Red Hook

by Reggie Nadelson

  You couldn’t stop looking at her. Val wore a plain white T-shirt, very tight, and a thin white cotton mini and white sneakers without laces on her tan feet. She was really something. A dirty thought flickered through my head, and I exiled it, and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Uncle Artie,” she said sardonically.

  “What do you want to eat, darling?” Tolya said to Val in Russian, and she replied in her bland Florida English.

  “I ate already, daddy,” she said. “I ate tons and tons and tons of food, I ate spareribs and spring rolls and satay, honest.” She smiled. “He feeds me like I’m in training for the ladies’ heavyweight class for the next Olympics.”

  “She’s a good kid,” Tolya said. “I love this, the way she never takes anything for granted, like every nice meal is her first, you know? I love this.”

  They grinned at each other. I said, to make conversation, as she settled back into her chair, “How’s your sister?”

  “Very serious. Masha’s the good twin, I guess. It’s like she wanted to go to college, she wanted to go to Yale and then medical school, and she will, she’ll do it, and she’ll be a doctor and heal the sick and have three perfect kids and win a Nobel Prize, and that’s OK. She’s good. I’ll be the dissolute but fabulous aunt, like my grandma, Lara.”

  “She’s in college already? Masha, I mean.”

  “You’re kidding me. In college? She’s starting her junior year. She skipped two years of high school.”

  “You didn’t want it?”

  “It was boring. I went last year, I lasted a semester, I already spoke four languages, daddy made us learn, and I read a lot, and I thought: I just want to work. I want to be in the world. It drives him crazy.”

  “We compromised,” Tolya said. “She promised me she’d take courses at NYU if she could be in the city, so I said OK, if you do it. So I gave her one of my businesses to run. A little business. I got her a little apartment.”

  “Close to yours, Daddy,” she said. “Across the street. But I like that, and anyway I mostly stay with you,” she said and kissed him.

  But Tolya was restless. He got up, and said, “I’m going out to smoke,” and pulled himself out of the low chair and made his way across the crowded room. A few minutes later I saw him through the window, lighting up a cigar on the street. I started getting up. Val put out her hand and said, “Stay a minute, OK?”

  “Sure.”

  Val pulled her chair closer to mine so that we were separated from the rest of the group. She leaned close to me, and said, “Do you think I’m beautiful, Artie? I mean, tell the truth. Brutal, total, absolute, no bullshit truth.”

  “Why?”

  She let out a tiny giggle. “Oh, Artie, I’m sorry. I’m not hitting on you, I’m not looking for you to tell me I’m gorgeous because I’m coming on to you. Although, I think you’re pretty cool, I do. I think you’re a cute guy. I could go for you.”

  I kept my mouth shut and felt like a fool.

  “Tell me. Go on.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Very. Very beautiful. One in a million. I mean that. I’m not saying it because you’re like family, you asked me, and I’m telling you. Yes. Don’t you know it?”

  She looked up. “It depends. Sometimes it makes me uncomfortable. You want to jump me, right? I mean it’s OK, guys do, and if you weren’t my dad’s friend and married to the completely fabulous Maxine I’d be flattered. I always had a crush on you, to tell the truth, from afar mostly, as they say. Even when I was little, I thought you were cute.”

  I was feeling stuff I couldn’t admit even to myself, and I fumbled with my drink and then with some chopsticks. I tried to get noodles off a plate and dropped them. Val picked up a napkin. I grabbed it from her, and rubbed at the stain on my shirt.

  “I’m sorry,” Val said. “I was flirting. But I see it in men, and I think, OK, that’s pretty neat, they want me, and they think I don’t notice, the nice ones, the ones who are too old for me or married or whatever, or even once with a shrink, that they hold entire conversations with me looking in my eyes like some kind of weird mesmerist, great word, right? Like they’re afraid to glance at my mouth or legs or tits or anything else, so they just stare in my eyes.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Thanks.” Val sipped at her pink cocktail. “I’m not being like self-obsessed or anything,” she said. “I can see it, you know, but I don’t feel it. I know it’s true, I mean people ask me to pose for pictures and stuff, so I’d have to be a halfwit not to know and people turn around in the street, I know that, and I play to it, I mean you don’t go around being six feet tall and dye your hair platinum and get a crew cut and wear little teeny skirts with your ass hanging out without knowing you look pretty good, unless you’re an idiot, right?”

