"You'll freeze to death," I said.
"Can I come upstairs?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I have a cold."
"Fuck you."
"Listen, if you don't want a ride, then go home yourself. I'm going to bed," I said and got out my keys and opened the door. She followed me inside.
"Is cold," she said.
I took my time. I unlocked the mailbox. I took out the mail and sorted it. Slowly, I read it, standing in the cramped overheated vestibule. In the small hot space, I could smell her. She followed me into the elevator. I was too tired, or too strung out, to stop her. By the time we were at my place, I was furious. I turned on the lights.
"What do you want?"
"I told you."
"Listen, cut it out. You're a kid."
"Then give me a drink," she said, pulling off her coat.
"I'll give you a drink and then I'll call a car service and send you home, OK?"
"Maybe, maybe not." She was playing a role she'd seen in some movie, but what made her sexy wasn't the act; it was the way she looked and dressed. It was crude but it worked; she knew it. She removed her coat slowly. Underneath she wore a mini skirt and tight low cut sweater. She flopped on my couch, legs apart. She wore stockings, but no underpants.
She reached down. "You like my thong?" she said.
I ignored her. She got up and came over to the counter and perched on a stool and leaned forward so I could almost see the nipples. I told myself this was a case I was working and the girl was nineteen.
I got an open bottle of white wine out of the fridge, but she said, "Vodka, please. Then I could give you some boom boom," she said. "Isn't this what all men want?"
"Where'd you hear that?"
I found some vodka in the freezer and poured a shot into a water glass and gave it to her and watched her knock it back. I put the bottle on the counter. She poured herself another drink.
I tossed some cigarettes on the counter. Under the bravado, she was scared. I wondered if she knew something after all.
"Why don't you tell me what's bugging you?" I said. "You're scared, right? So tell me how I can help you." I was on automatic pilot I was so tired.
"Why you don't want to fuck me?"
"Stop it. Just stop, OK? I'm on a job, you're a kid and if you keep this up, I'll just walk away. So talk to me."
She reached for the vodka bottle. "I was only offering," she said. "You like American girls who are more coy? You like it better if I use metaphors. Boom boom? Shagging. This is what they say in Austin Powers movies. Shag me. This is what they say in England?"
"Tell me how you found the girl's clothing near the boardwalk."
"I'm hungry."
I got out some bread and ham and cheese and made her a sandwich.
She said, "Give me mustard."
I got out the jar. She spread the mustard and then ate hungrily.
"Don't they feed you where you live?"
Her mouth full, she nodded her head. "This is better," she mumbled.
For a few minutes I drank some wine and watched her. When she had finished, she drank a glass of vodka without stopping, and took one of my cigarettes. I made coffee.
"Better?"
She smiled. "Thank you. Is really cold outside."
"So tell me, is it your birthday?"
She jumped off the stool and made for the couch again, where she threw herself onto it, put her feet up and looked at me.
"I can sit here, it's OK?"
I sat down in the chair next to her. "Just tell me."
Ivana pulled her legs under her like a schoolgirl and sat forward.
"Yes," she said. "This is true. You know, all my life I think if I can just get to the United States, it will be OK. I'll be safe, you know? And then I come here and everything is not safe, planes fall from sky, people are scared, people are buying plastic bags to keep out radiation, duct tape, for what? Everyone is worried, television is propaganda just like when I'm little kid at home, you understand?"
I nodded.
"I can maybe have some more vodka, please?" She went to the kitchen and brought back the bottle and drank from it steadily.
"So I come and I think, OK, I will be American. I study English, which I already learn in school, I read newspapers, I try to hang out with American people, but I am bored," she said. "Here nobody reads books. Nobody cares for nothing. You know what I study to be at home?"
"What's that?"
"I am going to be famous scientist. Doctor, maybe." She shook her head. "Never mind. So I'll tell you about what I know about this little girl, this May Luca, if you want."
Go on.
"They make money off these children."
"Who does?"
"Men. They take them, they sell them, you understand me?"
