Sacrifice Fly (23 page)

“For thinking that … Lisa’s bruise…”

“Thank you.” With nothing left to say, he let go of my hand, got into his truck, and
headed home. It was about time I did the same thing.

Chapter 18

I GOT AS FAR AS THE BODEGA
by the subway and decided I wanted a cup of coffee. I filled the cup halfway and dumped
in a lot of sugar. I had the guy fill the rest with ice, and I took the cup outside.
Shaking it all together, I leaned against the entrance to the subway and watched as
all the busy people hurried past me, up and down the subway stairs, across the avenue,
and around the crowded intersection. I was the only one not in motion, and I felt
a small sense of peace. I’d been moving a lot the past couple of days. Maybe Ron had
been right to send me home.

I took a long sip of my coffee and thought about what I’d do with my unexpected day
off when a car horn sounded, and a dark blue sedan pulled over to the curb in front
of where I was standing. The car had a logo on its passenger side door that took me
a few seconds to place. A snake wrapped around a cross. The passenger window rolled
down.

“Mr. Donne,” Elijah Cruz said, leaning across the seat. “I believe you are late for
school.”

“I got sent home,” I said. “Sick.”

“You do not look sick to me.”

“That’s what I thought until my boss told me I was wrong. How did everything go with
Milagros last night?”

“The doctor said she was fine. No injuries or bruises. She was obviously disturbed
by the events of the past week, but he cleared her to be released to her grandmother.”

“Good news,” I said.

“Can I give you a ride? You are going home, I presume.”

I stepped over and placed my hand on the roof. The cool air coming out of the car
tempted me. “That’s what I was debating. Seems a shame to waste a day like this.”

“You enjoy the heat?”

“To a point,” I said. “It just doesn’t seem like an indoor day.”

The passenger door lock popped up.

“Exactly as I was thinking,” Elijah Cruz said. “Come. I want to show you something
that I believe will be of interest to you.” And, as if sensing my hesitation, he added,
“One hour of your time, Mr. Donne. Then I will take you home or wherever it is you
wish to go next.”

“Wherever?” I asked.

Elijah Cruz smiled. “Within reason.”

He didn’t take me far. We were about halfway to my apartment when he pulled over and
parked illegally in front of McCarren Pool. “Excuse me.” He reached into his glove
compartment and removed a blue card with an official-looking seal on it. “Come.” He
placed the card on the dashboard.

“You have some business at the pool, Mr. Cruz?”

“Come.”

We exited the car, and I followed him over to the pool’s main gates, which have been
chained shut for over twenty years. Not today. He swung open one of the gates and
held it for me as if welcoming me to a backyard barbecue.

“It is okay, Mr. Donne,” he said. “I have the city’s permission.”

“I haven’t been inside here for years,” I said, stepping past Cruz.

“You used to come here to swim?” he asked, surprised.

“When I was a cop,” I explained, “we used to get called out here every week.” I looked
around at the knee-high weeds, old tires, pieces of lumber, garbage bags filled with
God-knew-what, and the neglected, dying trees. “Kids partying in the pool, climbing
the towers. I had to put out fires every once in a while.”

“Yes,” Cruz agreed. “My point to the city exactly. When you let a glorious place like
this … fall into decay, you are asking for problems. It is only by building something
positive that you make a change for the better.”

If he were waiting for an “Amen” from me, he’d have to keep waiting. We took the stairs
up to the arch, the once-grand pool entrance that welcomed thousands of people off
the steamy streets of Brooklyn. Now nothing more than an easel for any knucklehead
with a can of spray paint who wasn’t afraid to crawl under, slip through, or climb
over a barb-wired fence. We passed the admission booth and the bathhouses, and walked
into the main pool area. You could fit a football field in here. In the middle of
the pool, a few feet away from one of the many “islands” that rose from the floor,
a man was looking through one of those scopes surveyors use. I spotted his partner
about fifty yards away.

“Your business?” I asked Cruz.

Cruz stood beside me. “The city has graciously allowed me the day to survey the pool.”
He didn’t hide his sarcasm. “I have two weeks to present my plan to the zoning board.”

