Fresh Kills (7 page)

The noise like a mouse was coming from the garage underneath Billy's room. It got louder, moving, into the kitchen, up the stairs, then muffled by the carpet. An animal, I thought. A dog. The Farones didn't have a dog. I waited.

“You saw?” Billy was standing in the doorway of his empty room, his face somber. It was Billy who had come softly up the stairs. He was barefoot.

I wanted to put my arms around him, but I wasn't sure how he'd take it so I just said, “Are you OK?”

“I'm OK.”

“What about the fish?”

“I can't find them, not the fish or the tank. I just hope they're not dead,” he said, voice wavering at first like a little boy, then growing steady. “Look, I have to figure my dad took them to the restaurant so they could be fed. He would do that kind of thing. He probably has them on some pasta Alfredo or something.”

“It must have been lousy, finding your room like this,” I said.

“I'm OK,” Billy said. “Honest.”

“The front door was open.”

“I left it like that for you. I didn't go out. I promised you I wouldn't. I went into the yard was all, and the garage. They put my stuff there.”

“I didn't see any lights.”

“I just put a little one on in the garage.”

Billy set off back down the stairs and I followed him to the kitchen and through a side door into the garage. Genia's green Range Rover was in its usual spot, so was a long table with power tools she had bought for Johnny that he never used. His silver Porsche, which had cost him a bundle and which he could barely get into now he was so fat, wasn't there. I figured maybe he'd left it at the restaurant. Stacked against the wall were blue plastic storage crates and next to them Billy's fishing gear, his bike and his computer.

On one of the crates was a stack of school books. With a Russian's snobbish love for anything intellectual, Genia made Johnny buy fancy editions of Russian novels, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, in expensive leather bindings with gilt writing, but she kept them behind glass in her living room. Did Genia buy them from Dubi Petrovsky? Was that how Dubi knew Billy was coming home?

Genia was scared of Billy being at home. Redecorating his room was a way of making him disappear. I was furious with her. I had left a message in London to tell her I'd picked Billy up in Florida; she didn't return it. I thought about calling again, but what would I say? That she was a lousy mother?

“Artie?” Billy was holding up a dark blue hoodie he'd taken from one of the crates. “My stuff doesn't fit me. You think that's why they put it here? You think that? I went into my room and there wasn't anything at all, Artie, they took away my stuff, and put it in these boxes.” He put the hoodie down and picked up a pair of jeans and looked at them. “Do you think they planned on giving my stuff away, Artie?” He sounded a hell of a lot calmer than I would have been. “You think they
figured I wasn't coming back? You think they didn't want me to come back?”

“Maybe they just thought you outgrew a lot of your clothes.” I said. “You brought some things back up from Florida, right?”

“Sure, yeah, I left my bag over at your place, remember? I guess I was thinking I'd like to have my old clothes. You think it's like a metaphor or something? Old things not fitting? I'd like that.”

I pulled the lid off of one of the blue boxes. Inside were more books. Billy inspected the titles. It gave me the creeps, him standing there with his childhood packed into plastic boxes in his parents' garage.

“Maybe your mom was planning on redoing your room.”

“The wallpaper has ladies on it from olden times and gold borders and there's pink paint. You think that's for me? It's better if we tell the truth, at least to each other,” said Billy. “I'm OK with what my mom did, honest, I really am.” Pulling a thick white sweater from one of the open boxes, Billy put it on. His arms stuck out six inches from the cuffs and he started laughing, and then I laughed.

“How about we go shopping tomorrow for some new stuff?”

“Sure,” Billy said. “We could give my stuff to some poor kids, right? My grandma, Big Tina, always gave shit to the church, you know. I could drop it off with her.” He looked at me. “Except she's too weird. They're all weird on the Farone side except my grandpa and no one gives him a break except me. It's just old clothes. I really don't care. I'm with you, I'm good, I really am.” He put up his hand to give me a high five, then grinned at the corniness of doing it.

“Let's get a soda or something,” I said, and my voice bounced off the cinderblock walls of the garage and sounded faraway and thin.

*

In the kitchen, I turned on a light. Billy got some Frescas from the fridge.

Scrubbed down clean as a hospital ward, the kitchen was all fancy Italian glass cabinets and granite counters. The fridge motor turned over.

I took a long swallow of the Fresca and said, “I'm sorry I took so long earlier.”

“Where were you?”

“Something to do with work,” I said. I'd been with Sonny Lippert two hours if you counted going and coming.

“I got used to it, being by myself, when I was a kid,” Billy said thoughtfully, as if he'd thought about the business of being alone a lot. “Down there, in Florida, it's like there're almost too many people. You have to share a room. You have to eat with everyone. You never have any time. There's usually some shrink hanging around and stuff. It's great to have some time alone now, I mean sit around and read or just chill.”

“Is it hard?” I sat down at the counter, and Billy climbed up on a stool opposite me.

“It's OK. It's boring sometimes,” he said, pushing his hair off his forehead. “There're a couple of really good teachers. I mean most of the kids are like practically illiterate, you know? They made me a tutor in English. I get to tutor younger kids. I like that. They're so like weirdly grateful just to have someone not treat them like idiots.”

“That's good.”

“Artie?”

“What's that, sweetheart?”

He rolled his eyes.

“What?”

“You can't call me sweetheart,” Billy said. “It's way too weird. I'm fourteen.”

“I could call you buddy. Or pal.”

“I don't think so!”

“Why not?”

“On you that's even more weird, I mean you're not the type.”

“What type is that?”

“Bubba-type guy.”

“Got it.”

“I have something I probably need to tell you,” said Billy, pushing his hair away nervously, looking a little shifty now.

“What's that?”

“It's pretty awful.” He drank his soda and rolled the can between his hands.

“Come on.”

“OK. It's like I smoke. I'm trying to quit, but once in a while, I can't help it and I don't think I can make it through two weeks without one. Also, I don't want to lie to you. I really don't. Are you mad at me?”

“What about in Florida?”

“We sneak them. They know. They figure we're all so screwed up, not to mention that there are kids there who did a lot of drugs on the outside, a cigarette isn't the worst thing.” Billy dug a pack out of his pocket.

“I should give you the lecture, right?” I said. “It is a lousy thing. It really does suck. You end up with some crap disease and wheezing and coughing. You smoke, then you die.”

“You quit?” Billy said.

“I'm trying.”

“Can I have just one?”

“You don't need to ask me.”

“Let's go outside so I don't stink up Mom's house,” said Billy. “She doesn't like that. Even she goes outside when she smokes.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Yeah,” I said and we went outside together.

On the patio by the pool in the half dark, the only light coming from the kitchen, Billy lit up. He didn't smoke like a kid play-acting. He smoked like an adult with a habit.

I was dying to join him but I thought I should try to be some kind of role model.

“Let's go home. My place,” I said. “Tomorrow we'll go fishing, and maybe buy you some cool new stuff.”

“Am I making you nuts, smoking?” Billy said. “I'm so happy you quit. I want you to be around forever. I'm really going to try.” He crushed the cigarette in an ashtray on one of the glass tables.

From inside the house, the phone rang.

“I'll get it,” I said.

Through the kitchen window, I saw Billy carefully pull off his clothes. From behind he looked like a man. He jumped in the pool. Water splashed over the edge. From the street came the sound of a garbage truck, grinding trash in its maw.

Holding the receiver, in the second before I heard the voice on the phone, I knew something was wrong. Maybe it was only afterwards that I knew. When I replayed the incident, me picking up the phone, Billy jumping in the pool, the crude voice on the phone, felt like I knew all along.

“Get him out of here,” the voice said.

“Who the hell is this?”

“We don't want that kid in Brooklyn, you got that?”

“Who the fuck is this?”

“What's the difference? I know exactly who the fuck you are. You're that Russki cop, right, who's related to Johnny Farone's wife? So you listen, you take him back or we'll do it for you. You understand? He did plenty of bad shit already and he ain't going do to nothing again like that, so I want him out, you get him the fuck out of here.”

I kept my mouth shut. I wanted to make sure I remembered the creep's voice.

“The kid is garbage,” said the voice on the end of the phone. “You don't leave garbage around the house. You don't bring it into the neighborhood. I don't want none in mine, so get him the fuck out.”

I told him to work it up his ass and hung up, but I was scared. I knew who it was. It was Stanley Shank, the brother of Heshey, the guy that died, the guy they said Billy killed.

I thought about Shank's tone. He had expected me to answer the Farone phone. He wasn't surprised. He knew where I was. He knew Billy was with me. The maroon car that had followed me belonged to Shank. Why the hell didn't I talk to Shank on the phone? I should have calmed him down instead of telling him to shove it. He was a crazy, volatile guy who would stick a knife in you if he got mad.

Shank was a big fat ugly man, with a head like a cantaloupe between soft heavy shoulders like mashed potatoes, but he was solid. Mean. He used to run a fishing boat out of Sheepshead Bay, docked it the other side of the inlet from Manhattan Beach where the Farone house was. Half a mile away, not more. Shank knew his way around fishing knives, the kind he kept on board.

I'd seen Shank clean fish on the dock one time. He worked fast with the knife, his face full of concentrated glee. I'd also seen the kind of damage he could do to people with it.

Someone had told me Shank went bust and had to sell the boat to rich Russians and that it made him more pissed off than ever.

I didn't think Shank would do physical harm to Billy – it was too easy to trace it – but what sacred me was he'd call the tabloids and tell them Billy was out. Shank would make Billy seem like a freak, a kid who only got out on vacation because he was connected. After that, there'd be no place for Billy to
go except back to the institution in Florida. Maybe not even there if Shank wanted to press the case that Billy should have been in a real prison all along.

I wanted Billy out of Brooklyn.

From the kitchen, I watched as he emerged from the pool, dripping, wrapped a blue towel around himself, dried off, then he put his clothes back on. He glanced at a large rectangular object that stood against the back of the house. It was neatly covered with a heavy black plastic sheet. Billy pulled it off carefully and stood, not moving. I couldn't see what was under the plastic.

I pushed open the patio door.

“What are you looking at?” I said.

Billy turned around. “My aquarium. The tank's empty. There are no fish left in it, Artie. It's empty and cleaned out and put away like I would never want it again. You think my dad really took the fish to his restaurant?”

“We can call, if you want.”

“I don't think so,” said Billy. “No, let's not do that, Artie.”

“How come?”

“I'm pretty sure the fish are dead.”

“So let's go back to the city,”

Billy told me he was ready.

“Can I drive?” he asked. “Can I?”

On the way up from Florida, I let Billy drive some of the time. I picked him up on the Saturday of the July 4 weekend, and we drove home together, him and me, me driving mostly, up from the swampy heat, me wanting to stop at Cape Canaveral and see where they launched the shuttle. Instead, because he was restless and wanted to get to New York, we kept driving.

When we hit a stretch of empty road, I let him take the wheel. Billy said I'd taught him how and that he remembered
sitting on phone books and I let him drive around empty streets in Brooklyn early in the morning.

He was a good driver. Tall enough to drive without the phone books now, he drove gracefully, one arm resting on the window ledge, both hands on the wheel, looking ahead, never distracted by the radio.

In small towns where we stopped to pick up food or eat at some diner, American flags sprouted from houses and lawns. In one dusty town the lamp posts and stop lights were hung with pictures of soldiers fighting in Iraq. Hispanic guys most of them, women too. They were young, nineteen, twenty. Some were dead, others waiting. For a mile, as far out as the strip malls, the pictures fluttered along with limp yellow ribbons.

Once, we hit a parade coming up the block, a fire engine decked out with bunting, a few old guys in World War Two uniforms walking behind the engine, and little kids tagging along. It was like a movie.

“July 4 is on Monday. My independence day,” Billy said. “Right?”