Queens Noir (9 page)

"Let me take you back inside," Kevin or Kieran insisted,
grasping her elbow. Ow. "Mrs.-"

"Don't you even remember me?" The way it came out
sounded like begging. "Paulie's mom?" Of course, it had been
years since she was even that in any meaningful way. She
touched the bulge in her sweatshirt. It had been years since she'd been in her own garage, let alone had a car, driven a car,
ridden a bike, fired a gun. The beachy gas smell pulled her
back to all those sticky cousins of Vin's, of endlessly boiling
pots, gritty towels, crumbs, bones, and water rings that slowly
led her down to the sand dragging those two heavy planks that
signified: Company. Two leaves, two meats, the vegetable side-

Kevin or Kieran claimed to not have grown up around
here. But too bad, he'd kill for a house like this, on the beach.
At the door, he gave her a card. In case she saw anything
unusual. Then O'Donnell was beckoning him away, to the
neighbor's, setting Blacky off all over again.

"Fires on the beach are illegal; you should know that,"
said the policemen when they arrived, that first time. "We
could give you a ticket. Burnin' some good wood there too,
looks like oak. We could haul your crazy ass in." When they'd
finally gone, it took Rose a long time to bury the rest of the
charred leaves beneath the sand. And still, a dog had it partially dug up by daylight. Vin saw it and said, "So?" If Rose
wanted a buffet, well, he'd just invite more company. Then he
drag raced his moped into a Green Line bus.

The kids on the beach used to always say they were digging a
hole all the way to China. And once, for a few months somewhere in the '70s, she'd fashioned a hair ornament out of
chopsticks like she'd seen on that actress, what's her name, in
that film, whatsitcalled?

"Other than that, I gotta admit, when it comes to things
Oriental, I'm one big dummy."

Li starts to nod but an involuntary shiver overtakes him.
His eyes close. He slumps against the table's pedestal. Rose
imagines his mother teaching him to swim. A river it must have
been, not a curly, raging ocean. A nice, manageable river.

At first, he looked like some kind of sea monster soaked
through and wrapped in the moldy shower curtain. You could
see his chest go in and out, but close up that rusty, tentative
sound it made scared her. Every now and then he'd erupt with
the cough. The shower house itself was a dank lair, reeking of
vomit and adorned with wet leaves, cobwebs, and the butts
of cigarettes she'd long suspected her teenage grandson of
smoking.

"I can help you," Rose said. "My daughter-in-law is a
doctor."

The stranger bowed, moaning himself up onto his hands
and knees, but then he heaved up saltwater and collapsed
again.

"You come into my house," she insisted. "I have a nice
house."

"Ma! Ma! You okay? Did ya trip? What are you doin down here
under the table? The traffic, ohmygod. That Golden Adven-
Why don't you have the TV on?"

"I'm sleeping?" Rose opens her sticky eyes to see a short,
wide man with a graying goatee wheeling several bulging
Samsonites. "What are those for?" She pushes up on to her
forearms, blinking.

"Thought I'd start the process. Since I was comin' anyways." Paulie crosses his furry arms.

According to the window it's now morning. Low tide.
Soon enough he's eying the empty bottle of Sambuca near her
foot and swearing.

"You know you're not allowed-"

"I thought she was decaying. I thought they were closing
the beach!"

"You're still talking about a damn whale? MA! A dozen or
two people drowned right out there last night-"

Her confusion clears, leaving panic. "Where is he? What
did you- Oh!" Li's beside her, his chest moving up and down,
kind of. "Call Maureen!"

But Paulie's too busy hating her to notice. "They got some
cement trucks to bury the big ugly fish, all right? The beach is
safe. NOW CALM THE FUCK- Oh god, not again!"

Now he's spotted his father's shirt-the ivory cowboy
number.

"You keep tellin' me you don't need takin' care of, so how
come every time you get blicked, you gotta carry this shit
around?" Grabbing for the sleeve, he-'Aah! "-discovers
there's an arm inside it, and there's a man under the dining
room table attached to the arm.

Rose can't help but giggle. She was waiting for that. "You
should see your face, Paulie!"

"What the hell-"

And it just keeps getting funnier. "SHHHH," Rose has to
gasp between laugh spurts. "This is Li. He's not well."

"Have you gone fuckin' nuts? Where did you-why-"

"I was hoping Maureen-"

"What? You can't ask her to do that."

"Why not?" With effort, Rose pulls Li's dented too-still
skull onto her lap. "He's a Christian."

"You mean criminal!" Paul yells, patting his khakis. "And
she's a vet."

"Then call a priest."

"I'm callin' the cops is who I'm callin'!" Paul starts rifling
through his suitcases. "If you'd please shut your trap." Sounding exactly like Vin.

"When you find your weapon, let me know," Rose says, reaching into her sweatshirt pocket to cock the gun. "Then
you can just kill me and get my house."

"What? Where's my phone. I just had-"

The kick of the gun knocks Rose down where Paulie is
also heading with a sashay-low twist combination that leaves
him slumped right over his bulbous luggage. The movements
seem so foreign that she actually finds herself wondering, Did
he just get a bad haircut or something? Then she remembers
to thrust the gun into Li's dead-cold hands, their life about
drained from them. Fingerprints, right? Rose didn't endure
years of Columbo for nothing.

She is waiting for Li to die before crossing herself, a reflex,
and calling the number on the detective's card. Not Kevin or
Kieran but Andrew-her new friend. He'll be the one to do
her the favor. Andrew Volishskya. Not from around here.

followed him to the platform for the 7 train at Grand
Central, a place so far down below the street that I expected to meet devils with pitchforks on their way up
from Hell. The tail was easy. After a couple of days on the job,
I saw that he always wore the same kind of clothes, like a uniform or that crazy detective on cable. White Oxford shirt with
the sleeves rolled up, beige khaki pants, and brown loafers.
But today he added a cap-navy-blue with an antique capital
B on the front and little red socks at the back. A brand new
Boston Red Sox baseball cap.

I noticed more people in the city wearing Boston caps of
ter the team had won the World Series. Always brand new,
never faded from the sun or stained with sweat. It was like
they were previously ashamed to walk the city's streets broadcasting their loyalty or were afraid that crazy Yankees fans
would chant "1918" at them when they went for a quart of
milk or to pick up their dry cleaning. I say, your team is your
team no matter what and no matter what anyone says. I wore
a Mets cap that wasn't new when they won the Series in 1986,
and carried a copy of today's Post in my back pocket. The two
of its waited, on this warm June night, for the 7 train to take
its to Shea Stadium where the Mets and Red Sox would play
the first of three interleague games.

He stood quietly on the platform, leaning against the el evator with his hands in his pockets. He stared off into space
with no paper or book to read. The stale, sticky air did not
seem to bother him. Next to him, a fat guy in a crappy suit
with his polyester tie at half-mast, tired and heading home to
Queens, mopped his face with a rumpled handkerchief. Three
Korean women who could have been anywhere from forty to
seventy years old stood silent and still, holding shopping bags
filled with vegetables and other groceries. I disregarded them.
Further down the platform, college kids wearing black awayjerseys with the name and number of their favorite Mets players on the back were obviously going to the game. The kids
were playful and laughing but I knew they wouldn't get in my
way when the train pulled in. I didn't expect the subway car to
be sardine-can crowded until we got to the Queens stations.

A blast of cooler air signaled the arrival of a 7 express,
which meant fewer stops and fewer chances for screw-ups.
When the train stopped, we stood in front of the last car. He
didn't move to rush the doors like so many subway riders do.
He followed the tinny, distorted message over the car's loudspeakers and let the passengers off the train before getting on.
I maneuvered my way into the car so that I was standing in
front of him and holding the same pole in the middle of the
car. A little guy wearing blue mechanic's overalls and reading
El Diario had grabbed a piece of the pole to my left. A teenaged black girl on my right was lost in the music playing from
her iPod, swaying in time to the song. I was lucky that it was
'70s Philly soul leaking from her headphones, not some rap
shit.

I knew that I had to make my play before Queensboro Plaza,
the first stop on the ride to Shea with connections to other
subway lines. The express rattled through the first two underground stations, making so much noise that I couldn't even talk to myself, forget about talking to anybody else. When the
train left the Hunters Point station and emerged into the evening sunlight five or six stories above the Queens streets, the
clatter lessened to a normal din.

He was humming along with a Delfonics song from the
girl's iPod and staring out of the windows at abandoned buildings covered from rooftop to ground floor in graffiti that appeared to be carefully designed and painted, rather than the
work of random punks with spray cans. He held onto the pole
with both hands. He seemed not to be in the subway car but
in a private place with a look of contentment on his face. It
was the same expression that my second ex-wife had when she
did yoga in the morning.

I startled him when I told him that he was a brave man. I
saw in his eyes that he was confused and did not know whether
to ignore me, to ask me what I wanted, or, like any true New
Yorker, to tell me to fuck off. I continued to make eye contact
and said, "You're a brave man to be wearing a Red Sox cap to
Shea."

He relaxed and smiled, never questioning how I knew
where he was going. "Oh, I don't think so. It's not like going
to Yankee Stadium when the Sox play. The crowds there can
get rowdy. Besides, we Red Sox fans have a lot in common
with you Mets fans," he said, taking one hand off the pole
long enough to point to the cap on my head. "We both hate
the Yankees."

I smiled back at him. "Good point, good point. But I don't
know, man. We snatched Pedro from under your nose. And
if Manny stands at home plate admiring a home run ball to
show off for all his Washington Heights homeboys, it could
get ugly."

Still smiling, he shook his head but was fading back to his own personal place with his own thoughts, not the thoughts
of some joker on the subway. He turned away from me to look
at the midtown Manhattan skyline that now dominated the
view from the left side of the train after it had pulled away
from the Courthouse Square stop. I needed to keep this conversation going.

"I'm sitting up in nosebleed country. I'm gonna need one
of those guides that mountain climbers use to find my seat.
But what do you expect when you decide to go at the last
minute? Where are you sitting?"

He still didn't know what to make of me but was polite.
"My friend's family has season tickets. Field level behind first
base." I knew all about the friend. I was standing in front of
him because of the friend.

"Nice. I've sat around there a couple of times. I've been
going to Mets games since my dad first took me when I was
six. Most of the guys I know follow the teams that their dads
followed. It is like an inheritance, to my mind. He was a big
Brooklyn Dodgers fan. I mean, a huge fan. My mother says
that when O'Malley took his team to California, my father
said words that he never said before or would ever say again
in all the years they were married. So growing up in a National
League house it was only natural that we would follow the
Mets. But if the Dodgers were in the World Series or in the
playoffs, my dad, until the day he died, would root for the other
team. Even if it meant rooting for the Yankees." I whispered
the last part as if I were sharing a shameful family secret.