New York City Noir
Page 88
Her elbow throbbed and flamed from opening the door, but still she followed.
“You can’t do that! Wait!” Kicking off her flip-flops to try and move faster. “No, I think you’re not allowed to do that. Without a warrant.” Was this true? She hadn’t the faintest idea. All she knew for sure was, “This is my house!”
The backdoor sticks, the tile is scratched; the basement floods every time someone cries, Vin used to joke. But according to the brokers who periodically call, the brick rectangle is now worth two million easy. Ten thousand was what Rose’s daddy paid for it brand new, back in the ’40s.
“Germans came ashore then, did you know that? German spies in Rockaway!”
Now total strangers regularly stroll up and make offers on the house over the beach wall.
“But I’m gonna fool them all, Li,” Rose all of a sudden decides. “I’m gonna leave the place to you.”
The Good Guys didn’t help anyone that much. Other than a lady who let them load up her car with groceries in the Waldbaum’s parking lot, the Good Guys never really helped anyone at all. Vin said they tried but no one was interested. Even the lady with the groceries, Vin said, probably she just felt sorry for them. So the Good Guys took to drinking instead. Then they’d drag race their mopeds up and down Beach Channel Drive. Vin would stagger into Sunday dinner to alternately love up and criticize Rose. My favorite flower. You call this turd a meatball? My soft, fragrant Rose. Lazy bitch can’t go to Bensonhurst for some decent bread!
“It was that and more, and I took it until the day he says, Rose, he says, do me a favor. Don’t serve this grease when my cousins come from Calabria. In front of our Jewish friends, he says this in front of the Friedmans. He calls my sauce grease.”
Li can’t possibly understand the story, yet he tilts his head at its tone of hurt and even stops eating while she speaks. If Paulie and his atheist wife ever showed her half the deference, she might have invited them to live here already. If.
“That night, I burned the table leaves,” Rose continues. “This table here. I dragged those two heavy planks one by one across the floor—see here these long scratches?—that’s from draggin’ them, and mind you, by myself, since Paulie’s too busy upstairs with Vin watchin’ detectives chase each other or professional wrestlin’ . . . But I know you would have helped me, Li.” At that, he tries to give Rose the wad of bills from his Ziploc bag and she pretends not to notice.
* * *
Once she finally got to the garage, all the chairs and cushions she’d paid the grandkids to stack at the end of the summer had been tossed across the dirty floor, and still the officers were going at it, knocking over beach umbrellas, tossing paint cans. What would they do if they actually found a person? Her father had come over just like this, on a boat from Sicily. And Vin had arrived in an Armani suit on a plane. But the ways they’d been harassed would be nothing compared to what they’d do to a poor Asian soul stuffed on a freighter, for months it had to be, now half-drowned and frozen from kicking for his life in the frosty June chop. Just thinking about it made her sure she heard the croup again, that someone was there.
“Someone’s here,” Kevin or Kieran said, but he meant Rose. “Hey. Hi. Ma’am. Ya really shouldn’t be out.”
“At my age?”
“At this hour. With that cough.” One of his green eyes was lazy, drifting. Rose thought to cough again to cover for the stranger. She wondered if the wok she’d long ago ruined had wound up here in the garage. She’d cleaned it wrong and it had rusted or—
“Let me take you back inside,” Kevin or Kieran insisted, grasping her elbow. Ow. “Mrs.—”
“Don’t you even remember me?” The way it came out sounded like begging. “Paulie’s mom?” Of course, it had been years since she was even that in any meaningful way. She touched the bulge in her sweatshirt. It had been years since she’d been in her own garage, let alone had a car, driven a car, ridden a bike, fired a gun. The beachy gas smell pulled her back to all those sticky cousins of Vin’s, of endlessly boiling pots, gritty towels, crumbs, bones, and water rings that slowly led her down to the sand dragging those two heavy planks that signified: Company. Two leaves, two meats, the vegetable side—
Kevin or Kieran claimed to not have grown up around here. But too bad, he’d kill for a house like this, on the beach. At the door, he gave her a card. In case she saw anything unusual. Then O’Donnell was beckoning him away, to the neighbor’s, setting Blacky off all over again.
