The frightened cabbie moved away from Marat as if by centrifugal force and Jay thought that was the end of it, so he was alarmed when Marat brought the butt of his gun down on the man’s head and sent him crashing to the pavement. The fear turned to revulsion when Marat pistol-whipped him once more and then kicked him in the stomach. Jay grabbed Marat, who spun on him, hand raised, ready to strike again. He relaxed when he saw it was Jay.
“I need another soda,” Marat said.
Jay suggested they get it somewhere else and as the two of them walked quickly to the Pinto, he kept his eyes focused straight ahead. Only in the car did he glance back and see the man struggling to his feet. To Jay’s great relief, Marat had not killed him. He believed something criminal had occurred—the guy provoked Marat, certainly, but then Marat viciously assaulted him—and was ambivalent about leaving the scene. On the other hand, he did not want to be in the middle of anything that involved the police.
Marat lit a cigarette and reminded Jay to start the car.
Since it was nearly lunchtime, they drove to a diner near the Hunts Point market. There were jukeboxes on all the tables, and someone was playing “Love Will Keep Us Together” by the Captain and Tennille. Jay ate a cheeseburger and studied Marat as he devoured a liverwurst sandwich. Marat enjoyed his lunch as if it were another day at the office. The violence did not seem to have registered. Jay marveled at this, did not know how it was possible. He wondered if Marat had ever killed anyone. It wasn’t a question you asked. Marat flirted with the Puerto Rican waitress and smoked another Lucky. He explained to his younger cousin that you could never, under any circumstances, let someone think they could fuck with you. Jay thought Marat was slightly unhinged, but what truly frightened him was how unemotional he was, both when he beat the driver and when he provided the philosophical underpinning of his behavior.
They split the check, got iced coffees to go. That afternoon, Marat held forth and told stories about Odessa. But the metallic aftertaste of the morning’s viciousness remained with Jay. The previous winter Jay had gotten into a shoving match in a fraternity league basketball game at Penn, and the tension had remained with him for hours. Violence was preverbal, stupid. He abhorred it. That night Jay thought about telling Bingo what he had witnessed, it was on the tip of his tongue, but decided against sharing the information. Marat was good at his job and the percentage of tenants behind in their rent payments was declining. Bingo liked him. If he learned about this incident, it might jeopardize Marat’s employment, and Jay did not want to be the cause of that. He did tell his father that the elevator in Mr. Guzman’s building needed to be fixed.
The next day, and the one after that, Jay dreaded a repeat performance. He worried that someone would rile Marat and that his cousin would respond criminally. But it did not happen. Marat was able to convey the kind of individual he was without saying anything, and people acted accordingly. Big, scary-looking men, white, black, Latino, treated him civilly. They might not do what he suggested, as far as paying the rent on time, but no one challenged him. It was uncanny.
The following week they were in Highbridge, a neighborhood peppered with a mix of blacks, Dominicans, and Irish. It was the end of the day, and they had one more unit to visit. A young couple lived there, Irish, rent two months overdue. Only the wife was home, a rail-thin woman with thick red hair and a bruise under her right eye. She explained to Marat that they didn’t have the money but would have it next time—Can you give us a break?
Jay saw Marat think about it. The woman leaned on the door frame. She asked them if they wanted something cold to drink. Marat told Jay to go downstairs and wait for him in the Pinto. In the Bronx, victims sat in parked cars, but he wasn’t going to contradict his cousin. Marat came down twenty minutes later and handed Jay a beer. Jay did not ask what happened.
And so, the sweltering summer of 1975 passed. Marat’s English improved under Jay’s tutelage, and Jay absorbed some of Marat’s swagger. His fear of the streets had not entirely abated, but he was far more comfortable in the dashiki precincts of the Bronx than any kid from Scarsdale had a right to be. After work, they hit the bars on Fordham Road and drank Schaeffer on tap. Marat became a Yankee fan (his favorite player was the ornery Thurman Munson), and they even attended a couple of games together. The night they watched the Yankees beat Cleveland, flames of a tenement fire licked the sky beyond center field. On Fridays, Marat brought Jay to the Turkish baths on 10th Street where they shvitzed while being thrashed with oak branches wielded like maces by burly Russians. It was there that Jay noticed a gold Star of David nestled in Marat’s voluminous chest hair. When he remarked on it, Marat said, “Is good to be Jew in New York.” Was that true? Marat owed his immigration status to being a Jew, and his job. For this irrepressible refugee, Jews were his gang.
