Disturbed Earth (13 page)

"I'm listening," I said, but I was out of bed, stumbling across the room, looking for cigarettes.

"Go on," I said to Sonny Lippert.

"The preliminary reports are in," he said.

My heart was hitting against my chest.

"I heard you," I said.

"There's no match with May Luca's blood. The clothes didn't belong to her."

"But the blood type was the same."

"Yeah, some of it. But it was O positive, like a million other people. It was the DNA we needed."

"I thought you told me her ma said she had a blue baseball jacket, she was a tomboy, she loved the game."

Sonny said, "What type of blue? Did any of us ask? Jesus, man, we fucked up, you know. The jacket we found was a dark blue Yankees jacket. May's jacket was from the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets farm team, out by Coney Island. You know where I mean. It was blue but it wasn't from the Yankees. The father came in this morning and looked at it. It wasn't hers. None of the stuff was hers. We just assumed. We fucking assumed too much. We had a creep, we had a body, we had a weapon, we tied them together, so we assumed."

By now I had clothes on and my car keys in my hand, and a fresh battery for my cell phone, which had gone dead. As I made for the front door I saw a pink plastic cigarette case on the kitchen counter. It was Ivana's and I grabbed it, and yanked the pack out, desperate for a smoke.

A small gold cross on a thin chain fell out. I turned it over and over. I read the initials. I had seen it before. I had seen it on Billy Farone.

"I make you a present," Ivana had said. She had left the cross for me; it wasn't an accident.

Part Three

17

On a very quiet day, you could almost hear the ocean from the Far ones' house in Manhattan Beach. You could walk to the beach easily. Once, I'd gone with Billy, who showed me how to surf cast.

It was maybe ten minutes from Brighton Beach, but it was quiet and expensive and the houses were big and the streets had English names: Coleridge, Dover, Exeter, Hastings, Kensington, Norfolk.

The Farone place was large and beige and there was a light in the downstairs window. I parked out front and, the gold cross in my hand, ran up the walk and leaned on the bell until Genia opened the door. I held out the cross.

"Is this Billy's? Is it his, Genia? Listen to me, don't look in the other direction, OK? Where's Johnny? Does he stay at his restaurant every night? Do you two fucking care about your kid? When were either of you going to call and tell me Billy's missing?"

She took the gold cross from my hand and held it close to her face and, suddenly, slumped onto a chair in the hall.

"My God," she said. "Where did you get this? What do you mean missing?"

"Where's Billy?" I said.

"I told you, he went upstate yesterday morning, with Stevie and his father, the kid across the street. They promised to get him home early today, in time for church, they promised, but it gets later and later, Artemy, and I think, OK, it's a few hours, so what, and then I call and no answer and no one home at the Gervasis'." Genia talked mostly in Russian, switching on and off to English, hysteria rising in both.

I said, "You didn't think to call me."

"I try. Your cell phone is not working."

"You could call at home."

"I'm scared." Her face was pinched, but she was dry-eyed. "I wanted to call you," she said. "I've been waiting. I went out to look for my boy but he's not there. They're not there. The people, Stevie's parents weren't at home. I am hoping you come. Johnny said you were asking about Billy, and then you asked me about him and his friend, Stevie, the kid down the street. So you knew something? You knew and you didn't tell me?" She stopped for breath and to light a cigarette.

"I didn't want you to worry."

"You think I'm a bad mother, you think I don't pay attention my son is missing?" she whispered in Russian, looking up from a little white silk chair in the hall of her house. She crouched low, as if to protect herself from a blow. Genia looked crumpled and tiny.

"He was supposed to call last night," she said. "He didn't call. I tried him, he has a cell phone, nothing. Nothing from Stevie's parents, and I was petrified. I sat here alone in this house and convinced myself he was fine, he was with Stevie, but I couldn't move."

She held the cross in one hand and gestured at the living room of the big house with the other. She peered at the inscription; it was a date. Billy's first communion, she said. From Tiffany's. She went to the city, she went to Tiffany's and bought it and had the date engraved. Genia put out the cigarette and looked at her hands as if they were distinct objects, separate from herself.

"What about Johnny?"

"What about him? He says leave the boy, he's a boy, Gen, he has to be tough, OK. Nothing is wrong with him. Give him some rope, he says and I think what for? To hang himself?"