  “You’re a wise woman. How come you’re asking?”

  “I don’t know. Artie?”

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “Do you feel completely American?”

  I nodded.

  “Sometimes, I don’t know, I don’t. Did you know I went to see Genia on my way back to the city? Your half sister, right? I met her at your wedding.”

  I was surprised. “How come you went?”

  “She’s raising money for the kids in Beslan. I liked her, I liked being with the Russian women who are her friends. I liked listening to them talk Russian, I even liked that they wanted to cook for me.” She swallowed the rest of her pink drink. “Maybe I’m growing a soul.”

  “Genia cooked?”

  Val said, “You never know, right?” She touched my cheek. “Thanks, Artie.”

  “What for?” I said, but her attention was diverted.

  Jack, was standing by the table and I was jealous as Val half rose from her chair when she saw him.

  “Hi.” Val lit up like a bulb.

  “Hi, babe, I’m sorry. I had to talk to that guy,” said Jack, who kissed her and then sat in her chair, pulling her on to his lap, playing with her hair and neck.

  He whispered something to Val and she got up and moved over to sit next to one of her girlfriends. He waved at a waiter he obviously knew—everyone knew Jack—and asked for bourbon. He didn’t ask for a brand. I liked that.

  From where I sat I could still just see Tolya on the street. I was restless. I was shaken by Val; for a second, I had wanted her. Come on, Jack, tell me about Sid, I thought. Tell me!

  “So, Jack, what’s going on with you?”

  “So, Beslan, like I said. You have contacts? You have anyone there?” He didn’t give up when he wanted something.

  “I don’t know anyone in Beslan,” I said. “I told you. Why would I?”

  “I wish I could get Val’s old man to help me.”

  I couldn’t wait much longer to hear from Jack about Sid. I’d have to ask him. I didn’t have time. The obituary would be in the paper by morning, the funeral would be held, Sid would go into the ground; it would be over.

  Jack was holding court now, talking about the massacre at the Russian school. Suddenly the table grew quiet. One of the girls who had not seen the news began to cry. Her mother was in Russia, she said, and she got up, clutching her cellphone. For a few minutes the table was suspended in the silence, then the noise started again.

  “Let’s go home,” Val said abruptly to Jack. “I want to go now. I don’t feel like being here now. I’ll meet you outside,” she added, got up and went towards the bathroom.

  Jack took a wad of crumpled bills from his pocket.

  One of the guys at the table—he owned clubs, he’d said—pulled out a black American Express card.

  “I’ll do it,” Jack said. To me, he added, “I want to make a good impression on Sverdloff. I’m crazy about this girl. It’s not just my usual bullshit stuff with women. I mean I really love her.”

  “She’s nineteen.”

  “People are different,” Jack said earnestly. “She’s different. She’s an old soul. I can’t help it. I tried, but I can’t. Do you think Sverdloff
will have me offed or something because of it?” he said, smiling. “Do you think he’ll kill me, Art?”

  22

  We were outside the restaurant, Tolya still smoking a cigar, Jack and Val together, me a couple of steps away from them. I looked at my watch. I couldn’t wait anymore. I turned to Jack.

  I said, “Were you a friend of Sid McKay’s?”

  “Sure,” he said. “More than a friend. He was my boss once, he was like a father. He got crazy the last few years, paranoid. He kept these files, everyone knew, he thought everyone was manipulating information, that the media was corrupted, that it was all propaganda, that we were all making up stories. He was getting old. I was betting he had plaque on the brain. Sid kept files and everyone wanted them, and there was nothing in them. Why? How come you want to know?”

