Fresh Kills Page 16

  “That’s Katie, my youngest,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”

  “She’s grown up a lot.”

  “Yeah, they do that.” He looked at the two of them. “They seem good together, don’t you think, my Katie, your Billy. They look good together, Artie.”

  “You getting ready to walk her down the aisle already, Hank?” said Stellene, who was listening.

  “I’m not talking marriage, for chrissake. Katie’s only fourteen,” Hank said. “I’m talking in general. It’s just nice, seeing them like that.”

  I saw Katie twist a strand of hair around her finger, and Billy looking at her, and the two of them shifting from foot to foot. He moved closer to her, and she didn’t pull back. I thought I saw Billy smile.

  I waved at him, and he whispered something to Katie and walked across the patio.

  “Hey.”

  “Yeah, Artie,” said Billy.

  “You having a nice time?”

  He nodded.

  “Is it OK if I leave you here for an hour or so? I have to go into the city and you can come, but we’ll just have to turn around and come back if we’re going fishing some place later. What do you think?”

  “Did you ever notice how people are always leaving kids or parking them or dropping them off like sacks of laundry, or garbage for recycling or something?” said Billy. “Hey, it’s fine. I’m joking. Don’t get so worried. I’m having fun and it keeps my mind off London. You don’t have to watch me like I’m an egg about to hatch. Go away. Go.”

  “So you like Katie?”

  “Artie, pulease!”

  He punched my arm lightly, and without looking back, sauntered over to the kids near the pool.

  I said goodbye to Hank and made for my car when I heard someone on the gravel behind me.

  “Hi,” Billy said.

  “You changed your mind about staying?”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, never mind.”

  “What?”

  “I love you,” Billy said.

  Before I went home, I stopped by the mall where the Queen of Hearts beauty salon was. Filled up the car at a gas pump there, then went over to the salon.

  In the window, along with a price list for various beauty treatments, were pictures of Russian pop stars. Inside were two guys – I could see them through the window – getting their hair cut. Three women sat under dryers, one of them getting her nails done. I went in. I tried to remember how it felt not just to talk Russian but also to feel like one.

  The girl behind the desk who was reading a copy of a Russian magazine, and eating candy out of a glass dish, glanced up at me as I came in, ran her hand through her platinum hair, and looked bored.

  I asked if I could make an appointment to get my hair cut.

  Slowly she put down the magazine, and finished chewing on her candy, then opened a large appointment book and slowly looked through the pages. It took me back to Moscow, the girl’s sullen expression, her chipped nails, her disdain.

  In the background was the buzz of women yakking loudly in Russian at each other over the hairdryers. I didn’t know what I expected to find, but Vera Gorbachev had mentioned the beauty salon; so had Hank Provone.

  On a shelf over the desk in the salon was a TV. On it were pictures of London, the bombings, the dazed people, cops, medics.

  I made an appointment for a haircut for the next week, then asked if I could use the bathroom. The girl pointed towards a curtain at the back of the shop. Behind it were two doors, one partly open. It led to a small room, table, some chairs, a couple of men sitting in them, talking, smoking. The room was filled with smoke. One guy looked up, saw me, and closed the door. Nothing else. I used the bathroom.

  An older woman was coming through the front door as I was leaving, a young guy, maybe fifteen, sixteen following her. He caught your attention. Very slim, very blond, he wore some kind of Latin shirt, with puffy sleeves, and tight black satin pants.

  The woman introduced herself to me as the owner of the salon, admired my shirt – to her I was a potential customer – and introduced the boy as her son. She said he was a champion ballroom dancer, especially in the cha-cha and salsa, and he had been away to dance camp, but was back to help out in the studio she and her husband owned. It was very popular with Russians, she said, and gave me a card with a coupon so my wife and I could attend a class.

  In Russian, I thanked her and told her I’d just moved to Staten Island and had heard about Queen of Hearts from Vera Gorbachev. She didn’t say anything, just went out to the street and beckoned me to follow her.

