Fresh Kills (10 page)

“Artyom, this is how people feel about their children. You're not a pedophile, you don't want to sleep with the kid, you want to take care of him. I remember when my girls were little, I'd sit and stare at them and think how beautiful was their soft skin, and I would give them baths,” Tolya said. “I have a nephew, you don't know him, in Moscow, and it was like that with him also, when he was just before being a man and still a boy and had first little hairs on upper lip and I kiss him good night and I would think how wonderful he is. I didn't want to have sex. It doesn't mean that. Is OK. Is fine,” Tolya
said. “That's not all, is it? I mean, you want to tell me, or I can just go back in the bar.”

“He's here.”

“Where?”

“At my place.”

“How come?”

“You said it was OK to take care of him.”

“Yes, it's OK, but not to bring him here to New York to stay in your apartment. What happened? Where's his mother? Billy ran away?”

“They let him out for a couple of weeks. His parents are in London. I said I would take him just until Friday, and then he'll go to them. Billy's different now.”

“I believe you. You don't have to keep saying it. I believe.”

“You'll meet him, you'll see. I want you to meet him.”

“I'd like that,” Tolya said softly.

“Why were you worried he was at my place?”

“Because of his mother. Because of your half sister, Genia, who might be mad at you for stealing her boy. Her, or his father, Fat Johnny Farone.”

“I didn't steal him.”

“I mean metaphorically. That Billy loves you more than his own parents. I've met the parents,” Tolya said. “Even I would prefer you.”

“Thanks.”

“It's what you had to do,” he said. “It was the right thing, being with him. I just don't want you to have trouble with the parents, OK? That's all. So bring Billy to my place tomorrow, we'll make a New York brunch.”

“Thank you.”

“What is all this ‘thank you' bullshit? You're my friend.”

“I needed you to believe me,” I said to Tolya in Russian.

“I believe.”

“I'm scared someone wants Billy gone.”

“Serious?”

“I don't know.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Not yet.”

“So go home and take care of him. And come to my place tomorrow.”

“I told him we'd go fishing tomorrow.”

“So come first,” said Tolya. “I have great smoked salmon, best wild Norwegian that you can't get anywhere else. I have smuggled it in,” he added triumphantly as if it would taste better being illegal.

“I have to go.” I got up and looked for a cab. Tolya kissed me Russian style on the cheek three times.

“You're going to your apartment?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, this is good, you shouldn't leave him alone.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“Don't get mad with me,” Tolya said. “Billy has been away, he needs time to get used to being home with you and to the city, you said someone doesn't like him being here, so he needs you. Just take care of him.”

After the champagne I felt almost mellow, and when I found Sonny Lippert waiting for me near my apartment building by the river, I was OK with it.

It was going on midnight. Sonny wanted to talk about the case in Jersey, the kid who got killed and got her feet cut off, and the way it reminded him of the cold cases he could never forget. He was focused on a serial type thing, sure there was a string of murders dating back a decade.

We were neighbors, Sonny and me. He had moved to a building in Battery Park City first, before Maxine and I moved into ours a few blocks away. We didn't run into each other much, so I was surprised when I saw him.

With the Hudson behind us, we leaned against the railing. Sonny looked up at the apartment buildings clustered here, a few blocks west of what had been the World Trade Center and was now a hole in the ground.

“Listen, Art, man, I'm so sorry I was hounding you earlier. I'm fucked up with this case. I was waiting out here, hoping you'd come by, you know, so I could apologize. I get into that drift, you know, I get so fucked up with my past, thinking
about the old days, my parents, I dream about them, I dream about falling between the crack in their beds like I did when I was a kid, only I keep on falling, and there are these other little kids only they're missing limbs. Never mind. You think I'm fucking nuts, right?”

“Sonny, it's fine. Look, I'll come over one night and we can listen to some music, right? What do you need from me?”