It was late August, and the following week Jay was scheduled to go back to college for his junior year. The city was in the middle of another heat wave, and the mixture of tropical humidity and the heightened aroma of the streets intensified everything. Marat told Jay he wanted to buy him a steak dinner as a gesture of appreciation for being his guide to New York City. Jay didn’t think he had been anyone’s guide, but Marat was sentimental and feeling expansive toward his princely relative. Jay had plans, so Marat had instead treated him to valedictory lunch at a steakhouse on Gun Hill Road near Woodlawn Cemetery.
“You are khoroshiy chelovek, boychik,” Marat said. “When you finish university, you work for me.”
Jay laughed. He said: “As a rent collector?”
“Laugh now,” Marat said.
They each had a few beers and were pleasantly buzzed when they rolled out of the restaurant and into the Pinto. The first building they would visit after lunch, Marat said, was Mr. Guzman’s. On the short ride to Mott Haven Marat sang along to the songs on the radio, his rutted voice alternately caressing and assaulting the unsuspecting melodies. To Jay’s relief, his father had taken care of the broken elevator. As they rode to the top floor, Marat joked about what he was going to do to Guzman, the beating he would deliver. Jay assumed he was kidding. He believed Marat was only returning to the apartment to check it off the list so they could begin formal eviction proceedings. The last time they had been there a week earlier the tenant had not opened the door. But when they arrived at the fifth floor, rather than going to Guzman’s apartment, Marat headed for the roof. Before disappearing into the stairwell, he told Jay to wait in front of Guzman’s door. Slightly drunk, Jay obeyed.
It was around three-thirty. He had a date that night with a girl who lived in Morningside Heights. They were going to a reggae concert at the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park. Jay was thinking about the approaching evening when he heard a shout from inside the apartment and then what sounded like glass breaking and something heavy hitting a wall. When the door opened from the inside, Jay saw Marat holding a dazed-looking Guzman, who was bleeding from his mouth. Jay immediately noticed the gun in his cousin’s hand. Without a word, Marat pushed past Jay and made for the stairwell, dragging the tenant. Guzman suddenly realized the severity of his predicament and began to resist actively. “Help me,” Marat ordered. Without realizing what he was doing, Jay was beside Guzman and, with his cousin, hustled him up the stairwell.
There was no one on the roof. Jay looked around to the other buildings, where the roofs were similarly unoccupied. He could hear the sound of traffic and the distant rumble of the IRT. Salsa blared from an open window. Guzman shook Jay off and swung at Marat. He missed.
Jay was scared of what his cousin might do. “Let’s just report the nonpayment and get out of here, okay?” Marat was not interested. He pointed his gun at Guzman who swayed backward before regaining his footing. Looked over his shoulder. The adjacent tenement was about ten feet away. There was a pigeon coop over there, and Jay could hear the birds. Guzman glanced in that direction once more. Jay thought he might try to leap between the rooftops.
“Porque eres un puto Judio codiciosos,” Guzman said.
“You hear what he call me?” Marat asked. Jay knew the meaning of Judio. And puto. To Guzman, Marat said, “Do I call you Puerto Rican piece of shit?” Piece of shit was a phrase he had recently learned and now used whenever possible.
“Joder tu madre,” Guzman said.
Marat charged at Guzman, who, trying to avoid being caught, found himself close to the edge of the roof. A flock of sparrows rose from the adjacent rooftop as if to get a better look. Jay had an impulse to call for help but had no idea to whom. Guzman reached into his pocket and pulled a knife. He carved the air in front of Marat.
Marat said: “I have gun, you fucking idiot.” He pronounced it “eee-dyote.” “Put down knife.”
