Fresh Kills (19 page)

“What kind?”

“I don't know. More tea?”

“No thanks.”

“Don't go away.”

What Vera wanted, I realized, was company. She was rattled. She was needy. Her husband had disappeared and it had probably occurred to her that he was looking for an excuse to dump her and beat it. She didn't say, and I didn't offer the idea. Or maybe Al was just dead.

I went outside where the young cop held up the comic book he was reading.

“Japanese,” he said. “It's good, this stuff, you know? I mean it's not just for kids.”

“You talk any Russian?”

“You kidding me? I'm Irish.”

“Is there anyone who can stay with Mrs Gorbachev? Answer the phone for her, make her feel safe?”

“I don't know. They told me to keep an eye on the block. It's all I can do,” he said and returned to his comic.

Through the screen door of her house, Vera Gorbachev had been watching, and when I went back inside her house, she said, “Who's the kid?”

“What?”

“In your car. I saw him earlier when you got here. Great-looking boy, tall, dark, yours?”

“I have to go.”

“I don't want to be alone,” said Vera.

“There's a cop outside, if anyone calls, tell him. Call a neighbor. I'm sorry about your husband, but I have to go. Unless you have more to tell me.”

Standing just inside the door, Vera said, “So maybe my husband got involved in some small deals, you know, garbage stuff, I mean literally, out here, garbage was big business, but now, since they closed the dump at Fresh Kills, people are fighting over pieces of it. My Al was OK, but he was pretty square guy,” she laughed. “Before he got into garbage, he was a plumber.”

“So he fucked up someone's toilet and they kidnapped him?”

“He had some new ideas about garbage. Maybe someone didn't like that. There're people around here don't like Russians that much, you know? So my husband has a Russian wife and someone doesn't like. Why don't you tell your kid to come inside?”

I turned and saw Billy on the steps.

Vera opened the door and said to Billy, “Come on. He speaks Russian?”

It seemed to cheer Vera up, Billy talking to her in Russian, and we all went into her kitchen where she put out plates of cheese and cold cuts for him. Billy piled up ham and cheese on bread and started eating, and I went out into the backyard to take a call from Maxine.

I told Max about Billy because I had to. I told her I had taken him to my place.

“Your place?” she said. “I thought we had a place together.”

I walked across Vera's yard and looked at a kids' blue plastic wading pool.

“You know what I mean,” I said into the phone. “My loft. You didn't want him in our apartment, so I took him there. What else could I do, Max? What did you want me to do? His
parents are in London. Come on, tell me.” I was pissed off now and she heard it.

“Never mind.” Max hung up the phone, something she never did. Maxine didn't hang up on you. I felt lousy.

From where I stood, I could see Vera and Billy through the kitchen window. He could have passed for eighteen. She had her head close to his and they were laughing and it looked like she was coming on to him and he was liking it, or maybe I was seeing things. A couple drops of rain fell on my head. I ran inside. I should have called Maxine back, but I was pissed off at her.

At the kitchen table, Billy – flushed, smiling – was busy extracting an ice cube from a glass of orange juice. He put it in his mouth and crunched it around.

“We should go,” I said.

“It's starting to rain.”

“Yeah, well, you won't melt.” I knew I sounded sarcastic but I was upset over Max.

Billy stood up, arms hanging down at his sides, head bowed, staring at his sneakers.

“Just go get in the car,” I said. “Please.”

He went, and I said to Vera, “You have my number. There's a cop on your block now. You'll be OK. If you get any more calls, let him know.”

There was nothing much I could do for her. Either she knew who had threatened her and wouldn't tell me, or she didn't know. I was done here.

“The boy, his name is Farone?” Vera called out when I had started for the door. “He said Billy Farone.”

I turned around. “Yeah. So?” I tried not to let her see my surprise.

“I know the parents,” said Vera.

It made me edgy, her calling me back for this. I didn't know
what the hell Vera Gorbachev wanted; I kept thinking it: what do you want?

