Fresh Kills (14 page)

“You're here about the robbery?” Vera put two cups and saucers of aromatic coffee on the table, picked up her cigarette and sat down. “Please take cookies.”

I turned the cookies down. “Yes. Your cousin Rhonda asked me to come,” I said.

“Not my cousin, cousin of my aunt's husband's daughter. I think. Nice lady, Mrs Fisher. She brought me lox and bagels, even pastrami.” Vera blew out the smoke. “Rye bread also.”

“She said you wanted to talk to someone who knew Russian.”

“Cops around Staten Island do not speak Russian. My English is lousy. Sometimes people help only because they hear my name, Gorbachev, and they think, oh, maybe she is relative. They ask me, you are related to Gorby?”

“What do you tell them?”

“I say, sure.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Long time,” said Vera. “I never bother to learn English well. Enough for my job, nothing more.” She went to the
fridge and got out cheese and crackers, heavy cream for the coffee, salami and a jar of red caviar. She put it all on the table. You could die of a heart attack eating cake and drinking coffee on Russian cases. No self-respecting Russki who let you in their house let you out before they fed you to death. Or maybe it was their revenge on cops.

I reached for a wedge of Brie. “Thank you.”

“Yes. You are welcome. Please help yourself to everything.”

“Would you like to tell me what happened?”

“Yes, of course.”

Sitting on the edge of her chair, Vera Gorbachev put her cigarette in an ashtray on the table, picked up a cookie from the plate and began extracting the chocolate chips, which she ate one at time.

“I keep talking in Russian, OK?”

“That's why I'm here.”

“So we are asleep, two weeks ago this is. I sleep very well,” she said. “My husband, he is older, he gets up often in the night, you understand, to use the bathroom. On this night I heard him. I went out to the top of the stairs and saw my husband wearing his underpants, yelling at a man in the living room.”

“You saw the guy?”

She shook her head. “Not really. My husband is screaming at him and screaming at me to go back to our room and also because I left the front door open, so it was my fault. I did not. He said I did, but it was not true. The guy is trying to get out of the front door and then I yelled out for my husband to let him go, but no, he can't leave it, he can't leave anything, so he follows the man out of the door.”

“How could you see this?”

“You can see the living room from the stairs. I'll show you. Come,” Vera said.

I followed her out of the kitchen through the living room,
past a huge plasma screen TV that hung on the wall. A yellow leather couch faced the TV, there was a furry white rug and a long black glass dining table, a milky blue vase of silk roses on it and a stack of kids' games.

“You and your husband have children?” I said.

“Not now,” she said, then added hastily as if my question made her nervous, “Yes, I mean they are nieces. From my sister's family who is married to a man so rich – Russian man – she leaves toys for her kids at her house, my house. Both. Easier, she says.”

“Where does she live?”

“Staten Island also, over near water where there are many big fancy houses for Russians who pay cash. These are rich people, and very nice,” said Vera. “My sister is nice, her husband is so nice, a Russian. They have a big house with chandeliers, but we look out for each other. She gave me TV. I talk too much,” she said with a stagey laugh as she started up the flight of stairs. On the landing, she called down, “Here, look, stand here.”

I went up and stood next to her. She had been telling the truth: everything in the living room was visible from the stairs.

“After you saw him yelling at the guy, then what?” I tried not to crowd her. The landing where we stood was small, but she didn't seem to mind and she didn't move. I inched away from her.

“I yell to my husband to leave him alone, this guy who broke in. He is waving gun, but he doesn't do anything, just waves his gun and then runs out of the door and my husband, who is an idiot, follows him.”

“You called the cops? You dialed 911?”

“I could see nothing important was missing, TVs, and my jewelry was upstairs. I thought he would come right back, he was just showing me he was a big tough man,” Vera said.

“Your husband.”

“Yes.”

“You waited how long?”

“Five minutes, ten minutes. I got nervous. I put on clothes and went outside. No one is there. I called his cell phone, but it was dead. I call my sister and her husband goes to look. Afterwards, I called the cops. I don't like cops.”

