“Billy, could you sit with Luda a little while?” Val put her arm around his shoulder. “I think she’d like that.”
“Billy speaks good Russian,” I said.
“Yeah, sure,” said Billy who went and sat on the floor near Luda’s chair.
“He’s terrific, and very handsome. Who is he?” Val said.
“Billy’s my nephew.
“Wow.”
“I think he’s in love with you already.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“When did you get back?”
“I got back from Moscow yesterday,” Val said. “I brought Luda with me.”
“Where’s your dad?”
“Out getting bagels. He said he had to go to Murray’s for them because other bagels are not up to his standard.”
Billy was chattering to the little girl and she was beaming at him. I sat next to Val on the huge cream leather sofa and said, “You look great. Different.”
Six-one and gorgeous, Valentina was just out of her teens. Last time I’d seen her, she’d had a platinum crew cut, but her hair, long now, was heavy and dark, pulled back into a ponytail. She wore tight black jeans and a sleeveless black turtleneck. Her feet were bare. She was beautiful enough you couldn’t look at her without staring. Her face trapped you like a magnet.
“Do you think I’m beautiful?” she had said to me the last time we met, before she left New York for Russia.
Val could see herself through other people and it made her nervous. I was always a little ashamed of how easy it would have been to fall for her, but she was half my age, and she was Tolya’s daughter. He would have killed me.
“What’s Moscow like now?” I said.
“Let’s have a Bloody Mary or something,” said Val.
I looked at Billy and Luda, who were still in front of the TV.
“They’ll be fine,” Val said and I followed her into Tolya’s immense stainless steel kitchen where he was smoking a little cigar and scooping caviar out of a blue can onto plates that held warm blini. He was wearing big linen shorts and a linen shirt and a pair of cream suede Guccis, no socks.
“You’re admiring my legs, Artyom? I have very nice legs,” said Tolya.
“I thought you went out for bagels,” I said.
He pointed to a bag that must have contained two dozen. “I went. I return.” He gestured to a door. “Kitchen door goes out to the stairs. My Valentina looks wonderful, yes?”
Years earlier, when Val was a child, some hood in Moscow who wanted to hurt Tolya kidnapped her and cut off one of her fingers. Tolya took his then wife, Val’s mother, and Val and her twin sister, Masha, to Miami. The girls grew up American. No accent, no mannerisms, nothing to remind them of home except for Val’s finger which was only a little stub of flesh.
“Yes,” I said. “She looks terrific.”
Val got a pitcher of Bloody Mary out of the fridge and poured it into heavy squat glasses and we sat at the table while Tolya finished fixing breakfast, heaping bagels onto a platter, unpacking the salmon he claimed to have smuggled in.
“How was Russia?” I said to Val.
She sipped her drink and it left a red mustache on her lip.
“I went to Moscow,” she said. “I went to the small cities, I traveled a lot, I even went to Chernobyl, and the towns near by in the Zone of Exclusion, like a dead Soviet world, which of course made daddy completely freak out. I met children. No one gives a shit, Artie. People talk all kinds of intellectual bullshit about the post-Soviet world, but it’s the kids who have cancer from leaking nuke plants, and the kids who got it worst in the siege at Beslan and the Moscow theater. Others get dirty needles used on them in hospitals where the nurses sell the clean ones to addicts. Some kids are just plain vanilla regular victims of poverty.” Val knocked back her drink; it made her choke slightly and she put it down. “I drank that too fast. I drink too much.”
“What about Luda? Who is she?”
“She’s nice, isn’t she?” said Val. “She’s a sweet girl. I brought her here for a vacation. They allow you to do that. She was at this orphanage. Her father is dead. Her mother can’t support her and she’s dying anyway from cancer. Don’t look at me like that, I’m not trying to save the world,” she said. “I just want Luda to have a nice time once in her life.”
“Artie?”
It was Billy. He’d been standing in the doorway that led from the living room to the kitchen, listening.
“What’s up?”
