“What’s wrong?” I said.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “Should I get out the map? Should I navigate? I brought the map.”
“Sure.”
Billy looked at the map he got out of his knapsack while I drove through the little town of St George.
“What’s the address?” said Billy.
I told him. Intent on the map, he peered at it, tracing the roads with his finger, reciting the route first to himself, then to me.
“You find it?”
“I’m still looking,” he said. “I have to make sure that we get the best route. Otherwise, we could meander around for a long time.”
“Meander,” I said. “I like that word.”
I kept driving, past the rows of neat suburban houses, people still asleep inside except for one where an elderly man sat on the porch in his electric-blue pajamas, reading a newspaper.
Flags flapped in the breeze at strip malls, nail salons, Italian food joints. RV parks were filled with mobile homes. In one park with a scabby baseball field, a lone boy hit balls listlessly.
I was lost again. Couldn’t get the hang of the way the island worked. I pulled over to the side of the road, and peered over Billy’s shoulder at the map he was reading. He told me where to go.
We drove. It was Saturday, nice weather, people hauling fishing poles up towards the boardwalk that ran parallel to the beach.
In a sort of campground just off the road were pickup trucks and vans that contained dogs, some of them in cages. A sign announced that it was Dog Day on Staten Island. A big trailer had a sign out front that advertised dog grooming. Kids in yellow T-shirts handed around samples of doggie treats to the dog owners. People sat on deckchairs in the camping ground, their dogs around them, and talked to other people surrounded by their dogs.
“What, Artie? You look weird,” Billy said. “We’re OK now, we’re on the right road.”
In the rear-view mirror, I saw a green Jaguar behind me. I kept driving steadily, not hitting the gas or looking over my shoulder. Then the Jag pulled up, passed. The driver, alone in the car, was a trim good-looking woman with prematurely white hair who wore a sun visor. On the seat next to her was a fancy white leather bag of golf clubs. “Dykes on spikes,” someone had cracked about women golfers. Who was it? I couldn’t remember.
Sure, Billy had been on his own for a while on Wednesday morning, the time I’d left him at Tolya Sverdloff’s so I could take a run at Vera Gorbachev’s case. Billy told me he’d left Tolya’s to get ice cream. Mint chocolate chip. When I got home I found him in front of my building eating it. Told me he’d already eaten a Cherry Garcia cone from Ben and Jerry’s and looked a little worried in case I said it was too much, the Cherry Garcia and the mint chocolate chip. Same thing that night after the party at the toy store. All he did was leave and go home to my loft. Billy was a city kid and he could get around. Knew the subways. Knew how to get a cab.
“Got it,” Billy pointed to the map. “I found a really good way to get there.”
“What?”
He tapped the map. “Make that right over there,” he said.
“Billy, listen I have to tell you something.”
“Sure. I know something’s been bugging you. Go on.”
“Luda’s disappeared.”
He put the map down and half turned towards me. “What do you mean, disappeared? I talked to her yesterday.”
“I went over to Tolya’s while you were asleep. She disappeared. She walked out of the apartment or someone took her, and she’s gone. She’s just gone. You know anything at all about it? She say anything to you?”
“No. Course not. I would have told you.” Billy looked surprised and maybe a little hurt. “Course I would.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure. I really liked her. I felt she was like a younger sister. Oh, shit, Artie, that really sucks,” he said and I saw he was on the verge of tears. “We should go back to the city,” said Billy. “We should go back and help them find her. Where are you going? That’s not the right way at all.”
We didn’t go back. We kept going. I told Billy there was nothing we could do about Luda. I knew I was driving in circles but I didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to get to the house where we were going. I felt like I was losing my mind.
Up around the north-eastern edge of Staten Island I could see the Bayonne Bridge that linked it with New Jersey. In the car, Billy moved closer to me, for comfort or as a gesture of affection – I couldn’t tell.
“You have any gum, Artie?” he said. “I need something, mints, gum, something, I’m really trying not to smoke, I mean if I keep smoking, by the time I’m your age, I’ll have been smoking for like over thirty years. I’ll be dead, and also second-hand smoke is shitty for other people, so I’m trying.” He reached into the pocket of my jacket. “I used to think it was cool when I was a kid, but it’s not cool.”
I told him to get his hand out of my pocket and made it sound like I was kidding around when I pushed him away. It didn’t take Billy ten seconds, though, to find his missing cell phone.
29
For a while, Billy just held his phone and stared at it and didn’t say anything. I told him I was sorry; I said I’d found it and meant to give it to him but the words were hollow and we both knew it.
The image of the frozen baby in the freezer, buried between plastic bags of blueberries, came up from nowhere. I couldn’t get rid of it no matter where I put my attention, the road, the scenery; like floaters, those strange spots that sometimes drift into your vision, and you can’t get rid of, the baby stayed in front of my eyes.
Billy’s silence unnerved me. He sat, body rigid, straining against the seat belt. He didn’t ask me if he could drive, even though there weren’t many cars on the road and usually, if the roads were empty, I let him. He didn’t put his feet on the dashboard like he sometimes did. All I could see was his profile. He didn’t look at me at all.
