Sitting on the edge of her chair, Vera Gorbachev put her cigarette in an ashtray on the table, picked up a cookie from the plate and began extracting the chocolate chips, which she ate one at time.
“I keep talking in Russian, OK?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“So we are asleep, two weeks ago this is. I sleep very well,” she said. “My husband, he is older, he gets up often in the night, you understand, to use the bathroom. On this night I heard him. I went out to the top of the stairs and saw my husband wearing his underpants, yelling at a man in the living room.”
“You saw the guy?”
She shook her head. “Not really. My husband is screaming at him and screaming at me to go back to our room and also because I left the front door open, so it was my fault. I did not. He said I did, but it was not true. The guy is trying to get out of the front door and then I yelled out for my husband to let him go, but no, he can’t leave it, he can’t leave anything, so he follows the man out of the door.”
“How could you see this?”
“You can see the living room from the stairs. I’ll show you. Come,” Vera said.
I followed her out of the kitchen through the living room, past a huge plasma screen TV that hung on the wall. A yellow leather couch faced the TV, there was a furry white rug and a long black glass dining table, a milky blue vase of silk roses on it and a stack of kids’ games.
“You and your husband have children?” I said.
“Not now,” she said, then added hastily as if my question made her nervous, “Yes, I mean they are nieces. From my sister’s family who is married to a man so rich – Russian man – she leaves toys for her kids at her house, my house. Both. Easier, she says.”
“Where does she live?”
“Staten Island also, over near water where there are many big fancy houses for Russians who pay cash. These are rich people, and very nice,” said Vera. “My sister is nice, her husband is so nice, a Russian. They have a big house with chandeliers, but we look out for each other. She gave me TV. I talk too much,” she said with a stagey laugh as she started up the flight of stairs. On the landing, she called down, “Here, look, stand here.”
I went up and stood next to her. She had been telling the truth: everything in the living room was visible from the stairs.
“After you saw him yelling at the guy, then what?” I tried not to crowd her. The landing where we stood was small, but she didn’t seem to mind and she didn’t move. I inched away from her.
“I yell to my husband to leave him alone, this guy who broke in. He is waving gun, but he doesn’t do anything, just waves his gun and then runs out of the door and my husband, who is an idiot, follows him.”
“You called the cops? You dialed 911?”
“I could see nothing important was missing, TVs, and my jewelry was upstairs. I thought he would come right back, he was just showing me he was a big tough man,” Vera said.
“Your husband.”
“Yes.”
“You waited how long?”
“Five minutes, ten minutes. I got nervous. I put on clothes and went outside. No one is there. I called his cell phone, but it was dead. I call my sister and her husband goes to look. Afterwards, I called the cops. I don’t like cops.”
“Why’s that?”
“I grew up in Kiev,” said Vera, as if it explained everything.
“You talked to the police?” I said, heading down the stairs to the living room.
Following me, she raised her shoulders in a little gesture of despair. “What is the use of this? I don’t speak very good English, and they are not interested. They take notes in little notebooks, but nothing happens. Nobody finds my husband’s body, nothing happens.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“I don’t believe this, no. I don’t feel this.”
“So you called Rhonda.”
“I knew her boyfriend is a top gun in law enforcement, you can say this, top gun?”
“Sure.” I thought about Sonny Lippert. “Definitely top gun.”
Vera sat on the yellow leather couch. I asked for a cigarette because I figured it would count as work, this collegial smoking ritual. Also, I was dying for a smoke.
With a red Bic lighter, Vera lit it for me and it tasted great. I didn’t think she was telling me everything, so I sat on the edge of a blue chair that felt like suede and tried conversation.
“Ukraine, right? Kiev.”
“Yes,” she said. “Where did you learn your Russian?”
“Growing up.”
“In New York?”
“In Moscow.”