“I think Luda is hungry or something. She’s crying. I like didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll go,” Val said.
“Did I do something wrong?” Billy said anxiously.
“No, sweetheart, no,” said Val. “You’re just great.”
“Let’s eat,” Tolya said. Val returned with Luda’s hand in hers, and we all sat down at the kitchen table.
“Is Luda OK?” said Billy to Val in English.
“She’s fine,” Val said.
The table was loaded with food, the salmon, blinis and caviar and a bowl of sour cream and one of crème fraiche, white fish, sable and chubs and smoked sturgeon. There was chopped herring and three kinds of cream cheese – scallion, caviar, vegetable – mountains of bagels – onion, raisin, sesame – and sticky buns and croissants. I was hungry.
“I forgot the juice,” Tolya said.
Half a bagel in his hand, Billy jumped up from his chair. “I’ll get it.”
He opened one of the doors of the huge restaurant-style fridge, a massive hulking stainless steel giant with clear glass doors and a motor that purred. It was like an enormous animal in the corner of the kitchen. Carefully, Billy extracted a pitcher of orange juice.
“That’s like so huge, that refrigerator,” said Billy to Tolya. “You could climb inside if there wasn’t so much food. You could like chill out.” He laughed at his joke. “Did you know we saw a plane crash on the beach yesterday? Me and Artie. We were on the beach at Coney Island and we saw it come down. Did you see that on TV? It was everywhere. It was in the newspapers. I saw it for real.
“I saw,” Val said briefly. “Let’s eat.”
Billy went on talking about the plane crash.
“Maybe we could talk about it later,” Val said while Luda examined a croissant, and Billy, realizing he had said something wrong, and not knowing what, inspected his bagel.
“Should I like apologize?” he whispered to me.
“Don’t worry.”
We talked in English and Russian, Russian for the little girl, Luda. Val, who had a sixth sense about people, knew Billy was hurt by her refusing to listen to his story of the plane crash and she moved her chair closer to his and talked privately to him and tickled his chin with a daisy she took out of a vase on the table. Far as I could tell, Billy was in heaven.
After we made pretty good inroads into the food, Luda whispered something to Val who took her back to the living room to watch TV. Billy, asking if he could help, went after them, trailing Val like a puppy. When Val came back, she sat down next to me. Tolya was out on the terrace, smoking and talking on the phone.
“Billy’s watching baseball on TV with Luda and explaining it all to her,” said Val. “Is he cute or what? So, Artyom, Uncle Artie, so.” She leaned back, stretched her bare arms towards the ceiling, her sweater pulled tight across her breasts.
“You like my perfume, Uncle Artie?” Val put one arm along the back of my chair.
“Don’t flirt with me.”
“I’m such a bad girl,” she said. “You have no idea.”
“Bad how?”
“I don’t want to do like other rich girls,” said Val. “I don’t want to get married, I don’t want to be a bridezilla, you know, with the million-dollar wedding, and the Vera Wang dress and the perfect diamond chic-let for a ring, the little square-cut diamond that costs minimum a hundred grand and no one’s even planning on staying married for long. It’s not me, and it never will be, and oh, my poor mommy in Florid
a, it’s all she wants, so I say why don’t you remarry, Mom? She has the guy with the yachting cap and the real gold buttons on his blazer and the country club. She doesn’t want to, so my sister will have to do it because Masha is the good one,” Val added. “Also, since you asked, I like sleeping around. I like feeling I can do what I want.”
“You’re still a kid.”
“That’s the one thing I’m not,” she said. “Never was a kid, except for having a crush on you.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “Well, a little bit serious. How’s your love life?”
“I’m a married man.”
“Sure.”
“Cut it out. Tell me about you.”
“Me, you know, a sailor in every port like they used to say.” Lowering her voice, she added, “You want to talk to me about Billy, your nephew? How come I never met him? I don’t remember him being at your wedding last year.”