When I started to apologize again, he finally turned his head slightly, looked at me and made it clear he didn’t want to talk. Unsure about the road I was on, I reached for the map and asked for his help. Billy passed the map over silently.
Taking the dolls out of the toy store would have been easy for Billy. Kids everywhere. Luda screaming. Parents arriving to take their children home. No big deal for Billy to take the dolls, leave the store, get a cab or take the subway.
For all I knew, he had stashed them at my place – under the bed even – that night before he put them in the fridge in the Chinatown warehouse, if that’s what he did. His prints weren’t on them, but so what? Then I thought about the latex gloves in my loft. Billy said Mike Rizzi had forgotten them.
Billy’s expressionless face, rigid limbs, his refusing to talk, made me suspicious. The suspicions hit hard and made me feel cold.
“You’re shivering,” he said.
“I’m fine. Thanks. What about you?”
He shifted on the seat slightly, so that he half faced me while I drove.
“It’s mine,” said Billy “The cell phone is mine and I would have given it to you if you wanted, I’d give you anything of mine you wanted, but you just took it while I was asleep.”
“You knew?”
“How could I not? It was there, and then it wasn’t. No one else was in the loft.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I think you’re going the wrong way, Artie. Give me the map back, OK? I think you should turn left up at that corner.”
“How come you didn’t say anything about the phone if you knew I had it?”
“How come you didn’t? I wanted you to say something. I wanted to trust you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. Did you look at the pictures I took with the phone?”
“Yes.”
“Left, left and then right at the next corner. Artie, go left!”
“You want to talk about the pictures?”
“Not really,” B
illy said. “I’m just looking forward to our day together,” he added formally, like an adult accepting an invitation. “Did we bring enough stuff? Do we need bait? Are we OK on everything?” He reached into the pocket of his jeans, got out his red Swiss Army knife and, one at a time, checked the blades.
“What are you doing?”
“I just wanted to check that everything’s in OK shape,” he said. “What did you think I was doing? Shipshape, isn’t that the right expression?”
In the suburban streets now we passed a few kids out on skateboards and bikes. In driveways people climbed into their SUVs and vans and backed out, probably heading for the beach or the supermarket.
It was still very early, but it was Saturday. People out doing regular stuff, they looked like figures in a TV commercial, ordinary but unreal and apart from us, Billy and me.
I turned the radio on, and Billy hit the buttons for some country station he liked. I wanted news. He stopped me putting it on.
Was he afraid for me to hear it? I needed to know what was happening, needed to know about Luda, and when I saw a gas station, I pulled in. I didn’t want Billy to hear the call.
I climbed out of the car and Billy followed.
“What did you talk about on the phone with Luda?” I said. “Remind me.”
“I told you,” said Billy. “You’re getting old, Artie, you don’t remember.” He laughed amiably when he said it. The anger had gone. He punched me lightly on the arm. “You’re the best,” he said affectionately.
“So tell me again.”
“I don’t really remember that much. Luda was just like talking in Russian and I told her some funny jokes and stories, I think. She kept saying I have to talk to Uncle Artie, I said you were out, so she started crying. I felt bad for her so I made nice.”
“You want to get me some coffee,” I said to Billy. “Get us some kind of snacks?”
“Sure, Artie.”
Billy ambled toward the store attached to the gas station.
I called Sonny Lippert. The phone was busy. Tolya’s phones were busy. I kept hitting the buttons on my phone. No one answered. Nothing.
Billy returned with cartons of coffee, and after we were back in the car, I said, “I feel so bad about Luda. Val wanted me to be her American godfather.”
Sonny Lippert had asked me if there was anyone Billy could be jealous of, someone I cared about. I was testing Billy. If he was jealous of Luda, if he thought she had some kind of hold on me, maybe he’d open up.
“I know that,” said Billy. “She told me. She says to me, oh, I love Artemy I want him to be my American godfather, and I said, wow, that’d be nice because then we’d be related too, her and me, in a way.” Billy drank some of his coffee and got gum and candy out of his pocket. “I always wanted a little sister,” he said. “So I got Juicy Fruit,” he added. “I got spice drops. And some red Twizzlers. You want something? You can have all the white spice drops, if you want, I mean sour pineapple flavor, yuck, but I’d give you the reds, too.”
Eager to please, Billy rubbed his eyes with one hand, and offered candy. I took some gum.
Near the Bayonne Bridge that connected Staten Island to New Jersey, oil terminals rose on the horizon. On the Jersey side was where the big container ships now docked, and Bayonne and the area around it had expanded – tough working-class towns.
The Kill Van Kull separated New Jersey and Staten Island, and around here on the island were ramshackle houses, a few cheesy new condos, woods, creeks. For this part of Staten Island up in the north, you couldn’t see the rest of the city at all. It made me feel I was a million miles from home. Kill Van Kull. Lots of Dutch names, I thought, drifting, tired from not sleeping.
“There’s an island around here,” Billy said, “with a bird sanctuary. We could go. I’d like that. What do you think? You think we could do that?”
“I don’t think there’s any boats anymore that go. I think those were from old times, those islands. Some of those islands were for quarantine, diseases, maybe smallpox, that kind of thing.”