  “Gorbacheva, she’s a friend of yours?” the woman asked.

  “Not really. An acquaintance.”

  “She’s trouble. She messes in people’s business, she does favors for not so nice people, you understand? Don’t get involved, OK? I mean, my advice, not my business to stick my two cents in, but just my advice.”

  I thanked her, and we shook hands again, and I kept her card. I didn’t think I was going dancing any time soon, but maybe I’d get my hair cut after all. I ran my hand through it. It was probably too long.

  On the way home, I tried Johnny again on my phone. No answer. Circuits jammed. As I got near the city, I glanced up automatically at the empty space where the Trade Center towers had been. A silver airplane flew through the gap.

  17

  “Sonny Lippert’s looking for you. Call me.” I picked up Lily’s message from my answering machine even before I got home from Hank Provone’s place. Lily’s voice was tense and in the background I could hear the TV and the news coming in from London. Sonny Lippert had called her. Said to pass me a message. Why was he calling Lily?

  At Lily’s building on Tenth Street, the doorman was off. I buzzed the intercom and went up to her apartment.

  “Is Beth here?”

  “She’s out on Long Island with friends,” said Lily. “I didn’t want her in the city after last night and the business at the toy store.” She looked at the TV. “Now this. Is it starting all over again, Artie?”

  “I hope to God not.”

  The scene from London played over and over on the screen: bombs in the subway; people smashed from one train into another; the red bus ripped open; London in gridlock first, then empty; weeping people; flowers in cellophane cones, letters, teddy bears on the street to mark the dead.

  Bastards, I thought and put my arms around Lily. London was her second home. She had lived there on and off for decades. It was the city she loved most of all.

  “You talked to everyone you know over there?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Awkwardly, I let go of Lily and sat on the arm of her couch. She was wearing cut-off jeans and an old black T-shirt, her red hair was stuck on top of her hat and she was barefoot. She looked worn; the skin under her eyes looked bruised. On the wooden coffee table, among the piles of books and magazines, was an ashtray full of butts and an empty wine glass stained red from the dregs.

  “What about what’s his name?”

  “You mean the guy I married briefly?”

  “Yeah. Him. The one with the little designer car. I’m sorry, honey, I shouldn’t joke.”

  “Yeah you should. It’s the only thing to do. He’s fine. He called me. He’s fine and I’m sure his car is fine.” She smiled. “He’ll have theories already about what happened. He’ll have the politics of it all nailed down. Shit, Artie, I don’t know anything anymore. How did I ever feel so certain? What kind of fucking arrogance was that? Where’s Billy?”

  “I left him with Hank Provone over on Staten Island. You remember Hank? Big guy who was my partner?”

  “I always liked him. I used to fantasize we could live an ordinary life like Hank and Mary.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hank said hello. Listen, Billy’s parents are in London and I can’t get through, so I’m feeling a little fucked up about it. I don’t want to lay it on you, but I can�
��t talk to anyone else.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I think they’re probably fine.”

  “You tried the hotel?”

  “I got the number from Johnny’s restaurant and I called, but I can’t get through anywhere,” I said and now it hit me, suddenly, like a ton of bricks, hit me that maybe Johnny and Genia were dead. Could be dead. Weren’t coming back. I’d thought about it earlier, but not seriously. It was too improbable. Only around fifty people had died, the reports said.

  “Take it easy,” said Lily. “You want me to try some people in London?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give me the Farones’ cell phone, or their hotel. Artie?” She disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of Scotch and two glasses, poured a couple of drinks and handed me one.

  “Thanks. What the hell did Lippert want, calling you?”

  “He just said he was looking for you. He was calling around. Said to call him.”

  “He sound crazy?” Already I could feel myself getting dragged into Sonny Lippert’s case, not the Gorbachev woman, but the dead girl in Jersey.

