Fresh Kills Read online

  “Can we go, Artie? Please?”

  After we left the cafe, we walked along Brighton Beach Avenue, under the elevated train tracks that made a metal canopy over the street. Calmer now, Billy looked for the ice cream store he remembered. I asked him why the man on the boardwalk had scared him, but Billy shook his head. Said he was OK. It was nothing.

  In the store windows, the banks, the restaurants, most of the signs were Russian. Laid out in a deli window were fish – gilded chubs, oily succulent sturgeon, orange smoked salmon. Alongside them were heavy black breads, Russian cookies and tubs of pickles swimming in brine.

  You heard Russian on the street, but some of the people looked Asian; immigrants from remote republics, which had been part of the USSR, had begun replacing people from Moscow and Odessa. Pakistanis, Hispanics, Chinese were moving in, too; Brighton Beach was layered now like an anthropological dig. A lot of younger Russkis had gone, moved out, to other parts of Brooklyn, Staten Island, Jersey or Long Island.

  A few elderly Jews still sat on fold-up stools along the sidewalk and gossiped in Yiddish. Their parents had settled here in the early part of the twentieth century when Brighton Beach was the end of the streetcar line.

  Waiting for a red light to change, an old woman glanced at us suspiciously. No one I knew, no one Billy knew, just a Russian woman with a headscarf and broken shoes.

  Billy kept close to me. I put my arm around his shoulders for a second, then took it away. I didn’t want him feeling I was nervous. Whenever I came to Brighton Beach, though, and I didn’t come if I could help it, I always got a toxic whiff of the Soviet Union. Toxic for me, anyway; it smelled like fear and boiled potatoes.

  Ugly clothing, angora sweaters in turquoise with big shoulders and gold sequins, fox fur stoles, leather pants, fancy china, was set out in store windows along the avenue. Inside I could see women trying on the clothes and examining the black and gold porcelain. Tourists bought overly salted caviar in the shops and ate pirogi at Cafe Arbat. They went to The National or Rasputin, the fancy nightclubs where vodka flowed and the floorshow included flame eaters, jugglers and long-legged showgirls. Hookers worked the side streets. But the Russian mob, having extracted what they could out here, had moved on. Crime was down.

  “You’re pretty quiet,” I said to Billy after a while. “What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t find the ice cream place.” He sounded fretful. “I just can’t find it.”

  *

  “Artemy!” A voice called out from a doorway a block further down the avenue.

  Emerging from the door of his bookstore was Dubi Petrovsky. Lovingly he patted the big Dutch bicycle, custom made he had told me, that was chained up outside.

  “Come on,” I said to Billy. “You’ll like this place. Dubi might know where the ice cream store has gone.”

  “You still riding your bike, Artie?” said Dubi, who swept us both inside his shop.

  Tall, with a handsome beaky face like a big mournful bird, Dubi had the best bookshop in Brooklyn. He was born in Odessa, but he spoke English without much of an accent, also Russian, French and Yiddish. Dubi was about fifty, but he looked ageless. If you invited him to your house for dinner, he showed up with a bag of groceries, usually a cheesecake, paté and salami minimum. I knew that Dubi got up mornings around five to work out at the gym. The rest of the day he spent in his shop where books lined shelves from floor to ceiling; first editions were kept behind glass in an old mahogany cabinet.

  Dubi shook my hand, said hello to Billy, and you could tell he was great with kids, not condescending, but interested.

  “Take a look around,” he said. “See if you can find something which interests you.”

  Billy looked first at a rack of newspapers and magazines, Russian, Ukrainian, English, French, Arabic, Spanish, Urdu. From the time he was a little kid, Billy had always been a compulsive reader. He read everything he got his hands on, adventure stories, sci-fi, grown-up novels, history.

  “You interested in newspapers?” Dubi asked him.

  “Yeah,” said Billy softly. “Wow, can I look at some of these?”

  “Of course,” Dubi said.

  “I love reading them, I really do. I like to read about stuff, you know, so I buy the papers. They don’t let me do it that much down in Florida, but I get stuff on the net.”