"Come on, let's go sit in the living room," I said, and Genia, looking at the gold cross again, began to cry.

We sat on the white sofa. Suddenly, Genia's sleek, made-up face seemed to crack. Tears fell down her face in a way I'd never seen tears. They fell steadily without any break, streams of them, coming down her cheeks. I held her hand and waited for her to stop and looked towards the living room.

Everything in the house was white, white silk chairs, white carpet, a white velvet sectional in the sunken living room, which was white. As soon as Johnny had the money, he'd bought it for her.

Johnny got her the brand new big house she had wanted all her life. The facade was red brick. The entry way—she called it the portico—had slender white columns and between them a light shaped like a lantern and big as a wrecking ball. The driveway was lined with cement planters and little topiary bushes and there were two Chinese dragons made of stone that flanked the two-car garage. It had all seemed a paradise to her when she moved in.

Most of all it was the smell she loved; everything in the house, the house itself, was brand new: the carpets, the furniture, the appliances, the ruched taffeta curtains in all the windows, the pale mauve Formica panels that hid the closets in her bedroom, the matching silk spread and curtains, the granite in the kitchen, the marble in the bathrooms.

In another room was a wall-size plasma screen and a cream leather sofa: Genia's own home entertainment center. In all her life she had never expected to live in a big house with a living room like the one where she sat now, her feet planted on the thick carpet. A house with a sunken living room, the floor covered in pale carpet. Wall to wall, she had said.

The first time she told me about the carpet was one of the few times I'd seen her really smile. She didn't smile much in the old days; she was afraid to show her lousy teeth. The teeth had been fixed. She had the house.

To her, the best part, she had said, was the smell. It smelled new. She had gone up and down the stairs, in and out of the rooms, sniffing it. Sometimes she bent over to be closer to the smell, putting her nose against the fresh shining surfaces. In the dining room was lots of black teak, an enormous table with silk orchids on it and a breakfront with glass doors; inside was Genia's collection of fancy china, all of it black and gold. From France, she had said; it was French.

To me the house smelled like plastic. Or vomit. The faint smell that lingered after someone had puked. It smelled unwrapped and unlived in, but it wasn't my house, so it didn't matter; it was Genia's fantasy, a place she entered every day of her life as if through the pearly gates. She had told me all this once when she first moved in and invited me over for tea.

Instead of tea, she had opened a magnum of Dom Perignon some well wisher had presented to her. We drank it all and smoked cigarettes, and sat on the white sofa together and reminisced like a pair of old Russians. Just that once, tipsy from the bubbles and laughing at old bad Russian jokes about bad sausage and corrupt politicians, I had felt close to her, as if we were brother and sister and had grown up together.

Again I noticed how she held her pack of cigarettes; like me, I thought again.

I put my arm around her now and said, "Scared of me? Scared, who of?"

"Cops. Give me a cigarette, please."

"You have one in your hand."

She stubbed it out in a crystal ashtray on the coffee table and I gave her another one and lit it and she smoked it silently all the way down to the filter, then dropped it in a thin porcelain coffee cup next to the ashtray, where it sizzled and died.

"Where did they go, Billy and the friend?"

"Upstate. He's with Stevie Gervasi, his friend, like I said. It's only Sunday. He only left yesterday morning; the father was taking them upstate. To learn skiing. I think. Or maybe skate. Hockey skating on a lake."

"What's the name of the town, Gen?"

"Indian name. Not far. Maybe an hour, they said. Mahopac, something like this?"

"If he was only a few hours late, how come you're so scared?"

"I told you. I called. There was no one home. I wanted to speak to Billy. I called at the place they go, Stevie's people, I called to Billy's cell phone. I called the mother. I don't know. Now you bring his cross so I know something is bad."

I said, "Johnny's still at the restaurant?"

She nodded.

"He slept there last night?"

"Yes. Weekends, it gets late, sometimes he sleeps in his office."

"Yeah, sure, but two nights in a row? Gen?"

"It's OK. I don't want him driving when he's drunk." She glanced out of the window. "It's almost snowing."

"He could call a cab. You could pick him up. It's not far."

"It works for us, OK? It's OK. You understand. He likes it. He stays late with the guys, he plays cards with the bussers. He enjoys this." She looked at me. "We don't know if anything is wrong. Do we? Artie? I mean until the Gervasis get home." She was frantic.

