Neptune Avenue

by Gabriel Cohen

  “I was twelve. Your father was fifteen. In the middle of one night, they came for our family and put us in a barn with many others. All night we heard shooting, but we didn’t know what was happening. Me and Max, we agreed that if we could escape, we would meet up at a farm across the river. In the morning, the Nazis came. Max told me to run into a stall and hide. There was a giant pig in there, very mean, but I was good with animals.

  “A Nazi came into the stall with a pitchfork. He was poking down into the hay, but I was hiding behind the pig. The Nazi was frightened, I think—he didn’t look too hard. They took the rest of the people, including Max, my mother and father, and my sister—”

  “Wait a minute—your sister? I had an aunt?”

  Leon looked sad. “This also your father didn’t tell you?”

  Jack shook his head. Unbelievable. His father had always been incredibly closed off about his past, but still …

  “Her name was Yuliya. Julia, you would say here. A beautiful kid, very funny, very kind …” He sighed and continued with the story. “The Nazis marched them into the woods. There was deep pits dug there. Everyone could see what was going to happen.”

  Jack winced.

  “There was a young man in our village, a big guy, very strong—he used to challenge everybody to wrestle. He shouted, ‘Are we going to just die like sheep?’ He ran at the nearest Nazi and pushed him down. There was lots of shooting, but a few of them managed to run into the woods.”

  “What about your parents? And your sister?”

  Leon fell silent and shook his head. A moment later he went on. “I was able to swim across the river. Was nighttime—very cold. I came to the farm, but I heard voices so I ran away to hide. There was bee skeps in a field. I went underneath; it was okay because the bees was sleeping. Soon the voices came closer, and I recognized my brother. Such a reunion we had!

  “We went deep into the woods, and there we found a group of partisans. You know what this means? They was citizens who fought the Nazis. For the next year we lived in a shack they had made in the middle of a swamp—”

  “My father lived in a swamp for a year?”

  Leon nodded, then stood up—evidently he had had enough of these memories, for the time being. He put the dishes in the sink. “This is just one of my stories. So maybe I have a memoir, no?”

  Jack felt tired; this was too much to take in at once. He had always thought of his father as a man who inflicted punishment, but he had never imagined the extent of what the Old Man might have suffered. He looked up at his uncle. It seemed incredible that this man and his brother could have lived through such horrors together, yet spent the last decades of their lives apart. “Uncle Leon, I know you don’t want to discuss this, but why did you and my father stop talking?”

  Leon seemed to shrink. “It was a business disagreement. Something stupid.” He shook his head, misery etched into his face.

  Jack stared down at the table. His uncle had managed to talk about the death of most of his family without much visible emotion. Maybe he had come to terms with it somehow or figured out how to distance himself from the memory. But this wound was still fresh. Jack thought of his own brother, dead at just thirteen, and wanted to put an arm around his uncle. Instead, he got up, filled a glass with water, and set it down in front of the old man. As if that would help.

  Leon ignored the gesture. After a minute he pushed himself up from his stool. “You want more vodka?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “Me neither,” Leon said. He put the bottle back in the freezer, then sat down again. “So. After all these years, why do you come to see me?”

  “I want to ask you about somebody.”

  “Who?”

  Jack reached into his jacket, removed a computer printout, and passed it across the table. A mug shot. “His name is Semyon Balakutis. Have you heard of him?”

  Leon made a face. “I have heard things. He likes to call himself a businessman. I think he has something to do with the Cosmopolitan nightclub, on Brighton Beach Avenue.”

  Jack leaned forward. “What have you heard?”

  Leon snorted. “He’s a thug.”

  “Russian mafia?”

  The old man frowned. “I don’t like this talk. Because of the movies, people think we are all hoodlums here in Brighton Beach. Most of us work very hard; we just want to make a success of our little beauty parlor or tchotchke shop.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a Russian mob.”