  “Enjoy yourself,” Dubi said to Billy who was already lost in the racks of papers. “So, you’re good, Artemy? Maxine is good? You put on a few pounds, I see, so marriage agrees with you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Maxine’s out in San Diego with her girls, visiting their cousins, they have zoos and shit out there, and theme parks and pizza with pineapple.”

  “Very nice,” said Dubi.

  On Dubi’s makeshift desk, heaped with books, was a small TV; on it Paul McCartney was singing “Yesterday”, his old boy’s face crinkled up with delight. The camera pulled back. McCartney was in Red Square.

  Following my gaze, Dubi said, “A Beatle in Mosow. I would kill to have been there. I never ever dreamed there would be Beatles in Moscow, not even one Beatle. It is like a dream. I sold my book by the way,” he added. “I’m going to be published.”

  “No kidding. That’s great, Dubi. Terrific, man.”

  “History of Beatles in the USSR, a real publisher in Manhattan, too.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “It’s only the first volume.”

  “There’re others?”

  “Sure. Beatles is everything. Beatles is history of the entire world since l961. In USSR, everybody is Beatles fan. Even Foreign Minister Ivanov says he learned English as a kid listening to Beatles. About this creep, Putin, I am not so sure, however. He’s a very bad man, Artemy. Bad but the West sucks up to him. For natural gas, for diamonds, oil. No one gives a shit except for this.”

  “You said it.”

  To Billy, Dubi said, “When I was your age, I was in love with the Beatles. Bitles. We pronounce it Bitles because we have no way of knowing. And it’s still best band in world, Stones are OK, but no one makes melody like McCartney.”

  “You know about the Beatles?” I said to Billy.

  Billy made a comic face. “Sure I do, course, you think I don’t know anything about anything before 50 Cent? Pulease!”

  Dubi gave him a thumbs-up, reached across to his desk and presented Billy with the album that McCartney had recorded in Moscow. It had a red star on the cover.

  “Vinyl! How cool is that! Thank you so so much,” said Billy. “That’s really crazy. Thanks a lot. I already like the Beatles, I’m sure this will be really good. Artie, look!

  “Your Uncle Artie thinks all Russkis who live out here in Brighton Beach are thugs or crass ladies with fur coats, you know?” said Dubi. “Tell me what you like reading best, Billy.”

  They went into a huddle, a book lovers’ crouch as they inspected books starting on the bottom shelf. Dubi retrieved books, handed them to Billy; together they pored over pages, discussed plots, characters, writing styles. A slim hardback caught Billy’s attention.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  Billy got up to show me, a memoir about fly-fishing in Montana. Nimble as a kid, Dubi jumped up and looked over his shoulder.

  “I’ll buy it for you,” I said.

  Dubi interrupted. “It is a present. So bring your nephew over for dinner soon, Artie.”

  We all shook hands. Billy was halfway out of the shop, but Dubi pulled me back and said, “Great kid, Artyom. I like very much.”

  Billy turned back from the doorway. “Who’s that man? Look, over there, in the street?”

  A few yards away, an old man whose skin was broiled purple by the sun and who had an immense mustache was glad-handing a couple of tourists.

  “Rabbi Abraham Abraham,” Dubi said. “Always says he was already in Brighton Beach when there were still chickens on the streets. Must be over eighty. Likes to say he’s King of Brighton Beach. I once saw him walking into the ocean with the Coney Isl
and Ice Breakers, the club that likes to swim dead of winter. You want to meet him, Billy?”

  I said, “I think we’ll pass.”

  “Well guys, nice to see you. Nice to meet you, Billy. I heard so much about you. I heard you were coming home.”

  “How did you hear?” I said. “Who told you, Dubi?”

  But Dubi had disappeared into the back room of his shop where the phone was ringing.

  The sun was going down fast now.

  “Should I call you Uncle Artie?” Billy said.

  “What do you think?”

  “I never did. I just always called you Artie.”

  “So that’s good,” I said.

  “I asked Dubi about the ice cream place,” Billy said.

  “And?”

  “He told me he doesn’t like American ice cream. I have to find it, you know,” said Billy. “It has to be there. It’s the best stuff I ever ate, ice cream wise, I thought about getting some all the time I was in Florida. I used to go there with my dad when I was a kid.”