"This isn' t Thailand."
"You think men in Brooklyn doesn't like little girls? Listen, one time I'm hearing there's a group, men who want little girls, little boys also, and they pay good."
"How did you hear it?"
"I have friend," she said.
"Who's the friend?"
"Friend of my aunt. Name is Evgenia Borisova who is married to Mr. Farone with the restaurant."
I poured myself a drink.
"Yes, she is your cousin, right?" Ivana winked and reached for the vodka bottle. "Right? She talks to my aunt about you all the time, Artemy this, Artemy that. I ask myself who is this wonderful Artemy."
I was surprised. Most of the time Genia seemed eager to get rid of me.
"So what's her name, this aunt of yours?"
To hide my unease, I got up and went to the kitchen, where I took a fresh bottle of white out of the fridge, got the corkscrew from the drawer, pulled the cork, and poured the cold wine into a glass. I stayed there and drank half a glass in one gulp while Ivana lolled on my couch.
"Name is Marina Jones."
"Jones?"
"For convenience she is Jones, OK?"
On the floor not far from where Ivana inhabited my couch was the stack of receipts from Johnny Farone's. Hurriedly, I swept them up and carried them to my desk and stuffed them into a drawer. I looked idly at the bookshelf. The books seemed out of order. It looked as if someone had moved my books, but I was drunk and exhausted and I figured I was starting to hallucinate.
I said, "What else?"
"Can I stay here tonight, Mr. Artie?" she asked. "It's cold and I don't like taking the train when is still dark out."
"I'll call you a car."
"Please," she said. "We can talk more."
"I don't blackmail easy," I said. "What else do you know?"
"I know your cousin Genia is having big affair."
"So?"
"You don't want to know who with?"
I shrugged. "It doesn't make any difference to me."
"Elem Zeitsev," she said, triumphantly.
"How do you know?"
"I forgot maybe to tell you I worked as coat check girl for a while at Farone's. Did I forget to tell you? Ivana is a bad girl. Maybe you want to punish her?"
I picked up the phone and called a radio car and they put me on hold.
"I'll be good," she said and reached down and pulled up her sweater from the bottom up, rolled it slowly, then yanked it off so I could see her breasts. With one hand, she rubbed her left nipple until it was hard.
So I hung up the phone, and somehow she was in my bed and we were both naked and I had my hands on her.
I thought: what am I doing with this kid in my bed, and she was awake suddenly and wrapped around me. I thought to myself: grow up.
For a few minutes I feigned sleep. All my life I'd been a sucker for women and I was trying to grow up, but I was lousy at it. I didn't mess with kids, though. I didn't like them. It wasn't that I was judgmental; I just didn't get it. Young girls seemed dull, unformed and needy; once you'd slept with them, and they weren't much fun in the sack, either, what else was there?
Ivana was dir
ty. She had her hands on my cock, then her mouth, and I was dumb with booze and drugs and sex.
Later, half asleep, my mind drifted. I thought about Lily. Sometimes I still believed she was coming back.
The yearning took over, the welling up of wanting her. I missed Lily horribly. Sometimes, when I'd had too much to drink, I could feel myself think, oh, Lily, please come back. When I called Beth in London, if Lily picked up the phone, I kept it light. I kept it friendly. I didn't want her to cut me off and she could be brutal if you transgressed. But at night when I was alone, watching TV or listening to music, sometimes I thought I heard the door.
It opened. Lily would be leaning against the doorframe like she always did. Tall, lanky, pushing the thick red hair back from her face, tying it up in a pony tail with one of the rubber bands she kept in her pockets. I imagined her standing there, smiling at me. It never happened.
Now her face, her voice floated into my dreams and got mixed up with Maxine and my cousin Genia and this girl next to me, what was her name? Ivana.
Startled, I woke up.
"Mr. Artie?" Ivana said.
"Christ, what do you call me that stupid name for?"
"I think is funny, you know? Respectful for older guy."
The clock was near the bed. It was 8.30.
