At the kitchen table, Billy – flushed, smiling – was busy extracting an ice cube from a glass of orange juice. He put it in his mouth and crunched it around.
“We should go,” I said.
“It’s starting to rain.”
“Yeah, well, you won’t melt.” I knew I sounded sarcastic but I was upset over Max.
Billy stood up, arms hanging down at his sides, head bowed, staring at his sneakers.
“Just go get in the car,” I said. “Please.”
He went, and I said to Vera, “You have my number. There’s a cop on your block now. You’ll be OK. If you get any more calls, let him know.”
There was nothing much I could do for her. Either she knew who had threatened her and wouldn’t tell me, or she didn’t know. I was done here.
“The boy, his name is Farone?” Vera called out when I had started for the door. “He said Billy Farone.”
I turned around. “Yeah. So?” I tried not to let her see my surprise.
“I know the parents,” said Vera.
It made me edgy, her calling me back for this. I didn’t know what the hell Vera Gorbachev wanted; I kept thinking it: what do you want?
“Sure, Johnny Farone, the husband, has restaurant Brighton Beach,” said Vera. “Everyone knows them, sure, and Evgenia, the wife, always around, saying hello. I heard the son is away in some boarding school. So it is this Billy you brought? He was away? Another boy?” she asked, in a wheedling tone.
Vera Gorbachev knew the Farones, but so what? Maybe she’d heard gossip about Billy. Something wasn’t right about the Gorbachev business and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Lippert had asked me to go talk to Vera because she was related to Rhonda Fisher, his girlfriend. Vera Gorbachev was a lot less worried about her husband than she should have been. People with funny accents were calling her. I wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth. I beat it.
We were on our way to a pond Billy had read about. Told me it was a good place to fish. The phone rang. It was Sonny Lippert.
“I talked to Rhonda’s relative again. I can’t do any more,” I said. “I’m leaving there now.”
“I’m not calling about that, man, I want you here in the city.”
The line broke up and I couldn’t hear him. He called back.
“Just get to the city,” Sonny said. “Is the boy with you?”
“Yeah, so what?”
“I told you, I want to talk to him about May Luca. He could really help me on this thing.”
“Can’t hear you, Sonny, there’s no signal,” I said, lying, and when the phone rang again, I didn’t answer it.
“You have to go to the city?” Billy said.
“Let’s go fishing.”
“Really?”
“You bet.”
“Come on!” Billy put his feet contentedly on the dashboard and another piece of gum in his mouth. “I’m so happy,” he said. “Let’s get donuts. Chocolate ones.”
“You’re hungry?”
“Maybe I’m addicted.”
“You’re a funny kid.”
“Am I? I mean is that good?”
“It’s really good.”
16
“Holy shit,” I heard someone say when we got to Hank Provone’s big house over near Tottenville. Holy shit. The phrase twanged me back to 9/11 as fast as a picture of the planes crashing the Twin Towers, but why? Why that phrase, I kept thinking as we walked, Billy and me, to the back patio of Hank’s house where a crowd had gathered around a portable TV.
“What’s going on?”
Hank looked up at me. “Jesus, Artie, don’t you know?”
“Know what?”
“London. This morning. Christ, it’s happening all over again.”
Hank Provone had been my partner for years, best I ever had. He was retired now and lived on Staten Island in a big house near the water. He was a good guy and I felt sad I didn’t see him more. We used to call him Provolone because of his name and because he liked cheese on everything. Meat and cheese, any kind, was Hank’s idea of a feast.
I’d been fishing for a couple of hours with Billy, we didn’t catch anything, but we laughed a lot. I’d brought him over to Hank’s to say hello. Now, Billy beside me, I stared at the TV.
Three bombs, maybe more, had gone off that morning in the London subway. Another bomb ripped open a red double-decker bus like a can of sardines. Streets jammed with cars, ambulances, and police were filled with people streaming past; on the curb, others sat, faces smeared with dirt, clutching silver shock blankets.