I wasn’t sure how much Val knew about Billy. She hadn’t been in New York when it happened, the business out at the beach club at Breezy Point. By the time I got married, Billy was already in Florida.
“Not right now,” I said.
Val played with the little gold cross that hung on a thin chain around her neck. “I’m going back, Artie.”
“Being in Russia, it made you happy?”
“I felt useful. I’m not religious, not in that way, Artie, darling, but I believe in something or other. I’m Russian, right? You’re Russian, you either believe in something or you’re fucked up, unless you’re sixteen and playing tennis at Wimbledon or something and then you’re really a mess.” She laughed. “Poor little Russian girl tennis players. You should see them, seven years old, they arrive in Miami or some place, with nothing at all. Just hoping.”
I reached for the coffee pot.
“In Russia I could help,” Val said. “I could listen to some of the children and maybe get a doctor for them.”
“You’d be good at it.”
“I don’t like her being there,” Tolya said, coming back into the kitchen. “These places where she goes, places with terrorists, nuclear shit, people with AIDS, now she stays home.”
“Pop! Nothing happened to me. I was really safe, and everyone looked out for me. I swear.”
“I can’t win, can I?” Tolya said. “I want to show you something.” He reached for a box of cigars on a shelf, which he opened. The smell was delicious.
“We share, one each,” he said, extracting a cigar. “Something very special, partegas series D, factory in Cuba no one goes there, not for tourists, hard to get, very amazing, Artemy. I invest.”
“How much?”
“What how much? How much for perfection?” Tolya inquired, beginning the ritual of lighting his cigar.
“I thought you were through with business.”
He handed me the stogie so I could sample it.
“This is pleasure, Artyom.”
“My dad is like a child. Humor him,” said Val, carrying dishes to the dishwasher.
“Listen Tolya, can I leave Billy here for a few hours?” I said.
“Is your home, too, if you want,” he said. “Of course. Yes. We are here all day.”
My phone rang, and I didn’t recognize the number, so I went out on the terrace that overlooked the meat market and the river and the city. It was a warm morning, but not hot, and I could see little waves in the Hudson. The cigar in my hand made a wisp of smoke. I took a puff. Normally I didn’t like cigars much, but this was different and delicious and for a second it diverted me from the phone.
“You there?” a voice said. It was the same ugly voice.
“Who is this?”
“You take him away. The boy. I don’t want him nowhere in this city, you understand?”
“Shank?” I said. “Shank? Fuck you, you stay off my phone.” I cut him off.
Shank – or whoever kept calling – had called too often. The threats were too thin. He was pretty much all hot air, I told myself. I turned off my phone and stuck it in my pocket.
“Who was that, Artyom?”
I turned around and saw Tolya behind me.
“No one,” I didn’t want any advice about Billy now, or anything else. “Nothing. OK?”
“Whatever you say.”
The ash on my cigar fell off and I watched it drift away towards the river. I put the cigar out and dropped it in the garbage can in the kitchen.
*
“I have to go now,” I said to Billy who was still in Tolya’s living room watching the TV with Luda. I called him over to the other side of the room. “You OK with me going?”
“Sure. We already talked about that,” he said. “You still feel like going fishing?”
“We’ll go this afternoon.”
“I’m fine. I promise,” said Billy, then leaned over and whispered conspiratorially in my ear, “The Russian kid, Luda, is really cute, but between us, it’s like she’s so totally needy.”
“Yeah?”
He made a face. “She just tugs at my clothes and chatters to me, she says she just likes talking, and I don’t know what to say back to her. I mean I don’t understand half of it, she talks this weird Russian, and some of it’s like baby talk. I should be nicer, but it’s, like, jeez. Then she says she loves me because I’m her family now. Weird. I’m so trying, though. I am. I mean it’s nice for Val if I do it, right?”
“You like Val?”
“Please.”
“You’re in love with Val?”
“Artie!”
“So, listen, Luda’s had a tough time,” I said. “Just be nice like you’re doing, but you don’t have to take care of her. It’s not your job. Hey, I meant to ask, did you call your parents in London? You have the number?”
