I nodded.
“I always thought Jack Santiago was an ambitious cocksucker, anyhow. Take care of yourself, Artie, man. Be careful. You don’t want any idiots picking you up because your name got on some list, OK.”
“Sure, Sonny. Thanks.”
“What the fuck difference does any of it make, you know? I wish it was all over.” He looked at his wall. “Enough,” he said. “Enough.”
27
After I wasted hours at the airport, still trying to find out what airline Jack had used, after I got the run around from a lot of suspicious people wanting to know who the hell I was and peering at my badge as if it might be a toy or a fake, I finally got to Red Hook. I went to Sid’s to try to break in.
I wanted to get another look. I planned to replace the files before the family figured out I’d helped myself to them. The sun already up, the water alight, surface shimmering, boats bobbing on it, it looked exactly like the little paradise where Sid escaped the real world.
His loft was sealed, the locks changed. I didn’t know who did it, local cops, city, the family. The key I’d stolen was no good. The new lock was too hard to pick. What else could I do? Shoot off the locks? Trespass? I had no warrant. I didn’t have anything. The funeral was the next day. Tomorrow Sid would disappear into the ground.
I was sweating some now. I went out, found a security guard and tried to give him some money but he backed off, frightened. I realized he was the same guy who had screamed at the men in the kayak and he recognized me.
I went out on the pier, but there was only a small boy with a limp fishing line who looked up expectantly, smiling, obviously glad for company. The kid said hi and waved for me to come over and look at his fishing gear. I just waved back and walked away.
On the other side of the old loft building from the pier was the inlet. The repairs to the dock where Earl died were finished. It was a week since Earl, if he had been Earl because even now there was no firm ID, had been trapped in this tiny stream of water, head and arms under the pier, legs adrift.
The sound of the buzz saw echoed in my brain. I remembered the noise as they took off his arms to free him from the rotting pier; I remembered the stink.
I drove to the other side of the Gowanus Canal and the burned-out ferryboat where Sid’s body had been found. It was still a crime scene but I had my badge. I didn’t know what I expected but I needed to see it.
Black, charred, it was the skeleton of a boat, still tied to the dock. Standing near the edge of the water, staring down, was a woman. She looked up. It was the detective I’d met the first day I was in Red Hook, the morning I watched them pull Earl out of the water, the morning of the day I got married. Clara. Clara something. Fuentes.
“Hey, Artie, right? Hey. How are you?” She was wearing jeans and a red shirt, and a pair of Nikes. I offered her a cigarette, she held up her pack of nicotine gum.
I said, “You’re on this one, too?”
“No. I just came by to take a look. My day off,” she laughed. “I’ve got a whole week. A whole week,” she said again, chewing.
“What do you think happened here?” I said, pointing at the wrecked boat and the yellow tape.
“What do I know? Everyone says he drowned here, you know? That he just fell and drowned, that’s what they say, or maybe he jumped. They say it was suicide or an accident, accidental death by drowning, but I think it stinks of a cover-up. What do I know?”
“What do you know?” I smiled.
“Me, personally? I think someone dragged him here. Someone who had a hard time doing it. There were marks.” She waved at the rough stretch of raw dirt between the street and the edge of the docks. “I think someone dragged him who had trouble dragging him, you know, like they had to drag and shove him a little at a time. I didn’t figure that out myself, I heard someone say.”
“Who said it?”
“I heard a couple of detectives talk about it, and then one of them said about the dragging and the other one said, forget it. It was an accident, or suicide, that’s what it’s supposed to be, he said, and it was like they just decided to forget the other idea, or somebody told them to forget it.”
“What else?”
“That’s it. Just that maybe he didn’t die here, maybe he was dragged, so if he killed himself, how come he was dragged here, you know? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just better to say it was an accident. I have to go. Get the fuck away. Up to New Hampshire,” she added.
“Thanks,” I said. “Have a nice time.”