“Why's that?”

“I grew up in Kiev,” said Vera, as if it explained everything.

“You talked to the police?” I said, heading down the stairs to the living room.

Following me, she raised her shoulders in a little gesture of despair. “What is the use of this? I don't speak very good English, and they are not interested. They take notes in little notebooks, but nothing happens. Nobody finds my husband's body, nothing happens.”

“You think he's dead?”

“I don't believe this, no. I don't feel this.”

“So you called Rhonda.”

“I knew her boyfriend is a top gun in law enforcement, you can say this, top gun?”

“Sure.” I thought about Sonny Lippert. “Definitely top gun.”

Vera sat on the yellow leather couch. I asked for a cigarette because I figured it would count as work, this collegial smoking ritual. Also, I was dying for a smoke.

With a red Bic lighter, Vera lit it for me and it tasted great. I didn't think she was telling me everything, so I sat on the edge of a blue chair that felt like suede and tried conversation.

“Ukraine, right? Kiev.”

“Yes,” she said. “Where did you learn your Russian?”

“Growing up.”

“In New York?”

“In Moscow.”

Vera played coy. She was also a snob. I started feeling like a jerk, like I'd come on a pointless errand. I started worrying
about Billy. Billy had been fine at Tolya's, he had charmed everyone, had seemed easy with Tol and Val and Luda, the little girl. People responded to Billy, I'd seen it with Luda, the way she had looked at him, so attentive and happy.

Had it been Stan Shank for sure on the phone? Someone else? There had been cops who didn't like the way we handled Billy's case. Parents of kids who knew Billy had been freaked out.

“Anything else you want to tell me?” I said to Vera Gorbachev.

“So you're from Russia,” Vera said. “You sound so American, but you probably learned English when you were a child.”

I nodded, thinking of Birdie, my mother's friend who had taught me English in her one-room apartment on the outskirts of Moscow.

“I've been here a long time,” I said. “You?”

“Fifteen years,” Vera said. “Was good times then. I had boyfriend who says glasnost means we will travel all over the world. I don't know where he went. I am in Staten Island. You like to travel?”

“Sure.”

“Me too. Especially I like Florida, which is so nice and warm,” she said. “You like it there?”

“You married your husband when you arrived in this country?”

“Yes. Why? You think I married him for my green card?”

“Did you?”

“Yes,” she said. “But he's OK. Al Laporello is nice Italian man, except Italians look down on Russians. We're above black people, but we are immigrants.”

“Your husband is much older?”

“Yes. Fourteen years.”

“Go on.”

“Nice, sure, for a garbage man,” said Vera whose voice was
tinged with disdain. “Garbage is disgusting, garbage stinks, nobody wants to take care of moving garbage or getting rid of garbage. Except Italians.”

“You don't like Italians?”

“We're all Americans, right?” She was sarcastic.

“How come you don't like to speak English?”

“I speak OK, but I ask Rhonda to send someone Russian like you so I can tell you all the details in the right way.”

I suspected her English was a lot better than she let on; she was going in circles and I wasn't sure why. I didn't really care. It wasn't my case.

“It is better on Staten Island now than ten years ago,” said Vera. “Many Russians leave Brighton Beach, they move to Staten Island, which they say is the new Brooklyn.”

“What's the new Staten Island?”

“New Jersey. Here you can buy Russian groceries, candies, caviar, bread, smoked fish, even imported cookies, newspapers, and beauty salon my brother-in-law's sister owns that has name of Queen of Hearts. Very intellectual,” she said. “Good hair cutting, for guys, too. I can give you address.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem, like they say.”

“You don't seem so worried about your husband.”

“I worried,” said Vera. “I worried and worried, then I decide it's like last time when he also disappeared for a few weeks. He came back. I worried almost to death first, and then I thought I couldn't worry any more.”

“Can I see the rest of the house?” I said.

“You want to see the bedroom?” Vera stood up and stretched. She was a sexy woman. She was coming on to me. I was getting too old for this shit. “Fifty coming up,” Tolya had said to me. “You first.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I'd said. “Not for a few more years.”