“So I was waiting 'cause I wanted to apologize for the way I was with Billy Farone, I was just surprised to see him, you know, and also to ask you again if you could maybe help me out on Staten Island. This is for real, not to divert you from whatever you need to do or anything. It's just for Rhonda. She feels lousy that she didn't help these people, and there's nothing she can do and she's kind of obsessed with it. She already went and took food and money. The woman talks some English, but she needs someone who can speak the lingo. I don't even mind riding out with you, like tomorrow morning, for instance. I have someone I need to see anyhow. I could do that, Art. I know the lay of the land out there in Staten, if you want me to come.”

“So why don't you do it?”

“I can't get involved with Rhonda's personal stuff while I'm on the job.”

“OK,” I said. “Sure. I owe Rhonda.”

“You don't owe her.”

The champagne had warmed me up. “Yeah, I do. I owe her for taking care of you when you were fucking dying in the hospital, and her sleeping over in your room every night and busting their ass at St Vincent's if they didn't do the right stuff for you.”

“Thanks.”

“You're welcome.” I said goodnight and set off for home, then I turned back.

“You hear anything about the plane crash earlier?” I said.

Sonny told me that the people in the smashed-up plane on the beach were a Russian family. Only the father survived along with the pilot, and the father was still critical.

Lippert didn't think them being Russian meant anything, just figured he'd pass it on to me. Didn't think any of it meant a thing, except that people who took little kids up in planes like that were idiots. The plane had come from a place over in Jersey.

“I talked to someone who talked to Cohen and I think we can forget it being anything except a sightseeing plane,” said Sonny. “The
other
Cohen, that is, man.” David Cohen was the city's anti-terrorist czar and Sonny had a line to him like he had to everyone in town. “It was like they said on TV, it was an accident, the plane was a piece of crap and it broke up. And it doesn't mean dick, you know, that kills me, man.”

“Sure.”

“You think they'll ever put a building up where the fucking Twin Towers were, man?”

“I don't know, Sonny.”

“They been fighting over that space like dogs over a bone. Jesus.”

“Yeah, sure. Now they're telling us the towers were never built to withstand a bad attack. Poor bastards died in it, maybe for no reason. You believe that?”

Sonny looked up at the buildings again and then he laughed, a short snort of a laugh.

“You remember how after 9/11 they said Bernie Kerik took an apartment where he could see right into the pit?” Lippert said.

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Our beloved police chief, Christ, he was something. They said he used to pass out plaster busts of himself to people. They said he liked to go out on the balcony with his girlfriend, what was her name, Judith something, the publishing one, and she
would lean over the railing with him behind her and they'd do it looking down at the pit. After all, 9/11 was what made him a hero, and he liked that, so that's where he liked doing it with his girlfriend.” Lippert laughed. “You think it's just urban legend?”

“Who knows?” I said.

“Artie?”

“Yeah?”

“Where's Billy?”

I gestured towards my building. “Upstairs. Asleep.”

“Take him home to his parents, Art, man, as soon as possible, to avoid any trouble. I won't say any more.”

“What kind of trouble, Sonny? What do you mean?”

“You know, man, keep the boy safe.”

“Everything's fine,” I said.

“You probably know what you're doing, man.”

“You sucking up to me?”

“In your dreams, man.” Sonny said. “But you told Maxine you have the boy with you in the apartment, right? You should tell her. Go home and get some sleep. I got to go, too. I got some calls to make. I'm going to get the bastards who did the little girl in Jersey and all the others. I'm going to break whoever it is. See you tomorrow.”

As soon as I opened the door to the apartment, I knew something was different. Couldn't describe it. A smell. A feeling. I'd been snooping around apartments a long time and it just came to me. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I was drunker than I knew. Some of my CDs were on the table and I couldn't remember if I'd left them there, but so what? So what if Billy got up and played some music? But what if someone else had been here?

When I checked on Billy he was still asleep in the room where I'd left him – I'd never seen anyone conk out so completely – blanket over his head, feet sticking out at the bottom.