“Glad the fucking politicians are gone.” She looked at her watch, then took the gum out of her mouth and lobbed it in the water. “You want to give me one of those coffin nails before you go?”
“Sure,” I tossed her the pack.
She took one and handed it back. “Good luck,” she said. “You have my phone number, right?”
I tried to remember how tall Jack Santiago was. He was about five-nine. I wondered if that passed as small.
On my way to see Rita, the woman who made borscht and tamales, I passed three young guys. Outside her building, wearing soccer shorts and shirts, they eyed me suspiciously. I didn’t know if they recognized me as a cop, but they didn’t smile much, just looked at me and then looked away and went back to their conversation, huddled together, their long young bodies bent over in some private ritual.
I was at the front door of Rita’s building when I heard the guys talking, a mixture of English and Spanish, soft, but staccato, and something occurred to me. I turned around, and walked the few steps back.
They looked up, not hostile, but surprised that I would somehow have the balls to interrupt. The tallest—he was probably nineteen, tops—said, “Yeah, man? You need something?” He was real polite, only an edge of sarcasm, or maybe irony. Hard to read.
I said, “I been looking around for a guy named Jack Santiago. You ever meet this guy? He’s a reporter. He lives over the other end of Red Hook. Smart guy. Pretty famous. Black hair. Wiry. About forty. Five-eight, five-nine.”
The surprising thing was that the three of them started laughing. They laughed for real and they also cranked up the laughter so it became an act, and they chortled and giggled and held on to each other, until one of them produced a red bandanna and wiped his eyes, and then another of them pulled out a pack of Camels and passed it around and included me. I took one, lit up.
I said, “It’s funny? Santiago’s funny?”
“You want to buy us a beer, man?”
“Sure,” I said. “Where?”
He pointed at a convenience store, and I pulled a fifty out of my wallet and handed it to him, and he nodded, so I knew it was OK money. He went across the street to a store and came back with a paper bag with four coffees, and passed them around.
“Too early for beer, right?” he said, but he didn’t offer me any change.
“Never too early,” I said.
“Santiago’s a jerk,” he said. “He was always coming around, talking that lousy Spanish, he wasn’t really a Latino boy, he said his mama was Cuban, but he was a liar, you could see it, and he was, like, suitcase nukes this, and suitcase nukes that, and everyone here knows that was last year, that one time they found something on a ship and the guys came in from the what do you call it, hazardous something, guys in big white moon suits with hoods?”
“Hazmat,” I said. “The guys in moon suits.”
“Yeah, right.”
“They came over to the Gowanus Canal where there’s still a couple ships coming in, and those big box stores, and they found something, or they said they did, who the fuck knows anything now, and they carried it away, and everyone talked about it for like a day, it was one time, and we heard they didn’t find nothing much, but the guy, Santiago, he was on it like crazy. He was like so fucking excited by the whole thing, he was like OK, we’re all in danger, man, you gotta leave this place, and we gotta get the government to turn up the heat on these bastards, and we’re like, fuck that shit, man, and he’s like it
’s still so dangerous, boo hoo, they’re gonna send in those airplanes again and crash them and this time they’re gonna be full of flying suitcases with nukes in them. He pissed everyone off, you know? Flying fucking suitcases.” He laughed. They all laughed. “They didn’t find nothing, turned out someone was testing the waters, so to speak, seeing if it was leaky by the Gowanus, you know, for terrorists and stuff, you know, man?”
The first guy said, “I told them Santiago made it all up.”
“I can imagine.”
“You can imagine. I like that.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Good. I’m glad.”
He gestured around. “This is a crazy place, man,” he said. “You got us in the projects out front here, and over back on the water, you got rich people trying to get in, you got people who want to keep it like it is, which is like shit, you know, they call themselves urban pioneers, you got developers, and some people who actually care about the place, you got the whole fucking package, like they call it a microcosm, so to speak, fuck microcosm, right, and then you got the people like Santiago that’s just sniffing around.”