  Not finding the ice cream upset Billy.

  “I can’t remember,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s gone or I forgot where it was.”

  While Billy was worrying about ice cream, I realized a car was keeping pace with us. A shabby maroon Lincoln Town car. A couple of yards separated us from the car. I couldn’t see who was driving, but I knew someone in the car was watching me. Or Billy. Was it Billy they were watching? Was someone checking on him? Someone aware he was out on vacation, away from Florida, someone who had an interest?

  “Watch it, asshole,” an angry voice said. I had bumped into a woman with big blonde hair, stonewashed jeans and a skintight halter-neck top under her purple denim jacket that was studded with shiny gold beads. “Watch it,” she said again.

  I kept my mouth shut and put my hand on Billy’s arm.

  “We can get ice cream somewhere else.”

  “I feel so bad that I can’t find it, Artie.”

  “You mean the ice cream place?”

  “Anything,” Billy said. “I can’t find things. I don’t remember. I can’t tell if they’re gone, or if it’s me.”

  “What things?”

  “Places. A place I got sneakers once. Like that. The knish stand.”

  The car was still there.

  “Let’s just go.” I got out my cell phone, which had started ringing.

  It was Sonny Lippert. He told me to meet him at Peter Luger’s, where he was eating dinner. I told him I couldn’t. He said he needed me.

  “I would have talked to you at Coney Island, but it wasn’t the time or place, man,” said Sonny.

  “I’ll call you later.”

  Billy pulled the sleeve of my jacket. “If you have to go, I’m OK, I’m not going to be an asshole about an ice cream cone. I want to go to my house anyway and check on my fish, and get my things. I’ll meet you after. I have the keys. I kept my set of keys. You trust me, right?”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Can’t you trust me? I’m fourteen, Artie. Please? Otherwise it’s just like being locked up.”

  “Then stop for a minute. Talk to me.”

  Billy stopped and leaned against the wall of a bank.

  “I just need to go home,” he said.

  We walked towards my car silently, me pretending to look in shop windows where all I really saw was Billy’s reflection. His head was down, eyes on the pavement. He had given up on the ice cream. When he looked up at me, his face was sad.

  After a while he said, “So can we really go fishing?”

  “Yeah. You pick a place, we’ll go.”

  “Like I said, any place would be fine.”

  “You’re really cool, you know that? I mean I’m so impressed the way you deal with stuff.”

  “You are?” Billy flushed with embarrassment or because he was happy, or both. “I learned,” he said. “I think this is me, Artie, I think this is how I am, and something bad happened, like you read people get brain tumors and it makes them weird, I think something like that. Maybe I got a brain tumor, or that cerebral hemorrhage thing, and it went away, or there was this one nice doctor, he was really really good, and I think he cured me. You know? So I need to go to my house,” he said. “I need to see my fish.”

  “Come on,” I said when we got to my car. “Let’s go.”

  “Did you see that car that was following us?” said Billy. “Big ugly car, sort of purple? I saw you watching. I saw you and I figured it was following us for some reason.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t think so. I don’t think it was anything.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Your house.”

  I drove the mile or so to Manhattan Beach where the Farones lived. It was dark now. Lights were on in the suburban houses, which were always freshly painted, lawns trim as wall-to-wall carpet, with plaster statues of nymphs and goddesses. The tidy blocks ran up to the beaches, which were private around here. In the rear-view mirrors I looked for the maroon car but it was gone. Just paranoia, I told myself. I was nervous for Billy. Wanted him safe.

  My old red Caddy made me easy to spot. I knew I should trade it in for something else, but I loved the car, and anyhow Maxine always said, “I didn’t marry you so I could drive around in a beige minivan. You’re my access to glamor, honey, keep the car, no matter how often it has to go into the shop.” I looked at my watch to check the date. July 5. Tuesday. Maxine would be home Sunday and I was glad. I missed her.

  In front of the Farone house, I pulled up. Billy pushed open the car door, jumped out, ran up the walk, and spun around twice and waved like crazy. He was home. Already he had his keys out.

