Neptune Avenue (17 page)

Zhenya tucked a strand of fine blond hair behind her ear and licked her lips, dry from the sun and wind. What did he know about her? She was from a small town near Kiev—not far from where his own grandparents had been born, actually; she had shown him on a map. When he had asked about her parents, her voice became quiet and small. Her father, she said, had been sent away when she was a little girl.

“For what?” he had asked.

She shrugged. “He was a Jew. And he was not afraid to talk.”

“He was a political prisoner?”

She nodded, her face etched with pain. “When I am small, I am only allow to see him three or four times. The place where he is staying:
very bad
.”

“What happened to him?”

“He died in prison. Nineteen eighty-eight. He never was coming home, and he never saw end of Soviet Union. When my mother dies, five years ago, I have no reason to stay there.”

She and Daniel had met just after she arrived in the States, when she was working as a waitress in one of the boardwalk restaurants in Brighton Beach. Now she was thinking about taking courses at Brooklyn College, studying business, perhaps, or communications. She had even confided once, shyly, that she had thought of being a weather reporter on TV. She was young enough to see life as a field in front of her, open with possibility.

He wondered how much she cared for him. It was funny: he had been skittish at first,
once burned, twice shy
and all. He had expected that he would soon feel a need to back away from his emotions, but the fact that she demanded so little of him left him continually intrigued, as if he was always leaning toward her.

The kite traveled across the sky, and she followed it with her intense green eyes. He heard a shout down on the beach, and when he looked up again he saw that the kite’s string had snapped, and it was plunging around in wild circles over the beach. He followed it until the wind sent it careering around the corner of the condo development.

They sat for a while in easy silence. Jack sighed with contentment as the day’s problems drained from his mind.

Off to the west, the glowing orange orb of the sun seemed trapped in the spokes of Coney Island’s Wonder Wheel, and then it sank lower and disappeared below the horizon. The air grew cool as a soft mauve light settled over the beach and deepened in hue.

He turned back to find that he had become the subject of
her
inquiring gaze.

“May I ask a question?”

He nodded. “Of course.”

She reached down and grasped her toes. “Semyon Balakutis—you will stop him?”

He refrained from wincing. Talk about a mood spoiler … He nodded. “He’s smart—but not smart enough. I promise you: I’ll stop him.” He tensed. “Why? Has he bothered you?”

She shook her head, but he was not entirely convinced. He stared at her, wondering if she had received any threats. “You’ll tell me if he calls or anything, right?”

She nodded slightly but didn’t speak.

LATER, HE LAY IN
bed next to her, listening to her even breathing. Sleep eluded him—too many thoughts buzzing around inside his head again. He thought of Semyon Balakutis’s angry face—and Andrei Goguniv’s frightened one. He turned to Zhenya; she lay with her back to him, one bare, fragile shoulder exposed in the dim light.
Don’t worry,
he thought.
I’ll take care of you.
He was realizing what he had really missed: it wasn’t having someone to love him—it was having someone to love.

He moved closer and slipped his arms around her. He held her for a moment, his hand resting against her belly. But then he started thinking about the smooth rise of her breast, and his hand moved north, as if by its own volition, and he was cupping the firm liquid weight of it, and he felt her nipple hardening into his palm.

His heart started beating faster. Good grief, he had been prepared to slide into a sexually subdued middle age, but here he was, like a teenager again. Even so, he would have resisted the urge to wake her, but she arched back against him subtly, like a cat stretching, and he was emboldened to slip his hand down between her thighs, and he heard her breath catch and then its rhythm grew quick and eager.

They stayed awake for hours.

LATER, HE WAS HALF
awakened by the sound of a cell phone, but it wasn’t his ringtone. The faint light in the room said early morning. He felt Zhenya slip out of bed and heard her pad across the floor. She picked up her phone and went out into the hall. He thought he detected some sort of surprise or unease in her voice as she answered, but she was speaking in Russian. She softly closed the bedroom door, and he was so tired that he dropped back into sleep. Soon he was deep into a dream.

