Red Hook (33 page)

I said, “This little short Russian, what else?”

“Once I seen him with Mr McKay and one other black guy that was some kind of bum, all three together, over by Coffey Street.”

“You were there?”

Rita switched to Russian and kept her voice low. “I
am looking at space for Borscht Works, you like this name? I'm thinking, maybe Borscht Works, or something snappy, Borscht Belt, but what the hell does belt have to do with it, and I'm talking to people, and walking around, and there's not so many Russians around here, but I'm hearing people speaking so I listen, and who doesn't say nothing and looks like a bum, I look and it's Mr McKay, and the other black one and the short Russian.”

Earl, I thought; the bum had been Earl.

“How did you know he was Russian, the short guy?”

“I told you, didn't I? I saw him around Brighton Beach. Then here.”

“What else?”

“That's all.”

“You heard them?”

“Only that they were talking Russian.”

“What about?”

“I don't know.”

“I think you know,” I said, put down the plate with the uneaten food and took her wrist.

I noticed that Rita didn't mention Tolya Sverdloff this time. All she was interested in was the short Russian. Looking nervous now, she pulled away from me and waved at a friend, gesturing for her to come over as if for protection. I let go.

The other woman, who was wearing jeans and a yellow shirt, jogged to Rita's side, and smiling, started to chatter about food.

In Russian, I said something to Rita by way of an apology. She didn't look up. Two families with a trail of
kids in tow arrived in front of her stall wanting food and she huddled with them.

I started to walk away, went back and said to her, still in Russian, “The short guy, the little Russian man, what color were his eyes, did you notice, did you see his eyes?”

“Sure,” she said, serving up food, keeping her distance from me. “You couldn't miss this.”

“How come?”

“Real blue. This color people in Russia say naval blue, sea blue.”

“Where did you see him?”

She said, “Near the place where they throw the old cars. Columbia Street.”

I was already on my way when my phone rang; Lily was at the other end.

Hurry up, she said. Please! Get to the city. Hurry, Lily said again, get here now, I can't talk, just come. I need you here, Artie. She was babbling, panicky. I heard her voice, I didn't want to go, didn't want to see her, I would drown in it if I saw her again, I wouldn't be able to leave her. She sounded bad. The line broke. I closed my phone. Opened it.

I'm on my way, I said. What is it? What?

He's dead.

“Who? Tolya? Tolya's dead? He's dead. I'm coming, Lily. I'm coming.

The line broke again. Somewhere I could hear a steel band playing. The punchy merry music made me crazy. It was the Caribbean Day Parade in Brooklyn. I slammed my car window shut.

*

Dead, she had said, and my stomach turned over and I opened the window again to get some air. I couldn't get her back on the phone for ten minutes, all the way into the tunnel and into the city, back past the hole in the ground and Battery Park City where Sonny lived with his shrine made out of photographs, and where I knew now I could never live with Maxine—I would live with her, but not here—and I thought I was going to pass out or vomit. It was Monday. I had promised myself to be with her Monday, but I wasn't going to make it.

The light turned red, and I thought I was stepping on the brake. I hit the gas instead and the car jolted forward. I ran a couple of red lights, and heard a siren behind me. A blue and white had picked up on my speed, and was chasing me. I felt trapped. Tolya was dead and a cop was on me for speeding.

I pulled over. The cop pulled up alongside me, and I showed him my badge and I was trying to explain, and he thought I was crazy. Then the phone finally rang again, I ignored the cop who was now leaning in my window, inspecting my license with obsessive attention. My license number interested him; I was on a list.

The phone rang. Lily was waiting for me. She was at her apartment on 10th Street. Stop up if you need me, she said. I called her.

“Where is he?”

“Who?” Lily said.

“Where's the body? Why are you at home, if he's dead?”

“What are you talking about?”

I said, “You told me he was dead.”

The cop looking at my license was on his cell, and I didn't know why, but I didn't wait, either. I just went. I drove north, trying to call Lily back.

Before I turned off the highway I heard the sirens, saw the flashing lights, stepped on the brakes, pulled up and saw the crowd that had formed near the High Line.