Vera played coy. She was also a snob. I started feeling like a jerk, like I’d come on a pointless errand. I started worrying about Billy. Billy had been fine at Tolya’s, he had charmed everyone, had seemed easy with Tol and Val and Luda, the little girl. People responded to Billy, I’d seen it with Luda, the way she had looked at him, so attentive and happy.
Had it been Stan Shank for sure on the phone? Someone else? There had been cops who didn’t like the way we handled Billy’s case. Parents of kids who knew Billy had been freaked out.
“Anything else you want to tell me?” I said to Vera Gorbachev.
“So you’re from Russia,” Vera said. “You sound so American, but you probably learned English when you were a child.”
I nodded, thinking of Birdie, my mother’s friend who had taught me English in her one-room apartment on the outskirts of Moscow.
“I’ve been here a long time,” I said. “You?”
“Fifteen years,” Vera said. “Was good times then. I had boyfriend who says glasnost means we will travel all over the world. I don’t know where he went. I am in Staten Island. You like to travel?”
“Sure.”
“Me too. Especially I like Florida, which is so nice and warm,” she said. “You like it there?”
“You married your husband when you arrived in this country?”
“Yes. Why? You think I married him for my green card?”
“Did you?”
“Yes,” she said. “But he’s OK. Al Laporello is nice Italian man, except Italians look down on Russians. We’re above black people, but we are immigrants.”
“Your husband is much older?”
“Yes. Fourteen years.”
“Go on.”
“Nice, sure, for a garbage man,” said Vera whose voice was tinged with disdain. “Garbage is disgusting, garbage stinks, nobody wants to take care of moving garbage or getting rid of garbage. Except Italians.”
“You don’t like Italians?”
“We’re all Americans, right?” She was sarcastic.
“How come you don’t like to speak English?”
“I speak OK, but I ask Rhonda to send someone Russian like you so I can tell you all the details in the right way.”
I suspected her English was a lot better than she let on; she was going in circles and I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t really care. It wasn’t my case.
“It is better on Staten Island now than ten years ago,” said Vera. “Many Russians leave Brighton Beach, they move to Staten Island, which they say is the new Brooklyn.”
“What’s the new Staten Island?”
“New Jersey. Here you can buy Russian groceries, candies, caviar, bread, smoked fish, even imported cookies, newspapers, and beauty salon my brother-in-law’s sister owns that has name of Queen of Hearts. Very intellectual,” she said. “Good hair cutting, for guys, too. I can give you address.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem, like they say.”
“You don’t seem so worried about your husband.”
“I worried,” said Vera. “I worried and worried, then I decide it’s like last time when he also disappeared for a few weeks. He came back. I worried almost to death first, and then I thought I couldn’t worry any more.”
“Can I see the rest of the house?” I said.
“You want to see the bedroom?” Vera stood up and stre
tched. She was a sexy woman. She was coming on to me. I was getting too old for this shit. “Fifty coming up,” Tolya had said to me. “You first.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I’d said. “Not for a few more years.”
“I could use some more coffee,” I said to Vera.
“OK,” she said.
While Vera was in the kitchen, I ran upstairs and looked around the master bedroom, a guest room and a bathroom, which was tiled completely in black marble. Nothing looked out of place. A picture of Al Laporello and Vera Gorbachev at their wedding was on a dresser. In his tux with a frilly shirt, Laporello was pear-shaped and balding, but he looked happy.
Downstairs, Vera was waiting with two cups of fresh coffee. She had taken off her jeans jacket and through the stretchy fabric of her top I could see her breasts, the nipples sticking up through the thin material. I drank my coffee and ignored her.
“Nobody is around,” she said. “You want to make completely wasted trip to Staten Island? You could imagine I am a lonely housewife waiting for milkman,” Vera giggled.
I felt embarrassed for her.
“This would be one time, for only this thing, for hell of it, like when we were young. You never did it like that?” she said.
“Forget it,” I said.
“No?”
“No.”
“Well, bye-bye, Artie.”
“You can call me if you think of anything about the case,” I said.