Guzman stared at Marat dully. His pickled brain slowly adjusted. Realizing his error, he gently laid the knife down. Had he heard a note of mercy in Marat’s voice? If so, he was mistaken. Marat grabbed Guzman, spun him around, and shoved him off the roof. Then he looked at Jay and shrugged. He put two fingers to a cut on his cheek and licked the blood off.
Jay walked gingerly to the edge of the roof and peered down. Guzman was splayed in the alley between the two buildings. The sight of the body, and the height from which he observed it, dizzied him. Before losing his balance, Jay stepped away from the precipice. He turned and walked past Marat, ran down the stairs, and got into the Pinto. When Marat joined him moments later, he was nonchalant. Jay couldn’t look at him.
“Why did you do that?”
“Teach him to not fuck with Jew,” Marat explained. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it, drawing the smoke into his lungs. Jay slumped behind the wheel, but from the corner of his eye he sensed his cousin staring at him. He slowly faced Marat. Marat touched the tip of his finger to the edge of his eye socket, then pointed at Jay’s eye. He gently shook his head side to side. “You no see.” The semblance of a smile Marat offered combined reassurance and threat in a way that was entirely new to Jay. He felt sick. “Understand?” Jay could barely nod. All of his muscles were rigid. Marat told Jay to start the engine and drive.
Jay canceled his date for that night. He told his mother he wasn’t feeling well and spent the evening in his room. When his father arrived home, he said nothing. He barely slept, panicked that the police were going to knock on his door in the middle of the night and drag him to some precinct in the Bronx, then to court the next morning and charge him as an accessory. But the police did not come that day, or the day after, or the day after that. For a week, he bought all three daily newspapers but never saw anything. Jay did not yet understand that the fate of people like Guzman was of no interest to the tabloids, or to anyone else.
The knowledge of what he had witnessed gnawed at his gut. From the time that he brushed his teeth in the morning, and the memory of what had occurred sucker punched him, through his commute to the city, and all through the workday, it was present. When he returned home at night and, most intensely, when he lay in bed, Jay was tempted to reveal what he had seen. He would never have gone to the police but, again and again, he thought about telling his father. What made him bear the secret? On the most animal level, he was scared of what Marat would do. The man was a killer. Marat’s casual manner in the aftermath of the incident led Jay to surmise that Guzman was not his first victim. Would this Odessan gangster dare to take revenge if Jay reported what he had observed? He did not want to find out. But it was more than fear of Marat that made Jay hold his tongue. Even as a young man he had intuitively understood that if he told Bingo, he would pass the terrible burden along, hand it off, leave it to someone else. Bingo was Marat’s employer, his American sponsor—his blood relative. Jay would not put his father in the position of having to decide whether to inform the police.
Jay went back to college as if what he had seen on that rooftop in the Bronx had never occurred. He enrolled in his courses, participated in the life of his fraternity. He studied, worked out, partied. Occasionally, he would have distressing dreams, and more than once he awoke convinced he had killed someone. Along the border of sleep and wakefulness, he suffered ineffable torment and faced a hollowness so profound it seemed to negate his essential self. The feeling would persist for several hours, even days, and propel him back to that summer. He never told his father about what had happened, nor either of his wives. The melodrama of Marat killing Guzman in front of him was absurd, but overriding the absurdity of the crime was the absurdity of Jay’s having been there. This suburban boy, this twig: Eyewitness to a killing. He never wanted to believe the world worked like this. Yet now he knew, incontrovertibly, it did. Over the next several decades of his inexorable rise, there was always the thought lurking in the back of his mind that somehow, as the constellations shifted in the sky, as the planets revolved in their paths, a celestial alignment would arrive whose geometry would announce Jay Gladstone’s karmic payback.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Blood sluiced from Jay’s nose as he called 911 on his cell phone and kneeled by the unconscious Dag. He apologized, told him he had never meant to cause harm. He implored him to hang on, dear God, and wake up, please, please, wake up because the ramifications of not waking up were too horrifying to imagine. By the time the beams of the ambulance lights juddered along the dirt road, Dag had briefly returned to consciousness. Jay knew this because Dag had looked directly into his eyes. He couldn’t interpret what the player was attempting to convey, and it didn’t matter to Jay whether it was hatred (understandable), or apology (less likely, but not out of the question), or something in between. The only thing that mattered was that he had not killed the man.