“I could use some more coffee,” I said to Vera.

“OK,” she said.

While Vera was in the kitchen, I ran upstairs and looked around the master bedroom, a guest room and a bathroom, which was tiled completely in black marble. Nothing looked out of place. A picture of Al Laporello and Vera Gorbachev at their wedding was on a dresser. In his tux with a frilly shirt, Laporello was pear-shaped and balding, but he looked happy.

Downstairs, Vera was waiting with two cups of fresh coffee. She had taken off her jeans jacket and through the stretchy fabric of her top I could see her breasts, the nipples sticking up through the thin material. I drank my coffee and ignored her.

“Nobody is around,” she said. “You want to make completely wasted trip to Staten Island? You could imagine I am a lonely housewife waiting for milkman,” Vera giggled.

I felt embarrassed for her.

“This would be one time, for only this thing, for hell of it, like when we were young. You never did it like that?” she said.

“Forget it,” I said.

“No?”

“No.”

“Well, bye-bye, Artie.”

“You can call me if you think of anything about the case,” I said.

“I will tell cousin Rhonda thank you for sending me Artie who speaks such lovely Russian,” said Vera sarcastically.

I said goodbye, and I beat it. I had done what Sonny Lippert had asked. I'd tell him I thought things were a little strange at the Gorbachev house on Staten Island, and that Vera wasn't exactly desperate about her husband, but that it was nothing the local cops couldn't handle.

Staten Island detectives would find Al Laporello and the creep who broke into the house. I could only hope that when
they found Laporello, he was still alive. Nothing to do with me now; I was done here.

In my car, I looked in the rear-view mirror, then at the Gorbachev house. The street was empty. I shut the door and drove away. Back to the city. Back to Billy.

On the way home, I got lost.

In the glove compartment I found a map and tried to read it while I drove. On the map, Staten Island was huge, suspended between Manhattan and Brooklyn and Jersey. On the Jersey side were tanker ports and oil depots. Around the fringes of the island were inlets, bird sanctuaries, water meadows, creeks, islands I'd never heard of. I passed boarded-up factories, abandoned industrial parks, rotted docks, piers, wharves. The watery edges of New York were tough to work; people could disappear without trace here.

I called Tolya to make sure Billy was OK, but the phone was busy.

About a mile from the Gorbachev house, I turned left and ended up in a dead end where there was beach grass and tall weeds and a few crappy mobile homes. A sign pointed to a correctional facility. I turned the car around, looked at the map, and cut down towards the water.

A second sign pointed to Fresh Kills. I had been out to the dump once or twice. It went on forever, a mountain, a sea, an endless vista of garbage, huge quivering cliffs of garbage, seagulls pecking at it, the stink unbearable. People said it woke them up at night; like dirty diapers boiling in the sun, they said, it made you want to vomit. Why had I been to Fresh Kills the first time? I couldn't remember. The second time had been after 9/11 when they reopened the dump.

The shattered remains of the Twin Towers – paper from copying machines, sheetrock walls, plastic chunks of computer, metal filing cabinets were shipped over to Fresh Kills by
barge. It became a desolate crime scene where detectives and forensics people sifted through every item from the attack, some you didn't want to name. I went over once to visit a friend who was working there. I didn't go back.

Halfway back over the Verrazano, admiring the blue of the water in the summer light, I started wondering what the hell Vera Gorbachev really wanted. I still couldn't get through to Billy – my cell was running out of juice – and I was plenty anxious now. I felt pulled in too many directions – keep Billy safe, give him some space, satisfy Sonny Lippert. The Gorbachev thing didn't feel right. I tried Billy a third time at Tolya's, the phone rang, but no one answered.

Eating a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone, looking nonchalant, Billy was leaning against my door when I got home. I lost it. I'd driven back from Staten Island, gone to Tolya's, discovered Billy wasn't there, lost my temper. Tolya told me he let him go out because Billy wanted ice cream and to look at some clothes, wanted some new jeans. I went nuts. Then Billy phoned me and said he was standing outside my place.