In my bedroom, the shirt I'd taken off when I changed was on the bed where I left it, but it was folded differently, I thought. Maybe not. My head was fuzzy and I got undressed, then I put my pants back on and went downstairs to look for Jorge, the doorman, who was out front smoking.

Jorge said that Billy had not come down from the apartment at all. He said he also went up to check on him once. Yeah, Jorge said he had been in the lobby the whole time, except for going to the bathroom once and out on his dinner break for like ten minutes. Just to pick up a breakfast burrito even though it was his dinner because he liked the burritos, homemade, he said, at the corner deli. Good coffee, too. A black and white cookie was what he had for dessert, though some of the time he went for an oatmeal raisin cookie or, if it was hot, maybe a Haagen Dazs chocolate-covered ice cream bar. Like everyone in New York, Jorge's every meal was a complicated story.

I didn't think Jorge was lying about Billy, but his dinner break made me uneasy. I took the elevator back up and the woman in it stared at me because I wasn't wearing a shirt. I couldn't tell if she was disgusted or interested. I really was pretty drunk.

“Tell Maxine,” Sonny had said.

I didn't want to lie to Max. I didn't want to make a mess of things this time. We were married, I loved her, and we were friends. She wasn't going to fall apart because I had Billy in the house for a few days. Why would she?

Maxine was plenty tough. She was a 9/11 widow, and she had worked forensics in the days when they were bringing in pieces of the firemen who died; her husband had been one of them. They never found him, not even a little piece of finger, she always said. Not even a finger.

I looked at my watch. It was one in the morning. Ten in San Diego. I dialed Maxie's cell and waited.

“Hi,” she said. “Hi!”

“Where are you? Did I call too late?”

“We're on a dinner cruise in the harbor. It is so entirely gorgeous here, honey, I so wish that you were with us, it's just beautiful. San Diego is so clean! The girls adore it, and they like their cousins, and wait a sec, no, never mind, they're up on the deck. I think maybe I had a few too many glasses of wine, so if you think I sound silly, blame the vino. Also, I can't believe this, but we met a retired guy who lives around here, he was sitting near us on the boat for a while, he says he actually designed the first space buggy, the thing they rode around in on the moon, this real American inventor type of guy. Back when. Said in those days he slept on a waterbed. He was reminiscing, don't think they were connected. It's so cool how people out here just talk to you. What's up?”

Max was exuberant, and I could picture her, long limbs stretched out, a glass of wine in her hand, engaged, chatty, charming everyone she met, including some guy who told her he designed the space buggy. At forty, Maxine looked ten years younger. She was smart and practical and she loved me. I didn't want to lie to her. Still, I was nervous about Billy.

I said, “Hey, are you smoking? Did I hear you exhale?”

“I had one. I couldn't help it. You?”

“Me too,” I said. “I'm trying, but I had a drink with Tolya and I cheated. He wants to buy a wine bar.”

“Jeez,” said Maxine.

“I miss you.”

“Me too. A lot.”

“I have something I have to tell you,” I said.

“You won the lottery?”

“I wish.”

“You won the lottery and you lost the ticket, but I love you anyway. Do you care that we're always sort of broke?” Maxine said. “Do you wish you'd married some rich girl?”

“Don't be an idiot.”

“OK, I'm a knucklehead as my uncles would have said. You could have married a rich one,” said Maxine. “You were hot when I met you.”

Glad to avoid what I had to tell her, I said, “What do you mean ‘were' hot?”

“You're married now.”

“So it's fun out there?”

“Oh, Artie, honey, it's amazing, the sun shines, the beaches are great, the zoo was fantastic, the girls are in heaven, I just so totally wish you were here. What is it? What were you going to tell me?”

I told her. I said that I had picked up Billy Farone in Florida, like I'd told her, because his parents were away. I also told her he was here with me for a few days until they came back.

What for, Maxine asked me, her voice crisp now. What did you do that for, she said. They should never have let the kid out. She told me she knew how I felt about Billy but it wasn't my job to take care of him. Billy has parents, she said.