Fresh Kills Page 23
I looked up at my building. There were lights on in my windows. Again I tried crossing the street when a second kid tried to stop me.
“We’re filming,” he said. Like most film sets, the self-importance was heavy as the humidity.
I kept myself from pushing the kid out of my way. I showed him my badge and told him to move. I wasn’t in the mood for his attitude.
“Which show you working on?” said the kid who couldn’t conceive of life outside movies. Lucky for him that, before I answered, a cop in uniform came over and asked if I needed anything. Then I noticed that Mike Rizzi’s coffee shop was shut up tight as a drum, the metal gate pulled down over the door and I wondered what time he left.
In my building I hit the elevator button. Come on. Come on!
Rizzi was supposed to keep an eye on Billy and he had gone home. I couldn’t wait. I bolted for the stairs, took them two at a time up four flights. There were scratches on the wood frame of my door but I couldn’t tell for sure if they were new or not; one of the lights in the hall was out and it was hard to see. I unlocked the door. My key jammed like it always did when I was in a hurry. Come on!
“Billy?”
He didn’t answer.
“You there, Billy?”
The lights were on. The TV was on.
“I’m over here, Artie,” Billy said, getting up from the floor and standing and yawning. “I didn’t hear you come in. The TV was too loud. I was watching the news.”
On the screen was a picture of the suicide bombers in London; the youngest had been only eighteen. On the floor where Billy had been sitting was the framed picture of my father, which I kept on my desk.
“Did you eat?”
“I found some cookies and a piece of cheese,” Billy said, sitting down again in front of the TV.
I sat next to him. “I need to talk to you.”
Billy picked up the photograph of my father he had taken from my desk.
“What was he like?” Billy said.
“My dad?”
“Yes.”
“You look a lot like him,” I said. “You really do.”
“Like you,” he said. “We all look like each other,” Billy said. “Like real family. Tell me some stuff about him, Artie. I want to know.”
“Let’s talk about that later,” I said. “Tell me what’s been going on.”
Billy’s attention slipped away. He turned towards the TV.
“Can I just finish watching this?” he said. “Is that OK?” He leaned his head against my shoulder briefly, then, as if embarrassed, pulled his knees up under him and rested his chin on them, gazing at the television. I didn’t mention the scratches on the front door. I couldn’t find a way to tell him we had to leave New York.
Sitting with his back to my old couch, surrounded by his books and some newspapers and photographs, a couple of empty Soda cans and an empty package of Malomars, a box of Ritz crackers, a plate with cheese rinds, he looked as if he had made a nest for himself.
I couldn’t tell him and I couldn’t tell anyone else, except his parents, and I wasn’t even sure about them. Johnny Farone was a good sweet man who loved his kid, no question, but the Farone family was tied up with the Shanks and maybe, through them, with Al Laporello on Staten Island.
I got up and turned out the lights except for a lamp on the table beside the couch, and sat down again.
“Why did you do that?”
“Easier to watch TV,” I said.
Truth was I felt it made us less of a target, my lights being off. Crazy stuff was running through my head as I listened for unfamiliar noises in the building. With the movie people in the street yelling to each other and their generators grinding, it was hard to tell where sounds came from.
I felt trapped. The building seemed surrounded. My paranoia made me hot. Sooner or later, I’d have to get us out. At least we were together, Billy and me.
Inside the building all I heard was the bass turned up loud on some crap heavy metal music from downstairs, and a dog somewhere, and the clank of an air conditioner and a toilet running.
Billy put on a sports show, a gabfest, a bunch of ex-athletes dishing about current players taking steroids. I got up again, and wandered into the other room. The place I loved felt like a prison.
It was the only place I had ever owned in my life. Before it, before I saved up the down payment, I had lived in rentals around Chinatown, and one in Brooklyn. When I was growing up in Moscow, we lived in a cramped two-room apartment near the Arbat. We were lucky: it was central and it had a bathroom, but it wasn’t ours.
So who owned your family apartment in Moscow, a friend once asked, which made me laugh. No one, I’d say. The State owned it, I’d say to uncomprehending friends. It didn’t matter. The whole Commie enterprise had disappeared. It was off the map. All gone. Communism was a theme park for tourists: in Beijing people bought painted statuettes of Mao and his wife drinking tea; in Germany, people lined up for vintage clothing and furniture made by old East German companies; revolutionary posters from Cuba or the USSR sold at auction for big bucks. I went to the kitchen and got some Percoset.
“Artie?”
In the living room I sat down next to Billy again.
“What’s going to happen?” he said.
“It’ll be OK.”
“Don’t leave me again.”
“I won’t. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you here, there’s always some shit going down in my life,” I said to him. “It’s nothing to do with you,” I added, but he knew I was lying. “Did anything happen while I was out?”
