Neptune Avenue

by Gabriel Cohen

“It was like the dolphin show over at the Aquarium, yo—people all divin’ over benches and shit. Then people lyin’ on the ground, all blooded up.”

  “Who got shot?”

  “There was this big old lady, got hit in the arm. And this Russian dude, ’bout old as you, he took one in the back.”

  Daniel.

  “Then the black dude pulled off a coupl’a shots, and the white dude ran off.” Tyrese wiped his forehead; Jack didn’t know if he was sweating due to the memories or his polyester uniform. “Some crazy-ass shit. All I can say, we get a lot of little kids out here. I’m glad none of them got kilt.”

  Jack wiped his own forehead. Daniel had been reluctant to talk about the incident; his description had been considerably more spare. “What do you think it was all about?”

  Tyrese shrugged. “The cops found a coupl’a witnesses who I.D.ed the black dude. Turned out he’d been busted a bunch of times for slangin’ rocks.” He looked at his white visitor and decided that some translation might be in order. “Selling crack. Cops said the dude with the Mac-nine must’ve been after him, some kind of drug thing …”

  Jack rubbed his jaw. “You wouldn’t happen to remember the name of the detective who interviewed you back then?”

  Tyrese nodded. “His name was Wright. Easy to remember, because I figured he was wrong. He didn’t want to listen to me—he had his mind made up.”

  Jack frowned. They were in the Sixtieth Precinct. He knew the detective, Bobby Wright, an old-timer who was just riding out his days until he could take his pension and go sleep on the job as a night watchman somewhere. No Sherlock Holmes—and no civil rights crusader …

  Tyrese shook his head. “He wanted me to say that the Brother did it, but I kept telling him that the Russian drew first. Typical cop bullsh—”

  Jack held up a hand. “Whoa—the shooter was Russian?” Daniel had definitely never mentioned that. “How do you know?”

  “Yo, mister, I live out here. I know what a Russian looks like. Blond hair, tight-ass face. And he shouted somethin’ just before he pulled the trigger.”

  “What’d he say?”

  Tyrese shrugged and raised his open hands. “I’m not no translator—just a burger prep specialist.”

  Despite the general grimness of the day, Jack smiled again. He liked this kid. “Did they find the gangbanger?”

  “Naw. Far as I know, they never caught up with his ass.”

  Jack stared out across the hot asphalt. “The white guy—what did he look like?”

  “He was all skinny, maybe twenty-five …”

  “Blond, you said?”

  “Yeah. With a crew cut.” Tyrese pressed his hands against his cheeks. “Thin face.”

  “Did you see if he had any marks? Scars, tattoos, anything unusual?”

  Tyrese raised his eyebrows. “I was runnin’ from the motherfucker, not dancin’ with him!” He frowned in concentration, though. “He had some kind’a mark on the side of his neck. A tattoo or somethin’.”

  Jack wrote that down. “What was he wearing?”

  Tyrese frowned, struggling to recall. “I seem to ’member … he had some kind’a old-school kicks: Fila, maybe, or Adidas, with the stripes. The backpack … and blue sunglasses, the kind that wrap around.”

  Jack turned away for a moment, drumming his fingers on the picnic table. He turned back to the McDonald’s employee. “Anything else you remember?”

  The kid shook his head.

  Jack closed his notebook and stood up. “Thank you, Tyrese. I appreciate it.” He handed over one of his business cards. “If you think of anything else, just give me a call. …”

  Tyrese stood up. “You’re welcome. I hope you don’t mind my sayin’ this, but you best be careful checkin’ this shit out.”

  Jack stopped. “Why?”

  “Them Russians are into some nasty business, man.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know I just work at McDonald’s, but I can still afford a TV. They got their own Mafia, yo, only more nasty than the Eye-talians. They all into chainsawing people, and shit.”

  THAT EVENING, JACK CONSIDERED going upstairs to keep Mr. Gardner company, but he just wasn’t in the mood. He went for a walk instead.

