Disturbed Earth

by Reggie Nadelson

We went back downstairs and while I tried to persuade her to let me call Lippert, she smoked, one cigarette lit from the butt of the one before, and begged me not to.

  Finally I asked the question I had been dreading.

  "What kind of shirt did he wear yesterday, under his sweater?"

  "T-shirt," Genia said.

  "What kind of T-shirt, what color?"

  "Oh, Artemy, this is one of Billy's crazy things. He has this red T-shirt he always is wearing, always, too small for him, like from when he is a little boy, but he wears it like some prize, something, how do you say?" Again she switched back to Russian. "Something sacred," she said. 'Something holy."

  It wasn't a holy shirt, it was a shroud. I told Genia about the clothes near the beach.

  "You have to look at them, Gen. I have to take you."

  "Where?"

  "To police headquarters, where they have the clothes in a lab. Lippert will meet us. He'll be nice, I promise, and I'll go with you, but you have to look."

  "This Lippert? He's the one you worked for before?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't like him," she said. "He reminds me of a KGB official that came to our school once, to tell us about security, I remember. He looked like that. No one said he was KGB, but we knew. We knew because he has this suit that is Western and no one has Western clothes."

  "That was a long time ago. This is America. Brooklyn."

  "Nothing changes," she said. "Except we become less safe, more frightened, terrorist, disease, war coming. I read they pick up immigrants now, they can arrest you for anything."

  "That's illegal immigrants, Gen. Or maybe Arabs, you know? It's not us. You're married to an American. You're a citizen."

  "How long?" she said. "How long since you found these clothes?" She was stalling, watching the door, listening for the phone, still waiting for Billy.

  "Yesterday morning," I said.

  "You waited so long?"

  "I wasn't sure. I asked Johnny if Billy was OK, he said sure. Then the little girl, May Luca, you know, she turned up dead and we got the thug that killed her. We assumed the clothes were hers."

  "You assumed?" she said.

  "I didn't want to upset you."

  "If I tell you this thing, you can't tell Johnny."

  "Go on."

  "Christmas time, Johnny's mother, you know, this old lady, very devout, Italian and Polack woman, forty-seven years she is married, she throws out the husband."

  "Why?"

  She leaned close to me and her voice was ragged.

  "You can never say this, that you hear this from me," she said over and over. "I don't want it has any connection to me."

  I was silent.

  "Swear."

  "Yes."

  "On your father's grave."

  "Sure, if you want."

  "Johnny loves the old man, and he makes cuddly granddad for the kid, but I know something and maybe the mother figured it out. It was one thing that makes me wonder about marrying Johnny, but I want to marry him, so I deny it even to myself. I knew the old man, you see, before I married Johnny. He was Italian, but he was friendly with my father. He had also been in World War II."

  "Like your old man."

  "They talk about Red Army," she said. "They talk about the war and how they liberate Europe, Russians, Americans. They got out their medals. Bullshit stuff. When my Elena was little, I once found old man Farone with his hands under her dress and I tell to him, get out of this house. My father didn't believe it. I said if he comes here again, I call the welfare and have him removed. So the old men they meet on the boardwalk and play chess together. He was a dirty bastard and I hated him. He was a pig."

  "So Johnny's mother threw him out and Billy never saw him after that?"

  "I don't let him. Johnny gets furious. After forty-seven years, Christmas Eve, she throws him away."

  "What was his job, the husband, when he was younger?" I said, not sure why it mattered.

  Genia looked up.

  "He was policeman," she said. "Except for Johnny, whole family was cops."

  "Gen?"

  "What?"

  "Could the old man have something to do with Billy disappearing?"

  "Just find Billy."

  "Let's call Johnny and I'll sit with you until he gets here."

  "I think Billy will come home this evening," she said. "I'm sure of this." She looked at her watch. "It's only four o'clock. I am sure he will be back for supper. I'm sure. Everything will be OK. Will you give me until tomorrow morning, Artemy? Artemy, no police, please. I beg you. Please."