“That guy, Mr Rizzi, he must have been up here three times, and he kept calling. As soon as he went out, he called, and it was nice, but it was like driving me crazy, so I said I was fine and I’d just call him to check in, then he said he had to go home, and I said it was fine. I didn’t know why he was so worried, but he left his phone behind and these things. I tried to get to him, but his place was locked up.” Billy held up Mike’s phone and some crumpled latex gloves, the kind Mike wore when he dished up food.
“What else?”
“I so don’t want to go back to my mom and dad. I want to be with you and I know there’s no room for me when Maxine comes home with her daughters,” said Billy, sounding desperate. “What am I going to do? I don’t want to be a baby about it, but where will I go?”
“Tell me what’s been going on.”
He got up and wandered around the room.
“Come sit with me,” I said.
Billy sat on the edge of the couch.
“There were like phone calls,” he said. “You told me to write everything down. That was right wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Lily called and that was like so nice, I really like her a lot, and we talked about some of the books she gave me, and it was so cool just being on the phone with her, and we talked about stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Lily said she would come over if I wanted.”
“What else did you talk about?”
“You,” he said. “We just talked about how great you are, and stuff. And also Mr Sverdloff.”
“Tolya called?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say where they were?”
“He said they were back in the city from East Hampton, and he made me say hello in Russian to Luda, the little girl,” said Billy. “She really talks a lot.”
“You don’t like her?”
“I do like her. I told you I liked her, I just feel kind of impatient some of the time, I so try not to, Artie, but when she says oh, where’s Artemy, where is he, I want to see him, blah blah blah, and I felt bad I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t help her. Also, speaking Russian to her makes me feel kind of dumb because she can talk it better than me, and she’s only a little kid, so I get jealous of how good she is. Am I stupid or what?”
“Well she doesn’t speak any English, so you’re kind of even,” I said. “What else?”
“He used your name?”
He nodded. “Both names. He said Billy Farone.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I was getting ready to when you came home. I’m glad you’re home.”
“Anything else?”
“Somebody buzzed downstairs, and I answered and there was no one. I just sat here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Artie?”
“What?”
“Please, please don’t make me go home to my parents.”
I wondered if Billy had somehow blocked it out that he had to go back to Florida in ten days.
“You want to say why you hate it so much at home?”
“I don’t feel happy there,” said Billy. “No one is happy there. My dad is so fat and he falls asleep at the table with his mouth hanging open, and he keeps watching me all the time. I know he loves me but it’s too much, it’s like he has to love me to make up for the fact other people think I’m a freak, and then his crazy mom comes by and brings this stupid priest to talk to me, and I heard someone talking about exorcists.
“Did you know they teach exorcism at the Vatican college, I mean, it’s like the Middle Ages, and all I want is for them to leave me alone so I can read and maybe feed my fish or something, and my mother, I mean she loves me and all, but she can’t stand my dad. She never says she feels, like, grateful, which is sort of worse.” Billy flapped his arms as if he was trying to find a place to put them. Then he crossed them over his chest. “Listen, I know I have to go back to Florida, but I still have ten more days, and I just want to be with you. Artie?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s about my dad, about Johnny, and I don’t know if I should ask you.”
“Go on.”
“Just a feeling,” Billy said. “I met this friend of my mom’s a couple of times, and I saw how he was looking at me, and he brought me books. I heard my mom on the phone whispering to him once. People think kids don’t know, they think they’re being such good parents, like they go in another room to talk about the kids and stuff, and of course even little kids know what’s going on and I’m fourteen.”
“What are you saying?”
“I think this other guy might be my real father,” said Billy, voice uncertain, as if he didn’t know it was OK even to ask.
“Do you know his name?”
“I think it’s Mr Zeitsev. Please tell me. I have to know.”
“You have to ask your mom. The thing is, Johnny loves you and to him you are his son.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“You think Johnny knows?”
“I don’t know, Billy. Listen, I have to tell you something. You want me to be straight with you, right? You said that before, right?”
“Yes,” Billy said, but again he wandered aimlessly around the apartment, glancing out of the window, as if he didn’t want to hear the truth.
“I have to take you back to Florida early.” I said it as fast as I could, like ripping a Band-Aid, and I could see the shock on his face. Then I was sorry I’d told him. I wished I’d just taken him to the airport and made him get on the plane with me.
Billy turned away from me.
“Billy?”
For a while he was silent, his back to me, and I knew he was crying. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared as hell even to take him out of my building. I couldn’t protect him and there was no one else.
“I know they think you’re a great kid and you’ll probably get out much sooner than you think, and maybe we can fix something, maybe then you can come back and live with us, I mean me and Maxine and the girls, I know they’d like it, we could fix something like that.”
He turned to me, eyes dry now, and said, “Please don’t lie to me, Artie.”
“I mean it.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“I’m telling you how it is. I’m treating you like you said you wanted, like a grown-up.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me. It matters a whole lot to me.”
“How early?” he said.
“What?”
“When do we have to go?”
“Soon. I’m sorry.” I couldn’t stand telling him how soon, not yet.
“There’s just one thing.”