“Sure, Johnny Farone, the husband, has restaurant Brighton Beach,” said Vera. “Everyone knows them, sure, and Evgenia, the wife, always around, saying hello. I heard the son is away in some boarding school. So it is this Billy you brought? He was away? Another boy?” she asked, in a wheedling tone.

Vera Gorbachev knew the Farones, but so what? Maybe she'd heard gossip about Billy. Something wasn't right about the Gorbachev business and I couldn't put my finger on it. Lippert had asked me to go talk to Vera because she was related to Rhonda Fisher, his girlfriend. Vera Gorbachev was a lot less worried about her husband than she should have been. People with funny accents were calling her. I wasn't sure if she was telling the truth. I beat it.

We were on our way to a pond Billy had read about. Told me it was a good place to fish. The phone rang. It was Sonny Lippert.

“I talked to Rhonda's relative again. I can't do any more,” I said. “I'm leaving there now.”

“I'm not calling about that, man, I want you here in the city.”

The line broke up and I couldn't hear him. He called back.

“Just get to the city,” Sonny said. “Is the boy with you?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“I told you, I want to talk to him about May Luca. He could really help me on this thing.”

“Can't hear you, Sonny, there's no signal,” I said, lying, and when the phone rang again, I didn't answer it.

“You have to go to the city?” Billy said.

“Let's go fishing.”

“Really?”

“You bet.”

“Come on!” Billy put his feet contentedly on the dashboard
and another piece of gum in his mouth. “I'm so happy,” he said. “Let's get donuts. Chocolate ones.”

“You're hungry?”

“Maybe I'm addicted.”

“You're a funny kid.”

“Am I? I mean is that good?”

“It's really good.”

“Holy shit,” I heard someone say when we got to Hank Provone's big house over near Tottenville. Holy shit. The phrase twanged me back to 9/11 as fast as a picture of the planes crashing the Twin Towers, but why? Why that phrase, I kept thinking as we walked, Billy and me, to the back patio of Hank's house where a crowd had gathered around a portable TV.

“What's going on?”

Hank looked up at me. “Jesus, Artie, don't you know?”

“Know what?”

“London. This morning. Christ, it's happening all over again.”

Hank Provone had been my partner for years, best I ever had. He was retired now and lived on Staten Island in a big house near the water. He was a good guy and I felt sad I didn't see him more. We used to call him Provolone because of his name and because he liked cheese on everything. Meat and cheese, any kind, was Hank's idea of a feast.

I'd been fishing for a couple of hours with Billy, we didn't catch anything, but we laughed a lot. I'd brought him over
to Hank's to say hello. Now, Billy beside me, I stared at the TV.

Three bombs, maybe more, had gone off that morning in the London subway. Another bomb ripped open a red double-decker bus like a can of sardines. Streets jammed with cars, ambulances, and police were filled with people streaming past; on the curb, others sat, faces smeared with dirt, clutching silver shock blankets.

I started looking for Johnny and Genia in the terrified crowd on the screen three thousand miles away.

My God, I thought and reached for Billy's hand.

Hank saw it and said softly so the others couldn't hear, “You have someone over there?”

“Billy's parents,” I said.

“Come on,” said Hank, moving us away from the crowd to the edge of the patio where the water began and a few sailboats bobbed. “You OK, Billy?”

“I'm not sure,” he said, “I don't know what's happening over there.”

“I left your dad's phone number at home. You know where your parents are staying?”

Johnny and Genia wouldn't ride the subways, would they? Genia never set foot in a subway as far as I knew, not in New York anyhow. But she was in London and she hadn't called me. If they were dead, would that mean Billy was mine forever? I was his legal guardian. For a second, my back prickled with a kind of strange restless feeling, like something buggy creeping across it.

Billy recited his father's cell number, adding, “My dad's phone, he says it's like tri-band and it works every place. He brags about it like he invented the phone. You think they're OK?” said Billy, looking distracted, worried, scared.

While I tried to get through to London, Billy stayed close to me, me wanting to hold on to him, both of us straining to hear the TV. I put the phone on redial.