"Get up," I said. "Come on. Now."
"Why should I go?"
"I'm going to take you home is why. Or to work. Don't you have to go to work?"
"Is Sunday."
Sullen now, she climbed out of bed. She had a fantastic body, long, lithe, big shoulders, and the sort of breasts you wanted to put your face in.
I got up. I felt her watching me. I grabbed the jeans that were crumpled on the floor and put them on and went into the kitchen and made coffee.
"Let's go." I handed her a mug of coffee.
She was furious. I'd made a bad mistake sleeping with her.
I pulled on a sweater and shoes and grabbed my jacket and waited by the door while she got dressed. It was after nine by the time we got downstairs and out onto the street. It was Sunday but I saw Mike through the coffee shop window, scrubbing down the counter, taking inventory. He looked up and saw me with the girl and waved.
"Stop acting like a four-year-old and get in the car," I said to Ivana.
"I want to go upstairs."
"Get in the car."
"I forget something. My cigarette case." She grinned at me suddenly and added, "It doesn't matter. I make you present."
Suddenly, Ivana edged away from me and without saying anything, pulled her coat tight around her and started running. Faster and faster, not looking back, she ran down the block and disappeared around the corner. I watched her go and for a minute I wondered if she'd make trouble. She was a fantasist. She made up stuff about radioactive clothes. But she was a kid looking for something, security, fun, mischief, and I thought: to hell with her.
I went upstairs and crawled into bed. I had to sleep. I didn't care about anything except sleep. Have to go to Brooklyn, have to see May Luca's mother, call Sonny Lippert, call Maxine, pay bills, car needs servicing, murder, blood-soaked clothes . . . Perched on the edge of sleep, before I fell over, I suddenly remembered feeling someone had been in my loft. I couldn't hang onto what it was that made me think it, and I was so tired I had to grab the edges of the mattress to try to stay awake. It was no good. I was too tired to care and I slept hard.
The phone woke me. It was light out. I looked at my watch. It was one o'clock and my head hurt like hell.
"You're still asleep?"
"What's going on?"
"It's May Luca, man," Lippert said and I sat up and fumbled on the table by the bed for some cigarettes and couldn't find any.
"The case is closed, right? The kid was snatched from the backyard by a creep, and he killed her. Like we thought. End of story. You asked about the clothes. You asked about the baseball jacket. It was the girl's. May had a baseball jacket."
"No, man, it's not." Sonny's voice went quiet. "The first results on the clothes from near the beach, they came back from the lab. You're interested?"
"I'm listening," I said, but I was out of bed, stumbling across the room, looking for cigarettes.
"Go on," I said to Sonny Lippert.
"The preliminary reports are in," he said.
My heart was hitting against my chest.
"I heard you," I said.
"There's no match with May Luca's blood. The clothes didn't belong to her."
"But the blood type was the same."
"Yeah, some of it. But it was O positive, like a million other people. It was the DNA we needed."
"I thought you told me her ma said she had a blue baseball jacket, she was a tomboy, she loved the game."
Sonny said, "What type of blue? Did any of us ask? Jesus, man, we fucked up, you know. The jacket we found was a dark blue Yankees jacket. May's jacket was from the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets farm team, out by Coney Island. You know where I mean. It was blue but it wasn't from the Yankees. The father came in this morning and looked at it. It wasn't hers. None of the stuff was hers. We just assumed. We fucking assumed too much. We had a creep, we had a body, we had a weapon, we tied them together, so we assumed."
By now I had clothes on and my car keys in my hand, and a fresh battery for my cell phone, which had gone dead. As I made for the front door I saw a pink plastic cigarette case on the kitchen counter. It was Ivana's and I grabbed it, and yanked the pack out, desperate for a smoke.
A small gold cross on a thin chain fell out. I turned it over and over. I read the initials. I had seen it before. I had seen it on Billy Farone.
"I make you a present," Ivana had said. She had left the cross for me; it wasn't an accident.