  “A little crazy. Drink up.”

  “I like it when you baby me,” I knocked back half the Scotch.

  “Let me make some calls,” said Lily, took the number I gave her, went to her desk, opened a fat address book and picked up the phone.

  For a while, I drank the Scotch, Lily called London, the TV played. I thought about Billy and what I’d do if Johnny and Genia were dead. After a while, Lily turned around.

  “I didn’t get them, but I got the concierge at their hotel who saw them this morning early, before anything happened, and they were asking about directions for Sloane Street because the woman – it must have been Genia – wanted to go to Armani there. He said she had red hair and sounded Russian and I asked was the husband fat and American, I didn’t know how else to put it, and he said yeah. They asked if he could get them a reservation at the River Cafe for lunch after they went shopping,” said Lily. “I mean that’s totally in the wrong direction from any of the attacks Artie. I made him ask the doorman if they went out after that, and the doorman was Russian, or Serb or something, and had talked to Genia, and they did go out, really early before all the shit started coming down. So probably they got stuck in Hammersmith. I’m rambling.”

  “Where?”

  “Hammersmith, where the River Cafe is, miles from anywhere.”

  “You love London, don’t you?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Only you could get everyone in a hotel helping you.”

  “I mean it’s not definite because no one knows if they actually went to those places, and I called the River Cafe and they never showed up, but the whole city was gridlocked, so it doesn’t mean anything. I just think it’s OK. I made friends with the concierge and he said he’d really try to find out what he could.”

  “You’re wonderful. Thank you.”

  Weirdly, for Lily, she blushed. “Yeah yeah. No big deal. It’s nothing.”

  “You’re embarrassed.”

  Lily got up from her desk, took off her glasses, and came over to sit near me on the couch.

  “Artie, darling.”

  I put my arms around her, and she leaned against me.

  For a while we sat together and watched TV, not talking. I knew I should get over to meet Sonny Lippert. I knew I should go. I’d go soon. For now, I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave her. All I could do was sit by Lily and hold her and try not to let her see I wanted to cry.

  “You might have some competition,” said Lily softly against my ear, but I knew from her voice she was only joking.

  “Who?”

  “I’m teasing you,” said Lily. “Valentina, Tolya’s daughter, has been calling me endlessly, asks my advice, talks to me about her work. She took me out to breakfast this morning. She’s an adorable girl. She has what I think the kids call a woman-crush on me.”

  “I don’t blame her. I have one of those.”

  “You’re not a woman, idiot.” Lily reached for a black and red lacquered Russian box I once gave her. It was empty when she opened it. She wanted to smoke, she said.

  “I don’t have any cigarettes.” I said. “I’m trying not to. You want me to go out for some?” I stood up and when I looked back down at Lily, she was crying.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know what to do without you.” She fumbled with the empty box.

  For a moment I stayed standing, not because I wanted to leave her, but because I didn’t, and what might happen scared me. I thought back over all the times we’d been together: the night I met her when my uncle Gennadi was dying in the hospital; when she adopted Beth in China; in London when it never stopped raining and she went away with someone else.

  It felt as if everything I’d done, good, bad, anything that mattered, Lily had shared. She knew all about the Soviet Union because she had worked there as a reporter, and she understood the strange place I had grown up. Somebody asked me once what the most important thing that had happened to me in the last ten years was. I didn’t answer, but what I thought was: meeting Lily.

  I could talk to her. People always think that with guys it’s the sex, and it was that, too, with Lily. But the talking mattered. Even when she made me crazy, I knew that she got it, got me. She loved the music I loved.

  The first time we went out it was to Bradley’s on University Place, long time ago, before it shut down. A good trio had been playing – I couldn’t remember the name. Lily had liked my music, the musicians I liked, even before she met me. I looked at the TV and saw more pictures of a terrorized London. If the world was cracking up again, I wanted to be with Lily. I’d stick with Maxine, but I had to see Lily. Talk to her.

