The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx (26 page)

“Any ideas?” Leon prodded.

“No one should have to die for baseball,” Paul replied calmly.

Browsing through the listings pages of several newspapers, Paul was able to find a lead smock formerly used by a dental technician. He also picked up an old army surplus Geiger counter, but it broke after just a few days. Over the ensuing weeks, a routine formed: Paul would remove one cylinder a day. He made it a point to be done by 2 in the afternoon—in time to shave, shower, and dress so he could meet Lori outside of Bea’s school and walk them home. Sometimes he’d stay at the Mayers’ for dinner before heading back to Leon’s place for the night.

One evening, Leon showed Paul a column about Walter O’Malley’s obsession with building a new stadium. The guy wanted to plant one right on the corner of Atlantic and Flat-bush over the Long Island Rail Road yards in Brooklyn. The plan was being blocked by Robert Moses, who argued that the development would create “a China wall of traffic.”

“Your brother won’t let the Dodgers leave New York City, will he?”

“Even Mr. Robert’s not that stupid.”

“Cause I got to tell you, if he did, I really would consider killing him myself, and I ain’t fooling.”

Soon they read that Paul’s brother had offered O’Malley use of a new stadium he was building out in Queens. With that, even Paul felt some sense of relief.

Uli finished off the last of the crackers as the sun dipped out of view, then lifted the gun and pulled the trigger. The flare must have shot over a thousand feet in the air before it blasted open. This strange concrete buoy in this sea of sand had to be part of some kind of escape route. By blasting the flare into the sky, Uli had now fulfilled his bargain with the crazy black guy who had gotten him here.

That night, as he milled around trying to figure out his next move, choppy segments of Paul’s memories cut through. He saw Lori repeatedly yelling at the old man for various reasons, all pertaining to Bea. The two were getting into frequent fights about parenting the girl: He didn’t like the clothes she was wearing. Lori didn’t want Paul feeding her crappy diner food and taking her out late at night. He accused her of monitoring Bea more closely than her own daughter. Lori said he was paranoid, and finally that she was sick of all the fights.

During the next day in the sun, as Uli imagined Lori and Paul struggling over the young girl, he simultaneously searched for the woman in black, but his hallucinations seemed to have dissipated. He closed his eyes and rested.

“What we’re trying to say, Paul, is we’ve had it,” Lori snapped. “You win. Just take her and leave us alone.”

Though Paul didn’t say another word, Uli knew the old guy had concluded that he needed to quietly back out of his daughter’s life. Otherwise, there was no chance of her being raised by this decent family.

Suffering from severe hunger pains, Uli filled the container that Plato had given him and set out due west. A shiny half-moon and a million little stars allowed him some visibility to keep an eye out for potential food sources. The night grew steadily colder. Then he thought he saw her again, the Armenian apparition, walking across the desert floor in the opposite direction. He tiredly switched course and followed.

Rising sharply up to a small plateau of rocks, he spotted about a dozen large lizards enjoying the residual heat from the day past. They were each about three feet long from tail to snout. He found a flat rock and quietly tiptoed up and managed to slam three of them dead before the others disappeared. He slipped their hard little bodies under the rope he was using as a belt. He could still see the dark figure of the Armenian woman standing in the distance. He walked stiffly toward her until he realized it was merely the outline of a rock.

He pressed on for a couple more hours before he started shivering. Fortunately, he came upon a dried-out tree, so he snapped off some of the smaller branches, peeled strips of dried bark, and rolled them into a tight bundle. Using matches he still had with him from the underground storage depot, he lit a fire at the base of the tree. After a few minutes, the trunk was up in flames. He flopped the dead lizards on the fire and warmed himself while they cooked. Soon their skins were black and bubbling. When they cooled down, he ripped the short little limbs from one of them and chewed slowly. They were rubbery as hell, but they tasted good. He intended to save the other two cooked reptiles for later, but after months of C-rations, the roasted meat was just too tempting and he gobbled it all down. He spent the remainder of the night and most of the following day in a cool little rock hollow resting up for more hiking. Without even thinking, he drank through nearly half the container of water.