Part Three
17
On a very quiet day, you could almost hear the ocean from the Far ones' house in Manhattan Beach. You could walk to the beach easily. Once, I'd gone with Billy, who showed me how to surf cast.
It was maybe ten minutes from Brighton Beach, but it was quiet and expensive and the houses were big and the streets had English names: Coleridge, Dover, Exeter, Hastings, Kensington, Norfolk.
The Farone place was large and beige and there was a light in the downstairs window. I parked out front and, the gold cross in my hand, ran up the walk and leaned on the bell until Genia opened the door. I held out the cross.
"Is this Billy's? Is it his, Genia? Listen to me, don't look in the other direction, OK? Where's Johnny? Does he stay at his restaurant every night? Do you two fucking care about your kid? When were either of you going to call and tell me Billy's missing?"
She took the gold cross from my hand and held it close to her face and, suddenly, slumped onto a chair in the hall.
"My God," she said. "Where did you get this? What do you mean missing?"
"Where's Billy?" I said.
"I told you, he went upstate yesterday morning, with Stevie and his father, the kid across the street. They promised to get him home early today, in time for church, they promised, but it gets later and later, Artemy, and I think, OK, it's a few hours, so what, and then I call and no answer and no one home at the Gervasis'." Genia talked mostly in Russian, switching on and off to English, hysteria rising in both.
I said, "You didn't think to call me."
"I try. Your cell phone is not working."
"You could call at home."
"I'm scared." Her face was pinched, but she was dry-eyed. "I wanted to call you," she said. "I've been waiting. I went out to look for my boy but he's not there. They're not there. The people, Stevie's parents weren't at home. I am hoping you come. Johnny said you were asking about Billy, and then you asked me about him and his friend, Stevie, the kid down the street. So you knew something? You knew and you didn't tell me?" She stopped for breath and to light a cigarette.
"I didn't want you to worry."
"You think I'm a bad mother, you think I don't pay attention my son is missing?" she whispered in Russian, l
ooking up from a little white silk chair in the hall of her house. She crouched low, as if to protect herself from a blow. Genia looked crumpled and tiny.
"He was supposed to call last night," she said. "He didn't call. I tried him, he has a cell phone, nothing. Nothing from Stevie's parents, and I was petrified. I sat here alone in this house and convinced myself he was fine, he was with Stevie, but I couldn't move."
She held the cross in one hand and gestured at the living room of the big house with the other. She peered at the inscription; it was a date. Billy's first communion, she said. From Tiffany's. She went to the city, she went to Tiffany's and bought it and had the date engraved. Genia put out the cigarette and looked at her hands as if they were distinct objects, separate from herself.
"What about Johnny?"
"What about him? He says leave the boy, he's a boy, Gen, he has to be tough, OK. Nothing is wrong with him. Give him some rope, he says and I think what for? To hang himself?"
"Come on, let's go sit in the living room," I said, and Genia, looking at the gold cross again, began to cry.
We sat on the white sofa. Suddenly, Genia's sleek, made-up face seemed to crack. Tears fell down her face in a way I'd never seen tears. They fell steadily without any break, streams of them, coming down her cheeks. I held her hand and waited for her to stop and looked towards the living room.
Everything in the house was white, white silk chairs, white carpet, a white velvet sectional in the sunken living room, which was white. As soon as Johnny had the money, he'd bought it for her.
Johnny got her the brand new big house she had wanted all her life. The facade was red brick. The entry way—she called it the portico—had slender white columns and between them a light shaped like a lantern and big as a wrecking ball. The driveway was lined with cement planters and little topiary bushes and there were two Chinese dragons made of stone that flanked the two-car garage. It had all seemed a paradise to her when she moved in.
Most of all it was the smell she loved; everything in the house, the house itself, was brand new: the carpets, the furniture, the appliances, the ruched taffeta curtains in all the windows, the pale mauve Formica panels that hid the closets in her bedroom, the matching silk spread and curtains, the granite in the kitchen, the marble in the bathrooms.
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