Fresh Kills Read online

  From the bag, I lifted out T-shirts and jeans, shorts, a pair of green high top sneakers, a stack of underpants, some red swim trunks. Genia bought him nice things, mostly from Brooks Brothers, as if Billy attended a fancy boarding school.

  At the bottom of the bag were a pair of brown loafers, a Yankees cap and fleece shirt, and books, which included a fishing guide, an unread copy of a Harry Potter book, short stories in Russian, a Russian dictionary, some schoolbooks and David Copperfield. A book about Charles Lindbergh, with pictures of Lindbergh and the airplane he made his solo Atlantic flight in, was untouched, still in the bookstore bag.

  A thick plastic wallet fell out of the pocket of Billy’s plaid jacket. It was full of photographs of the two of us: fishing on a party boat; at a Yankees game; at Billy’s sixth birthday party. There was one of him at his First Communion, all dressed up in a white satin suit and white shoes with Johnny Farone looking fat, and me looking glum.

  The Farones were Catholic and Genia went along with it. In one of the pictures, Johnny Farone stood in the background, like a distant relative and I, standing up close, looked like Billy’s real father.

  Thinking about how I’d found Billy trying on my jacket – I didn’t think it meant much, but it bugged me, him wanting to look like me – I went through the clothes in his bag again.

  The phone rang in the other room and I ran for it, and it was a guy I knew who I’d figured could help on tracking down Genia and Johnny in London. He said he didn’t have anything on people named Farone. He’d keep trying. He’d call back. Sorry, Artie, he said. They’re still missing.

  It was Thursday. Maxine was due home on Sunday. I didn’t know what the hell I’d do with Billy if she got back and the Farones were still in London. Or dead. I turned on the news.

  What if they were dead? What if, I asked myself over and over while I got ready to go look for Samson Britz.

  Consuming Diet Cokes one after the other, Britz was in his usual hangout, a bar in Chinatown near the waterfront and the old fish market that was gone now. Not far from the warehouse where the dolls had been stuffed in the refrigerator.

  Britz was in the back, like he always was, where it was dimly lit; drinking his sodas, non-stop, pouring one, downing it, picking up another, he used the stuff like a junkie used heroin. At the other tables, a few elderly Chinese men sipped beers slowly and played cards. Above their heads, a TV screen was covered with news from London. Missing.

  When Sonny Lippert told me I could spend money on Britz, I knew Sonny was plenty worried about the doll thing – really worried, not just spouting off – and the potential for copycats.

  Samson Britz had been a cop, and he was a creep, a man who accounted for every favor and made sure he was always in the black. He called himself a private investigator, but what he was, was a man who retailed information and did it – sold it, one way or the other – to anyone who paid him.

  What Sonny Lippert didn’t really get was that Britz preferred information to money. He squirreled it away. You never saw him write anything down, but you could see his eyeballs turn back into his head, like beads on an abacus, click click, click, one for you, two for me. Three.

  I only used Britz when I was desperate. Sonny had been right about him: you wanted to take a shower after you’d been with him because of the moral stink.

  Always snappily dressed, even when it was hot, Britz wore a blue and white seersucker jacket, and sharp cotton pants, pink shirt, a pink and white polka-dot bow tie. He watched me come through the door of the gloomy bar and walk towards his table.

  “Detective Cohen,” said Britz, whose small talk sounded like a cop show he’d seen on TV. “Detective Cohen, long time no see.”

  I sat down and ordered a beer and when it came I drank half of it down in one gulp.

  “So, you want to know something that I know?” Britz asked. “Would you like a freebee? I’m in the mood,” he said, making my desire for information sound obscene, like some kind of vice he’d be happy to service.

  “Sure.”

  “The sightseeing plane that crashed over Coney Island, that someone had fooled with the propeller when it was serviced, that’s what I heard,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “That costs more.”

  “I don’t have time right now,” I said. “Tell me something I can’t hear on the news.”