“Lines are probably jammed up,” I said. “I know they're OK, your mom and dad, I just feel that.”

“Me too,” said Billy who sat down on a chair suddenly.

“What's that?” I said, squatting next to him.

“I'm scared.”

“I'm here.”

“If something happened to them, would I be able to stay with you?”

“Nothing happened to them.”

“But like if?”

“Nothing happened. I'll get the name of the hotel,” I said. Hank, who had been standing quietly near us, said, “Hey, Billy, I'm gonna get on the landline and see if I can get through to a friend of mine that's a cop in London, OK?” Hank ran a hand through his wild curly graying hair which he tried – and failed – to tame into a crew cut. “Meanwhile let me get you a soda or something. Billy? You think you're up to meeting a few people, hang out a while with the other kids, maybe help us devour some barbecue? Ribs, burgers, steaks, some dogs. I make a mean guacamole, too.”

Billy said OK, nodding shyly. Hank gave him a high five. Except for Sonny Lippert, Hank was the only guy I'd told about Billy – told the whole thing – back when the bad stuff was happening. Billy had been accused of murdering Heshey Shank out at Breezy Point. People wanted him tried as an adult. I had needed help when we made the case for him as a juvenile, and set up the newspapers to report it was self-defense. Hank Provone came with me. He stood up for me. Otherwise, he kept his mouth shut and I loved him for it. I suddenly felt glad to be here.

People on Staten Island were tight with their communities; they identified themselves as being from Tottenville or Rossville, not from some outer borough of New York. In Rossville, which was still open countryside in the nineteenth
century, whole Sicilian villages settled together. Before the landfill opened, before the stink of garbage permeated the place and people sealed their windows with duct tape during the worst times.

I'd let things drift with Hank and me, didn't know why. Now I was with Maxine, I'd spend more time here. She would understand, she had lived on Staten Island with her first husband.

With his belly straining to get free from his faded Springsteen T-shirt, Hank didn't look much older than when we last worked together, ten, eleven years back. He had retired after 9/11.

“I can't even think of the right words for the bastards who put bombs in London, we should cut their nuts off first, and then fry them,” said Hank. “The Brits are such pussies, they just lock them up for a few years, me I'd stick a needle in them. People thought it was over. We knew. So, hey, Artie, you missed me? Come and say hello.”

Hank pulled me back towards the group in front of the TV. “Everybody, it's Artie.”

Folded up on a chair a little way from the TV set was a woman I recognized from some of Hank's parties. She had lost her son on 9/11, and sat now, tears coming out of her eyes but not making any noise.

At the other end of the yard was a group of teenagers who sat on the edge of the pool, kicked their feet in the water and stared into their soda cans. A couple of older boys held beer bottles. From somewhere in the house Springsteen played on a stereo. Hank never played anything else.

“This London thing sucks, man, right? Jesus Christ,” Hank said. “Fucking terrorists. I'm like yelling holy shit over and over when I saw it because it was like it was all happening again.”

So I remembered; the first words on the first piece of video I saw as the first plane hit the south tower that morning, a New York voice crying out: “Holy shit.”

“Nobody wants to fucking talk about it, so people who are
hurting are so grateful you even remember them it breaks your heart,” said Hank. “One 9/11 fireman's widow, I still go over and take her a bottle of wine or just sit and talk and last time I was there she was like god blessing me and so on and so forth. Jesus, Artie, you remember the sound of the locators?”

I remembered. The day after the attack, when we were working non-stop on the smoking pile of shit at Ground Zero, there had been an eerie noise like cicadas, something in the woods, hundreds of them. It was the locators firemen wear so they can be found in the smoke. They were still beeping on dead fireman in the rubble for days afterwards.

“Take it easy.” I put my hand on Hank's arm. “Where's Mary?”

“She's in the kitchen cooking where a woman belongs.” Hank laughed.

The Provones had five kids – Hank was only twenty-one when they started – and the house was always filled with them and their children and cousins, and uncles and aunts, Italian, Polish, Irish, Greek. “We're the fucking UN of Staten Island,” Hank used to say.