I started looking for Johnny and Genia in the terrified crowd on the screen three thousand miles away.
My God, I thought and reached for Billy’s hand.
Hank saw it and said softly so the others couldn’t hear, “You have someone over there?”
“Billy’s parents,” I said.
“Come on,” said Hank, moving us away from the crowd to the edge of the patio where the water began and a few sailboats bobbed. “You OK, Billy?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, “I don’t know what’s happening over there.”
“I left your dad’s phone number at home. You know where your parents are staying?”
Johnny and Genia wouldn’t ride the subways, would they? Genia never set foot in a subway as far as I knew, not in New York anyhow. But she was in London and she hadn’t called me. If they were dead, would that mean Billy was mine forever? I was his legal guardian. For a second, my back prickled with a kind of strange restless feeling, like something buggy creeping across it.
Billy recited his father’s cell number, adding, “My dad’s phone, he says it’s like tri-band and it works every place. He brags about it like he invented the phone. You think they’re OK?” said Billy, looking distracted, worried, scared.
While I tried to get through to London, Billy stayed close to me, me wanting to hold on to him, both of us straining to hear the TV. I put the phone on redial.
“Lines are probably jammed up,” I said. “I know they’re OK, your mom and dad, I just feel that.”
“Me too,” said Billy who sat down on a chair suddenly.
“What’s that?” I said, squatting next to him.
“I’m scared.”
“I’m here.”
“If something happened to them, would I be able to stay with you?”
“Nothing happened to them.”
“But like if?”
“Nothing happened. I’ll get the name of the hotel,” I said. Hank, who had been standing quietly near us, said, “Hey, Billy, I’m gonna get on the landline and see if I can get through to a friend of mine that’s a cop in London, OK?” Hank ran a hand through his wild curly graying hair which he tried – and failed – to tame into a crew cut. “Meanwhile let me get you a soda or something. Billy? You think you’re up to meeting a few people, hang out a while with the other kids, maybe help us devour some barbecue? Ribs, burgers, steaks, some dogs. I make a mean guacamole, too.”
Billy said OK, nodding shyly. Hank gave him a high five. Except for Sonny Lippert, Hank was the only guy I’d told about Billy – told the whole thing – back when the bad stuff was happening. Billy had been accused of murdering Heshey Shank out at Breezy Point. People wanted him tried as an adult. I had needed help when we made the case for him as a juvenile, and set up the newspapers to report it was self-defense. Hank Provone came with me. He stood up for me. Otherwise, he kept his mouth shut and I loved him for it. I suddenly felt glad to be here.
People on Staten Island were tight with their communities; they identified themselves as being from Tottenville or Rossville, not from some outer borough of New York. In Rossville, which was still open countryside in the nineteenth century, whole Sicilian villages settled together. Before the landfill opened, before the stink of garbage permeated the place and people sealed their windows with duct tape during the worst times.
I’d let things drift with Hank and me, didn’t know why. Now I was with Maxine, I’d spend m
ore time here. She would understand, she had lived on Staten Island with her first husband.
With his belly straining to get free from his faded Springsteen T-shirt, Hank didn’t look much older than when we last worked together, ten, eleven years back. He had retired after 9/11.
“I can’t even think of the right words for the bastards who put bombs in London, we should cut their nuts off first, and then fry them,” said Hank. “The Brits are such pussies, they just lock them up for a few years, me I’d stick a needle in them. People thought it was over. We knew. So, hey, Artie, you missed me? Come and say hello.”
Hank pulled me back towards the group in front of the TV. “Everybody, it’s Artie.”
Folded up on a chair a little way from the TV set was a woman I recognized from some of Hank’s parties. She had lost her son on 9/11, and sat now, tears coming out of her eyes but not making any noise.
At the other end of the yard was a group of teenagers who sat on the edge of the pool, kicked their feet in the water and stared into their soda cans. A couple of older boys held beer bottles. From somewhere in the house Springsteen played on a stereo. Hank never played anything else.
“This London thing sucks, man, right? Jesus Christ,” Hank said. “Fucking terrorists. I’m like yelling holy shit over and over when I saw it because it was like it was all happening again.”
So I remembered; the first words on the first piece of video I saw as the first plane hit the south tower that morning, a New York voice crying out: “Holy shit.”
“Nobody wants to fucking talk about it, so people who are hurting are so grateful you even remember them it breaks your heart,” said Hank. “One 9/11 fireman’s widow, I still go over and take her a bottle of wine or just sit and talk and last time I was there she was like god blessing me and so on and so forth. Jesus, Artie, you remember the sound of the locators?”
I remembered. The day after the attack, when we were working non-stop on the smoking pile of shit at Ground Zero, there had been an eerie noise like cicadas, something in the woods, hundreds of them. It was the locators firemen wear so they can be found in the smoke. They were still beeping on dead fireman in the rubble for days afterwards.
“Take it easy.” I put my hand on Hank’s arm. “Where’s Mary?”
“She’s in the kitchen cooking where a woman belongs.” Hank laughed.
The Provones had five kids – Hank was only twenty-one when they started – and the house was always filled with them and their children and cousins, and uncles and aunts, Italian, Polish, Irish, Greek. “We’re the fucking UN of Staten Island,” Hank used to say.
“Hey, Artie,” a voice called. It was Stellene Anastasiades, Mary Provone’s niece. We had dated for a while. I had been crazy about her. She was a great-looking woman, now pregnant with her fourth kid.
She waddled in my direction, still gorgeous, blonde hair pinned up on top of her head, belly sticking out, gold flip-flops crunching the gravel underfoot. In my hand was my phone. Come on, Johnny. Just call me, I kept thinking: call me!
“Artie.” Stellene kissed me, and tapped her belly. “Say hello to the new boys.”
“Boys?”
“Triplets. Can you fucking believe it? I got three boys, I said to Stas, let’s try for a girl, and we get, hello, triplets, boys. I’ll name one for you.”
“I’d really like that.”
“Come on,” Stellene said to Billy. “You should meet some of the other kids,” and before he could protest, she had his arm and was steering him towards the pool, Stellene like a blonde Greek cruise ship, Billy in tow.
From a distance, I watched him with a couple of other boys about his age. A few girls in those “wife-beater” undershirts you saw everywhere, their boobs hanging out, circled around Billy. He accepted a hot dog from one of them and bit into it. He seemed a little awkward, but he joined in and before long he was swept up in the teenage action.
“Artie, let me get you a beer or something,” Hank said, heading for the table that was covered with food, meat ready for the barbecue, bowls of potato salad and potato chips, boxes of pastry, rows of beers and sodas.
From the cooler I took a bottle of Corona and it was wet and cold against my hand. I was thirsty. The crowd in front of the TV dispersed, some of the women peeling off towards the house, maybe to go fix stuff in the kitchen, a few of the guys settling in at table with a pack of cards. One of them was a black guy I didn’t know. He got up from his chair.
“I can’t stand watching this stuff,” he said. “I’m going inside to catch a game.”
I thought about the black guy I’d seen at the pizza place with Sonny Lippert.
Hank, who saw me look, said, “Yeah, yeah, we got everyone out here now. A cop’s a cop, right? We’re very PC these days. And me, I never gave a shit what color anyone was.” He nodded towards the house where the black guy had gone. “Dave Green’s a good guy, he’s from Guyana, they got a whole community out here and they’re real smart.” Hank pulled down his T-shirt. “The old men are dying off, them and their stupid racist rage with them. I remember when my pop used to sing me a song about the Latin from Staten Island with his guile and his smile, can you believe it? American is American, I told my grandfather, and we were all immigrants. My grandpa is ninety-two and all he wants is to suck on his rage.” Hank looked back at the TV.
