Fresh Kills Page 12

  I listened to the rest of the news, went to the closet where I still kept a few things, found some clean chinos and a new black polo shirt I’d picked up on sale, and put them on.

  While I was changing, I noticed that an old denim jacket of mine had slipped off the hanger onto the floor. I hadn’t worn that crummy jacket in years. I hung it back up.

  “Hey.” Billy smiled up from the couch.

  It was the same seductive smile my father had always used when he wanted something, wanted me to work harder in school, wanted my mother not to worry if he took me away fishing for a weekend; probably it was the same smile he used as a KGB guy on those occasions when smiling got results. I knew I had it, too, and I didn’t like it about myself much; not so much the smile, but the ability to make people talk. It seemed like a kind of con, ingratiating, disingenuous, cunning.

  But my father was dead and my mother could no longer speak. She had talked plenty when we were still in the USSR. She got in trouble for telling the truth about the system, and my father lost his job because of her being a noisy Jew. But now in the nursing home in Haifa, she was so deep in the fog of Alzheimer’s that no one could reach her at all. I had gone over to see her after I got married. Maxine wanted to come but I could see how nervous she got every time there was a report of a suicide bombing on TV. I went by myself.

  In a chair by a window, my mother sat. I leaned down close to her to show her my wedding pictures.

  Ma?

  There was no response. All that was there was the form of a woman who resembled my mother sitting in a low armchair by a window. Now, I sat on the edge of the couch and ruffled Billy’s hair.

  “Wow.” Billy was watching clips from an old Yankees-Red Sox game. “That pitch was like so insanely crazy.”

  “You can’t say that about the Sox. They’re the enemy. Didn’t I teach you anything?”

  “Why?”

  “History,” I said.

  “That’s not fair,” he said with a kid’s sense of the rightness of things. “They did it good, isn’t it fair to say it was good?”

  “You want to be a real New Yorker, you have to harbor a grudge against the Red Sox,” I said. “That’s how it is.”

  He looked confused.

  “I was joking,” I said. “Sort of.”

  “They teach us not to get mad,” said Billy earnestly. “They teach us to be rational. I like it, being rational. I do. One of my therapists told me, you feel upset or something, talk to yourself. It’s like intelligent people can make themselves better.”

  “How many therapists do you have?”

  “Never mind, Artie. Just come and watch the game. It’s just starting.”

  “Who’s playing today?”

  “Yanks and Orioles,” he said.

  “I’m sorry about the fishing, but we’ll go tomorrow for sure.”

  “How was Staten Island?”

  “Weird.”

  “Could we fish there?” Excited, Billly bent one arm, miming the way he held his fishing pole.

  “Sure.”

  “If you have a case to work on there I could help you.”

  “You want me to be straight with you?”

  Billy nodded.

  “I can’t ever take you along on cases.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “If you have to go back to Staten Island, I could always like wait in the car,” Billy said. “I can go with you and wait or you could leave me at some diner or something. Then we’d go fishing. Can I use your computer? I want to look up places to fish there just in case you have to go again. Artie?”

  “Go use the computer if you want.”’

  He scrambled up to a sitting position, crossed his legs, leaned forward, excited.

  “I have a better idea,” said Billy. “I just had a wild idea, like could we maybe catch the last few innings of the game? We could get the subway. What do you think? Remember how you took me after 9/11 to the stadium and got me the Yanks jacket, and everyone was singing?”

  “You remember?”

  “Course I remember,” Billy said. “I remember everything we ever did together because they were the best times in my whole entire life.”

  “I promised Tolya Sverdloff we’d go to a birthday party later for Luda, the Russian kid. We could probably go to the game and get something to eat after and still make the party.”

  “Please,” Billy said. “Please please please please.”

  “OK, OK.”

  “You know, I was thinking they should keep Luda in America.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “’Cause she’s so full of rage,” he said. “Maybe over here in America someone can help her.”

  “I don’t understand exactly.”