  Genia let go of my hand and slipped to her knees. She kneeled on the thick pale carpet and I didn't know if she was praying or begging. She whispered, "I know this is right. I know you feel like father for Billy, right, and he tells me once he wishes you were his real father."

  "Get up," I said.

  I felt myself dragged back into a world of secrecy, unofficial deals, meaningless talk where everybody lied or told half-truths. You learned, where I grew up, to hide things even from yourself. Most of all from yourself. Genia's face was twisted with fear, fear of the cops, of Johnny, Zeitsev, her own past. Maybe me. I wanted to get out. I felt like I was suffocating. I looked at the door.

  "Billy loves you most in the world, Artemy, OK, so promise me we do this right way for him, OK? Just until tomorrow. I don't want his picture in papers or TV, I don't want. Please."

  "I'll be back in the morning. You call me. You call me regularly, you promise me?"

  She took my hand and I thought she might kiss it.

  "We'll find Billy ourselves, won't we?" Genia asked.

  *

  Billy loves you most in the world. Genia's words stayed with me and as I left the house, I felt heavy with it. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know if I should keep my promise to her or if I should call Lippert and get the word out. I was terrified for Billy, but I had promised Genia.

  Trapped, the door still open, my hand on the knob, I turned around. I was going to tell her I couldn't wait. That I had to report in. Lippert would kill me; he would fire me. Worse, Billy might die.

  But Genia was right: Billy's picture would be on TV, in the papers; once it was official that he was missing, his image would be everywhere. It might scare the guy who took him. Billy might die.

  I wasn't sure if Lippert's guys would find Billy either; they could descend on a case like dinosaurs, they could come down heavy, trample the territory, destroy the evidence. Caught. I felt paralyzed.

  My hand was on the door, but the door was still open, and now I heard Genia on the phone. Who did she call as soon as I was gone?

  A few minutes later when I was in my car, my own phone rang and I searched my pockets frantically for it. It was in my hand.

  18

  Fire power, fire balls, people falling, limbs, flesh impaled on railings, and the noise, the rumble, thunder, the short burst, and then the bright hot airplane fuel and the snap and shutter of cameras everywhere, and he's alone, covered in dust, a glass of orange juice still in his hand, a piece of bagel in his mouth. The taste of dough, the sesame seeds, orange juice, blood. Dust in his nose, eyes, throat, coughing blood.

  Elem Zeitsev told me, when I got to his place, that Genia's call had grabbed him out of the nightmare. She called him, he called me. He knew we were related. He was worried about her. Worried sick about the boy, about Billy.

  Her call, he said again, awakened him from the repeating dream and now he sat on the edge of the sofa in his apartment, in Brighton Beach, holding a bottle of vodka questioningly in my direction. I shook my head. He put down the vodka and picked up his coffee cup and stared out of the window at the ocean.

  When he'd heard Genia's voice on the phone, he got up off the sofa where he'd been sleeping with the Sunday papers on his chest, and went into the bathroom.

  He had looked at himself in the mirror. He was almost fifty-one now and haggard; nothing had been the same since September 11, when he found himself on
the 79th floor of Tower One. He had gone up to the Trade Center to have breakfast with his broker, who was a friend, and drop off a present for his broker's kid, who was Zeitsev's goddaughter.

  Eighteen already, he says. Do you remember when the kids were born? So he goes up in the elevator, holding the blue Tiffany bag, eager to chew the fat about the market. Grab some breakfast. Discuss plans for a vacation together, all of them, both families. Colorado, they were thinking, maybe Napa Valley.

  He wore a Hermes tie that morning; it was yellow, he remembered, he remembered choosing it when he woke up that morning in his place in Tribeca. Yellow with pink watermelon slices. An old tie. A tie he loved. A tie that Genia had given him.

  A few hours later, the tie is stiff with dust, stiff as paste. He has thrown water over himself to stop the sense he is burning up and it mixes with the dust and makes paste.

  The beautiful morning. Everything bright, clean, fresh. He waves his driver away and walks. He rides the elevator. He meets Peter, his friend, whose secretary brings orange juice and bagels.