Police cars were parked everywhere, an ambulance was at the curb, the noise of the sirens rose up into the hot afternoon. I left my car near Tolya's building and followed the flashing lights.

A knot of people, tourists out for the holiday, was standing near a row of mounted cops, whispering, giggling, pointing up. “It's just like
Law and Order,
just like a real episode of the show, like TV. Take a picture.” They were pointing at the High Line overhead.

A teenage boy in a striped shirt pulled a disposable camera out of his pocket. A cop tried to stop him, but he snapped a picture anyhow, and backed off, then turned and ran, grinning. A woman held up a little girl to pat the nose of one of the horses, and the cop sitting on it—they were probably from over at the First Precinct on Hudson Street—leaned down and patted the girl's head. Her mother took a picture.

“I heard he fell over or something,” I heard someone say.

“What?”

“Yeah,” a cop in uniform said to me as I came up to the barrier and leaned over and showed my badge. “Crazy accident. You see those old iron struts up the side
there?” He pointed up at the High Line. “The poor bastard fell through them or over them, right here, the south end of the High Line. There were rolls of barbed wire on it, and he got stuck, he was like hanging down, probably fucking dead drunk or something, and he dropped over. What in hell was he doing up there? He must have been high as a fucking kite. Or dead drunk. You ever been up there?”

Yes, I thought. I've been up there. I thought: What was Tolya doing up there alone at night? He was too fat to be up there. It was illegal. He had said to me, I go at night, like a thief, like a spy.

The cop said to me, “We used to do sweeps regular when a lot of homeless made camp up there. Not recently. I hate it. It's slippery, like a jungle. You can kill yourself wandering around on the High Line.”

It was Jack, not Tolya. Jack had not gone to Russia. He had lied about it, or maybe he intended to go and someone stopped him, but he was dead. It was his body they had found early that morning, stuck in a fence, under the High Line.

A detective I knew slightly from the Sixth Precinct said, “You OK, Art?”

Leaning against the wall of a warehouse, I had my head down, trying to get some blood back. I looked up. “What happened?” I said.

“I saw him before they cut him down from the fence where he landed. You couldn't tell if he was pushed or jumped. He must have snuck through one of the warehouses. That place is way off limits, I mean
way.
Trespassing, if you go up there it's like private property and they're very antsy about it, you get arrested. The people who own it are big time unhappy about that. You know who this guy was? He was a big deal or something?”

I nodded.

Officials were all over the place, cops in uniform, detectives, forensics, people from the Mayor's office. Jack Santiago was a name. I counted three TV crews and six reporters with little notebooks. From around the corner, a young guy trotted over to one of the TV people, holding a stack of newspapers. An early edition of the
Post
was out. I grabbed one and tossed him some money.

On the front was a picture of the High Line, and a smudgy picture of a body—what looked like a body— hanging from a fence underneath it. The picture had been taken from a distance, but you could make out that it was probably Jack. It reminded me of a picture of a lynching in the South, a man hanging from a tree, the body like a sack of beans, just hanging down, lifeless.

A reporter who worked for the paper had been out until late, early this morning, drinking at one of the bars in the Meat District. Around five, he saw a cop arrive at the scene.

The article included an account of Jack's life, a lot about his partying, hints about drugs, women, the usual stuff they printed in the
Post.
There was something about Jack's stunts. I remembered Jack at my wedding, walking on the wall of Tolya's terrace.

Tossing the paper in a garbage can I went across the street to Tolya's building and went in, thinking how weird it was that a guy like Jack ended up dumped like a bag of trash. Jack, with a Pulitzer Prize, three ex-wives, a million other women, with all the access, the private numbers for every restaurant and club, whatever he wanted, could disappear overnight. He just fell through
the cracks, someone on the street said. He wasn't in Russia at all. He was dead.