  “I mean, those little kids like Luda who are orphans in Russia, they live a horrible life, they’re orphans, no one gives a shit or anything, and there’s terrorists everywhere,” said Billy. “Luda told me people take children hostage and kill them. Everything they see is bad and I bet those kids are getting ready for some kind of revenge the rest of their lives.”

  “When did you get so smart?” I said.

  “Yeah, you think?” Billy was beaming. “Do you ever feel like. . . never mind.”

  “What?”

  “Do you ever feel I’m your own kid?”

  “Sure I do. Let’s get ready or we’ll miss the game.”

  “Honest?’

  “Yeah, you know that.”

  I went to the kitchen where I kept spare keys in a jar. I gave them to Billy.

  “This way you don’t have to hang around downstairs waiting for me again. Just in case.”

  “Thanks,” Billy said, beaming. “For like trusting me,” he added, putting the keys in his pocket. “I’m glad we’re here. I don’t mind one bit that Maxine didn’t want me at your other apartment. I like this better.”

  The loft was a mess. Scaffolding was up near one of the big industrial windows. The walls needed painting. I had moved most of my things and some of my furniture to our apartment, Maxine’s and mine, and the loft looked bare. My plan had been to renovate, first for Maxine and the girls and me. When I realized she was too happy in the apartment near the river ever to leave, I figured I could rent out the loft and make some dough. I told myself I planned to rent it out.

  On his way to the bedroom, Billy turned and said, “This is your real place, isn’t it?”

  He knew me. The way some kids do, Billy instinctively got how I felt. For now, I didn’t want to think about Maxine coming home and me taking Billy back to his parents who wouldn’t know what the hell to do with him. I didn’t want him going back to Florida. I resisted thinking about any of it. Something would work out.

  I switched off the TV. I went to my bedroom to get some money from a stash I kept in the closet. From the doorway, I saw Billy. His back was to me. He was standing in front of my open closet, looking at himself in the mirror that hung on the door. I could see him reflected in it. He was wearing my old jacket, the one that had fallen off the hanger.

  The homeless guy who got beat up on the sidewalk in Chinatown died that afternoon while we were at the Stadium cheering for the Yankees who wiped out the Orioles 12–3.

  We ate hot dogs heaped with sauerkraut, drenched in mustard and ketchup and Billy put mayo on his, too, until we felt like bursting. Then we had Cracker Jacks. We joined in all the yelling and cheering with the family next to us. There were five kids, four of them girls, decked to the nines in Yankees gear. One of them was around Billy’s age and I noticed they spent a lot of time laughing together.

  The sky was murky, but no one cared so long as it didn’t pour, and everyone was lit up because the Yanks were finally doing something right, so we yelled some more and clapped until we were hoarse and our hands hurt.

  “Artie, look at the woman selling cotton candy, she has like a Louis Vuitton do-rag on her head, that is so New York.” He nudged me. “God, I’m happy to be home.”

/>   “I see Florida didn’t exactly crush your New York attitude.”

  “If you had a mom with an entire closet of Louis Vuitton everything, including a dog carrier when we don’t have a dog, you’d spot all of it. I could be a designer birdwatcher, like one of those people who hang around the park with little books looking for different species. Weird, right? I can do Vuitton, Armani, Chanel. My mom so like talks about it all the time. God, look, did you see Derek catch that?” He stood up in his seat.

  The only seats I could get at the last minute that didn’t cost a fortune were high up. Billy, who was so excited he couldn’t sit still, got up, sat down, then hung so far over the railing that for a minute I got nervous, but he said he only wanted a better look at Randy Johnson. Sitting down, Billy discussed if Randy’s pitching could bail the Yankees out with a man sitting on his other side.

  “I still love Derek,” he said. “I think I love him best. I think. I know all Derek’s stats, you want me to tell you? Or Mariano. He’s pretty cool. He reminds me of Gary Cooper in High Noon.”

  “You know a lot of stuff.”

  “Well, duh. You keep saying that, of course I know stuff. I’m taking film history in school.”