He was sitting in a little cabin of the Wonder Wheel, and Zhenya
—
excited
—
sat next to him. At ground level the noise of the amusement park was deafening, but as the wheel turned it lifted them above the chattering hordes, high above Coney Island. The beach expanded out to his left, dotted with thousands of half-naked sun worshipers, and the sea spread out to the curve of the horizon. He looked straight down. From above, the park resolved into a bright, orderly grid. As their car rose toward the top, 150 feet in the air, the din of the rides disappeared, giving way to the gentle whisper of a shoreline breeze. Twisting in his seat, he could look back at the Cyclone, cars full of tiny screaming patrons plunging down its slopes. Farther back, he could see the apartment towers of Brighton Beach. And then he turned back toward Zhenya, but somehow she had disappeared
—
and he was sitting in a huge underground cave with Daniel, and the man was rubbing his bald head, and warm water was pouring down from somewhere up above, and Daniel was trying to tell him something, but the sound of the rushing water was too loud
—

He woke to an empty bed.

Groggy, he got up, wearing only his boxer shorts, and he looked for Zhenya in the other rooms of her apartment. He found a note on the kitchen counter. “Sory. I hav many erends today. Will call U later. xoxo, Z.”

He remembered something about an early morning phone call but wondered if he had dreamt it. As he made himself a cup of coffee, he noticed that dirty dishes were piling up in the sink. Then he saw some Cheerios spilled on the little kitchen table, and a few on the floor. He was starting to realize something about Zhenya. She would slip out of her clothes by the side of the bed, and he was always happy to witness that, but then she might leave them puddled there for several days. Or she would finish painting her toenails and leave the polish bottle and dirty cotton swabs sitting by the side of the couch. Hell, it was her place, and Michelle had always teased him about his neatness, but still—he didn’t think it was neurotic to not want to see food left on the kitchen floor. And he had exaggerated her beauty. She was attractive, there was no doubt about that, but she wasn’t the perfect vision he had made her out to be in his first throes of desire. She had her physical flaws, just like everybody else, and a closet full of tacky clothing.

He shook his head; he was just grumpy this morning. Seeing Zhenya’s little messes made him feel as if he were her father or something. Christ, he wasn’t
that
much older. … He refilled his coffee cup and slumped down at her table. What was he doing here? Was this some sort of midlife crisis? Next thing he knew, he’d be wearing designer jeans and dyeing his hair. He frowned. The girl was lovely, but what did they really have in common? Where did he think this could ultimately go? He scoffed at himself. He had been starting to think he was falling in love.
Pah
—it was just infatuation, pure and simple. He wanted some company, someone to eat dinner with, to watch a little TV with. He hoped to get laid now and then. And it was the same old stupid middle-aged-guy story: he wanted to be with someone young, with fresh skin and no wrinkles, someone who could help him ignore his own aging body.

Over the years, he had seen so many people who had died suddenly, been shot, stabbed, strangled, electrocuted with radios thrown into their baths. But it wasn’t a gruesome death he was afraid of, no—it was growing old. Getting sick, becoming infirm, becoming helpless, being alone.

Oh well, at least there was one bright side: he hadn’t abandoned some perfectly good wife in order to play out this little fantasy.

He took a shower, briskly washing his body, as if scrubbing himself free from foolish notions.

After, as he dressed, he picked up his cell phone from her bedside table and slipped it into his pants pocket—and felt a crinkly piece of paper that he didn’t remember putting there. He took it out and unfolded it. A note:
I will mis you all day. Luv, Z.

Big dope that he was, it made his heart light up all over again.

“S
EX CRIMES,” JACK SAID.

“Huh?” Kyle Driscoll looked up from his desk, where he was busy eating a steak-and-cheese sub.

“Our Crown Heights killer,” Jack said. “This guy didn’t go from having a little problem getting it up to suddenly going around murdering multiple victims. That’s like zooming from zero to sixty in two seconds. You gotta go through some gears first, and I would guess he’s got a record for more minor offenses. I’m betting sex crimes.”

Kyle set down his sub. “I already went through all the convictions in this area in the last five years. And I cross-referenced for the ones that included attempted strangulation.”