  And then the world blows up, so he fights his way through the fire and dust and starts walking and on the way he loses Peter. He can't find him. He disappears into the maelstrom. One building is down.

  Zeitsev walks down seventy-nine flights half carrying a woman in bare feet, her feet so cut up by glass there's blood all over him, and when they get out, she clings to him, they're covered with dust, he drags her up Broadway to a coffee shop that's jammed with dust people. Inside people are crammed together, hiding behind the counter, groping for the phone. Then the eerie silence settles. Then the other building collapses into itself.

  "You're OK," he said to his image as he brushed his hair carefully and then glanced out of the bathroom window. Snow coming, he thought.

  He surveyed the beach, almost empty now; he let his eyes roam across the boardwalk, the cafes and restaurants. He should have been happy; most of what he saw had belonged to his father, and he'd sold it and made himself legitimate. He rarely used the apartment; he had the place in the city and, when he wanted the beach, there was the house in East Hampton on the south side of the highway, near Georgica Pond. He had run into Steven Spielberg once and the guy actually said hi.

  Zeitsev hated Brighton Beach, but he kept the apartment for business, and because he needed a place close to Genia. If she needed him, he was there. He never admitted it was about the boy. About Billy. He wanted to be close.

  Genia Farone had called him. He took the call because he liked Genia and there had been stuff between them and she was Billy's mother. Genia's older kid, Ellie, had been at school, at St Anne's, with Justine, his own daughter. When Ellie turned out to be a talented musician, Zeitsev put up the money for Juilliard. Nobody knew.

  He looked out of the window at the ocean and thought about his father. He had detested the life with his father. His father had been a killer; he killed for profit; he enjoyed the killing.

  I don't want this, Elem Zeitsev remembered thinking very early on. And he got out, didn't he? He took not just English lessons but elocution to lose his accent, he went to Columbia Law School, he clerked for a federal judge, he moved to Manhattan.

  A businessman now, legit, his daughter at Princeton, he was on the board of the Tribeca Film Festival. He donated money to liberal causes. At first he gave to liberals because they were more credulous than the right and didn't ask as many questions, and afterwards, after he went legit, because he liked what they believed and also they had better parties; you met Bobby de Niro and Bono and former President Bill Clinton at their parties, and the women were smarter and better dressed.

  He looked in the mirror. He was still crazy about Genia, he couldn't help it. He didn't know why, it was some animal attraction. There were younger, better looking women, there were smarter girls, there were the models and movie stars he met in Manhattan, and he was a good-looking guy even now.

  The bathroom door opened and Elem Zeitsev saw his wife's reflection in the mirror. He followed her into the living room, where he sat down, and picked up the Times.

  Her pearls preceded her; she always wore them, the huge pearls the color of thick cream. He'd bought them for her once upon a time when they were in love and their Justine was born.

  "What did she want?"

  "Who, Katya, darling?"

  "I prefer if you would use Katherine," she said. "You know who. Genia Farone."

  "She needed some help."

  She sat on the couch. "What kind of help, I thought you gave her plenty of help."

  "I told you it was over with Genia a long time ago. It was nothing. One time." He lied to Katya but it was easier than enduring the tantrums.

  He looked at his watch. "You're late, aren't you?"

  She went into the office, even on Sundays. It was her refuge. Katya was obsessed with animals and she had carved out a legal practice for herself representing people who sued on behalf of their pets.

  Straightening the jacket of her Prada suit, she adjusted the pearls, brushed down her skirt, picked up her bag and shrugged, then turned and left the room. The always unasked question remained. It hung between them. If she never asked whether Billy was Zeitsev's, it would never quite be true.

  He stuck with Katya because she had helped him. She had given up breeding her stupid dogs, which had been her obsession, and gone to law school and then to work in the Estates Department of Story, Middleberg, Cole and McGowan on Madison Avenue. Katya bought the right clothes at Bergdorf's and got her hair cut by John Barratt at his salon, where she made friends with the English babes she met there. She could work a room. She could charm. Zeitsev stuck it out with her.