“There’s a lot of stuff going on out here?” I said.
“You never could dream, man, how much. You never could fucking dream. Or maybe nothing. Maybe just a football match. Soccer to you.” He grinned. “So thanks for the beers, we got a game. You come see us kick some ass today, we got a match against some boys from Senegal. They’re like fucking geniuses. Come see, man, OK?”
I said thanks, and I left them still laughing about Santiago, and smoking Camels, and I went into Rita’s building and buzzed her, but there was no answer. I stuck a message under her door with a note to call me.
I was sure that Rita knew more than she’d told me, about Red Hook; maybe she knew something about Jack that I could take to Sonny. On my way out I asked the guys on the corner if they knew a Russian woman who made tamales and they said, sure, they saw her head over to the park.
28
“There is an old man,” Rita said. “I don’t know his name.”
On the slats of wood that formed a trestle table, she had laid out platters of steaming tamales and paper plates, and condiments and plastic cups. In the park, kids were playing soccer. People were arriving. The last holiday of the summer.
“No borscht?” I said.
She glanced out at the playing field.
“Not unless Russians are playing. What do you need?”
I looked at my watch. “Help me,” I said suddenly, and took her wrist.
“OK,” she said. “Sure. For free,” she added, thinking my hesitation had been about money.
“How come?”
She shrugged. “I like Mr Sid McKay is all. I like him a lot. I think maybe this old man threatens him. Maybe not so old, this Russian.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t say because I was scared, I told you I was not scared, but I was.” Looking down at the tamales on the table, she paused, and it was as if she had seen an opportunity. “So I change my mind, OK? I change. I can be wrong.”
“What kind of Russian?”
“What kind of Russian is there?”
“Tell me.”
She smiled. “Russian that been here a long time and doesn’t talk so good English. Russian that hangs around a lot just looking around. Russian that sometimes I see with Mr McKay. Russian once I saw around Brighton Beach then here in Red Hook, which is how come I’m noticing this Russian. He comes always here for food, not Russian food, I think how come he wants this stuff?” She put a couple of tamales on a plate and handed it to me.
I took the plate and said, “Go on.”
“I ask him his name, he don’t talk to me. Don’t want to talk. Just watching. This kind of Russian.”
“What does he look like?”
“Short.”
“What else?”
“He looks short. Very short. Little man,” Rita said, “Hello? You with me?”
I said, “This little short Russian, what else?”
“Once I seen him with Mr McKay and one other black guy that was some kind of bum, all three together, over by Coffey Street.”
“You were there?”
Rita switched to Russian and kept her voice low. “I am looking at space for Borscht Works, you like this name? I’m thinking, maybe Borscht Works, or something snappy, Borscht Belt, but what the hell does belt have to do with it, and I’m talking to people, and walking around, and there’s not so many Russians around here, but I’m hearing people speaking so I listen, and who doesn’t say nothing and looks like a bum, I look and it’s Mr McKay, and the other black one and the short Russian.”
Earl, I thought; the bum had been Earl.
“How did you know he was Russian, the short guy?”
“I told you, didn’t I? I saw him around Brighton Beach. Then here.”
“What else?”
“That’s all.”
“You heard them?”
“Only that they were talking Russian.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you know,” I said, put down the plate with the uneaten food and took her wrist.
I noticed that Rita didn’t mention Tolya Sverdloff this time. All she was interested in was the short Russian. Looking nervous now, she pulled away from me and waved at a friend, gesturing for her to come over as if for protection. I let go.
The other woman, who was wearing jeans and a yellow shirt, jogged to Rita’s side, and smiling, started to chatter about food.
In Russian, I said something to Rita by way of an apology. She didn’t look up. Two families with a trail of kids in tow arrived in front of her stall wanting food and she huddled with them.
I started to walk away, went back and said to her, still in Russian, “The short guy, the little Russian man, what color were his eyes, did you notice, did you see his eyes?”