  Monsalvo’s bar was a little bunker on the edge of Midwood, an anomaly in a neighborhood characterized largely by another puritanical Hasidic community. As he stepped inside, Jack was welcomed by several old-timers. They made him think of pigeons, the way you could often catch sight of a little flock of them wheeling over some low Brooklyn rooftop, bellies flashing as they caught the light, then returning to home base.

  “Jackie L., how they hangin’?” called out Tommy McKettrie, a long-retired bus driver with a wrinkled face that always seemed subject to an extra dose of gravity.

  Joe Imbruglia, retired welder, threw a copy of The Post down on the cigarette-scarred bar. The old man’s claim to fame was that he had helped build the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. “Jesus, look at this crap!” he said. “Who is this Britney Spears? And why should I give a shit? I remember when we used to have stars who didn’t look like kids working the counter of some goddamn convenience store. Remember Rita Hayworth? Remember when you first see her, in Gilda, and she throws her hair back and gives Glenn Ford the eye? Cripes, I almost had my first heart attack when I saw that. …”

  Jack settled onto a stool and ordered a draft from Pat, the ruddy-faced young bartender. One thing he liked about this place was that it wasn’t frequented by cops, and he could talk about other things beside who had gotten passed over for promotion, or the impossibility of making a decent living on the paycheck. He could just sit and stare up absentmindedly at some ball game on the TV, and try to forget the gruesome images of the day. He sipped his beer and watched Pedro Martinez finish off Derek Jeter with a called strike that must have been at least six inches outside.

  Soon the old men were embroiled in a lively jukebox-inspired argument about the relative scat-singing abilities of Tony Bennett and Mel Tormé. Jack tuned them out; he nursed a couple more beers, and soon he found himself thinking about Daniel Lelo’s widow. Zhenya. He had missed something there, no doubt about it.

  Back when his son Ben was little, the boy had gone through a phase of being obsessed with Spiderman. The character had always talked about how his “spider sense” tingled when something was wrong. Likewise, being a good detective was largely about developing a profound sensitivity—not ESP or some other superpower, but an awareness acquired through years of learning how to read subtleties in an interviewee’s body language and voice. Learning to recognize lies—and most people stretched the truth even when they didn’t have anything to hide. Problem was, as a detective in New York City, you had to deal with all sorts of cultural and ethnic groups, from Dominicans to Senegalese, Poles to Bengalis, each with its own codes and mores, and that made it harder to understand what was really going on. Stepping into someone’s personal space, for example; that meant one thing to someone in Sunset Park’s Chinatown, something completely different to a Brooklyn Heights WASP. The Russians were a tough group: they tended to hold on to their native tongue, which meant you often needed a translator to deal with them, and they were notoriously wary of the police, perhaps because they thought the police were like the KGB. Even so, Jack reflected, he had gone too easy on the wife, out of consideration for her recent loss. He should have pushed harder.

  He exhaled. Enough with the work thoughts; he was off duty. He took out his cell phone again. Thinking about his son had reminded him that he hadn’t seen the kid in way too long. It also reminded him why. Jack had gotten divorced when Ben was eight. Ever since then, he’d done his best to stay involved in the boy’s life, but his son had turned sullen and resentful. It was only in the past couple of years, after Jack had gotten shot, that he’d started to make some headway at repairing the damage. And Michelle had helped. Ben liked her; he would come over for dinner sometimes, and they’d almost started to feel like a family. When that
relationship suddenly ended, Jack got the sense that his son blamed him, as if he was just naturally incapable of maintaining a relationship, of holding on to a woman’s love.

  He called the kid and made a future dinner plan, then put away his cell and sipped his beer. His mind drifted again. A woman’s love … he pictured Zhenya Lelo tucking a loose strand of fine blond hair behind her ear; he thought of that endearing little gap between her teeth.

  He frowned.

  He finished his beer.

  A few minutes later, he stood up and threw some money on the bar.