“Plan?”

“Look around you, Mr. Donne,” he said, making a sweeping gesture with his hand. I
looked around. “Now close your eyes.” I kept my eyes open. Cruz had his shut as he
went on, his arm held out in front of him, the palm facing the pool. “I envision a
church, a temple for the people to worship in. I see”—he moved his palm over a bit—“a
school the parishioners would be proud to send their children to. A recreation center”—again
his hand moved slightly—“to exercise not only the body, but the soul, as well.”

He stood like that for a few more seconds—silent, his hand out in front of him—before
asking, “Can you see that, Mr. Donne?”

“I see an abandoned pool,” I said, “hopelessly and unfortunately stuck between a public
school and a public park, Mr. Cruz. Not to mention an old factory across the street
that is probably going to be broken up into million-dollar condos in a year or two.
Do you really think the city will let you put a church here?”

“Yes!” He bought his two hands together, making a loud enough noise that the surveyor
closest to us looked over. “That,” Cruz said, his hands still together, eyes still
closed as if in prayer, “is my vision. The vision I share with you today.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I kept quiet, waiting for Cruz to reopen his
eyes. When he did, he turned to me and touched my elbow.

“Perhaps if my last name were Trump,” he said. “You—they—would take me more seriously,
yes?”

“Perhaps.”

“Let them have the waterfront,” he said. “Let them build their million-dollar condominiums
with views of Manhattan. Fill them with those who work across the river and would
not dream of sending their children to public schools.” He fixed his eyes on mine.
“I know the struggle that comes with no place to worship. My own childhood church
was destroyed by fire when I was just a teenager. My dream is to rebuild the spirit
of that church. Here, on this spot. This is what I ask for.”

I held his stare for a few seconds and then said, “Sold.”

Cruz laughed. “If only the city were as easily convinced.”

“Maybe you should bring the mayor out here and have him shut his eyes.”

“The mayor has little interest in abandoned pools. Or abandoned people.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” I said.

“Do you know, when they decided to shut this pool down, when they decided they could
spare no more resources for the maintenance and security? That same year the millionaires
running this country announced massive tax cuts. The federal government paid billions
of dollars to the arms builders to produce weapons they told us they hoped to never
use. They even found enough money to help other countries buy weapons and train soldiers
and contribute to the culture of death.”

Cruz bent over and picked up a piece of the pool bottom, its blue paint faded but
still visible after all these years. He held it in his closed hand and crushed it,
allowing the pieces to fall to the ground.

“Do you know where the children of Williamsburg go swimming now? The lucky ones take
the hour ride by subway to Coney Island. The less fortunate and more daring take their
chances by jumping into the East River off the decaying piers. Politicians prefer
their pools like their schools: private.”

I looked over at what used to be the children’s pool. The tall, brown grass covering
the swimming area swayed gently in the slight breeze, a miniaturized prairie.

“Yo!” We both looked over at the surveyor, who was waving his clipboard.

“Excuse me for a moment, Mr. Donne.”

As Cruz went over to discuss business, I tried to imagine what this pool once was
and what it had meant to this community. Standing here in the great, empty space,
I could understand a little better what some of the old-timers had meant when they
told me about McCarren.
“Our homes may not have been much, sonny boy, but we were close to the pool.”
An oasis.

I walked over to where Cruz was finishing up his conversation with the surveyor. They
were looking at the clipboard. Cruz pointed at something and the surveyor nodded.
Cruz smiled. They shook hands, and the surveyor went over to his coworker.

“Good news?” I asked.

“The work I would like to have done can be done.”

“Congratulations.”

“One obstacle out of many,” he said. “But it is enough to get me to the next one.
Have you had breakfast yet, Mr. Donne?”

“Just coffee,” I said.

“Would you join me then?”

“I’m not hungry yet, thanks. But I will take that ride now. Home.”

“As you wish.”

We were approaching the archway when Cruz stopped. He reached over and began gently
fingering the leaves on a six-inch plant that was growing out of the floor of the
pool.

“What would you call this, Mr. Donne?”