  She got up slowly, said, “I need a shower,” and left the room. I could hear the water through the bathroom door. I sat and waited for her. Sonny Lippert could wait.

  I listened to the shower and thought about going in and getting under the water with her and other stuff, but that would have made everything impossible. Instead, I went into the kitchen. I couldn’t find the coffee. Lily had fixed it up, everything was different and there were new wood cabinets and appliances.

  “Hi.”

  Hair plastered to her scalp from the shower, Lily came in wearing a starched white shirt, sleeves rolled up, and black jeans. She put her bag on the kitchen counter.

  “You changed it. The kitchen, I mean.”

  “Yeah, you like it?” said Lily.

  “A lot.”

  “I made them keep the pipe. Look.” She touched a piece of old steam pipe that ran up the kitchen wall. “I said they had to keep it. The contractor thought I was nuts.”

  “What did you keep it for?”

  “You don’t remember?” Lily reached up and pointed to a faint mark on the pipe, which was painted creamy yellow like the rest of the room.“One of the first times we went out together, we were going to hear music at the Village Vanguard, I think it was, you came to pick me up, and you had a gun in an ankle thing. You took it off and you got your handcuffs, which I guess you had in your pocket. Anyhow, you handcuffed the gun to the steam pipe. You guessed I didn’t like guns, and you just did it.”

  “I forgot.”

  “I always remembered you doing that,” she said. “You seemed very cool.”

  “Then you found out the truth.”

  “I liked you even better when I found out you were as big a mess as the rest of us.”

  “The kitchen looks really nice now.”

  “I finally earned some money for a change,” Lily said. “I sold out. I did some work for a PR firm, that kind of thing. I just got bored with politics, monitoring everyone’s behavior, especially mine. God, was I righteous. So I’ll be on the PC shit list, I can live with that. I think it was when I was working for some NGO, you know, and I realized they were a lot more interested in gender politics in the office than actually getting something done in Africa.
They bored me. I bored myself.”

  “You don’t bore me.”

  “I was glad Sonny Lippert called me, I had an excuse to call you.”

  “I would have called you anyway.”

  “They played ‘Someone To Watch Over Me’ that time we went to Bradley’s, didn’t they?”

  “Don’t.”

  “Darling, maybe you should call Lippert now,” said Lily.

  “In a minute.”

  “Maybe I got you over here on false pretenses,” she said. “I just wanted to talk to you first.”

  “First?”

  “Before Sonny gets you involved in another case. Before you have to take Billy back to Florida.”

  “Why would I take him back now?”

  In the living room, we sat on the worn gray couch, and Lily played with the blue and red kilim that was thrown over the back of it.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “I shouldn’t say it.”

  “You can say.”

  “I don’t get why we’re not together,” said Lily. “I mean I get it, I was a jerk, you married Maxine, and who could blame you? I mean in the bigger way, I don’t get why it was so fucked up. Why I fucked it up. Never mind. I just mean that I miss you.”

  “It will be OK.”

  “How?”

  “It just will. Somehow.”

  “You have such an optimistic streak,” she said. “It’s like you’re still an immigrant who thinks he’s lucky to be here and somewhere the streets are actually paved with gold.”

  I laughed. “I do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I should go.”

  “I’m going with you,” Lily said.

  “Did Sonny Lippert tell you what he was calling about?”

  “He just said he wanted you, and there was some kind of tip-off about something, but he started rambling about something from his childhood, so I wasn’t sure.”

  “Did it sound bad?”

  “Call him.”

  “Yeah. It’s probably just him ranting about something he read in Tolstoy or remembered from his childhood in Brooklyn, he probably just wants me to listen. I’ll call.”

  After a couple of tries I got Sonny on the phone. He was terse. Not rambling. Told me where to meet him. Now, he said, coldly. Where the hell were you, Artie? I’ve been calling you.