Fresh Kills (28 page)

I didn't answer. It had occurred to me, right then as Shank headed for the bathroom and Britz got himself another Diet Coke – God knows why I thought of it then – exactly how Shank knew Billy was in Brooklyn.

I waited. Shank returned from the bathroom still zipping his pants.

“So old man Farone, John Sr, your ex-partner, called to tell you his grandkid Billy was coming back to the city? Isn't that right, Shank?”

“He don't talk so good anymore, far as I know. Poor bastard stroked out, in a wheelchair. Fuck knows what he's saying, just drools into the phone.”

But old man Farone had called out, “Everything OK out there, Billy boy?” as we left his house in Florida. His voice was thick and the words blurry, but he could talk all right. Shank was bullshitting me. The old man could talk, so long as someone put the call through for him.

I leaned into Shank's ugly face and said, very quietly, “Just stop following us.”

“Or?”

“Try me,” I said.

From where I sat in the freezing cafe, I could see a couple of guys hanging around on the street near my car.

I wasn't getting anywhere with Shank. I wanted him locked up. I knew it was him who put the dolls in the Chinatown fridge, but it wasn't enough. Maybe I could shake his smug demeanor, I thought; maybe I could get him for assaulting a cop. I was willing to let him take a slug at me for that.

I leaned over the table. “You and your pals still like little girls?”

Shank's face blew up like he just ate something poisonous.

“What the fuck you talking about?”

“I know, and I could let everyone else know, how people said you and old man Farone liked feeling up little girls, how you put your hands under little girls' dresses, you kept pictures, you protected each other. Maybe you did other stuff with them. You were a rookie when you and old man Farone first became partners. He taught you, right, and you got him whatever he needed,” I said close up to Shank's face. “You got him whatever he needed. You tell your priest about that? You want me to remind people that it happened to May Luca who was murdered? You heard there's a little girl got killed recently over in Jersey? You heard that, Stan?”

Shank lurched towards me. Britz put up a tiny manicured hand to try to stop him. Nothing could have stopped Shank, who was surprisingly fast on his feet and had me by the throat, his hands like hams.

“You're a fucking asshole,” he screamed. “That was Farone, not me, you hear? I never did that stuff.”

“So how come you never see your kid, Debbie? Your own kid, you never see her, isn't that because she stays away from you?” I remembered the toy stroller at the Shank house and I took a gamble. “You even keep toys for Debbie's kid, your own granddaughter, who never comes. Isn't that right? I bet
Debbie wouldn't let her little girl near you, but you just keep hoping and they never show.”

He gripped my neck and I gasped for air and thought I was going to pass out, then he let go and pushed me, and I fell backwards into my chair. It tipped over. I was on the floor, my legs in the air, and I felt like a fool because what I wanted was to get out my gun and beat the shit out of him. I got up.

“You want to know the truth?” Shank said.

I waited.

He was purple and I thought he might have a heart attack, but he grabbed Britz's Diet Coke and slugged it down.

“The truth is, your fucking nephew killed Heshey, and he deserves whatever. That's the truth and you don't tell the truth about it, you and that prick, Sonny Lippert. You just fixed things up with some judge.”

I wanted to get him good and mad; if he got crazy, he might talk, or attack me; one way or the other, he'd give me something to use against him.

“What eats you, Shank, is that your own son, who was damaged goods, died, and Billy is alive and well.”

From his back pocket, Shank took a knife. I saw the blade glint in the dull light.

“I could kill you, you know,” said Shank. “I could carve you up. I made up my mind I wasn't going to do him, the kid, your nephew, or whatever he is.”

“I don't believe you.”

“I'm a Catholic and the priest told me, don't kill nobody, and killing kids is worst, you go to hell forever and they got devils down there stick you in the eyes and the balls for the rest of your life,” said Shank who clearly believed it and was terrified. “Farone told me from Florida, keep an eye on my grandson, keep an eye on Billy boy, just make sure no one else gets to him, that he's safe, so that's what I done, you hear? The old man, he was my partner, and he's stroked out, and I done
what he asked me.” He lunged at me “I didn't make no promises about you.”