“I will tell cousin Rhonda thank you for sending me Artie who speaks such lovely Russian,” said Vera sarcastically.
I said goodbye, and I beat it. I had done what Sonny Lippert had asked. I’d tell him I thought things were a little strange at the Gorbachev house on Staten Island, and that Vera wasn’t exactly desperate about her husband, but that it was nothing the local cops couldn’t handle.
Staten Island detectives would find Al Laporello and the creep who broke into the house. I could only hope that when they found Laporello, he was still alive. Nothing to do with me now; I was done here.
In my car, I looked in the rear-view mirror, then at the Gorbachev house. The street was empty. I shut the door and drove away. Back to the city. Back to Billy.
On the way home, I got lost.
In the glove compartment I found a map and tried to read it while I drove. On the map, Staten Island was huge, suspended between Manhattan and Brooklyn and Jersey. On the Jersey side were tanker ports and oil depots. Around the fringes of the island were inlets, bird sanctuaries, water meadows, creeks, islands I’d never heard of. I passed boarded-up factories, abandoned industrial parks, rotted docks, piers, wharves. The watery edges of New York were tough to work; people could disappear without trace here.
I called Tolya to make sure Billy was OK, but the phone was busy.
About a mile from the Gorbachev house, I turned left and ended up in a dead end where there was beach grass and tall weeds and a few crappy mobile homes. A sign pointed to a correctional facility. I turned the car around, looked at the map, and cut down towards the water.
A second sign pointed to Fresh Kills. I had been out to the dump once or twice. It went on forever, a mountain, a sea, an endless vista of garbage, huge quivering cliffs of garbage, seagulls pecking at it, the stink unbearable. People said it woke them up at night; like dirty diapers boiling in the sun, they said, it made you want to vomit. Why had I been to Fresh Kills the first time? I couldn’t remember. The second time had been after 9/11 when they reopened the dump.
The shattered remains of the Twin Towers – paper from copying machines, sheetrock walls, plastic chunks of computer, metal filing cabinets were shipped over to Fresh Kills by barge. It became a desolate crime scene where detectives and forensics people sifted through every item from the attack, some you didn’t want to name. I went over once to visit a friend who was working there. I didn’t go back.
Halfway back over the Verrazano, admiring the blue of the water in the summer light, I started wondering what the hell Vera Gorbachev really wanted. I still couldn’t get through to Billy – my cell was running out of juice – and I was plenty anxious now. I felt pulled in too many directions – keep Billy safe, give him some space, satisfy Sonny Lippert. The Gorbachev thing didn’t feel right. I tried Billy a third time at Tolya’s, the phone rang, but no one answered.
13
Eating a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone, looking nonchalant, Billy was leaning against my door when I got home. I lost it. I’d driven back from Staten Island, gone to Tolya’s, discovered Billy wasn’t there, lost my temper. Tolya told me he let him go out because Billy wanted ice cream and to look at some clothes, wanted some new jeans. I went nuts. Then Billy phoned me and said he was standing outside my place.
When I saw him, wearing black jeans and a green T-shirt, completely involved in a complicated method of licking the ice cream cone, oblivious to anything else, I felt really pissed off – mostly because I’d been so scared.
“Hey, Artie.”
“What the hell happened to you?”
He looked at me worriedly. “I’m fine. Don’t be mad. Please. Here, you can have the rest.” He held out the cone. “Come on, Artie. Take a bite. It’s really good.”
“No thanks.” I got out my keys, went through the door, Billy following me, picked up mail from my box and then got into the elevator and went upstairs.
“Artie?”
By the time we were in my loft, I had cooled off.
“Try it,” he said, holding out the ice cream again like an offering.
I ate some ice cream.
“Good, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How good?”
“It’s pretty good.”
“You have a green mustache.”
I wiped my mouth.
“You’re OK?” Billy asked.
“You asked me not to go out without telling you, so could you do me a favor in future and tell me where you’re going and when?”