  The phone rang again; it was Lippert.

  “Don’t bring the kid with you, either,” he said.

  I got out and followed Billy up to the front door.

  “My keys don’t work,” he said.

  I got a set of keys from my pocket.

  “Here,” I said. “Your mom gave me these.”

  “She changed the locks?”

  “I guess.”

  Billy looked defeated. “They didn’t want me here, you think that’s why they did it?”

  “I’m sure it’s not why. Look, you go see your fish, whatever, and I’ll pick you up in a couple of hours. If I leave you, you won’t go out, right? I’m not supposed to leave you alone, and I don’t like even asking if you’ll stay at the house, but I have to.”

  Billy lit up like a bulb. “I promise. You can phone me every two minutes, or anything, it would just be so great to know that you could trust me. Thank you,” said Billy. “Thanks.”

  “I trust you.”

  He leaned over and kissed my cheek, then drew back and blushed.

  “Thanks, Artie.”

  “I’ll be back in two hours.”

  “Good. OK.” Billy started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. I’m just laughing. I’m just like happy.”

  Billy sauntered up the walk to his house, arms swinging, hands flapping, skipping every other step, whistling “Yesterday” loud and off-key. Whistling and skipping at the same time, then turning to wave at me as if he felt free.

  4

  A week earlier, Genia Farone had stood on her new back patio – made of imported fieldstone, she told me – looking at her swimming pool, which was oval and deep blue; gold mosaic fish sparkled on the bottom. Real gold leaf, Genia said.

  Genia had called me that morning sounding desperate. I went over and asked what was wrong, but she was reluctant to talk. Instead, in a kind of ritual I was used to now, she showed me around her house.

  Fancy loungers with blue and white striped cushions were positioned near the pool, for conversation and cocktails, Gen said, as if expecting a stylish crowd to appear poolside. In her mind were pictures of old Hollywood gatherings and she’d had a bar built with a white leather top and stools to match, and there was a fancy stainless steel barbecue, glass-topped tables
and big terracotta pots of white orchids. Plucking a few dead leaves off a plant, Genia smiled faintly, satisfied.

  From inside the house came voices of workers putting new shelves in the kitchen. Power saws buzzed. A quartet of movers grunted as they dragged in furniture bound in thick cloth and duct tape, like mummies. The house was Genia’s obsession. It was as if all the stuff somehow added up to a life, as if the material goods were ballast that kept her from drifting away.

  I felt for her. Stuck with Johnny Farone, Genia believed she owed him because he had married her and made her an American citizen, got her the house and furniture, the Range Rover, the clothes, and because they had Billy.

  “What do you need?” I said.

  “They’re letting him out for two weeks,” Genia said in Russian. “Billy, I mean, Artyom. I was going to go down to Florida to pick him up, but Johnny’s getting some kind of award in London for the restaurant. We heard Billy was getting out, but we’d already planned this trip for ages. I talked to Billy’s doctor in Florida, his shrink. I talked to the administrator. They said it’s fine. You’re his godfather, Artyom, you’re his guardian if anything happens to us. You’re on all his paperwork. If he is good, there can be some more time off, or whatever they call it, at some point, not now, but later they’ll let him out. This is too much to ask of you, I know.” Genia sat down on the edge of a lounger, got a pack of Dunhill’s from her jacket pocket and unpeeled the cellophane from the red and gold box.

  I sat beside her.

  “You don’t want to go.” It wasn’t a question.

  She lit up, sucked in the smoke, blew it out and said, “I’m scared.”

  Genia seemed distant, affectless. All the Botox meant her face barely moved and you couldn’t tell what she was feeling. Toned from the gym, her body was hard. She crossed her legs, flexed her tanned right foot in its silver snakeskin sandal – she told me she went to a tanning salon regularly – and the muscles on her calf showed. She wore black linen Capri pants and a white silk jacket. Her expensive clothes – Gen never failed to tell me where she got her outfits – were like costumes.

  “I’m a design whore,” she had said once, a rare night when we went out drinking together, the bar at the Four Seasons Hotel where she loved going, and she got drunk enough to laugh at herself. Mostly, she seemed too thin, too brittle.