  “So maybe you’re here about the babies?” said Britz. “You don’t mean to say you think I hadn’t heard about the poor baby dolls in the freezer? Four blocks from here it happened. This is not news. Everyone knows. Everybody knows that they were fakes. So we wait for the copycats, the real babies, is that right? Isn’t that why you’re here, looking for Sammy Britz?”

  “How does everyone know?”

  “The movement of gossip in New York City,” he said, holding up an auction catalogue on the table in front of him. Art sales were a regular preoccupation with Britz who figured he could make real money trading in art. Told me once he got the idea from some Japanese gangsters who worked the fine arts business. Along with being a creep, Britz could be a pompous asshole.

  “Do you like the German Expressionists? I think they’re really fucking depressing, but valuable,” Britz said.

  “Knock it off. What about the dolls?”

  Britz raised his glass. “Everyone knows about it, which doesn’t mean anyone knows how it happened. Grim stuff, right? Gruesome. Who the fuck does something like that unless it’s a warning.”

  “What kind of warning?”

  Drinking more Coke, Britz fussed with his seersucker jacket with a prissy gesture.

  “I could make a guess,” he said.

  “Guess.”

  “Somebody who wants you to know that there’s worse coming, that the baby dolls are advertising for the thing that’s coming next. Somebody, for example, who kills a little girl in Jersey and cuts her feet off and leaves her little dolly with her. You know that part of Jersey, over by the Bayonne Bridge, opposite Staten Island?”

  “Yeah, some.”

  “How come? You been to Staten Island recently?”

  “How the fuck did you know that?”

  “I didn’t. Just asking. So I guessed right?” Britz said.

  “What do you mean, someone wants me to know there’s worse coming?” I said.

  “I think I’m in the black now, Artie. I think you owe me now, isn’t that right?”

  “How much?”

  “I’ll see what I can find out. I’ll let you know the price.”

  “Then tell me what the fuck kind of warning you mean, who from?”

  “That would be ‘from whom’, wouldn’t it?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “If I knew that I’d be fucking rich, Artie,” said Britz. “So, I hear your little nephew Billy Farone is out, they let him out of the nuthouse on vacation, isn’t that right? Is he with you? Is he with his mom and dad, no, they’re in London. I forgot. I hope they’re OK.” Britz looked up at the TV set and the pictures of the red bus and of people looking for their relatives. Missing. “They’ll hit us again soon. Fucking Homeland Security couldn’t protect us from a summer storm.” He picked up a fresh Diet Coke and drank it, watching the TV without much expression.

  How the fuck did he know about Billy? About Billy’s parents?

  Sweat poured down the back of my neck into my collar.

  “What’s the matter, Detective? You need another beer or something?” Britz was getting anxious. “You going to say something or just sit there or what?”

  I had remembered. Remembered when I had last seen Britz. Remembered him telling me, in this same bar where we were sitting, that he knew John Farone, Sr; Johnny’s father, Billy’s grandfather, was someone Britz knew, and Britz knew Stan Shank who had been Farone’s partner. I remembered Britz talking about Shank. A crazy bastard, he had said. Something like that. “The Keyster,” they called Shank.

  Shank’d see a big fancy car, and if it was holding up the traffic or somethin
g, or waiting for someone to come out of a store, he’d stand nearby and wait for it to pull away, hold out a key, scratch the car or limo the whole length. He was famous for it.

  I kept my mouth shut. I drank beer. Got some passing pleasure from the confused look on Britz’s face and because I’d remembered about Shank. So far I didn’t owe Britz anything. I tossed my card on the table.

  “Call me,” I said. “If you have anything I could get interested in on the dolls. I mean something worthwhile.”

  “Wait,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I could get you something else. For a price.”

  “What price?”

  “I’ll let you know.” Britz picked up my card without looking at it, and then tore it into little pieces. “I have your number,” he said.