I found some Kleenex in my pocket and gave it to her. "Wipe your face, Genuska," I said in Russian and put my arm around her.

She leaned against me and wiped the tears and snot and mascara off and balled up the tissue in her hand.

I said, "What was Billy wearing when he left the house this morning?"

She looked up.

"You saw him leave, right?" I said. "You saw him go, didn't you? You wouldn't let your kid go without seeing him, isn't that right, Genia? What was he wearing?"

She nodded. "Around 6.30 yesterday morning. It was foggy, so I watched him. He went across the street. He went to the Gervasi house. It was OK."

I thought about Ivana. She had stumbled over the clothes around ten. Four hours after Billy left home.

Genia played with the sharp little ends of her short red hair. It was a mess, the ends wet with sweat, as if she'd been running her hands through it for hours.

"What did he have on?"

Genia didn't hear me, or didn't want to. "He said I want to do this myself. He said I'm almost twelve. I want to go to Stevie's alone. I can do it myself. My grandpa always let me, he said."

"Your father? The old man?"

"Billy liked him. They were OK together before he died. Except for once. Once I found Billy screaming, just sitting, screaming. I said, what did he say to you, the old man? And he said, about the war, like always."

Go on.

"When Billy gets an idea, he's very intense. He talks really good, Artemy, he was talking when he was two years old, he talks with big words in English I don't understand. It's very hard to say no. He gets upset, and I want this, for him to be independent. Isn't that right? Artemy? It's right, isn't it? So I said, OK. OK. It was all set. The day before I talk to Stevie's mother, very nice, very wealthy and decent woman, and nice to me, you know, and everything is arranged."

"You went over there already?"

"Of course, you think I'm an idiot? Billy was supposed to be home this morning, As soon as I see he is late, I call and when there is no answer I go over. The house is dark." She looked at her square gold watch. From Cartier, she told me once. From Cartier.

"But you saw him go."

"Yes. Johnny said, I want him home for church Sunday, but what for? Johnny never comes home for church. I go to that church with Billy for their sake, I become Catholic, I did all that, to be an American. Then I discover these priests they do dirty things with little boys." She laughed bitterly. "This will kill Johnny. He loves the kid, or pretends he does."

"What does that mean?"

"Johnny's a hugger, you know? He gives you big sloppy kiss, he thinks this shows his love. He's like a child himself."

Straightening her spine, Genia leaned forward again as if she couldn't support her own weight. She combed her hand through her hair over and over, then looked up as if to study my expression.

I got out my cell phone. "I'm going to call this in, Gen. I can't do anything until you say he's missing officially."

"Please, wait. A little while longer, OK, Artemy? It's only Sunday. It's only a few hours. Wait a few hours. It's not even dark."

She picked up the gold cross and worked the chain through her fingers like rosary beads.

"He was wearing it when he left?" I said.

She nodded.

"What else was he wearing? Take me through it."

"I didn't want him growing up frightened like me. I know he's a funny child, strange sometimes, but Johnny says, let him grow up, and this way Johnny is sometimes right. He takes the bus to school. I let him walk to Stevie's. He goes to his grandmother on the bus. I let him bike to the restaurant when weather is good, you see? Even the old general let him go around the block alone."

"How come you call your father the general like that?"

She shrugged.

I said, "Tell me about Billy's clothes."

But she was on another track again. She led me into the kitchen, where she made coffee and I sat in the breakfast nook. She talked. You couldn't stop her. She talked without stopping so I had to pay attention. She held me in the endless talk like a bug in a web.

"Yes. So Friday night I said, he could go. I said you can walk to Stevie's by yourself Saturday morning. Tomorrow morning. Saturday. Then the two of them would be together all day with Stevie's family in the country. Then he'd stay over. I pretended not to see him. I didn't let him know I was awake. It was early in the morning. A little before 6.30. So I heard him get up. I heard him go downstairs and let himself out and I watch him all the way across the street and over two houses. I can see him all the way to the front of the Gervasi house because the streetlights are still on and also people on block have lights outside their houses." Genia paused. "So it was OK. I went back to sleep. He's very independent. He's not an emotional kid. He's very sure, you see, very determined. He's . . ."