“Fires on the beach are illegal; you should know that,” said the policemen when they arrived, that first time. “We could give you a ticket. Burnin’ some good wood there too, looks like oak. We could haul your crazy ass in.” When they’d finally gone, it took Rose a long time to bury the rest of the charred leaves beneath the sand. And still, a dog had it partially dug up by daylight. Vin saw it and said, “So?” If Rose wanted a buffet, well, he’d just invite more company. Then he drag raced his moped into a Green Line bus.
* * *
The kids on the beach used to always say they were digging a hole all the way to China. And once, for a few months somewhere in the ’70s, she’d fashioned a hair ornament out of chopsticks like she’d seen on that actress, what’s her name, in that film, whatsitcalled?
“Other than that, I gotta admit, when it comes to things Oriental, I’m one big dummy.”
Li starts to nod but an involuntary shiver overtakes him. His eyes close. He slumps against the table’s pedestal. Rose imagines his mother teaching him to swim. A river it must have been, not a curly, raging ocean. A nice, manageable river.
* * *
At first, he looked like some kind of sea monster soaked through and wrapped in the moldy shower curtain. You could see his chest go in and out, but close up that rusty, tentative sound it made scared her. Every now and then he’d erupt with the cough. The shower house itself was a dank lair, reeking of vomit and adorned with wet leaves, cobwebs, and the butts of cigarettes she’d long suspected her teenage grandson of smoking.
“I can help you,” Rose said. “My daughter-in-law is a doctor.”
The stranger bowed, moaning himself up onto his hands and knees, but then he heaved up saltwater and collapsed again.
“You come into my house,” she insisted. “I have a nice house.”
* * *
“Ma! Ma! You okay? Did ya trip? What are you doin’ down here under the table? The traffic, ohmygod. That Golden Adven— Why don’t you have the TV on?”
“I’m sleeping?” Rose opens her sticky eyes to see a short, wide man with a graying goatee wheeling several bulging Samsonites. “What are those for?” She pushes up on to her forearms, blinking.
“Thought I’d start the process. Since I was comin’ anyways.” Paulie crosses his furry arms.
According to the window it’s now morning. Low tide. Soon enough he’s eying the empty bottle of Sambuca near her foot and swearing.
“You know you’re not allowed—”
“I thought she was decaying. I thought they were closing the beach!”
“You’re still talking about a damn whale? MA! A dozen or two people drowned right out there last night—”
Her confusion clears, leaving panic. “Where is he? What did you— Oh!” Li’s beside her, his chest moving up and down, kind of. “Call Maureen!”
But Paulie’s too busy hating her to notice. “They got some cement trucks to bury the big ugly fish, all right? The beach is safe. NOW CALM THE FUCK— Oh god, not again!”
Now he’s spotted his father’s shirt—the ivory cowboy number.
“You keep tellin’ me you don’t need takin’ care of, so how come every time you get blicked, you gotta carry this shit around?” Grabbing for the sleeve, he—“Aah!”—discovers there’s an arm inside it, and there’s a man under the dining room table attached to the arm.
Rose can’t help but giggle. She was waiting for that. “You should see your face, Paulie!”
“What the hell—”
“Have you gone fuckin’ nuts? Where did you—why—”
“I was hoping Maureen—”
“What? You can’t ask her to do that.”
“Why not?” With effort, Rose pulls Li’s dented too-still skull onto her lap. “He’s a Christian.”
“You mean criminal!” Paul yells, patting his khakis. “And she’s a vet.”
“Then call a priest.”
“I’m callin’ the cops is who I’m callin’!” Paul starts rifling through his suitcases. “If you’d please shut your trap.” Sounding exactly like Vin.
“When you find your weapon, let me know,” Rose says, reaching into her sweatshirt pocket to cock the gun. “Then you can just kill me and get my house.”