“Anything.”
“Promise?”
I hesitated. I had to keep whatever promise I made.
“Yeah, I promise.”
Billy smiled at me. “Can we have one more day together? Is that crazy?”
“What do you mean?”
“Tomorrow. Can we go fishing like we planned and make a picnic and just like hang? The weather forecast says it’s going to be really nice, and it’s Saturday, can we do that? I wish we could have just one day.”
“We’ll do that, we’ll have a great day together, we will. Let’s get everything ready, then you should get some sleep.”
I was on my knees in the closet in my room, digging under magazines coated with dust, an old bicycle pump, fossilized winter boots, stiff with ancient frost, and some weights I had never used and probably never would, but I couldn’t find the fishing stuff and right then the phone rang and it was Lippert.
I crawled out of the closet, listening to Lippert’s shaking voice. We found another baby, he said. Dead. In another freezer. Real, he said. A real infant.
Dead?
He said yeah, it was dead.
I told Billy I had to go out for a while. I told him to go to sleep in my room. It faced the back of the building. No one could see in from the street. You couldn’t see much anyhow because my place was on the fourth floor, but it made me feel better. It was quieter in back I said softly to Billy, who didn’t argue. I could see he was scared and trying to hide it. I said I’d be back soon.
When he was in bed, I sat with him for a while until he fell asleep, then I locked the windows, and took my gun, and did something I hated doing: I took the keys I’d given Billy out of his jacket and locked him in. I didn’t want him going out in case Shank or one of his goons was watching my place.
By the time I got to the ground floor, I could hear the sirens. My throat was dry; trying to get it clear I coughed, but it didn’t help. I made my way past the film crew and knocked against a table piled with candy bars that flew off into the gutter.
I remembered Billy’s cell phone when I was already on the street. I was afraid to go back, afraid to wake up Billy. I’d have to get it later, but I wanted the phone bad because it might show me who had been following us, not just Shank but his cronies. Sammy Britz had reported Shank told him Billy was never without the phone, always taking pictures with it.
26
It was the size of the body bag that was so horrible. One of the cops on the scene said the rash of child crime around the country meant manufacturers had stepped up production, turning out pint-size black body bags that you could use for children, or for certain other kinds of remains; I didn’t ask what.
As bad as the little body bags, and what gave me a chill on this dank humid evening, was the fact that the baby was found in Mike Rizzi’s freezer out back of his coffee shop, in the alleyway where he had constructed a makeshift shed.
The rain was letting up. I was standing near the curb, watching a cop holding the body bag when I spotted Sonny Lippert. He was talking to Bingo, the homeless guy who worked my block. I went over to them. Bingo told me that he’d found the baby. He’d told the story to other cops and to Sonny Lippert, but he wanted to tell me.
There were cops everywhere, some trying to shut down the movie set where crew people were whining about the loss of time. Others were putting up orange cones with yellow tape slung between them to secure the sce
ne. Bystanders gawked. A woman picked up her rat-like dog in her arms, as if the dog was in danger. There were a lot of those tiny dogs around these days and women carried them like expensive handbags.
“What time?” I said to Lippert.
“Tell him,” he said to Bingo.
“Around an hour ago, man,” he said. “I guess. Don’t got my Patek Philippe on me tonight.”
“He’s OK,” I said to Lippert. “I know Bingo. Is she dead?”
“Looked dead to me, God rest her,” Bingo said. “I was there when they broke the lock on that there freezer.”
It was a fluke that he had found her. Bingo was a black guy who always said he named himself for Bingo Long and the All Stars, which was his favorite movie. He was a regular on the block. He was a drunk, but he was cheerful. He carried your groceries before he asked you for a buck. Told me he had played the sax long time ago, and he announced to tourists that he was not just a panhandler but was soliciting contributions to the “United Negro Pastrami Fund”.
Mike Rizzi gave Bingo food and people gave him money and whenever he disappeared for a while, a couple of older ladies who lived in my building worried about him. One of them had asked if he needed a place to stay once, but he said he had a room with an aunt somewhere in Jersey. “I just like to drink,” Bingo always said.
He wasn’t drunk now. He led me a couple of steps to the alley and Lippert went with us. I pushed my way into the narrow space. Six of us were crammed in, Bingo, Lippert, me, two cops, someone from the Medical Examiner’s office.
Bingo had come into the alley here, he said, like he sometimes did when it rained. The tin shed protected you from the rain, and you could climb up on the humpback old-fashioned freezer and catch forty winks, or smoke, or do the crossword puzzle.
He said he had heard the baby cry, or thought he did, or maybe he thought it after he saw her. Soon as he did, Bingo started yelling like crazy until a cop showed up and broke the lock on the freezer.
Maybe it was a premonition. When the cop opened the freezer, Bingo told me, underneath the boxes of pies and the plastic-wrapped lumps of meat, was the frozen baby girl, wrapped in a pink blanket and a sheet of tin foil. The face was visible.