  HE KNOCKED SOFTLY ON the mint green door. He stood waiting. Checked his watch: only nine thirty. Not too late to pay a little official call. He heard a TV murmuring somewhere down the hallway, smelled boiled cabbage. He shifted his feet; he wouldn’t knock again. Maybe she was sleeping. Or maybe she was out, being comforted in the home of some friend or family member.

  The door swung open just as he was pivoting away. Zhenya, now wearing slacks and a navel-revealing blouse. Barefoot. Somehow, she didn’t seem to be quite so surprised to see him this time—and then she surprised him by turning away without a word, leaving the door open behind her. He paused on the threshold, then followed her in.

  She walked down the hall, hips swaying—it occurred to him that maybe he wasn’t the only one who’d had a couple of drinks. She continued on through the dark dining room—he could see half-eaten platters of food still sitting dejected on the table—and led him into the living room and out on the balcony. Sure enough, there was a bottle of Irish whiskey sitting on the little glass coffee table.

  She turned. “You will have a drink?”

  He shrugged. He had expected to have to press her, and her lack of resistance left him off balance, leaning forward, unsure of how to proceed.

  She stepped back into the living room and then came out with a glass for him. Poured him a healthy measure.

  He stepped to the railing and looked down: on the boardwalk, old couples with their arms around each other strolled in and out of cones of light cast by yellowish sodium-vapor lamps. Beyond, the dim beige expanse of the beach, and then the gray ocean stretching out into the night … He breathed deeply of the salty air and turned to find Zhenya sitting in one of the rattan chairs, legs tucked beneath her, regarding him coolly. He could see the light from the condominiums reflected in her impenetrable cat eyes. As she reached out for her drink, he saw her nipples press against the soft blouse, and he quickly looked away.

  He sipped the smooth malt. He thought of saying something about how he might have expected her to be drinking vodka, but realized how dumb that would have sounded.

  Zhenya picked up her drink and took a long pull. He wondered how much she might have already downed.

  He rolled his glass between his palms. “I was wondering if you gave some thought to what I was asking earlier. If you can think of someone who might have had it in for Daniel.”

  She made a face. “In for? What this means?”

  “Someone who might have been angry with your husband. Someone who owed him money, someone he owed money to …?”

  He could sense her tightening up again. She seemed to see him as a bad guy, like an interrogator in some Iron Curtain holding cell. He turned toward the ocean view. Bullshit. He was just trying to find out who had killed her husband—and his friend.

  Normally when interviewing an uncooperative witness he might try to rattle her somehow, throw her off base. He could ask if she had a life insurance policy on her husband, imply that she was involved with the homicide. Come to think of it, he should check that possibility. …

  He took another sip of whiskey. If he pushed too hard, she would just clam up. He’d have to come at this from a different angle. He turned back to her. “You don’t seem to like me very much. Maybe it’s my job, or maybe you just don’t like me. Whatever it is, it’s okay. …”

  She didn’t contradict him.

  He sighed. “When I was in the hospital, after I got shot, I was having a tough time. It’s hard to explain what it feels like when you’ve come that close to dying. You feel so weak. It kind of shakes up everything you think you know about life. …” He lifted his drink but didn’t sip it; just stared down at a faint circle of light shimmering on top of the dark liquid. He looked up at her, in direct appeal. “Your husband helped me get through that time. He pushed me to work harder in physical therapy. He knew what I was going through. And now I owe it to him to find out who did this.”

  Eugenia scowled. “You are policeman. Police only helps police.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, so I’m a cop. That doesn’t mean I’m not here to help you. Don’t you want to know who did this to your husband?”

  Her eyes clouded up, and she rubbed them angrily. “Nothing can bring him back. You do not know how it is like to lose someone.”

  He looked down at his drink again and was silent for a minute. When he finally spoke, his voice was muted. “You don’t know anything about me. My younger brother was killed when he was just thirteen.” He winced. This was something he never talked about. Was he bringing it up now as some sort of cheap way to earn her cooperation—or to win something else from her? He stole a quick glance: her face had softened a little, but not enough.

  “Was you ever married?” she asked.