“What? Where’s my phone. I just had—”
The kick of the gun knocks Rose down where Paulie is also heading with a sashay–low twist combination that leaves him slumped right over his bulbous luggage. The movements seem so foreign that she actually finds herself wondering, Did he just get a bad haircut or something? Then she remembers to thrust the gun into Li’s dead-cold hands, their life about drained from them. Fingerprints, right? Rose didn’t endure years of Columbo for nothing.
She is waiting for Li to die before crossing herself, a reflex, and calling the number on the detective’s card. Not Kevin or Kieran but Andrew—her new friend. He’ll be the one to do her the favor. Andrew Volishskya. Not from around here.
BUCKNER’S ERROR
BY JOSEPH GUGLIELMELLI
Shea Stadium
I followed him to the platform for the 7 train at Grand Central, a place so far down below the street that I expected to meet devils with pitchforks on their way up from Hell. The tail was easy. After a couple of days on the job, I saw that he always wore the same kind of clothes, like a uniform or that crazy detective on cable. White Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up, beige khaki pants, and brown loafers. But today he added a cap—navy-blue with an antique capital B on the front and little red socks at the back. A brand new Boston Red Sox baseball cap.
I noticed more people in the city wearing Boston caps after the team had won the World Series. Always brand new, never faded from the sun or stained with sweat. It was like they were previously ashamed to walk the city’s streets broadcasting their loyalty or were afraid that crazy Yankees fans would chant “1918” at them when they went for a quart of milk or to pick up their dry cleaning. I say, your team is your team no matter what and no matter what anyone says. I wore a Mets cap that wasn’t new when they won the Series in 1986, and carried a copy of today’s Post in my back pocket. The two of us waited, on this warm June night, for the 7 train to take us to Shea Stadium where the Mets and Red Sox would play the first of three interleague games.
He stood quietly on the platform, leaning against the elevator with his hands in his pockets. He stared off into space with no paper or book to read. The stale, sticky air did not seem to bother him. Next to him, a fat guy in a crappy suit with his polyester tie at half-mast, tired and heading home to Queens, mopped his face with a rumpled handkerchief. Three Korean women who could have been anywhere from forty to seventy years old stood silent and still, holding shopping bags filled with vegetables and other groceries. I disregarded them. Further down the platform, college kids wearing black awayjerseys with the name and number of their favorite Mets players on the back were obviously going to the game. The kids were playful and laughing but I knew they wouldn’t get in my way when the train pulled in. I didn’t expect the subway car to be sardine-can crowded until we got to the Queens stations.
A blast of cooler air signaled the arrival of a 7 express, which meant fewer stops and fewer chances for screw-ups. When the train stopped, we stood in front of the last car. He didn’t move to rush the doors like so many subway riders do. He followed the tinny, distorted message over the car’s loudspeakers and let the passengers off the train before getting on. I maneuvered my way into the car so that I was standing in front of him and holding the same pole in the middle of the car. A little guy wearing blue mechanic’s overalls and reading El Diario had grabbed a piece of the pole to my left. A teenaged black girl on my right was lost in the music playing from her iPod, swaying in time to the song. I was lucky that it was ’70s Philly soul leaking from her headphones, not some rap shit.
I knew that I had to make my play before Queensboro Plaza, the first stop on the ride to Shea with connections to other subway lines. The express rattled through the first two underground stations, making so much noise that I couldn’t even talk to myself, forget about talking to anybody else. When the train left the Hunters Point station and emerged into the evening sunlight five or six stories above the Queens streets, the clatter lessened to a normal din.
He was humming along with a Delfonics song from the girl’s iPod and staring out of the windows at abandoned buildings covered from rooftop to ground floor in graffiti that appeared to be carefully designed and painted, rather than the work of random punks with spray cans. He held onto the pole with both hands. He seemed not to be in the subway car but in a private place with a look of contentment on his face. It was the same expression that my second ex-wife had when she did yoga in the morning.