  “I heard that he fired you. I heard you screwed up.”

  He laughed. “That was years ago. Another time.”

  “Where were you all last week, Jack? Since my wedding?”

  “With Val at her place in East Hampton. We just got back to the city.”

  “So you didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  I didn’t make it nice. “Sidney McKay is dead,” I said.

  Jack was standing near the wall of the restaurant and suddenly, as soon as I told him about Sid, he slid to his knees. Val saw him and reached over and put her arms around him, and sat down on to the pavement beside him. People passing stared. She ignored them, and kept her arms around Jack who was crying. I couldn’t tell if his tears were for real or if Jack was a great actor. Maybe it was both.

  “My God,” he said.

  I crouched down next to Jack, “You were close?” I said. “You and Sid?”

  “Sure we were close. Of course. Shit. He helped me.”

  “What with?”

  “Everything. Work when I was starting out. Everything. Even helped me buy my place in Red Hook. Oh, Christ, and I didn’t call him back last week. He called me, I didn’t get back.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I was tired of his obsessions about the news, that kind of thing, the accusations, he would fucking go on and on. But who killed him? Which son of a bitch decided he had to get poor old Sid McKay?”

  “What accusations? He accused you of something?”

  “Do you know who killed him?” Jack said.

  “I thought it might be you.”

  He struggled to his feet, helped by Val. Pushing her aside, Jack went for me. He was shorter than me, but he was in good shape, and he came at me so fast I fell off my feet and was on the sidewalk when Val grabbed at his sleeve.

  “Stop it,” she said. “Stop.”

  Half dragging him to the curb, she waved at a cab and pushed Jack into it. Tolya ran. Tried to keep her from leaving. The cab driver slammed on the gas and the car disappeared up Ninth Avenue.

  Doubled over, Tolya was panting. He held on to the street lamp. When he stood up, I could see he looked bad, trying to catch his breath, his whole body heaving. He scared the hell out of me. He’d had trouble breathing in Red Hook. He was sick and he was keeping it from me.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Where did they go?” He looked around, his eyes darting.

  “I don’t know. Let’s go up to your place. I’ll call a doctor. You look like shit,” I said.

  “You let her go with him?” he said and reached in his pants pocket for his phone.

  “I’ll take you home,” I said.

  “Forget it.” He was dialing his phone frantically. “I want her back. I want Valentina with me.”

  I took hold of Tolya’s arm; his skin was clammy. I didn’t want him dying on me and he looked half dead, his face sallow and shriveled, the skin slack. Walking to his car, he stumbled.

  “Stop being so fucking solicitous, OK?” he said. “I’m OK. Just leave me the fuck alone, will you? You want to help, then help out. Give me the rest of Sid McKay’s files. Right now I’m going to find my child.”

  I got to Tolya’s SUV ahead of him, and stood in front of the door.

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Get out of my way,” he said, but he leaned against the side of the car, half slumped like an elderly prizefighter, his expression somehow defeated.

  “I’ll drive you.”

  “No.”

  “Just tell me what’s going on. I’m not the fucking enemy.”

  “You have the rest of the files, right? You stole them, so share with me. You don’t trust me, isn’t that right? Isn’t it, Artemy Maximovich?”

  He used my patronymic, he addressed me formally in Russian, and the tone was sarcastic, a kind of taunt.

  “What do you need them for?”

  “I want them because Sid was obsessed with the corruption of information, with lying and cheating.”

  “So?”

  “Sid knew that Santiago was involved. He knew. Santiago who asks me how I made my money, who calls my friends to ask about my past. Please, let me get into my car.” He pushed me aside.

  The door to the SUV open, Tolya hoisted himself up. It was like climbing a mountain for him.

  I said, “You want to go after Santiago, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of Val. Or other reasons?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why can’t I come with you?”

  “Give me McKay’s stuff.”