  20

  I left the bar and Britz, found a newsstand and bought a copy of the Post. There was a headline that read COLD DOLLS. A report – if you could call anyone who worked for the Post a reporter – made connections between the dolls and the fact that the guy kicked to death in Chinatown was only fourteen, a boy with a cardboard sign proclaiming he was homeless and had AIDS. Child abuse was epidemic all over again, just like 2003, the piece in the paper said. Violence on TV and the movies to blame, was the conclusion. I threw the paper in the garbage can.

  On my way home, crossing the Bowery, I saw a couple of cops with AKs on the corner. The city was getting edgy. A young guy who looked Arab crossed the street away from the cops, who glanced at him twice. Later I read that on one bus uptown some cop got on and gave the passengers a free lecture on how to spot a terrorist.

  Some asshole in a van was honking, and at first I didn’t hear my cell go off in my pocket. I dug it out, and called back. When Johnny Farone answered, I was so surprised I must have sounded really pissed off, instead of relieved, and I said, “Why the hell didn’t you call me before?”

  “Didn’t Billy tell you I called him, Artie?” said Johnny, who was always sounding apologetic. “Jesus, I’m so sorry. I called Billy hours ago and told him, call Artie. I couldn’t get you. Your phone was always tied up, you probably trying me.”

  “You’re OK? How’s Genia doing? When are you coming home?”

  “She’s going crazy. I can’t talk that much. I’m in the hallway outside our room. She keeps watching the news on TV. We were on the street and she saw a couple of people who had been near the bombed-out bus, and one was bleeding a little and she went crazy.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Genia was looking for some stupid antique store,” Johnny said. “You know how she is about shopping.”

  “When are you coming home?” I said again.

  Johnny’s voice wavered. “Fuck knows. I mean fucking fuck, Artie, the airports are closed and Genia says she’s not getting on any plane ever. She thinks the terrorists gonna get us. She wants to take a boat, for chrissake. I feel so bad for her, Artie and I don’t know fucking what to do. I gotta go,” he said. “I’ll call you. You just take care of my Billy boy, OK? You gotta promise me, Art.” Johnny was weeping into the phone now.

  I was going to ask him about his father, old man Farone, and Stan Shank, but the line went dead.

  I tried to feel angry at Billy for not calling to say his parents were alive, but I knew he’d been having a good time with Katie Provone; soon he’d be too busy with girls to go fishing with me. For the first time in a while, I laughed, mostly at myself, the way I was acting: protective, anxious, jealous; I was turning into a parent. I went home and got my car.

  I wanted Shank. I wanted to nail him. I wanted him to leave us alone. It was Shank who had followed Billy and me around Brighton Beach on Tuesday afternoon and forced me down an empty street the same night, and Shank who kept calling to threaten me, and I was betting it was Shank who called in the so-called tips on the dolls in the refrigerator; Shank using a Russian accent, or maybe a friendly Russki.

  For all I knew, Shank was involved with the dolls and the girl who died in Jersey. The more I thought, the more it seemed right, and I figured if I got something, I could make it stick. Get Shank picked up at least, get him out of circulation for a few days.

  I knew if I went to Shank’s place, he’d slam the door on me if I was lucky, or stick a knife in my neck. I needed a line through to him. Farone Sr in Florida was Shank’s friend, which left Farone’s daughters, Johnny’s sisters. Donna lived with the old man and I didn’t trust her any more than I trusted him. There was another sister named Tina, like the mother. She lived on Long Island some place – Rockville Center, somewhere like that.

  Tina was listed under her own name. I was pretty surprised when a girl answered, said she was Tina’s daughter, Sara; she recognized my name and gave me her mother’s cell. She sounded nice, a nice kid with a sweet voice, and it came like a kind of balm, the mood I was in, the things that were happening. Finally, I got lucky.

  Tina Farone – they used to call her Little Tina because it was also her mother’s name – was at Johnny’s restaurant in Brooklyn having cocktails with some girlfriends when she answered my call and she said she’d wait for me and we could have a cup of coffee or something.

  She was as sweet as her daughter had been on the phone, voice, face, demeanor, everything. Sitting opposite me at Johnny Farone’s restaurant, sipping a mojito, Tina answered my questions easily. Smiled easily. I’d never met anyone with less guile.