  Leon shrugged. “In the eighties and nineties, we had some big shots operating here. I don’t know about all this mafiya business, though. They were not like the Italians. They came from Russia, and in Russia there’s not so much difference between the criminals and the people that are running the place. I went to Moscow on vacation last year. I saw guys like this Balakutis crawling all over the place. Novye Russkies—New Russians. They call themselves businessmen, but they’re just out for a fast buck. Capitalism has not worked out so good for most people in Russia, but for criminals, yes.” He grimaced. “They drive fancy cars, eat in the best restaurants. They have no class.” He stood up to put away the rest of the food. “Why are you asking me this?”

  Jack told him about his contacts with Balakutis so far. “I think he might be trying to extort Daniel’s company.”

  Leon scratched his chin. “Extort might not be the best word. Maybe he’s offering them a krysha.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  Again, Leon shook his head at his nephew’s ignorance. “It means roof. It’s like protection, but different. In Russia or Ukraine, if you want to get a business going, a lot of the time you have to pay off some hoodlum to protect you from other criminals. But he also helps you cut through red tape and get things done. It’s like taking on an unofficial partner who grabs a big chunk of the profits. Thousands of businesses over there pay it.”

  “How about here?”

  Leon shrugged again. “Some new immigrants might fall for pressure, thinking that they need it. But others realize that they can say no and get help from the police.”

  Jack frowned. Daniel, evidently, had said no without the help.

  Leon crossed his arms. “Whatever he’s up to, this guy is someone who, if you see him coming, it’s a good idea to cross the street.”

  AFTER LEAVING HIS UNCLE, Jack walked toward the beach, thinking about his uncle, the “boring” little shopkeeper with the amazing past. And he thought about his father. About the Nazis. About an aunt he’d never known he had. When he reached the boardwalk, he stood at the railing; the midday sun baked the beach. On the horizon, huge ships plowed out across the sea. Across the world.

  Jack wandered along the boardwalk until he came to the sidewalk cafés, where the old women gathered around the gypsy medicine-sellers and the old men played their chess. He wondered how many of them had survived terrible times in World War II. The war had always seemed as if it had happened far in the past, something for history books, yet it had scarred his own father, and he himself had been born just five years later. Five short years.

  His cell phone trilled. He pulled it out and leaned against the boardwalk railing, watching a flock of seagulls beating against a stiff shore breeze.

  “Detective Leightner? This is Semyon Balakutis.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THERE WERE STARS IN the ceiling, thousands of them, twinkling against black velvet. Several hundred people sat in the dark below, eating dinner and watching the floor show. In front of the band, a guy with a strap-on synthesizer and three female singers in gold hot pants were singing some shrill, cheesy pop song.

  The maître d’ led Jack around the dance floor to an empty half-circle booth. He soon felt conspicuous—he saw no other single diners, and very few couples; people seemed to come to the Cosmopolitan club in groups. The maître d’ leaned down and spoke into his ear. “Mister Balakutis will like for you to have dinner and watch the show, with his compliments.”


  Jack frowned. “Where is he?”

  The maître d’ pressed his hands together in apology. “He says he will be a little late, but don’t worry: he is coming.”

  Jack almost smiled. Balakutis was no dummy. He was working a game detectives played all the time. He’d left Jack wondering all day what this evening appointment might be about, and now he was keeping him waiting even longer, trying to establish who was in control.

  A stone-faced waiter appeared and set down a bottle of vodka in an ice bucket. A couple of others glided up with big trays and started setting down appetizer plates: eggplant caviar, pickled beets, smoked salmon, and whitefish. Jack didn’t touch the food. He was hardly going to break bread with a man who might have murdered his friend. It didn’t matter what he said, though—the waiters kept appearing, like grim genies.

  He sat back and checked out the landscape. Rumors always floated around that some of these clubs were frequented (or owned) by the Russian mafia, but tonight the scene just resembled a salesman’s retirement party. Most of the men in the audience looked paunchy and mild, and the women were clearly wives or grandmothers. They were all dressed up. Occasionally they stared at him, and he felt like an uninvited guest at a wedding. There had been a couple of surly-looking bouncers in the gaudy, chandeliered lobby, but that was about it for the potential criminal element. So far, at least—there was a balcony ringing the club, and it was too dark to tell much about the shadowy figures in the booths up there.