  “I’m a cop, man. I can’t just give you stuff,” I said. “You want me to pick him up because of Val is all. Isn’t it? You want me to lay it on him because he knows about you and because he’s with your daughter. I’m sorry about it. But I can’t.”

  “It’s not because you’re a cop,” he said. “It’s because you think I killed Sid. You accuse Jack Santiago, but you don’t believe it. You just believe it was me.”

  For a second I was distracted by my phone ringing with a message from Sonny Lippert’s office. In the time it took me to answer, Tolya slammed the car door.

  Rhonda Fisher, Sonny Lippert’s secretary, was in the outer office, even though it was Saturday night.

  At her computer, Rhonda was half watching a Yankees game in extra innings on a portable TV that sat on top of a filing cabinet next to a plant with yellow flowers, and when she saw me, she raised her palms, despairing a little, the way she usually did.

  She had worked for Sonny for twenty years, and was probably in love with him. I kissed her and we talked about the Yankees for a minute, her regretting, like always, that there were no men like Paul O’Neill anymore, asking me to try to keep Sonny from drinking, and knowing it was all impossible. I had to get to Tolya before he crashed his car, but I didn’t know where the hell he was. I had to get home and look at Sid’s files, but Sonny had been leaving messages.

  I went in. Sonny looked up at me, and took a bottle from his desk drawer. “Nightcap,” he said and poured Scotch into two glasses that were already on the desk. He had been expecting me. “They want me out of here,” he said and gestured at the office. “I’m not leaving.”

  “That’s why you called me? You left messages. It’s late. What?”

  “Yeah, sit down. You want the bad news or the other bad news?” he said.

  I took the glass. “Go on.”

  “I have to tell you something, man. I don’t want to but I have to.”

  “What is it? Jesus, Sonny, what?”

  “It’s about you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I got a call from a guy. Someone who knows I know you.”

  “What guy?”

  “It doesn’t matter what guy. A guy I had asked about Sid McKay for you. Call him my Deep Throat,” he said and snorted. “He said, you’re talking Detective Artie Cohen, aren’t you, and I said, yeah and I’m about to ask him about the McKay case, and he says out of nowhere, listen I know Cohen’s a pal of yours, so I want to tell you that someone got his license number off one of the Al Qaeda intercepts.”

/>   “Excuse me?”

  “Yeah, I know this sounds like fucking Tom Clancy stuff, but it’s what they do, you know the reports coming in about attacks on Citicorp earlier in the summer, whatever, they get real detailed stuff from somewhere, they got sleepers everywhere, man, they got measurements of every skyscraper in New York City, they got the architectural plans, they got the locations of vents and air conditioning, they probably know the names of the president of every fucking co-op board that’s fighting about who puts a plant on the roof garden, and they probably got people on the co-op boards, and among other shit, they got the badge numbers of officers on the beat and licenses of cops and license plates from guys on cases. You have no idea. They write it down, they send it back to whatever shit-hole in Pakistan or Saudi they work out of, and once in a while, we capture some stuff and there it is. Your license plate. Your badge. You don’t have to be some fucking whiz kid.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah, fuck is right,” Sonny said.

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “Nothing. I’m just telling you. You know how the Feds get, they get a shred of information they turn it into something to get media play because otherwise they would never get anything positive, and the politicians climb on board, I’m just telling you, I mentioned your name, this is what comes back, so anyone stops by your place, you call me, or if you get stopped at an airport, or your car breaks down and you get hassled. Something like that. OK?”

  “Thanks.”

  “OK, I’m just saying.”

  “OK,” I said but I was nervous. A while back the Feds had been in my place looking through my stuff because someone told them I could speak a little Arabic.

  “You think it’s related to Sid McKay?” I said.

  Sonny said, “I doubt it. But it will make people look at you. Some people. Some people in the department. You have to talk to me about this thing with Sid McKay. I heard the family is saying it was some kind of accident. What kind of accident? He hit himself over the head? You know anything about this?”