44

A
t the main branch of the library on 42nd Street, Paul began reviewing published dissertations and scholarly articles to try and figure out how to turn a hundred-plus cylinders of radioactive material into a bomb. All bombs required a shell, an explosive element, and a detonator, but instead of shrapnel, the most deadly part of Paul’s creation would be the pitchblende. The lead safe that Leon had gotten for him could serve as a bomb shell. The real trick was finding enough dynamite to blow it open along with the lead cylinders inside. It all came down to cash. When Paul mentioned this to Leon, his friend asked how much was required.

“Maybe a thousand dollars for a box of dynamite.”

Leon told him they could earn it scrapping.

That summer, the two men worked hard at cutting, grinding, and compressing ferrous and nonferrous metals from Leon’s yard, then hauling them down to a blast furnace and other recycling plants.

“You know,” Leon said tensely, seeing the yard clearer than he ever remembered it, “I wish to hell your brother would cut the crap and allow O’Malley to build that fuck-ing stadium in Brooklyn.”

“I wish my brother would die painfully.”

“I mean, think about it, the Brooklyn Dodgers should be in Brooklyn, not Queens. Am I right?”

“Sure, but hell, O’Malley’s not being particularly flexible on location.”

In the hot days of August, Paul woke up one afternoon with a hangover and realized that Leon was still in bed. His buddy had been nauseous for several days in a row.

“You should lay off the sauce for a while,” Paul suggested that evening, after working the entire day on his own.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Leon said, struggling to get out of bed. Aside from his increasingly pale complexion, Leon was suddenly losing his hair. When Paul went to the bathroom, he saw that the sink was splattered with blood. Leon said it was nothing—his gums were bleeding, big deal. It was obviously more than that, and Paul convinced him to go to Cabrini Hospital. Leon was immediately diagnosed with late-stage leukemia.

“I was healthy as an ox till a few weeks ago,” Leon said, barely able to breath.

“It’s very odd, getting leukemia so quickly,” the doctor said. “Do you know if any other members of your family had it?”

“No,” Leon said tiredly.

“You must’ve been exposed to something that brought it on,” the doctor speculated. He prescribed Leon a full menu of painkillers and antibiotics. Because he didn’t have much money and didn’t want to die in the charity ward, Leon asked Paul to help him back to his yard. Paul cared for him attentively, never voicing his fear that the crap in those shoe-fitting machines was somehow responsible. The following month consisted of nonstop nosebleeds, diarrhea, bedsores, and significant weight loss since nothing stayed in or down.

“I think that this might’ve been my own fault,” Leon finally confessed.

“What do you mean?”

“I think this is what happens when you get radioacti-vated. Shit!” he mumbled, coughing. “I knew I shouldn’t have …”

“Shouldn’t have what?”

“One day while you were down at the library, I took one of those things from the safe.”

“One of the cylinders?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you do with it?”

“Nothing, really. I mean, first I drove out to Queens …”

“Where?”

“Flushing.”

“Why?”

“So the Dodgers would have to stay in Brooklyn,” Leon said.

“Where’s the cylinder? Leon, you didn’t empty it, did you?”

“No. I opened it and poured a little onto some newspaper.”

“It just poured out?”

“Just like dark sand. Then I poured it all back in.”

“How’d you get it open?”

“The little side panel slides open easily with your finger. It’s held shut by a spring.”

“Where is it now?”

“I put the cylinder back in the safe—but I never even touched the stuff!”

Paul said not to worry. Leon apologized.

Later, Paul took the old Geiger counter apart and carefully checked its bottom board lined with test tubes. When he prodded one of the old wires, the needle of the counter started bouncing. He managed to get the thing working again, so he put on the lead smock and walked around the scrapyard, where everything seemed fine. Checking inside Leon’s truck, however, the dial flipped all the way to the red side and stayed there. Paul then went to the lead safe and opened it up. Again the Geiger counter’s dial swung into the red. He closed the heavy door.

Paul carefully hosed down the interior of the truck, then tossed his clothes into the garbage bag and took a long shower. He got dressed, made some chicken soup for Leon’s lunch, and helped him to the bathroom and then back to bed.