I stepped closer to get a better look. “A weed?”

Cruz nodded. “Most people would,” he said. “But in reality, it is the same tree that
grows just outside this fence.” He pointed to a tall tree to the right of the pool’s
entrance. “That tree will grow to thirty or forty feet and was planted well before
the city shut the pool. This one,” he touched the leaves of the one at his feet again,
“comes from the one outside. The product of a stray seed blown over by a storm. It
may grow another foot or so and still be seen as a weed, but it is truly a small miracle.
To be able to survive at all, to burst through the concrete and reach for the sun.
Remarkable. And yet, for all its perseverance, it will always be considered a weed
until it grows too big and demands more than the soil can provide.”

“That’s too bad,” I said, as much to Cruz as to the weed.

“It will die here unless it is taken and placed where there is more water, more sunlight.
If that happens, it will grow as mighty as any of its brothers and shed its status
of ‘weed’ and be called a tree.” He gave the leaves one more stroke. “What do you
think, Mr. Donne?”

“You should take the pulpit every once in a while at that church of yours, Mr. Cruz.”

He smiled. “I leave that for the real preachers. I am just a businessman. Which I
must now get back to,” he said. “Let me take you home.”

By the time Cruz dropped me off, it was after ten. I picked up an egg sandwich, another
coffee, and a newspaper at the deli. It was almost noon when I finished all of them.
The message light on my phone was blinking. It was Billy.

“No go on those plates, Ray,” he explained. “Used to be registered upstate, but that
car was dumped and they ain’t in the system anymore. Maybe your friend read it wrong.
Sorry.”

I hated dead ends. I took a second shower, then wasted half an hour channel-surfing,
and another thirty minutes trying to doze off. Too many thoughts of Frankie made me
feel helpless; too much caffeine had me wired. Looked like I was going to see Muscles
after all.

Chapter 19

“I GUESS I DIDN’T MAKE MYSELF
clear last time we spoke.”

Muscles was spreading a jellylike substance on my knees as I was trying to get into
a comfortable position on the training table.

“When I said it was about time you decided to get your knees back in shape, you thought
I meant what, now?”

It’s pretty easy to be sarcastic when you’re the one holding pads with wires connected
to a generator that looks big enough start a truck engine.

“Explain this part to me again,” I said as he attached four pads to the sides of my
knees.

“Transcutaneous Electronic Nerve Stimulation.” Like he had invented the thing. “TENS.
Once I turn on the generator”—he gave a sweeping hand motion—“you’re gonna feel something
along the lines of pins and needles. I’ll increase the voltage until you tell me to
stop.”

After a few seconds, I said, “Okay.” It took me a while to get used to it, but when
I did, it felt … therapeutic. “This new tech stuff is great.”

“Not so new, Raymond.” Muscles stood. “High frequency electronic stim has been known
to disrupt the pain signals in targeted parts of the body for years.”

“I’m not buying one of these machines, Muscles.”

“You could, though. This one here’ll run you about eight hundred.”

“And my insurance?”

“Covered,” he said. “I may have to call it something besides TENS, but they’ll cover
it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Raymond. Do you really need a lecture on how our medical system—and the politicians
they pay good money for—would rather spend billions of dollars on drug therapy instead
of something like this that really helps? This device, you buy and pay for once. Where’s
the perpetual profit in that? Drugs? Now, there’s the gift that keeps on giving.”
He reached into the cooler, pulled out two ice packs, and placed one on top of each
knee. “Don’t worry. There’s no danger of leaking”—he wiggled his fingers—“and gzzzzzzz!”

“I trust you.”

“When I submit your forms, I’ll have to write ‘Pain Management’ instead of ‘TENS.’
Some insurance companies still consider this an ‘elective procedure.’ From the Latin
for ‘We don’t wanna pay for it.’ They reject, I appeal. Sometimes I win.”

The pins-and-needles were doing their job, creating a pleasant sensation that started
at my knees and rippled up the legs and down to the feet. I was tempted to ask Muscles
to up the voltage, but it was my first time.

“How long do I lie here?” I asked, leaning back and shutting my eyes.