  Onstage the emcee, a hyper little guy with a spiky rooster haircut, came out and made an announcement in Russian. As a favor to the few noncountrymen present, he translated: “Good evening, ladies and gentleman. We welcome you tonight to Brighton Beach and Cosmopolitan nightclub! Is time for cabaret!” The stage dimmed and a strange blue light came up. The band churned out some sinister spacey music as a group of dancers in spandex tiger costumes strutted out from the wings; their stripes glowed in the dark. They arched their backs and pretended to claw at each other. The music picked up and they launched into a synchronized disco dance. After the tigers crawled away, a man and a woman came out wearing costumes from some prior century: he sported a ruffled shirt and a powdered wig; she was strapped into a corset with a plunging neckline. The guy serenaded her with a maudlin ballad.

  Jack noticed a teenager at the next table covering his eyes in embarrassment—evidently the Russians had their own version of a generation gap—but the rest of the customers seemed quite happy with the entertainment. Most of them were middle-aged; they sat staring at the stage, nodding misty-eyed to music that reminded them of younger days, an ocean away.

  Jack wanted to rest his elbows, but there was no room: the table was covered with food. He glanced around, noting the exits. A bouncer the size of a large bear had taken up a post nearby; he leaned against a wall, hands folded over his crotch.

  The man suddenly straightened up. Jack followed his gaze out across the club: a stocky man was moving toward them from the back of the hall, leaving a ripple of nervous glances in his wake. Balakutis took his time making his way to Jack’s booth; he stopped along the way to greet other diners.

  Jack watched him, frowning. Linda Vargas had checked out the man’s alibi for the night of Daniel’s murder; Balakutis’s wife had confirmed his story about being home for dinner and after—but so what? How reliable was a confirmation from a suspect’s own spouse?

  The man sat down without a word. A waiter rushed up to ask if he wanted anything. He said something sharp in Russian, and the man backed away.

  Balakutis wore a silvery dress shirt; it reminded Jack of the polyester outfits his patrol buddies had worn when they went nightclubbing back in the eighties. The man’s whole bearing seemed stagy and self-important, as if he were starring in some second-rate gangster flick. Such posturing was silly, but Jack had learned long ago not to laugh. The most dangerous people in the world were the ones with the lowest self-esteem, the ones who always felt they had something to prove.

  Balakutis took a couple of cigars from his breast pocket and offered one to Jack.

  Jack shook his head. He glanced over his shoulder: the bouncer had come around and stationed himself a couple of yards away. He turned and spotted another steroids fancier watching him intently from the edge of the dance floor.

  Balakutis reached into his pocket for a lighter and set it on the table. He pulled out a silver cutter and slowly and deliberately clipped the end of his cigar. Jack’s chest tightened; he couldn’t help picturing the man hacking off a shop owner’s ear.

  The waiter came back, set a big glass of red wine down carefully in front of Balakutis, then slipped away. Balakutis lit his cigar and inhaled with gusto. “So. Thenk you for coming.”

  Jack frowned. “What’s this all about?”

  Balakutis shrugged. “Nothing much. Somehow, it seems you have gotten some bad ideas about me. I want to make friends. That’s all. Is better to make friends than enemies, no?”

  Jack shifted in his seat; he was supposed to be the one asking the questions. “What did you argue about with Daniel Lelo?”

  Balakutis shrugged. “I already telled you: I knowed him just a little. We are both biznessmeni, and the community here is not so large.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  Balakutis shrugged again. “If I remember is correct, he asked to borrow money. If, like me, you are successful businessmen, this happens all the time.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Balakutis sipped his wine. “I said, for a loan, go to a bank.”

  “Did you argue about it?”