“I have something to tell you,” Leon said later that afternoon in a hoarse whisper. “I put the house and yard in your name.”

“Why?” Paul asked.

“I don’t have any other relatives, so I thought you’d be best.”

“But I’m an old man,” Paul replied.

“You still need that box of dynamite, right?”

“Oh God.”

“We didn’t start this battle,” Leon rasped.

“I guess not.”

“They can’t just tear a community in two … and expect to get away with it.”

“That’s true.”

Leon looked strangely content.

When they heard the news on TV that the Dodgers were indeed leaving Brooklyn at the end of the year, neither man said a word. On September 24, 1957, Paul and Leon watched as the Dodgers played their final game in Brooklyn against the Pittsburgh Pirates. They won 2-0.

A few nights later, Leon said he had something to tell Paul.

“I’m listening.”

“Remember that first time …” Leon was having difficulty breathing and could barely keep his eyes open. “Remember that morning when you came into the kitchen at Lucretia’s … and you saw me sitting there eating breakfast?”

“Yeah.” Paul remembered feeling his heart break, assuming she had slept with him.

“I just want you to know … we didn’t … we didn’t do nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

Leon smiled softly and said, “It was her idea, and I probably shouldn’t tell you, but she … she was trying to … to make you jealous. She called and asked me … to come by early and tiptoe in …” Paul chuckled. “Hell, we waited an hour before you … before you entered the kitchen.”

“What are you saying?”

“She loved you and you wouldn’t …”

“But you were her boyfriend, weren’t you?”

“Never really been a ladies’ man,” Leon said softly. “Anyway, I guess Lucretia’s plan worked.”

“And all this time I thought—” Paul broke out laughing, as did Leon. Paul spent the rest of the night reveling in how clever—if not conniving—Lucretia had been. She had always seemed so naïve.

Leon died six days later. When Paul found the empty bottle of sleeping pills under the bed, he wasn’t wholly surprised. He called the police and had the body taken away, then arranged a funeral. Among others, Lori, Bill, Charity, and Bea came. He hadn’t seen his daughter in nearly a month, so she rushed up to him as soon as she arrived. He lifted her in the air and kissed her face all over.

Seeing his daughter in a pink outfit that matched Charity’s dress, he knew that Lucretia would never have bought something so gaudy. That thought brought on a flood of memories of Lucretia’s death six years earlier, and sitting across from Leon’s open casket, he started weeping softly for his wife.

Two days later, Paul used Leon’s pickup truck to purchase a bunch of supplies, then returned to the scrapyard. With a jackhammer, he tore a small square opening through the pavement at the outer edge of the property. The next morning he dug a hole six feet into the earth.

Using two-by-fours, Paul slowly hammered together a frame. That week, he mixed and poured several bags of concrete, fashioning a small container in the earth. When it dried, Paul carefully lowered the lead safe with the 103 cylinders down into the shaft. He topped it off with an additional bag of concrete, then covered the shell with dirt.

He didn’t want to ever think about building a bomb again. His friend had died because of it—he didn’t want to kill himself and Lord knows how many others just to get back at his brother. Most importantly, though, he certainly didn’t want his little girl to become known as the daughter of one of the most evil men New York had ever produced. All plans to build a bomb were officially off.

Soon afterwards, he sold the pickup truck. Next, he took the title to the property to the Mark Lukachevski Real Estate Agency on East Tremont and put the scrapyard and house on the market.

“How much do you think you can get for it?” he asked Lukachevski, a man he had come to know in the neighborhood over the years.

“At this point, you’d have a difficult time even abandoning it,” the man replied earnestly.

Paul packed his few things at Leon’s house and moved back down to the old Times Square dive where he had lived when he first met Lucretia years ago. It was as if he had only been gone a day.

Uli felt relieved that Paul had abandoned his suicidal plan to attack the city. He had come to assume that this bombing scheme was the very reason he was having these memories, so he wondered anew what his relationship with Paul Moses signified.

Uli crawled out of his nook and scanned the horizon for any sign of his hallucination. As usual, she was being coy.

While he slovenly marched forward into the barren landscape, a symbol kept popping into his head: