“Go on.”
“Weird thing is Stan Shank also married a Russian. It was some kind of bond with those men, they married Russians and they got off on making fun of them and the women took it because they were immigrants and they thought, what else could they do, you know? My old man’s in Florida. Shank’s retired. Thank God. There were others.”
“Shank had kids?”
“A boy that died, and a girl. Debbie. It made him crazy the boy died. God knows why, the boy had Down’s syndrome and no one ever talked about it.”
“You knew her? You knew Debbie?”
“Yes. She was OK, younger than me; I used to babysit her back when. I heard after she finished high school, she beat it. Went to live in Italy or something.”
“You kept in touch?”
“I’ll see if I can get a number.”
“Anything else about your father?”
“Son of a bitch just sits in Florida and drools.” Tina looked at her water glass. “What’s going on, Artie, honey? Is this about Billy?”
“If you can get that number, that’d be great. Tina, how come they let Billy visit with your old man in Florida?”
She looked into her glass, then picked up her purse, extracted a lipstick and a compact and began fixing her mouth.
“It was never little boys they wanted, you know? They didn’t touch the boys,” said Tina softly. “My father adored Billy and Billy was crazy for him. They went fishing and stuff, he was a great cuddly granddad for the kid. You knew my mother threw my pop out of the house after forty-seven years because he was supposedly feeling up little girls?”
“I knew.”
“I don’t think him and the others had sex with kids or whatever, I just think they liked looking, maybe they felt them up if they got a chance,” Tina said. “Which was plenty bad enough. Those men thought they were like little dolls, you know. I heard they figured if they were tender with them, or whatever, if they didn’t hurt them, or what they figured was hurting them, it didn’t matter. It was like they were playing with them in their old man’s fucked-up view.”
“How do you know?”
“Like I said, I heard. I picked up stuff my mother told me. I put stuff together. I knew about those little girls.”
“Including you?”
“Not me. Never. Thank God.”
“Your sister, Donna?”
“I don’t think about it. Donna, who should have been a nun or a saint, took the old man on when my mother threw him out.”
“What about Shank’s daughter?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure the men got to Debbie,” said Tina. “She was only a little kid. I should have done something. Is Billy in trouble?”
“I don’t know for sure. Someone doesn’t like it that he’s home for a while,” I said, then wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
“I think I know how to reach Debbie Shank. Give me your numbers, Artie,” Tina gathered up her purse, rose, hugged me and started for the door slowly, all the brightness gone. I went with her.
“Where is Billy now?” she said. “Maybe you should be with him. Artie, I don’t want to alarm you and I don’t know anything, but I would be with him all the time, at least until Johnny gets back from London, you know? Shank’s a bastard. He made his half brother Heshey’s death into a cause.”
“Billy’s safe on Staten Island with friends.”
We went out to the parking lot and as Tina got into her car, I wondered if I should have told her anything about Billy at all. I called out but Tina was already pulling away in her SUV and she didn’t hear me or pretended not to.
I got in my car and for a few blocks I followed Tina, wondering who she talked to. She was the only person I ever heard call Billy “Billy boy”. Except for her father in Florida.
21
The deserted dead-end street on Staten Island, which seemed to be full of dead-end streets, was where I got lost after I took a wrong turn not far from Hank Provone’s place. I wanted to see Billy. I didn’t like the way Tina Farone had called him “Billy boy”, and I wanted him with me. Wanted to take him back to the city with me. Keep him safe. My car was making crazy noises and I hit the brakes and got out.
My head under the hood, me poking around in the engine – pointless, but I figured I’d give it a shot – someone kicked the backs of my knees so hard my legs buckled and I folded up on the ground and lay there. It was sudden. It came out of no place and for a split second I wondered if I was dead before I blacked out.
While I was lying on my side, he kicked me again. Kidneys, I thought, and I went out again. There was nothing, no threat, no dread, no anticipation, just a sudden overwhelming, blinding pain, and another blow, and then the feeling that my guts had wrenched themselves loose, and I was falling and then nothing. I seemed to spin down into a black hole.
I didn’t know if I was out for sixty seconds or an hour, I didn’t know if I was bleeding inside. My hand reached out for something to hold on to, and I managed to grasp the fender of my car. I didn’t have the strength to hang on, my hand fell back, my whole body trembled, burning, bruised, the worst pain I’d ever felt. When I opened my eyes, I was lying next to my car, the pain so intense I had to close them again.
Where was I? In a way I didn’t really care because my whereabouts seemed a lot less interesting than a way to ease the pain. I tried to roll over and tears poured out of my eyes. I waited. I smelled the faint, green smell of fresh-cut grass. It was drizzling, and the rain and tears ran down my face. When I opened my eyes again, I didn’t know if I was asleep or not, or unconscious, but the only thing I thought about, the only person I wanted, was Lily.
Where the hell was Billy? I was hallucinating now, or was I? I couldn’t remember where I had left him, and I didn’t know if he was alone or if someone had snatched him off the street. The panic made it hard to breath. My stomach clenched up like I was going to vomit.
The rain that fell was erratic and thin, as if God, like an old man, got up in the night to piss on me. It was getting dark. My head hurt, and I couldn’t concentrate, and I thought about believing in God, and wished I could. Somehow I crawled into my car. When I tried to turn the key my hand was shaking too hard. I waited.
In the glove compartment I found a half-empty bottle of Poland Spring and a plastic jar of Advil and I took four of them, figuring it would ease the pain enough so I could drive. I managed to start the car up.
I backed out carefully as I could, turned the car around, tried to get my bearings, tried to figure out if it was one of Stan Shank’s creeps who kicked the crap out of me, when I knew what was happening: Shank’s plan wasn’t to hurt Billy; it was to set Billy up. Shank wanted to prove Billy was bad, get Billy arrested, sent away for good, maybe to avenge Shank’s half brother Heshey, maybe because Shank was a vicious bastard.
Little Tina Farone or her old friend Debbie Shank might give me something I could use against Shank, though I wasn’t sure about Tina at all now. Shank and his crowd wanted Billy gone or dead and they’d do anything, hurt anyone to make sure it happened. And that included me. Mainly me. Billy wasn’t safe without me. He wasn’t safe with me.
“He’s not here,” said Mary Provone, who was standing at her sink, rinsing dishes, chatting with Stellene who was at the kitchen table. “You look like shit, Artie, sit down for God’s sake. Stellene, get him a glass of water and some coffee, or maybe you should lie down. I’m gonna call a doctor, honey, we have a friend a couple blocks over who’s a good guy, good doctor, he’ll come over if I call unless you want to go to the ER. Artie, you listening to me? Sit down.”
“What do you mean not here?” I said.
Stellene poured me a glass of water. I drank it all and asked for more right away.
“What else do you need?” she said.
“Something for pain.”
Stellene found some Percoset in the kitchen table drawer and handed me one.
“I could use two,”
“One’s enough. You take too much
of this stuff, you get crazy. I mean really like hallucinogenic. What’s so funny?”
“I’d love to be hallucinogenic,” I said. “Never mind. Why did Hank take Billy to the city?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I guess Billy wanted to go back. He seemed anxious. You heard from his parents?”
“They’re OK. That’s not everything is it?”
Mary was silent.
“Where are the kids?”
“They went out for burgers,” said Mary, putting down the dish she was holding. “They always go to eat after the movies.”
“Katie too?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Artie, sweetheart, I think you should go home,” said Mary. “They’ll be waiting for you.”
“They?”
“Hank wouldn’t leave the boy alone, not after you asked him not to. Maybe the movie freaked him out,” Mary said. “Maybe it was the bombings in London. Everyone’s a little on edge around here, it reminds us,” she added. “There was a lot of watching news and talk. You want someone to drive with you? One of the boys could drive you if you’re feeling bad. What happened to you?”
“Mary?”
“What’s that, honey?”
“What do you mean, the movie freaked Billy out?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“You ever meet a woman named Tina Farone?” I said.
“Related to Billy? To Johnny? The one they called Little Tina because her mom was Big Tina?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure. I knew her a little bit,” Mary said. “We used to be sort of friends, but we don’t see that much of each other anymore. We used to take our kids for horse-riding lessons together, Teen was good, she could ride a horse, and I would say, where’d you learn to ride a horse growing up in Brooklyn, and she’d laugh, I remember, and show me pictures of herself as a cowgirl or a rodeo rider or some cockamamie thing. Outfits with spangles, little bolero jackets, big hats. I don’t see her now, though, not really. I think she moved out to Long Island. I used to run into her at the mall here some of the time. Why?”
“She lived around here?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Her old man, John Sr, when he stayed with her, used to come around and shoot the breeze with Hank, and he made Hank feel it was like his duty to hang out with him because he had been a cop. I didn’t like him. Hank tried to keep him away, but he felt dutiful, you know Hank, and John Sr wouldn’t leave, he just sat around the back yard and drank beer and ate peanuts in the shell that he carried around in a paper bag, and sometimes I saw him throw the shells on the patio and Hank would pick them up. I was OK with the peanuts, but there was other stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“He used to stare at Katie when she was in her bathing suit, and once he made her sit on his lap. Finally I told Teen I didn’t want him here, and that kind of broke it up with us, you know? John Sr, he’d be Billy’s grandfather, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Hank took Billy to the city is all I know,” Mary said. “Let me get a doctor for you.”
“I have to go home.”
Out front of the Provones I was getting in my car when Stellene came out of the house.
“What is it?” I said.
“Artie, listen, Billy should be at his school or whatever, or at least with his parents,” she said. “Where are they, the parents?”
“In London. His mother is scared to get on a plane after the shit in the subways over there.”
“Jesus,” Stellene said. “Then you need to take him back to his school or just be with him.”
“Why?”
“I think he’s scared of something. Katie told me,” she said. “We’re close. I’m Katie’s godmother, and she talks to me, and she said she really really liked Billy, I could tell anyway, she had that look, you know, like her mother, they have that thin skin and when they’re happy it turns bright pink. So they sat together at the movies, and she said Billy was very polite. Maybe she was kind of miffed he didn’t try to kiss her or anything. Afterwards, they all came out of the movie, and Hank was waiting to bring them home. Billy wasn’t there. Katie said he just wandered off as soon as the movie ended. It took them half an hour to find him.
“Hank found him across the street at a diner by himself, eating a chocolate donut with colored sprinkles like nothing happened. He said he had felt hungry. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, and I asked Katie if she had the impression Billy was scared, and she said yes, even on the way to the movie, he was watching the cars that passed like he was looking for someone.”
“I’m going,” I said. “Call if you need me. You sure you should drive like that?”
“Yeah,” said Stellene, patting her belly. “Triplets. Can you imagine? So go home and be with Billy. He needs you.”
“But you like him, right?’
“Sure, Artie. I like him a lot. He was cute about me being so pregnant, asking me when I was having the babies and stuff. Go home.”
22
“Is Billy OK? What happened? Where’s Hank?” I said to Lily who was waiting for me when I got home.
“Calm down,” she said.
Legs tucked up underneath her, a book in her lap, Lily sat on the couch with Billy beside her; his head on her shoulder, one arm flung over the back of the couch, he was fast asleep.
Untangling herself, Lily got up, pulled a blanket over Billy and said, “Everything’s fine.” She was wearing a yellow cotton skirt and a sleeveless black T-shirt. Little diamond earrings I had given her a long time ago were in her ears. It was the first time I’d seen them in years.
“Where’s Hank,” I said and fell onto a chair.
Stuffed with Percoset and Advil, I’d been nuts to drive myself home; weaving crazily through traffic, all I had heard were horns honking and drivers screaming at me.
“I’m taking you to the ER,” said Lily.
“No. Tell me about Hank. Where the fuck is he? Mary said he brought Billy home.” My hands were shaking.
“Hank said he had to go home,” Lily said. “I called here a while ago, I can’t remember exactly when, looking for you and Hank picked up the phone. He told me he was here with Billy, he brought him back because Billy said he had to go home, and he had keys you gave him so it was OK. Hank promised you he wouldn’t leave him alone. Hank asked me where you were and I didn’t know and he said could I come over for a while and stay with Billy. He sounded pretty desperate to get back to Staten Island. I remembered you always said Hank Provone was a good guy, so I came.”
“Mary didn’t say anything about Hank needing to get home.”
“Who?”
“Mary Provone, Hank’s wife.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Lily. “By the time I got here, Billy said he was tired. I felt bad for him. He said you thought he needed someone babysitting him all the time. I said I didn’t do babysitting and I was only here because I liked him and also I was hungry, so we laughed and I made some salami sandwiches – it was pretty much all you had in the fridge – and he passed out before we finished. I covered him up on the couch, and that was it. I tried you like a million times,” she said.
I looked at my phone. “The battery’s dead. I think the phone is fucked. Someone kicked me in the general area where I had it in a pocket.”
“You really need a doctor, darling,” Lily put her hand on my forehead.
“That feels good.”
It was late now, dark out. I was so sore I could barely move. If I went to some emergency room, they’d leave me lying on a gurney half the night, and I didn’t think the guy who beat me up ruptured anything essential. They might not let Lily stay with me, and I wasn’t leaving her, not now.
A hot bath would be just as good. I went into the bathroom and turned on the taps.
“You want a drink?” Lily called from the other room like she had a million times before.
&nb
sp; “Yeah,” I said, and I heard the clink of ice, and then the sound of Bill Evans playing “I Should Care”, a track from the Town Hall album I loved. Both of us loved it.
Lily brought the drink into the bathroom, sat on the edge of the tub while I drank it, her face damp from steam. Then I sank into the water and stopped thinking.
Later, sitting on one of the kitchen stools, Lily held a glass of red wine, not drinking it, just staring into the liquid. She put the glass on a table and got up, stretched and looked for her bag, which she found on the floor. She put it on her shoulder and turned towards the door.
“I should get going,” she said. “It’s late.
“Don’t go,” I said. “Please. I need you. I’m scared.”
She leaned her hip against my kitchen counter, and picked up an orange and rolled it between her hands.
“What of, darling, what are you scared of? Was it the dolls?”
I shook my head and sat down on one of the stools at the counter near Lily.
“No.”
“What, then?”
“Myself. Billy. People like Stan Shank who want him dead.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter. A creep.”
“What else?”
“Maxine doesn’t want Billy around,” I said.
“She has children, it makes you irrational,” Lily said. “I understand that.”
“Even Billy’s mother doesn’t really want him.”
“So, there’s only you.”
“You like him. Lily?”
“I like Billy a lot,” she said.
“I just keep thinking about the dolls in that refrigerator in the warehouse, and how they looked like the dolls at the toy store. I couldn’t say it before, not even to myself.”
“Go on.”
“I’m afraid of what people believe Billy did. That someone wants to set him up.”
“And how much you care about him? That, too?”
“I don’t know.” I picked up the bottle of Scotch Lily had left on the counter and poured some for both of us.
“They made him well in Florida, didn’t they?” said Lily, sipping her drink.
“You really believe that’s possible?”
Fresh Kills Page 19