“Bastard sons of bitches terrorists,” he said. “I’m thinking of offering to go over to London, see if I can help or something. We know what it fucking feels like. We look at that fucking hole in the skyline every day. Seventy-eight firefighters we lost, you want to call that a holocaust you could do that. We got 9/11 widows, we got 9/11 kids, look at Stellene’s nephew on her husband’s side that lost his uncle who was a fire captain, and saw his own dad jump out of a window. They ID’d him in some photograph as a ‘jumper’. That’s going to take a generation to fix. How’s your Maxine?”
“Good,” I said. “She’s out in California for a few days.
“You guys should come out more often, now you got a life, man. We’re so happy for you that you and her got married, you know. Me and Mary both.”
My cell phone was ringing and I saw that Sonny Lippert had called four times. He was leaving messages, saying it was urgent for me to get my ass into the city. Urgent, he said. Make it fast.
“I should probably go,” I said to Hank. “Lippert’s been calling me on something. I don’t want Billy getting upset, with his parents being in London.”
“Lippert said it’s urgent?”
“Yeah, it’s probably nothing, I mean Lippert sometimes calls when he wants advice on taking a piss or because he heard someone speaking Russian. Other times it matters. He calls four times, I try to pay attention. You know.”
“I know,” Hank said. “So Billy will stay here,” Hank added. “We’d love to have him. Like I said, I’ll get on the phone if you want. I have plenty of favors I can call in. I know this guy in Scotland Yard, how cool is that? I know him pretty good.”
“Nobody knows anything about Billy, about that stuff back when, you know,” I said. “I mean the whole story, only you and me.”
“And Lippert,” Hank said.
“Yeah.”
“Billy looks fine to me,” said Hank. “Look at him; the girls are loving him being here, guys too. Billy seems like a real nice boy.”
“Thanks. Hey, you didn’t hear anything about some Italian guy a couple miles from here over by Fresh Kills that just disappeared like that, walked out of the house and nothing?”
“Laporello, something like that? Married to a Russian woman?”
“Yeah.”
“I think I heard something. Why?”
“I got asked to take a run at it by Sonny Lippert. It doesn’t matter.”
“I mean Staten Island is still pretty small town when it comes to gossip,” Hank said. “I feel like I remember the whole deal was somehow connected to a beauty parlor where they thought somebody was laundering some cash or something, ring any
bells with what you heard? Queen of something, the beauty parlor, one of those cockamamie family businesses. The Gorbachev woman’s brother-in-law’s sister owned the place and someone said Gorbachev was sleeping with the sister’s husband. I didn’t pay attention. You want me to find out?”
“Only if it’s easy.”
“You want to eat something.”
“Later. You think we’re going to get hit again, I mean the London thing?”
“I don’t know,” Hank said. “I wouldn’t go in the fucking subways if you gave them to me, you know, but that’s just me, I’m a fat old cop, and what do I know? I missed you, buddy.”
“You know any good places to fish around here, Hank? I told Billy we’d go later, we tried one place, but it was pretty lousy fishing.”
“Plenty,” said Hank. “I’ll write them down. Wait a sec.” Hank went into the house, came back, handed me a piece of paper with some addresses and a set of keys.
“I got a rental property out at the north end of Staten, up almost opposite Jersey, end of Fresh Kills, I started buying after they closed the dump,” he said. “House is empty next couple of weeks, the new tenants don’t move in until then, in case you want to get away from the city, with the boy, whatever. You could always use it. It’s close to the beach, everything you need.”
“I probably won’t need it,” I said.
Hank pressed the keys into my hand. “So return the keys. That way I get to see you again. OK?”
Hank Provone was one of those guys who was not formally educated but whose instincts were stainless steel. He had a built-in emotional compass. I thanked him and again I looked over at Billy.
He was talking to a girl with long brown hair. She was wearing a flouncy white skirt, and a red shirt tied up at her waist. She was about fourteen, like him, and she reminded me of someone. She kicked the toe of her sandal against a cracked paving stone, talking to Billy as they stood together near the edge of the swimming pool, holding their soda cans and eyeing the booze set out for the grown-ups on a table near by.
“Who’s the girl?” I said to Hank.
Fresh Kills Page 15