The air on my arms was so cold, the hairs stood up and seemed to freeze like icicles, and my skin was raw and rough as paper.

“Let's talk about the toys you sell off the back of a truck, dolls for little girls, say.”

“You don't got nothing, do you?” Shank was two inches from my face. “Or maybe you got some prints on some toy dollies, is that it?”

I didn't say anything.

“Who's going to indict me because I sold a couple hundred dolls that fell off the back of a truck, like they say, so to speak, and some of the same type ended up at a toy store off Fifth fucking Avenue and another one on Madison, and some ended up in Chinatown, you think anyone's going to indict me for that?” Shank said. “There's hundreds. I sold hundreds of them. A big item for little kids. So someone got hold of a few and stuck 'em on ice. Yeah yeah, I heard about it. So fucking what? Now get the fuck out of here.”

On the street, I pushed past Shank's guys who were standing too close to my car. Sammy Britz came after me.

“You shouldn't push Shank like that,” he said, still holding his can of Diet Coke. “He has a temper.”

“Fuck you. You told him I came to see you, you owe me now.”

“In that case, here's something else,” said Britz flicking imaginary dust off his little lapels.

“Yeah?”

“You gonna try to pin the dolls on Shank?”

“I have to go.”

“We're even now, right, detective?”

“No.”

I could see Britz doing his accounts in his head.

“Shank told me when he was keeping an eye on your nephew, he noticed the kid was always holding a cell phone, like he was taking pictures with it, never took his eye off it, that anything you can use? I mean tell me, 'cause I don't like to end the week with owing people, you know? So does that make us good, detective, does that even us up?”

Britz was more anxious than I even remembered him being, and I let him hang around for a few minutes while I patted my pockets for a pack of cigarettes, fiddled with the door of my car, enjoying the pinched, scared look on his violent little face.

“So?”

“So I'm thinking, we're even.” Britz worked on the Diet Coke he held, and even when the can was empty he sucked on it like a baby sucking on its mother's tit, like he couldn't get enough. “You know, Detective Cohen, Shank told you like it is.”

“Like what is?” I said.

“Whatever he does is for his brother, Heshey,” Britz said.

“He never gave a rat's ass about Heshey, who was only his half brother, the kid from his father's second wife, the Russian Jew he hated,” I said. “Come on, Sammy, you want your accounts evened up, don't you?”

I opened my car door, and made to get in.

Britz leaned down, dropped the Coke can in the gutter, and stamped on it, smashing it up like the little plane on Coney Island beach.

“You really got to him when you mentioned the daughter and the grandkid.”

“So?”

“Yeah, well, the husband, Debbie's husband, Shank's son-in-law, it was him didn't want their daughter anywhere near Shank or his pals. Debbie Shank didn't say nothing about it, just went along with her husband.”

“Go on.”

“Your hand's shaking,” Britz said. “You mentioned you went out to Staten Island recently, isn't that right?”

Did I? I couldn't remember. I kept my mouth shut.

“So Debbie and her family, they lived over there for a while, came back from Italy, moved into a place on Staten Island, out by the mall near Fresh Kills,” said Britz.

“Why would I care?”

“Debbie's husband got nervous about Shank and they took the kid and moved some place upstate. Catskills, I think. Town of Accord. Cut themselves off from both families, Shank, her husband's family, too,” said Britz. “His mother was dead, his father remarried. Another Russki, the second wife.”

“What's the husband's name?”

“Frank Laporello,” said Britz. “So are we even now?”

At Vera Gorbachev's house there had been a tricyle in the yard. When I had asked if they had children, her and Al Laporello, she had said, “Not now.” Even then I had thought it was strange.

The house where May Luca had lived was shut up. There was a
FOR RENT
sign in the front yard, which was full of weeds. A filthy shriveled pink balloon clung to the low fence around the yard, and the remains of some rosary beads, and I remembered the night after May was murdered how people came with flowers and balloons and stuffed animals and candles, and stood for hours, praying, weeping, lighting candles, in the street. It had seemed an open and shut case: May's body dumped at a nearby marina, a local crackhead who ran from the cops and got shot dead.