  “Everyone loves Derek,” I said, as Jeter singled in the fourth.

  Billy said, “So where’s this thing? The birthday party for Luda.”

  “A toy store,” I said. “Big one. Midtown. I’m sure your mom took you there sometime, right?”

  “You think we should get Luda a present, or something?”

  “You think?”

  “We could get her some Yankees things, like a jacket and a cap or whatever,” said Billy.

  “Fine.”

  “Is the party going to be mostly little girls?”

  “Probably,” I said. “Yeah. But Val will be there.”

  “Right,” he said, rolled his eyes, gave this big wicked grin he had started using when he was pleased, and stole the last sip of my beer.

  *

  We were leaving the Stadium, making our way with a huge crowd towards the subway, when a pair of Chevrolet Suburbans screeched up the curb. Sirens blazing, lights on, the drivers jammed on their brakes. We were near enough to the edge of the crowd that I got us, Billy and me, onto the sidewalk.

  The vans had blacked-out windows. The doors flew open. Four guys, Kevlar vests, helmets, holding their M4s like they were marines getting ready to hit the beach in a movie, jumped out. The crowd still pouring out of the Stadium stopped, froze.

  Next to Billy and me, a clutch of Japanese tourists in short-sleeved shirts, probably here to see Hideki Matsui hit a couple homers, looked frantic. I heard voices from the crowd, people wondering if there was a terrorist attack. Maybe it was a movie, someone said. From the Stadium you could still hear Sinatra singing “New York, New York” over the speakers, which they always played when we won a game – Liza Minnelli sang it when we lost – and Billy looked up at me.

  I held up my hand for everyone around me, the Japs, Billy, other fans, to stay still. The guys in the Suburban were a Hercules team, part of the city’s street-level anti-terrorist operation. They showed up places around town at random, for practice, and to let people know they were a presence. These guys were good. They were fast. A dog one of them held on a lead sniffed the ground.

  Was there an attack? Was this practice? Real? Voices rose out of the crowd.

  “We are here to protect you,” I heard one of the Hercules guys say to a woman who was arguing with him because she couldn’t cross the street.

  “What about my civil rights?” she said, in a thick Bronx accent.

  “Lady, shut the fuck up,” said a man nearby.

  “This is like the fascists,” the woman said, furious.

  “Listen, you might be old, but you’re not a vegetable and if you don’t put a sock in it, I’m going help you do that,” a man in a Yankees shirt said.

  “You think it’s a bomb-sniffing dog?” Billy whispered to me, while one of the officers explained to a tourist from Baltimore that protecting people was their job.

  “It’s not an attack,” someone yelled.

  “Idiot,” someone else said.

  For a couple of minutes, the huge crowd tensed up, waiting, and then it let go. It was an exercise. It was OK. For now. People set off for the subway again.

  No one in the city believed the Feds could do much if there was another attack. The city’s own anti-terrorist operation was getting ready. Intelligence people sat in an unmarked warehouse down in Tribeca near my place. Other units inhabited facilities in every borough.

  The sight of the bulked-up Hercules guys with guns made me feel, for an instant, something bad was coming again, but I got hold of Billy’s arm and we got over to the Yankees shop to buy a present for Luda.

  “You OK, Artie?” Billy said.

  “Yeah,” I said, when my phone rang. It was Sonny Lippert. His voice was excited.

  “I got a lead, Artie, man.” Lippert said loudly. “I’m closing in on a couple of suspects for the creep that killed the little girl in Jersey.”

  “Good, that’s good,” I said, watching Billy comb the aisles of the Yankees shop.

  “Listen, I’m not going ask you to work this Jane Doe with me, I’m not, you did plenty going out to Rhonda’s relative and taking that off my hands, but I want to ask if you still have any notes from that case out by Sheepshead Bay a couple years back.”

  “I could look. I probably turned my stuff in.”

  “But maybe you kept something? Maybe you remember something you didn’t want people to know?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Sonny. I could look. You want to spell this out?”