  Balakutis shook his head. “He asked; I said no. No argument. Just business.”

  Jack frowned. No progress. It was this man’s word against Zhenya’s.

  Sometimes interrogators would purposely rile a suspect, as if throwing peanuts at a tiger in the zoo, just to see what he might let slip. The tactic took on a new dimension when you were both sitting in the same cage. Jack leaned forward. “Word on the street is that you might have been involved with Lelo’s murder.”

  Balakutis didn’t rise to the bait; he just made a pained face. “I tell you the same thing I telled the other police. I never kill Daniel Lelo. In my life, I never kill nobody. Why you peoples persecute me?”

  Jack frowned. The man’s tone reminded him of an interrogation he had once conducted with a child rapist: the big creep, 240 pounds, had claimed that the eleven-year-old victim had seduced him.

  “You’ve been very lucky with your court cases here in the United States. Nobody’s luck lasts forever. I’m watching you, and if I find out that you had anything to do with this, you’re going away for a long, long time.”

  Balakutis’s mask of humility and forbearance dropped away. “I don’t know you, mister. I offer you hospitality. I never done nothing to you.” His fists clenched and his face grew red. “Now you come to my club and make threats to me? Who the fuck you think you are?” The man had worked himself into a rage. He slammed his hand down on the table, knocking over his wine, which splashed like a bloody red bomb across the white tablecloth.

  And that’s when Jack realized that it wasn’t some old bully this man reminded him of—it was his own father. Sober, the Old Man had been reserved and relatively quiet, but when he got drunk he could be just like this, prone to sudden tempers that blew up out of nowhere, dark tornadoes.

  The nearest bouncer stepped closer, but Balakutis waved him away. A bevy of waiters and busboys rushed up. Within literally two minutes, they had whisked the food and broken glass away, yanked off the stained cloth, replaced it with a fresh one, and brought Balakutis a new glass of wine. All of the diners at the neighboring tables seemed careful to avoid expressing the slightest curiosity. Jack blinked; it was almost as if the unpleasant little episode had never happened. That was the way things had been with his father, too; after a sudden blowup, everyone in the family had to pretend that it was forgotten, even though the damage remained, deep inside.

  When
he glanced back, the rage had completely left Balakutis’s face, replaced by a slight, canny smile that revealed his little teeth. The man spread his arms extravagantly along the top of the booth. “You know what I hear? Maybe it was the Russian mafiya who killed this Lelo. Very bad problem around here. Very bad people. Of course, I know nothing about this. I am biznessmen.” He shifted forward, crowding Jack. “I never been shot before. It must hurt very much, no?”

  Jack resisted the urge to flinch. Evidently, he was not the only one who had done a little research.

  The other man sat back, satisfied that his barb had found its mark. He glanced at his watch. “You must excuse me—I go to other appointment.” He stood up, brushed at his pants, scooped his lighter and cigar cutter off the table. “I hev nothing to hide, Detective. If you are looking for me, here I am. Anytime you want to come to the club and see the show, just give me a call.”

  Before Jack could reply, he swaggered off.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  JACK STEPPED OUT OF the club into a dense, humid summer night. He felt a wetness on his face and looked up into a very light rain, barely visible below the streetlights. Brighton Beach Avenue had quieted now, due to the hour and the weather; the throngs of shoppers had taken their purchases home, and the place seemed lonely. Neon signs along the storefronts shone brighter in the wet; their bright colors smeared across the windshields and hoods of passing cars.

  He took a couple of deep breaths. He shouldn’t have felt so stirred up—lord knows, in two decades with the NYPD he had run into no shortage of blustering thugs, and more than a few threats. Thankfully, though, even the dimmest street punk knew that the dumbest thing was to attack a cop; within minutes you’d have thousands of outraged colleagues hunting you down. A cop’s little metal badge acted as a real shield—or at least he had always thought so. But there was a fragment of metal inside his chest, and he also carried memories of lying helpless and bleeding on a dank basement floor, all because one thug had failed to play it smart.