A police car arrived on the scene just as the EMTs were finishing their work. The officer told Jay he would see him at the hospital to take a statement. Jay was relieved to hear this since it would give him time to decide what to say. The ambulance ride along the dark roads was nerve-racking. He crouched next to the gurney on which Dag lay, neck stabilized, oxygen mask obscuring his features, and attempted to will the big man back to consciousness. Eyes riveted to Dag’s inanimate, deeply familiar face, a face known to millions, a face Jay had seen fully embody exaltation and despair, he implored Dag not to die. With one hand, Jay held a towel to his own nose, which still had not stopped bleeding. With the other, he braced himself as the ambulance screamed down the twisty rural roads.
At least Dag was breathing.
Recognizing the limits of his own will, Jay tried talking to him: “Dag, can you hear me? Dag? Wake up, buddy.” (Buddy? Where had that come from?) But there was no response.
Across the gurney was a young Latino EMT who introduced himself as Luis. The driver was a burly white man with a small cross dangling from his ear, who immediately recognized Dag when they arrived at the scene. Luis had hooked Dag up to a monitor and was watching the lines on the screen. His jaw worked a wad of gum. Satisfied that everything appeared to be in order, he became curious.
“What happened, Mr. Gladstone?”
“I don’t know.”
He looked at the face of the EMT to gauge his reaction to the nonresponse. Jay was going to have to formulate a plausible version of events at some point, but now was not the time. The ambulance careened through a red light at an empty intersection. Luis seemed to be gauging whether or not to continue the conversation. Jay began to think about whom he would call when they reached the hospital.
“You got an NBA All-Star lying in the street, and you don’t know what happened?”
“That’s what I said.”
“You got a lawyer?”
“Excuse me?”
The impertinence! Who was this kid to speak with Jay Gladstone as if they had gone to school together? Jay had enough of his wits about him not to reveal anything. As concerned as he was with Dag’s condition,
he was aware of his tenuous legal position, and anything he said to Luis would be of interest to a judge. What to tell that cop? Right before Jay tilted his head back to let the blood from his nose flow in another direction, he saw a sign that read Welcome to Mt. Kisco.
“Hey, no offense, Mr. Gladstone,” Luis said. “Sometimes I joke around ’cause of all the tension. I apologize.”
Jay was not listening. The taste of blood in his mouth, he wondered whether Dag would have had sex with his wife had more money been offered in the contract negotiation. Was Dag paying him back? Yes, he was! What else could it have been? Wait! Had they been having an affair or merely charmed each other at the Obama dinner? Had they been overtly flirting? Was an entire table of Obama donors convinced D’Angelo Maxwell was sleeping with Jay Gladstone’s wife?
Despite the confusion, the feelings of helplessness and rage that ebbed and flowed, what Jay felt most was remorse. He wanted to rewind time and tell Boris to take him to the apartment in New York rather than to Bedford.
And what of Nicole, with whom he had intended to grow old? Who he had decided, eventually and after much deliberation, would be a wonderful mother to his second—as yet imaginary—child. Now his marriage had burst into a million radioactive pieces.
The siren’s wail in the empty night seemed to mimic the dissonant drone in his head and served to distract from the pain of his physical injuries, but it did nothing to hide the psychic wounds which continued to suppurate.
The ambulance zoomed into the ER bay. Someone flung the rear doors open, and Dag was whisked into the building. Jay trailed the stretcher like an afterthought and presented himself to the on-duty nurse at the reception desk. Dag was already in the ER.
The arrival of a gravely injured person always sets off a flurry in a hospital, and when the person is a celebrity, the volume kicks up several notches. On-duty personnel summoned sleeping doctors from their beds and relegated Jay to the waiting room. Several times he tried to find out what was happening with Dag but was rebuffed.
The Hazards of Good Fortune Page 28