Red Hook (32 page)

Sonny followed my gaze as I looked at the wall to the left of the front door. The photographs reached almost to the ceiling. There were photographs of the Twin Towers, of the planes smashing into them, of the fireballs rising up, of people running covered in thick white ash, firefighters, cops, an abandoned bagel cart, workers emerging from the pit with orange fires burning as if from hell, a tea set covered in dust like something from Pompeii, a hundred more photographs. Sonny had created a shrine.

“I'm addicted to it,” he had said; now he just stood and looked at his wall.

“You know what I hated, Sonny, you know what made me really pissed off almost the most?”

“Yeah, what's that, man?” He moved away from the wall and shoved some newspapers off a table and extracted a half-empty bottle of Scotch.

I said, “I hated it when people used it, politicians, you know. I hated it when people took stuff for souvenirs from the pit.”

“Yeah.”

I hesitated.

“What?”

“I hated it when reporters lied their way down there, like dressing up as firemen, you know, I fucking hated that, all of us busting our asses, and them lying and putting on firemen gear, which was like sacred stuff.”

He looked at me. “You're telling me Jack Santiago did that?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I seem to remember he was one of them. I remember that.” I was feeding Sonny. I was fueling him up.

“You want Santiago real bad, right?”

“Yes.”

“I'll do what I can, Artie. I'll call Moscow. I have someone over there I know. After that, fuck knows, he could be anywhere; he could disappear into the middle of nowhere if he wanted. You're sure. It's probably my last big ‘ask', Artie, man, they want me out, they want to retire my ass, and if this goes bad, that'll be it. If you say, I'll push the buttons. If you really need it, if you're
fucking positive that he killed Sid McKay, I'll get him, I'll reach out for you, but tell me you're sure.”

I nodded.

“I always thought Jack Santiago was an ambitious cocksucker, anyhow. Take care of yourself, Artie, man. Be careful. You don't want any idiots picking you up because your name got on some list, OK.”

“Sure, Sonny. Thanks.”

“What the fuck difference does any of it make, you know? I wish it was all over.” He looked at his wall. “Enough,” he said. “Enough.”

After I wasted hours at the airport, still trying to find out what airline Jack had used, after I got the run around from a lot of suspicious people wanting to know who the hell I was and peering at my badge as if it might be a toy or a fake, I finally got to Red Hook. I went to Sid's to try to break in.

I wanted to get another look. I planned to replace the files before the family figured out I'd helped myself to them. The sun already up, the water alight, surface shimmering, boats bobbing on it, it looked exactly like the little paradise where Sid escaped the real world.

His loft was sealed, the locks changed. I didn't know who did it, local cops, city, the family. The key I'd stolen was no good. The new lock was too hard to pick. What else could I do? Shoot off the locks? Trespass? I had no warrant. I didn't have anything. The funeral was the next day. Tomorrow Sid would disappear into the ground.

I was sweating some now. I went out, found a security guard and tried to give him some money but he backed off, frightened. I realized he was the same guy who had
screamed at the men in the kayak and he recognized me.

I went out on the pier, but there was only a small boy with a limp fishing line who looked up expectantly, smiling, obviously glad for company. The kid said hi and waved for me to come over and look at his fishing gear. I just waved back and walked away.

On the other side of the old loft building from the pier was the inlet. The repairs to the dock where Earl died were finished. It was a week since Earl, if he had been Earl because even now there was no firm ID, had been trapped in this tiny stream of water, head and arms under the pier, legs adrift.

The sound of the buzz saw echoed in my brain. I remembered the noise as they took off his arms to free him from the rotting pier; I remembered the stink.

I drove to the other side of the Gowanus Canal and the burned-out ferryboat where Sid's body had been found. It was still a crime scene but I had my badge. I didn't know what I expected but I needed to see it.

Black, charred, it was the skeleton of a boat, still tied to the dock. Standing near the edge of the water, staring down, was a woman. She looked up. It was the detective I'd met the first day I was in Red Hook, the morning I watched them pull Earl out of the water, the morning of the day I got married. Clara. Clara something. Fuentes.