I got to Tolya's elevator at the same time as a family coming home from the beach. The man held the door open while the others—a woman and two girls—piled in the elevator with blankets, pillows, buckets, coolers. They took their time. I fiddled with a cigarette. The woman, who had an ugly skinny body and a face that had been worked on too many times, stared at me. “OK, we're sorry,” she said in a peevish tone.

I wondered what the hell they were doing in Tolya's building anyway. Maybe he was renting out residential space. Maybe the money was drying up.

I turned and slammed through a door and ran up six flights. Tolya knew his way around the High Line: he had shown it to me, had wanted me to see it, wanted me to know that he knew it, that he could get access to it. I banged on the door, and waited. I hammered on it, then rang the bell.

Wearing white slacks and a thin black shirt, Tolya embraced me formally, Russian style, and then without saying anything turned and went ahead of me into the living room, empty now of the tables and flowers and waiters and noise that had filled it at the party.

A couple of large white couches, some chairs, a huge expanse of glistening pale wood floor, a couple of immense abstracts on the walls, it was quiet. Light came through the wall of windows, but no noise.

Valentina was sitting on the couch. She had on one of
Tolya's shirts, a yellow shirt I'd seen before, which covered most of her shorts. Dry-eyed, she was very pale and held a liter bottle of water in one hand.

“Her sister is coming from Boston tonight to be with her here,” Tolya said. “Masha will be here soon.” He stood close to her, one hand on her shoulder.

“No she's not,” Val said. “I don't want anyone. I'm OK. Masha has school starting. She doesn't need to come, Daddy. She really really doesn't. I called her. I'm fine.”

“She's coming anyway,” he said, and sat down beside her and put his arms around her. For a minute, she was quiet. Then she looked up, her face scrubbed and shining, and said to me, “How are you, Artie?”

“I'm sorry,” I said to Val. “About Jack. I'm really sorry.”

“I know.” She turned to Tolya, whose eyes were closed, his face shut, expressionless. “Are you OK, Daddy?” she said gently. “Can I talk to Artie by myself, please? Would that be OK? I mean, I just need to talk to him a little bit. You don't mind, do you? I mean he's kind of like family, right?”

She was tentative with him, as if he were an old-fashioned patriarch. I had seen Tolya do business with men who looked up to him. I had seen him as a ringmaster, an impresario, at my wedding. I had seen him flirt with women. He had rescued me half a dozen times, efficient, fast on his feet. He knew how to make money. Then last week, I had seen him angry and defeated and sick. His daughter, in spite of their easy banter, saw him as requiring respect; with him, she deferred.

“Daddy, would that be OK?” she repeated.

Tolya nodded. He pulled himself to his feet and Val got up too, and he kissed her three times.

“I have to go out for a while. I have some business,” he said in Russian. “I trust Artyom,” he added, then walked away from her and went into his bedroom.

I sat down on the couch beside Val. “What is it?” I said, but I could see she didn't want to talk until Tolya had gone. For a few minutes we sat, me and Val, silently, and waited for him.

Tolya reappeared in a dark summer suit, white shirt, plain black tie; even his shoes were black. Picking up keys and a wallet from a chair near the door, he left the apartment and closed the door behind him. A few seconds later he was back. He gestured to me, again formally, a man I barely recognized as the freewheeling guy I knew who had once been a rock and roll hero. I got up.

In Russian, he said to me quietly, “You'll stay with her until I get back?”

“Sure,” I said. “Where are you going?”

“Something I have to do. Yes. For a few hours.” He looked at his watch. “You promise me, Artemy, you won't leave her alone?”

“Business? On Labor Day? It's a holiday. What about Santiago?” I said, still thinking I could get away to the shore before the holiday ended.

“He's dead. We'll talk about this later.” He went out again and I heard the grunt of the elevator.

Val picked up the water bottle she had set on a low green glass table in front of the couch, and pulled her
legs up under her, then seemed to change her mind. “Artie?”

“Yes, honey.”

She looked towards the kitchen and said, “I need some caffeine. Will you stay and drink some coffee with me?”

“Sure. Let's go ahead and make some coffee, and maybe you should eat something, too,” I said and we started for the kitchen, walking together, not saying anything.