  He chuckled bitterly. “Funny you should ask … Would you like to hear a little story?”

  She just stared at him, still wary.

  He cleared his throat. “Just before I got shot, I had started going out with a woman. You know what that means, going out?”

  She nodded.

  “All right. So—even though we had just met, she came to the hospital all the time after the shooting. I can’t remember if you saw her or not. Anyway, when I got out, she moved in with me. I had been married, a long time before, but I was divorced. And I hadn’t been with someone—really been with someone—for a very long time. And I fell for this woman pretty hard. I bought her a diamond engagement ring, I planned out how to surprise her with it. …” He glanced at Zhenya, who was regarding him now with much greater interest. He paused. It was an old interview trick, talk about yourself a bit, make yourself seem vulnerable, get the interviewee on your side so you wouldn’t seem like the Big Bad Cop. … Was that what he was doing? Or was it just the alcohol talking? The stuff seemed to be having a greater impact on him tonight than he’d thought.

  He looked at her for a moment more, then turned away. Maybe he wanted to open himself up to this sad, lovely woman for reasons of his own.

  “What heppened?” she asked quietly.

  “It was New Year’s Eve. A year and a half ago. I made reservations at a fancy restaurant. I was all nervous, waiting for the right moment.” He chuckled sourly again. “You know what I was thinking about? Which knee to get down on when I asked her to marry me … And so the time came, and I pulled the ring out of my pocket, and I popped the question. And you know what she said?”

  Zhenya shook her head, and he knew he had her full attention now—she was like a rapt kid, eager to hear the end of some bedtime fairy tale.

  He snorted. “She told me that she was having an affair with someone else. And then she ran out of the restaurant.” He finished his drink and set the glass down heavily. “Don’t tell me I don’t know anything about loss.”

  They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, looking out at the dark ocean. Jack was embarrassed and felt a little guilty about using his personal stories. What Zhenya was thinking, he had no idea, though he could tell that the air between them was considerably less strained.

  He sighed. “You know what I think? I think that somebody might have tried to kill your husband two years ago. And maybe it was the same person who succeeded the other night. You know what else? I think you know something about this, something you’re not telling me.”

  Zhenya sat in silence, a silence that lasted so long that he thought she might not say anything at all. Anxious, the woman ran her palms along the armr
ests of her chair. She kept her eyes averted, but finally she began to speak. “Where I come from, we do not use police to help our troubles. Where I come from, police is our troubles. But you was my husband’s friend.” She cleared her throat. “There was a man. For some times, my husband knows him. But then they was having some kind of arg…” She struggled with the word.

  “Argument?”

  She nodded.

  “What about?”

  She shrugged. “I told you: my husband does not tell to me his business. But some weeks ago, I see him talking to this man. And I think Daniel is very aff…” Again she struggled with the word.

  “Afraid? Daniel was scared?”

  She nodded nervously. “This man is very bad. I am afraid also.”

  Jack was careful not to look directly at her; he didn’t want her to stop talking. It all clicked into place. Her weirdness during the first interview. Her edginess around him. It wasn’t hostility, after all—it had been fear.

  “Do you know his name?”

  She chewed her lip. “You will not say to him that I am the one who telled you? You must make promise.”

  He nodded gravely. “You have my word on it.”

  She stared at him. He could almost see the gears of worry turning in her head.

  But she told him the name.

  When he stood up to go, she led him through her dark apartment, and they stood for a moment in her little foyer, a moment when time stretched out, full of something he could not name. “I’m so sorry about Daniel,” he said again. And then he took a risk: he held out his arms. For a moment, she just stood looking at him, and he thought that maybe she was offended or that she had just gone back to being cold, but she stepped forward and gave him a quick hug.

  After the door closed behind him, he stood out in the hallway for a moment, remembering the feel of her lithe body, pressed close to his heart.

  Out in his car, though, he slumped back in his seat. What the hell was he thinking? This woman was in a period of grief.

  He resolved to let Linda Vargas handle any future contacts—and to make sure that Daniel’s widow would receive any necessary police protection.