I startled him when I told him that he was a brave man. I saw in his eyes that he was confused and did not know whether to ignore me, to ask me what I wanted, or, like any true New Yorker, to tell me to fuck off. I continued to make eye contact and said, “You’re a brave man to be wearing a Red Sox cap to Shea.”
He relaxed and smiled, never questioning how I knew where he was going. “Oh, I don’t think so. It’s not like going to Yankee Stadium when the Sox play. The crowds there can get rowdy. Besides, we Red Sox fans have a lot in common with you Mets fans,” he said, taking one hand off the pole long enough to point to the cap on my head. “We both hate the Yankees.”
I smiled back at him. “Good point, good point. But I don’t know, man. We snatched Pedro from under your nose. And if Manny stands at home plate admiring a home run ball to show off for all his Washington Heights homeboys, it could get ugly.”
Still smiling, he shook his head but was fading back to his own personal place with his own thoughts, not the thoughts of some joker on the subway. He turned away from me to look at the midtown Manhattan skyline that now dominated the view from the left side of the train after it had pulled away from the Courthouse Square stop. I needed to keep this conversation going.
“I’m sitting up in nosebleed country. I’m gonna need one of those guides that mountain climbers use to find my seat. But what do you expect when you decide to go at the last minute? Where are you sitting?”
He still didn’t know what to make of me but was polite. “My friend’s family has season tickets. Field level behind first base.” I knew all about the friend. I was standing in front of him because of the friend.
“Nice. I’ve sat around there a couple of times. I’ve been going to Mets games since my dad first took me when I was six. Most of the guys I know follow the teams that their dads followed. It is like an inheritance, to my mind. He was a big Brooklyn Dodgers fan. I mean, a huge fan. My mother says that when O’Malley took his team to California, my father said words that he never said before or would ever say again in all the years they were married. So growing up in a National League house it was only natural that we would follow the Mets. But if the Dodgers were in the World Series or in the playoffs, my dad, until the day he died, would root for the other team. Even if it meant rooting for the Yankees.” I whispered the last part as if I were sharing a shameful family secret.
I had hooked him just in time. The subway car was beginning to get crowded as more people going to Shea got on at Queensboro Plaza. He could have easily moved away from me to grab one of the metal railings in front of the benches of filled seats. Despite the crush of Mets fans and homebound workers boardin
g the car, we were still standing together like two buddies having a night out at the ballpark.
“So, your dad take you to Fenway during the glory days of Yaz?”
He flinched at the question. I thought I’d overplayed my hand and lost him. I hoped that the look on his face was just the result of a sudden burst of sunshine hitting his eyes. “No. My father never took me to a ballgame. I don’t think I ever saw a baseball game when I was growing up. My college roommate freshman year dragged me to Fenway with some of his friends because he thought I studied too much. It was love at first sight, the minute I stepped into the ballpark. After the first pitch I knew that I belonged right there. I never liked the taste of beer but must have had five that day. I loved the cheering and yelling of the crowd. I loved the hustle and grace of the players on the field. When we left and the Sox had beat Baltimore 5 to 4, I was hoarse and my hands were sore from clapping. I went to dozens of games before I graduated. I read the Globe and Herald sports pages religiously and any baseball history or biography voraciously. All these years I’ve been true to the Boston Red Sox. I never get to see the team live enough, working here. Now I have one of those cable packages that allows me to see almost every game, but it’s not the same as being in Fenway.”
I gave him a name and told him that I worked on Wall Street selling mutual funds to retail brokers. I knew enough details about this kind of job that I could BS my way through a conversation if he wanted to talk about work. I know a little about a lot of things so that I can talk to almost anybody about anything, a talent I find useful in my line of work. It would have given us something else in common, though I was certain we wouldn’t be talking shop for the rest of the ride. Only baseball.
“I’m Jack Buckner,” he said, mentioning he worked for an elite, privately held Wall Street firm that only handled oldmoney clients whose net worth was a minimum eight figures. He did not mention that it was his friend’s family firm.