Now Sonny Lippert was working the case of another dead girl whose name I didn't know, who lived somewhere near here, and there was evidence that the same perverted bastard who killed May had killed Jane Doe. Had killed others also, years earlier, cold cases that had been shelved.

I was already thinking about Stan Shank for the killer. His desperation to set Billy up, the fact that Billy and May Luca had been friends long ago, maybe it was Shank all along. Maybe he had wanted May Luca dead because his pal, old man Farone, had felt her up and she had talked; maybe it was Shank who killed the little girl in Jersey to set up Billy.

Vera Gorbachev had called me because her husband, Al Laporello, had disappeared, and Laporello's son was married to Stan Shank's daughter.

Where did I fit in? Was I in so deep I was dragging Billy down with me?

“Who is it?” Rhonda Fisher yelled through the door of Sonny's apartment when I got there.

There was the sound of locks turning, a chain removed, the door opened, and Rhonda said, “Hi, Artie, come on in. Sonny's asleep.” In the background John Coltrane played “My Favorite Things.” Sonny had a fancy Bose system and the sound was great.

“You don't look so hot.” Rhonda kissed my cheek, invited me into the kitchen, and offered me a cold beer that I drank down in a couple of gulps.

Before Lippert let Rhonda into his life, there was nothing in the kitchen except a jar of stale Medaglio d'Oro instant espresso and bottles of Scotch; now there was food and some red mugs on the draining board and a bunch of yellow roses on a round table. Rhonda wasn't living there, but she came around a lot and fixed things for Sonny.

Neatly stacked next to the roses was a pile of newspapers, copies of the
New York Review of Books
and the
London Literary Review
, which Sonny read religiously and discussed with me, or tried to. Once, during a long discourse on Charles Dickens and Darwin and if they ever met each other in London, I fell asleep over dinner.

“Sit,” said Rhonda, who had lost a few pounds – she told me she was into Pilates – and looked great. She was wearing a pair of white shorts and a red and white striped shirt, a pair of gold Italian earrings Sonny had given her, and she leaned against the stove, sipping tomato juice, glancing up once in a while at the portable TV on a shelf where a Yankees game was on.

“You look good,” I said, still standing. “The place looks good.”

“Thanks, babe, but tell me what you need,” said Rhonda. “And sit down. You're making me twitchy.”

“He OK?”

“Sonny? He's taking a nap, but yeah, he's OK. I just wish he'd give it up, this thing is getting to him.”

“The dolls?”

“The dolls, the girl that got killed in Jersey, everything that goes down with children, he can't stand it, he gets drawn back in. Should I wake him up?”

“I came to see you.”

“You want me to fix you something to eat?” Rhonda said.

“I need to know about your cousin, or whatever she is, on Staten Island. Vera Gorbachev. You asked Sonny to get me to go talk to her, what did she say exactly?”

“Didn't she tell you?”

“You tell me. Please.”

“She's not my cousin,” said Rhonda. “Or maybe she's a cousin but like really distant. Vera Gorbachev, I almost laughed out loud when I heard the name. So, anyway, I had heard way back from some of my mother's family when they got to Brighton Beach, you know, like in the 70s or 80s when they all started coming, and I didn't do fuck all. I wasn't interested in a bunch of Russkis I had no relationship to, and I went once and it depressed the hell out of me, all those Russians talking about how they missed Russia, you know?”

“Do I ever.”

“So I didn't do anything more except I sent some money and
I felt kind of bad, in a not very important way. I planned on seeing them again,” Rhonda said. “You plan on seeing people, and you don't. And then they move on, or they get old and then die.”

“No other reason?”

“I was busy. I was young, I was waiting for Sonny to like me,” said Rhonda. “It took me hours to get ready for work every morning so he'd notice me. I didn't care about a bunch of immigrants, and anyhow I had already made it out of Brooklyn and into the city, what did I want to go back there for?” said Rhonda. “When this Vera Gorbachev moved over to Staten Island she called to tell me. I visited her once, I think I brought some smoked fish, chubs, I think, and I didn't go back. I felt bad afterwards. Jesus, the Yankees really suck this season overall, in spite of the last few days,” said Rhonda, a rabid Yankees fan, as she looked up at the TV.