide detectives do traffic stops. I guess they want you to earn that hundred grand plus, huh?”

Serpe knew he should just keep his yap shut, but couldn’t resist. The disparity in pay between city cops and Suffolk cops was a real sore point. Though it was only about thirty miles from the Queens border east across Nassau to the border of Suffolk Count-they might as well have been light years apart. They call the NYPD “New York’s Finest,” but they’re paid like New York’s finest migrant workers. Suffolk cops, on the other hand, were the highest paid police force in the state, maybe in the nation. It was perverse, almost inversely proportional to the threat level faced by the members of each force.

“It’s bad enough that I have to listen to that horseshit from my neighbors on the job in the city, but at least they’re cops,” Hoskins barked. “From the likes of you…” He spit on Joe’s boots.

Joe was tempted to wipe the spit off on Hoskins’ polyester pants by thrusting his boot into the detective’s groin. He couldn’t afford to be weak, not this time. Serpe didn’t need to be a theoretical physicist to figure out the mechanics of what was going on, that Ken Bergman from the group home had dropped a dime on him.

Joe knew he was taking a risk by freelancing, but he didn’t figure he’d get ratted out in less than twelve hours. It dawned on him that if he intended to take this thing any further, he was going to have to be more cautious, maybe even get a little backup.

“All right, guys, I get the point,” Joe surrendered, figuring to speed up the process of intimidation. “I fucked up. I shouldn’t have stuck my nose in.”

“What the hell you talkin’ about, Snake?” Hoskins chided. “Hey, Kramer, you know what this guy’s talkin’ about? We’re stoppin’ you for violations. Then, when we’re done writin’ you up, we’re gonna give you a police escort over to the D.O.T. checkpoint on Wicks Road. Over there, they’re gonna write you so many violations on this piece a shit you call a truck, both you and your boss are gonna have to take out second mortgages.”

The D.O.T., a trucker’s worst nightmare. The cops were hairy enough, but getting stopped by the Department of Transportation was the ultimate bureaucratic cluster fuck. They went over every inch of your vehicle: from tire tread to turn signals, from air horn to air brakes, from mirrors to manifolds. Then they ran your license, inspected your paperwork, matched your trip sheet against your bills of lading. Since 9/11 it had only gotten worse. The government had made a point of cracking down not only on vehicles that carried hazardous materials, but also on the men and women licensed to drive them.

“What you got, Kramer?” Hoskins was getting impatient. “Big stuff, Tim,” Detective Kramer called back to his partner. “Oh yeah, like what?”

“Better come see for yourself.”

When Hoskins and Joe Serpe got to the back of the truck, Kramer was fanning himself with three tickets.

“These are for you,” Kramer said, handing the three citations over to Serpe.

Joe scanned them and laughed. They were all trumped up bullshit, but he found one of the alleged violations particularly amusing. “Dirty taillights, huh?”