“Who would stop us?”
“So, about Luda, what do you think, I mean would you mind if I was like a sort of godfather for her?”
“Didn’t we just talk about this? Sure,” Billy said casually. “That’s OK. I’m good with that, like I already said. It’s fine.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see him, but he was relaxed, head back against the seat, feet on the dashboard, a kid having a good time. He ate the spice drops out of a bag, selecting the green ones first, placing them on his tongue, one at a time, and then swallowing.
“You’re not chewing those things?”
“I’m chewing, I’m chewing.” He laughed.
Why couldn’t I just ask him straight out about Luda and everything else? But if I asked, I thought for the second time, it was the same as accusing him. I’d lose him. It was bad enough he didn’t know I was taking him back to Florida that night.
For sure Billy had been at my loft when Luda walked out of Tolya’s. Had I been there with him? I worked out the times again. There was no way he could have gone and snatched her, and anyhow, here he was sitting beside me. I breathed out. I looked for some cigarettes.
“Here.” Billy handed me a pack.
Billy rolled down his window and leaned out.
“God, what’s that smell,” he said. “What is that? Fuck! I thought they closed the garbage dumps. Sorry, I’m not supposed to say fuck.”
I opened my own window and took a whiff.
“It’s methane,” I said.
“Where are we?”
“Fresh Kills. That’s what it’s called. Used to be this was the city garbage dump,” I said. “They covered it over with some kind of plastic, wrapped it up, put landfill on top, and dirt and stuff, so they could grow grass and trees.”
“You’re not wise in the ways of the wild, Artie, are you?” Billy was giggling. “I mean nature’s not your thing.”
“Yeah, well, they had to put in pipes so the gas from all that packed-in garbage could escape, otherwise the whole thing would just explode.”
“Like boom!” Billy said. “Wow, that’s weird, all that crap just festering away under the grass, getting ready to push up through some golf course. Totally, completely weird. Can we take a look? I could do a science report on it. Festering is a good word, right?”
“There’s nothing to look at, unless you want to drive up to the old sanitation plant, I mean what for?”
“Can we?” Billy said. “I want to. Please?”
When we found the road that led to the sanitation plant, I stopped and we got out of the car.
After a few hundred feet, the road turned into dirt; there was a fence with a locked gate and a sign warning people to keep out. In the distance, you could see some of the chimneys from the old plants. The insidious stink of methane got to me.
I said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Billy had his face up against the gate, curious, interested.
“Come on.”
“You want to fish, come on, let’s get moving.” I was irritated.
Billy dawdled some more. He looked through the fence, he bent down to examine some pebbles, he kicked an empty soda can with the toe of his sneaker.
He was halfway up the path to the old recycling plant. I got out my phone. The reception was lousy out here, but I got through to Tolya who told me Luda was still missing. He was furious I’d called the case in to Sonny Lippert. Told me there were now so many cops on the case Luda was good as dead. Tolya said when the cops came in on a kidnap, the kid always turned up dead. I told him he’d more or less said that already.
I listened while Tolya yelled at me in Russian. I told him Luda would turn up. I didn’t believe my own words. He was angry and hurt because I didn’t keep a promise. I hung up and saw that Billy was watching me; he didn’t say anything, though.
Billy stuffed his hands in his pockets and sauntered slowly towards me, kicking the dirt, am
bling around, behaving like a teenager. What bugged me was it felt Billy was putting it on. It was as if he had learned an act, to prove to me he was just a regular guy. I had a sour taste in my mouth.
Out here in Fresh Kills, I felt cut off. Nobody was around, only me and Billy, and him wandering around what used to be a garbage dump, the methane leaking, stinking up everything, getting in my throat and making me gag.
Watching Billy while I waited for him, I started thinking again. Stuff that I had discarded, things I’d pushed down pretty deep, pressed up.
On the road all morning, I had started trying to fit together the pieces. Started trying to account for Billy’s time – days, hours. I let the poison in.
I got into the car and turned the radio to 1010; stories about the dead baby in the freezer were followed by news about the dead girl, Ruthie Kelly, who got killed in Jersey and had lived in Brooklyn.
Ten minutes later, Billy was still kicking stones around. He was Genia’s son. My father was his grandfather. If I didn’t take care of him, who would? I tried to keep myself focused on this. I got out of the car to get some air, but it didn’t help.
At the toy store Wednesday night, Billy had scared Luda plenty. Somehow he knew seeing dolls that looked like her would shake her up good. Maybe he did it for the hell of it. Maybe it was his idea of a joke. He talked Russian to her, a nice American boy who talked to her in Russian, a good-looking boy who was almost family. Billy was my father’s grandson.
It never ended, this Russian thing. Tolya had warned me over and over that it would never go away. It was part of who I was, my history, but I had refused to believe him until now.
I had made myself into an American, a New Yorker; I didn’t have an accent. I buried the whole fucking past as best I could. But when I looked at Billy – he was poking around a grassy knoll near one of the methane pipes – I couldn’t escape. I looked at Billy, I saw my father.
Fresh Kills Page 26