  He looked at his own shoes, which he ordered twice a year from London, and then out at the ocean. I have to get out of here, he thought; I have to get rid of this apartment. I don't know why I keep it, he said to himself, or what drags me back to this shithole of a neighborhood. He knew it was because of Genia.

  Divorce him, Gen, he had said over and over. For years he asked her, but she couldn't. Johnny didn't deserve it, she said.

  Christ, I hate this fucking apartment, Zeitsev thought.

  He hated the brand new condos that backed onto Brighton Beach and faced the ocean. There was a gate at the front. The buildings had no patina; they were the kind of buildings men who had worked for his father coveted, expensive buildings, expensive apartments with acres of marble in the bathrooms and slick granite surfaces in the kitchen.

  I didn't understand why Elem Zeitsev called me. He knew we were related, me and Genia, he said. He needed a favor. A few minutes later I was sitting in the living room of his apartment overlooking the ocean, listening while he talked about his nightmares. It was surreal. I barely knew Zeitsev. He wore jeans and a sweatshirt and looked haggard. His wife was out. We were alone in the room.

  Zeitsev was raised by his father to be his heir. The father, Pavel, who was a kind of monster and who ran Brighton Beach for a while, owned land all over Brooklyn that he sold off when he needed cash. He was thought to have masterminded some of the gas scams that made a lot of Russians rich; the Medicare rip-offs were his invention, too, along with some of the most brutal forms of killing. He was never indicted. I met him once.

  Years earlier, I'd visited the Zeitsevs in the old man's house near the ocean. In his presence, the rest of the family had behaved like serfs. He sat in an armchair with an orange cat between his hands. He watched the animal as if he might be thinking about strangling it.

  Then when I came closer—he had summoned me to his side—he let the cat slip to the floor and got up to show me his books. He kept them in glass-fronted cases. The first editions were beautifully bound in green leather with gold writing on the spines; his passions were Emily Dickinson's poems and Emerson.

  The old man made out he was some kind of literary scholar and a connoisseur; when Boris Godunov was on at the Met, he took a box. But he was a murderous thug. When he died, though, thousands of people turned out. It was li
ke Stalin's funeral.

  Elem Zeitsev talked now, untangling his life for me, a binge of self-revelation; I remembered that Genia was sleeping with him. Ivana had told me.

  I said, "You want to tell me why Genia called you when she realized Billy was missing?"

  He nodded. "I'm a friend."

  "She's one of your charities?"

  His tone stiffened. "Genia doesn't need charity."

  "So, just to get it out of the way, where were you yesterday morning?"

  He smiled slightly. "Are you asking me as a cop or her cousin?"

  "What's the difference?"

  "I didn't kidnap Billy. I was in the city. I ate breakfast at Balthazar. I left my apartment at seven, you can ask the doorman; if you want, if you don't want to ask my wife. I went for a run with a neighbor. I'll give you his name and number. I was at Balthazar by eight. They all know me there. I stayed until after nine. I had another cup of coffee on the way home. I went shopping with Katya at Jeffrey's in the Meat District. More?"

  "No," I said.

  "I hate it here." He looked out of the window. "It's everything about my family I hate. The way you hate Russia," he added.

  I was startled.

  Zeitsev said, "You wonder how I know that about you? It shows. You come out here and you hate it and it shows. You're uncomfortable. You feel as if it's yanking you back. Don't you? Am I right? We're a lot alike."

  I got up.

  "I'll come with you," he said.

  "No, thanks."

  "I have people looking for Billy."

  "I'm not surprised."

  "You're going to make it official. Aren't you?" Zeitsev's voice was weary.

  "And if I do, what? You'll shoot me? You'll get some creep to interfere?"

  He shook his head. "You don't understand, do you? I know you think I'm like my father," he said. "I'm not. I would call the police, but I think out here the police are the problem. You know these cases that were never solved, the girl whose feet they cut? The other girl out on Long Island?" His voice went cold with anger. "You remember this? You heard about it, the way they destroyed the child's body, killed her, then cut her up?