  Younger than Johnny, she was blonde and blue-eyed, and wearing a sky blue cotton summer dress. She was probably in her late thirties, maybe early forties, and I’d met her a few times at family affairs – the last time had been Billy’s First Communion – but I’d never really talked to her. I ordered a beer. The waiter brought it and brought Tina another drink.

  “I don’t even like these things that much,” said Tina holding up her mojito. “They’re supposed to be cool. How can I help, Artie?”

  “You talked to your brother? He’s OK, you know. Safe.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t even know Johnny had gone to London until he called me. I try to stay in touch, but we don’t see each other much, hardly ever, truthfully speaking. It makes me sad, Artie.”

  “You don’t have to explain,” I said. “Poor bastard. Genia’s hysterical about London, and she says she’s not getting on a plane.”

  “You want to know what I think, I think Genia’s hysterical because Billy boy’s in New York and she’s scared of seeing him,” Tina said. “She was always so crazy about that boy that when the thing happened, it made her nuts. I don’t mean to say anything bad about Gen, so I mean like off balance, you know?”

  “You knew Billy was here?”

  “Johnny told me.”

  “Billy’s good. He’s with me.”

  “I’m so glad,” Tina said. “But something’s wrong, which is why you called me, is that right? Anything, Artie. Really.”

  I leaned forward. “You know the Shank family at all? Stan Shank.”

  “I knew them,” said Tina. “My father and mother were all tied up with them back when, very pally. You met my mother?”

  I nodded.

  “I try not to feel bitter,” Tina said. “My mom had me very late in her life and it was a bad birth and she didn’t want me at all, even though they named me for her, which I also hated because they called me Little Tina. You remember? They called Johnny ‘Junior’, and me Little Tina and we hated how we were named for our parents.

  “I knew my ma didn’t want me from an early age, I used to hear her yell at my dad, but they were Catholics, you know, she got pregnant, in those days what could they do? When I was fourteen, I just thought to myself, get over it, Tina. Just get over hating your family, and I got myself accepted at a boarding school, it was Catholic but I had worked out that it had a kind of liberal faculty, which my parents didn’t know existed. All I said was it was Catholic and some of the teachers were nuns, so everybody was like oh, this is great, Little Tina is a good girl, maybe she’ll become a nun or
something.” Tina picked up a glass of water on the table and drank it in a few gulps.

  “I left home and that was it,” she said. “In college I met a boy from out west. For a while I wanted to be like a rodeo rider, I swear to God, don’t laugh, and I went and worked out west, and wore stupid hats, and great outfits with chaps and spangles. I wasn’t bad but every time I opened my mouth, they knew I was from Brooklyn, and it didn’t play that great, even if I looked pretty good in the hats. They tried making it work calling me The Bucking Brooklyn Babe. No one bought it.” She laughed.

  “What about the boy?”

  “We got married, we got divorced. I’m married to a great guy now, who is not from the west. Mack’s a dentist on Long Island, and he’s a nice Jewish man who’s happy for me to keep my own name which my mother never forgave me for, the Jewish part, and I have a great daughter – you talked to Sara – but yeah, I knew the Shanks some.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I knew that Stan Shank and my old man were tight, they’d been cops together,” said Tina. “They did business together, not entirely kosher, I’m pretty sure of that; they ran things in this part of Brooklyn. They weren’t real players, they did little deals, electronics, toys, stuff they said fell off the back of a truck, stuff like that, and they could be harsh if someone got in their way. Cops that didn’t play ball with them. Black people who had the temerity to show up over in Howard Beach to do business. It was the Russians they hated, though, because the Russians moved into Brooklyn, and they were smarter than my dad and Shank.” Tina clasped her hands together on the table.

  “So they took it out on their own women. My mom is half Polish, which my father claimed was the same as Russian, and Shank’s stepmother was Russian, she’s dead now, and her and his pop, who is also dead, thank Christ, had Herschel. They called him Heshey.”