“God, I forgot. I am such a total dope. Can I do it from here?”
“Tolya and Val, they’re like family. Like you and me, the same thing. You can do anything.”
“But you’re not related to them,” said Billy.
“Sometimes it’s the same thing.”
“But you and me, we’re really related, right?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t stay away too long, OK?”
“Promise.”
“I’ll go make nice with the kid,” Billy said. “She’s had a lousy time. I don’t mind hanging out with her, you know, she’s a good kid even if she never shuts up, right?”
“You know anything about Russia, about how lousy it is?”
“I was only in Florida, you know. I wasn’t like on some foreign planet. They have TVs. I know you like to take care of me, Artie, I do, and I like it the way you ask if I’m OK all the time, but I’m not a baby, I could be nice to Luda, it won’t kill me.” Billy hugged me briefly, then pulled away, probably embarrassed. It reminded me of when he was little and hugged me a lot, reminded me of the heavy warmth.
“Remind me where you’re going?” he said.
“Staten Island.”
“On a case, right?”
“Right.”
“Will you tell me all about it later?”
“Sure,” I said.
On my way out of the apartment, I looked back to see Billy and Luda, playing pick-up sticks. Billy was completely focused on her and she was looking up at him with an expression of pure rapture, or maybe that was the wrong word; it was more like devotion, as if she’d do anything in the world for him in return for the attention.
11
I took the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island. It seemed made out of spun metal, a broad span hung by elegant threads over the Narrows, which connected the Hudson to the Atlantic Ocean. In the middle of the bridge you were high up, forty stories over the city, Brooklyn behind you and to the right, the Statue of Liberty and the tip of Manhattan and the curve of the harbor ahead. To the left, the passage out to the Atlantic Ocean was interrupted by Coney Island where I could see the old parachute jump in the amusement park like a broken toy.
I loved the bri
dge, the way it connected Brooklyn to Staten Island, the way it seemed to throw itself off the coast to the huge remote island that was the fifth borough, three times as big as Manhattan, but empty. I loved the way the watery city was spread out, the New York archipelago. Up here I felt like I could breathe. Billy was safe with Tolya. No one was following me. I hadn’t been sure if the call this morning really was Shank. Maybe I’d just been paranoid.
Next to me, in the passenger seat, arms folded across his chest, Sonny Lippert dozed. I had called him earlier and he was already up, working, but he said he’d ride out with me like he promised, maybe visit a guy he knew. I could drop him and he’d get a radio car to take him back to the city.
Staten Island was almost as remote to me as Iowa. I didn’t think I’d been out here more than four, five times in my life – a few times to see my old partner, Hank Provone, once to visit Maxine back when we were just friends and her first husband Mark was alive and they threw a barbecue where they lived near the Arthur Kill, the far side of Staten Island opposite New Jersey.
One time I went over and back on the ferry with Lily Hanes when we were still together. We’d sat out on the deck of the ferry, drinking beer and watching the Manhattan skyline, the lights. Lily’s red hair, long in those days, blew all over the place in the breeze off the river. Later we watched the moon, hanging low and yellow, was reflected in the water, and I felt happy.
I drove off the bridge past an old Revolutionary War fort and into the suburban sprawl of Staten Island. It looked huge, and unknown, big as Queens. A Sheryl Crow CD Maxine had given me was playing.
“Can we change the music, man?” Lippert opened his eyes. “I must have dozed off some.”
I put on a Clifford Brown album that I knew Sonny loved. A few minutes later, he said, “Listen, pull over, yeah there, La Rocca’s, that was always a place I liked. Good pizza. Good ices. A slice and an ice, they used to say. Also I need the bathroom. Getting old, Art, man.”
I parked and we went into the pizza place where the owner remembered Sonny, or said he did, and offered us espresso. Sonny accepted, and ordered a small white Sicilian-style pie, ricotta and mozzarella.
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