“You’ve been doing an excellent job,” Jack said, and he meant it. Despite their occasional touchy moments, he had grown to like the young detective and was proud of the way the man was handling his first homicide. But you could always dig deeper. “The thing is,” he said. “We’ve been looking for
convictions
. Maybe our guy was involved in a case that never got that far.” He was thinking about Semyon Balakutis and his trail of dropped charges.

The other detective frowned. “I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but this case is turning into a real pain in the ass.”

“C’mon,” Jack said, manufacturing enthusiasm. “Patience and perseverance made a bishop of His Reverence.”

Kyle raised his eyebrows. “Kind of a strange motto for a guy with a name like Leightner.” But he raised his hands in surrender. “I know, I know: it’s all about the legwork.”

“Tell you what,” Jack said. “You start calling cops in the neighboring precincts, and I’ll call everybody I know in the D.A.’s office.”

FIVE HOURS LATER, THEY
stood in a hallway of the Seventy-first Precinct House. Both men were excited, though Jack was too much the veteran to show it.

“You ready?” he asked gravely. A lot might be riding on this interview; it didn’t happen every day that detectives could talk to one suspect about two different homicides. He straightened the knot of his tie, a pre-game tic. “Remember: let’s start things off nice and easy.”

The other detective followed him into an airless little interview room, where they found one Joseph Joral, a resident of Crown Heights. The man sat on the left side of the table there, digging a pinkie into his ear as if he had not a care in the world. A couple of uniforms had just picked him up at work, on the outdoor lot of a car rental office. He was a big Caucasian, midthirties, with a Caesar haircut and a finely trimmed little line of beard that ran from his sideburns down along the edge of his chin. Along with his blue polo work shirt, the man wore oversize athletic shorts, big basketball shoes, a hoop earring, and a gold chain—generic Brooklyn street style. Jack was curious about the guy’s ethnic background; the name was unusual, and he couldn’t place it. Joral looked like the kind of mook who might spend his days off hanging out on a corner outside a deli, scratching his balls and boasting about his sexual conquests. The kind of guy who would have a Playboy air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror in his car, along with a couple of fuzzy dice.

If the man’s looks just suggested a certain lifestyle, his record was more specific: he’d been charged with soliciting prostitutes and with battery (on a date from a classified ad). The latter charge had gone through to a conviction six years earlier, and Joral had done a brief bid upstate.

Jack matter-of-factly dropped a manila folder on the table and sat down across from the man. Kyle remained standing, leaning back against the only door. The room was tiny and absolutely bare except for the table and three chairs. (Jack supposed there might be police interview rooms somewhere that featured potted plants and other homely touches, but he had never seen one. The idea was always to strip things down to the barest essence: two or three people in a little cage, dancing around the truth.)

“How ya doin’…” He pretended to consult his file folder for the name, as if this was just one of many routine interviews. “
Joseph
. What do your friends call you? Joe? JJ?”

“Whatever” was all their suspect had to say. He sat back with his legs splayed wide, like a guy who was used to taking up two seats on crowded subway trains.

“Must be hard work, being Superman’s father and all,” Jack said.

Their suspect didn’t even crack a smile. “That’s Jor-
El
.”

“Right. You want something to eat? My partner here can run down and get something from the snack machines.”

“I’m good.”

The man didn’t ask why the uniforms had brought him here or complain about missing time from work. He just sat back with his meaty arms folded across his bull chest. Jack thought of the killer’s evident belief that he was fooling the cops with his staged suicides.

The fact was that Joral didn’t have to be here at all. He had not been charged with any crime, and technically he could have just said no to the request that he come in. Thankfully, though, television cop shows set a powerful example for the average guy on the street. On TV, the suspects always came in. (There was no story if they didn’t.) In real life, even if a suspect was arrested and
had
to come in, he could simply lawyer up and refuse to be interviewed. The fact of the matter was that the Fifth Amendment protected all citizens against self-incrimination, which meant that they didn’t have to talk to a cop.
Ever
.