“I promise. But you could always just call me.”
“What on?”
“I have a phone. I’ll give you the number,” Billy said. “I thought I gave you the number.
“They let you have a phone in Florida?’
“What is this, a police interrogation?” he said, but he laughed nervously. “Come on, Artie. It’s funny.”
“Yeah yeah.”
“When I was coming up here, they let me have a phone so they could find me,” said Billy. “I mean so they could keep in touch. Come on, please, please don’t be mad. Artie? I’ll make you lunch. Hey, I’ll share a cigarette with you. You want to watch a game?”
“Maybe.”
“Artie?”
“What?”
“It makes me scared when you get nervous about me. I mean, there was the garbage at my house and stuff, is everything OK? Is someone going to hurt me?”
“No,” I said. “No one’s going to hurt you. How about we watch the game?”
“You’ll watch with me?”
“Sure.”
He turned on the TV, then threw himself on my couch, and continued eating his way through the ice cream and the sugar cone and I thought to myself: get over it. I pushed Billy’s feet to one side of the couch and sat down. The phone rang.
“You found him?” It was Tolya.
“Yeah.”
“So if he wants to go out for ice cream you let him go,” Tolya said. “You can’t stand guard over him his whole life, Artemy, are you listening to me? I know about this stuff. I have two girls. I spent my life watching over them, then I had to let go. It was you who told me I had to let go of Valentina. You have to do that. I met Billy. You told me he’s fine, then he’s fine.”
“You liked him?”
“Yes. Also, Luda is in love with him. He’s very nice with this little girl, very sweet. This makes my Valentina happy. Also, I’m calling so you’ll come tonight to Luda’s birthday party.”
“Sure,” I said. “Where?”
“I buy entire toy
store for one night for little Luda,” said Tolya. “Is called slumber party.”
“What time?”
“Six, seven. Billy of course comes also. Party for kids, OK, then we go to East Hampton, for vacation. Come with us. Big house I rent for summer, ocean in front, pool, tennis court, butterfly trees. You ever see butterfly trees?”
“I think Billy’s probably too old for a girls’ party at a toy store.”
“So next week, I rent Madison Square so he can play basketball, for now he comes to Luda’s party. I see them together, Artyom, they are like brother and sister, both children with sad times.”
For once, though I’d pretty much stopped paying attention, Tolya’s crazy English got to me.
“Speak to me in English. Or Russian. But for chrissake cut the crap,” I said. “Do me a favor. My head hurts.”
“So take an aspirin,” Tolya said. “See you later.”
“Yeah, I’ll think about it.”
“You took care of something on Staten Island? Something that upset you?” said Tolya. “You reported in to Sonny Lippert like a good boy?” There was no love lost between Tolya and Sonny Lippert.
“I called Sonny. I did what I had to. I saw the woman on Staten Island whose name, you’ll love this, is Gorbachev. Fucking Russians.”
“Like us?” He grinned. “Oh, I forgot, you’re an American. God bless America,” Tolya said and started to sing, then switched to the “Internationale”. He had a terrific voice and though I wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone on earth, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“Is there anything on Staten Island except garbage?” Tolya asked.
“Fucking beats me.”
Later on, a smear of green ice cream still on his mouth, and stretched out on the couch in my loft, Billy watched the opening of the Yankees game, sipped at a can of Coke and looked about as content as a kid could look.
I went into my bedroom to change my clothes and put on the radio. Along with the weather and stock market report, there was news about some homeless guy attacked over on Mott Street. It only caught my attention because Mott was a few blocks from me.
In Chinatown, the streets were always jammed. People bought bok choy and lychees and haggled over fake Vuitton bags and Prada wallets. Among the crowd and the hagglers, it was easy to miss a homeless guy lying on the sidewalk, no one noticed he was bleeding. Mostly people picked their way around the homeless, now there were so many of them on the streets again. Eventually, a cop noticed the guy.
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