  “You’re alone?”

  I glanced out at the heaving crowd coming out of the ballpark, trying to get to the subway.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I’m at the Stadium.”

  “You remember how it turned out to be some crackhead?”

  “So?”

  “I’m not so sure anymore, Artie, man. That’s what I’m calling about. We’re gonna try to get some DNA on this Jane Doe and match it up with some others.”

  “How come?”

  “They way the little girls looked. The kind of knives somebody used on them.”

  “I’ll look for the notes, Sonny.”

  “Thanks, man. You remember her name, right?” said Sonny, and I knew he’d been stringing me along, that he remembered her name fine, but he wanted me to say it.

  “I remember her name.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Her name was May Luca, Sonny, you knew that already. I have to go.”

  “So how come you’re so defensive, man, I mean, be happy about this, right. One more thing.”

  “What?” I knew what was coming, I didn’t want to know. “I’m getting on the train, Sonny, OK, I’m losing the signal.”

  “So May Luca, man, the little girl that was killed over by Sheepshead Bay? Wasn’t she friends with Billy Farone? Back when? Didn’t they attend some school or other together, man? Weren’t May and Billy friends?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, man, I just thought the kid might recall something about May. You with him now?”

  “Yeah, Sonny.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Lippert’s tone softened. “Be with him. I wish I was with my kids.”

  “I’ll try to get you the notes,” I said and hung up.

  “What do you think?” Billy was holding up the presents he had chosen for Luda; a miniature version of his own dark blue satin Yankees jacket was in one hand and in the other, a bobble-headed Derek Jeter doll. “You think she’ll like these? I mean if I get her one the same as mine?”

  I told him I was sure Luda would like the presents he had chosen and I paid for them, we left the store, climbed the stairs to the subway platform – the train ran out of doors from an elevated platform up here in the Bronx – and waited. My heart was racing. I was out of shape, I told myself
; running up the subway stairs had winded me. I checked my watch. It was twenty after six. July 6.

  14

  “Welcome, welcome,” said the girl in harlequin hot pants, a purple chiffon bow around her red-white-and-blue curls, and a yellow fur jacket that could have been dyed bunny. “I am Miss Jelly Bean, and I hear you’ll be spending the night with us here at Toy Heaven. Have some candy, please,” she added, plucking jelly beans and fruit-colored Lifesavers from the emerald green tutu she wore over the hot pants.

  From a waist-high container built to resemble a large see-through purple jelly bean, Miss Jelly Bean pulled cell phones, all of them pink and purple with soft covers painted with flowers. One was handed to each little girl who stopped by. The ring tone played the Barbie song.

  Behind Miss Jelly Bean were more enormous see-through containers of candy – jellybeans, red hots, Good and Plenty, nonpareils, raisinettes, M&Ms, red Swedish fish, Gummy Bears, in a dozen colors, including pink. The kids, all girls, all around nine or ten, the same age as Luda, yakked excitedly to each other as they ran all over the place, some munching on slices of pink pizza, others running into a photo booth to get their pictures taken, some having their faces painted or their arms temporarily tattooed.

  There must have been twenty little girls. A couple of them, shooting the breeze about their outfits, candy and sodas in their hands, resembled miniature Manhattan ladies at a cocktail party. Overhead, on a trapeze hooked up to the ceiling, an acrobat did terrifying stunts while the little girls looked up and screamed. Pink balloons also hung from the ceiling. Silver and pink mirror balls hung among the balloons and on every shelf available were giant pink lava lamps.

  “Jeez, Artie,” Billy said. “How insanely weird is this?”

  “Think of it as a sociological study,” I whispered. “You know what I mean?”

  “I know what sociology is.” He helped himself to a scoop of M&Ms. “Also anthropology.” He looked at the girls. “Did you know there are places in Africa where they send all the boys away to live together when they’re around fourteen, and they don’t let them out until they grow up and become OK people? So what I want to know is, what about the girls? I mean, Artie, look at them. Jeez. Talk about hormones.”