“Hey, Artie, right? Hey. How are you?” She was wearing jeans and a red shirt, and a pair of Nikes. I offered her a cigarette, she held up her pack of nicotine gum.

I said, “You're on this one, too?”

“No. I just came by to take a look. My day off,” she
laughed. “I've got a whole week. A whole week,” she said again, chewing.

“What do you think happened here?” I said, pointing at the wrecked boat and the yellow tape.

“What do I know? Everyone says he drowned here, you know? That he just fell and drowned, that's what they say, or maybe he jumped. They say it was suicide or an accident, accidental death by drowning, but I think it stinks of a cover-up. What do I know?”

“What do you know?” I smiled.

“Me, personally? I think someone dragged him here. Someone who had a hard time doing it. There were marks.” She waved at the rough stretch of raw dirt between the street and the edge of the docks. “I think someone dragged him who had trouble dragging him, you know, like they had to drag and shove him a little at a time. I didn't figure that out myself, I heard someone say.”

“Who said it?”

“I heard a couple of detectives talk about it, and then one of them said about the dragging and the other one said, forget it. It was an accident, or suicide, that's what it's supposed to be, he said, and it was like they just decided to forget the other idea, or somebody told them to forget it.”

“What else?”

“That's it. Just that maybe he didn't die here, maybe he was dragged, so if he killed himself, how come he was dragged here, you know? I don't know. Maybe it's just better to say it was an accident. I have to go. Get the fuck away. Up to New Hampshire,” she added.

“Thanks,” I said. “Have a nice time.”

“Glad the fucking politicians are gone.” She looked at her watch, then took the gum out of her mouth and lobbed it in the water. “You want to give me one of those coffin nails before you go?”

“Sure,” I tossed her the pack.

She took one and handed it back. “Good luck,” she said. “You have my phone number, right?”

I tried to remember how tall Jack Santiago was. He was about five-nine. I wondered if that passed as small.

On my way to see Rita, the woman who made borscht and tamales, I passed three young guys. Outside her building, wearing soccer shorts and shirts, they eyed me suspiciously. I didn't know if they recognized me as a cop, but they didn't smile much, just looked at me and then looked away and went back to their conversation, huddled together, their long young bodies bent over in some private ritual.

I was at the front door of Rita's building when I heard the guys talking, a mixture of English and Spanish, soft, but staccato, and something occurred to me. I turned around, and walked the few steps back.

They looked up, not hostile, but surprised that I would somehow have the balls to interrupt. The tallest—he was probably nineteen, tops—said, “Yeah, man? You need something?” He was real polite, only an edge of sarcasm, or maybe irony. Hard to read.

I said, “I been looking around for a guy named Jack Santiago. You ever meet this guy? He's a reporter. He lives over the other end of Red Hook. Smart guy. Pretty
famous. Black hair. Wiry. About forty. Five-eight, five-nine.”

The surprising thing was that the three of them started laughing. They laughed for real and they also cranked up the laughter so it became an act, and they chortled and giggled and held on to each other, until one of them produced a red bandanna and wiped his eyes, and then another of them pulled out a pack of Camels and passed it around and included me. I took one, lit up.

I said, “It's funny? Santiago's funny?”

“You want to buy us a beer, man?”

“Sure,” I said. “Where?”

He pointed at a convenience store, and I pulled a fifty out of my wallet and handed it to him, and he nodded, so I knew it was OK money. He went across the street to a store and came back with a paper bag with four coffees, and passed them around.

“Too early for beer, right?” he said, but he didn't offer me any change.

“Never too early,” I said.

“Santiago's a jerk,” he said. “He was always coming around, talking that lousy Spanish, he wasn't really a Latino boy, he said his mama was Cuban, but he was a liar, you could see it, and he was, like, suitcase nukes this, and suitcase nukes that, and everyone here knows that was last year, that one time they found something on a ship and the guys came in from the what do you call it, hazardous something, guys in big white moon suits with hoods?”

“Hazmat,” I said. “The guys in moon suits.”

“Yeah, right.”

“They came over to the Gowanus Canal where there's still a couple ships coming in, and those big box stores, and they found something, or they said they did, who the fuck knows anything now, and they carried it away, and everyone talked about it for like a day, it was one time, and we heard they didn't find nothing much, but the guy, Santiago, he was on it like crazy. He was like so fucking excited by the whole thing, he was like OK, we're all in danger, man, you gotta leave this place, and we gotta get the government to turn up the heat on these bastards, and we're like, fuck that shit, man, and he's like it's still so dangerous, boo hoo, they're gonna send in those airplanes again and crash them and this time they're gonna be full of flying suitcases with nukes in them. He pissed everyone off, you know? Flying fucking suitcases.” He laughed. They all laughed. “They didn't find nothing, turned out someone was testing the waters, so to speak, seeing if it was leaky by the Gowanus, you know, for terrorists and stuff, you know, man?”

The first guy said, “I told them Santiago made it all up.”

“I can imagine.”

“You can imagine. I like that.”

“Yeah?” I said. “Good. I'm glad.”

He gestured around. “This is a crazy place, man,” he said. “You got us in the projects out front here, and over back on the water, you got rich people trying to get in, you got people who want to keep it like it is, which is like shit, you know, they call themselves urban pioneers, you got developers, and some people who actually care about the place, you got the whole fucking package, like
they call it a microcosm, so to speak, fuck microcosm, right, and then you got the people like Santiago that's just sniffing around.”

“There's a lot of stuff going on out here?” I said.

“You never could dream, man, how much. You never could fucking dream. Or maybe nothing. Maybe just a football match. Soccer to you.” He grinned. “So thanks for the beers, we got a game. You come see us kick some ass today, we got a match against some boys from Senegal. They're like fucking geniuses. Come see, man, OK?”

I said thanks, and I left them still laughing about Santiago, and smoking Camels, and I went into Rita's building and buzzed her, but there was no answer. I stuck a message under her door with a note to call me.

I was sure that Rita knew more than she'd told me, about Red Hook; maybe she knew something about Jack that I could take to Sonny. On my way out I asked the guys on the corner if they knew a Russian woman who made tamales and they said, sure, they saw her head over to the park.

“There is an old man,” Rita said. “I don't know his name.”

On the slats of wood that formed a trestle table, she had laid out platters of steaming tamales and paper plates, and condiments and plastic cups. In the park, kids were playing soccer. People were arriving. The last holiday of the summer.

“No borscht?” I said.

She glanced out at the playing field.

“Not unless Russians are playing. What do you need?”

I looked at my watch. “Help me,” I said suddenly, and took her wrist.

“OK,” she said. “Sure. For free,” she added, thinking my hesitation had been about money.

“How come?”

She shrugged. “I like Mr Sid McKay is all. I like him a lot. I think maybe this old man threatens him. Maybe not so old, this Russian.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I didn't say because I was scared, I told you I was not scared, but I was.” Looking down at the tamales on the table, she paused, and it was as if she had seen an opportunity. “So I change my mind, OK? I change. I can be wrong.”

“What kind of Russian?”

“What kind of Russian is there?”

“Tell me.”

She smiled. “Russian that been here a long time and doesn't talk so good English. Russian that hangs around a lot just looking around. Russian that sometimes I see with Mr McKay. Russian once I saw around Brighton Beach then here in Red Hook, which is how come I'm noticing this Russian. He comes always here for food, not Russian food, I think how come he wants this stuff?” She put a couple of tamales on a plate and handed it to me.

I took the plate and said, “Go on.”

“I ask him his name, he don't talk to me. Don't want to talk. Just watching. This kind of Russian.”

“What does he look like?”

“Short.”

“What else?”

“He looks short. Very short. Little man,” Rita said, “Hello? You with me?”