“Sure,” she said, serving up food, keeping her distance from me. “You couldn’t miss this.”
“How come?”
“Real blue. This color people in Russia say naval blue, sea blue.”
“Where did you see him?”
She said, “Near the place where they throw the old cars. Columbia Street.”
I was already on my way when my phone rang; Lily was at the other end.
Hurry up, she said. Please! Get to the city. Hurry, Lily said again, get here now, I can’t talk, just come. I need you here, Artie. She was babbling, panicky. I heard her voice, I didn’t want to go, didn’t want to see her, I would drown in it if I saw her again, I wouldn’t be able to leave her. She sounded bad. The line broke. I closed my phone. Opened it.
I’m on my way, I said. What is it? What?
He’s dead.
“Who? Tolya? Tolya’s dead? He’s dead. I’m coming, Lily. I’m coming.
The line broke again. Somewhere I could hear a steel band playing. The punchy merry music made me crazy. It was the Caribbean Day Parade in Brooklyn. I slammed my car window shut.
*
Dead, she had said, and my stomach turned over and I opened the window again to get some air. I couldn’t get her back on the phone for ten minutes, all the way into the tunnel and into the city, back past the hole in the ground and Battery Park City where Sonny lived with his shrine made out of photographs, and where I knew now I could never live with Maxine—I would live with her, but not here—and I thought I was going to pass out or vomit. It was Monday. I had promised myself to be with her Monday, but I wasn’t going to make it.
The light turned red, and I thought I was stepping on the brake. I hit the gas instead and the car jolted forward. I ran a couple of red lights, and heard a siren behind me. A blue and white had picked up on my speed, and was chasing me. I felt trapped. Tolya was dead and a cop was on me for speeding.
I pulled over. The cop pulled up alongside me, and I showed him my badge and I was trying to explain, and he thought I was crazy. Then the phone finall
y rang again, I ignored the cop who was now leaning in my window, inspecting my license with obsessive attention. My license number interested him; I was on a list.
The phone rang. Lily was waiting for me. She was at her apartment on 10th Street. Stop up if you need me, she said. I called her.
“Where is he?”
“Who?” Lily said.
“Where’s the body? Why are you at home, if he’s dead?”
“What are you talking about?”
I said, “You told me he was dead.”
The cop looking at my license was on his cell, and I didn’t know why, but I didn’t wait, either. I just went. I drove north, trying to call Lily back.
Before I turned off the highway I heard the sirens, saw the flashing lights, stepped on the brakes, pulled up and saw the crowd that had formed near the High Line.
Police cars were parked everywhere, an ambulance was at the curb, the noise of the sirens rose up into the hot afternoon. I left my car near Tolya’s building and followed the flashing lights.
A knot of people, tourists out for the holiday, was standing near a row of mounted cops, whispering, giggling, pointing up. “It’s just like Law and Order, just like a real episode of the show, like TV. Take a picture.” They were pointing at the High Line overhead.
A teenage boy in a striped shirt pulled a disposable camera out of his pocket. A cop tried to stop him, but he snapped a picture anyhow, and backed off, then turned and ran, grinning. A woman held up a little girl to pat the nose of one of the horses, and the cop sitting on it—they were probably from over at the First Precinct on Hudson Street—leaned down and patted the girl’s head. Her mother took a picture.
“I heard he fell over or something,” I heard someone say.
“What?”
“Yeah,” a cop in uniform said to me as I came up to the barrier and leaned over and showed my badge. “Crazy accident. You see those old iron struts up the side there?” He pointed up at the High Line. “The poor bastard fell through them or over them, right here, the south end of the High Line. There were rolls of barbed wire on it, and he got stuck, he was like hanging down, probably fucking dead drunk or something, and he dropped over. What in hell was he doing up there? He must have been high as a fucking kite. Or dead drunk. You ever been up there?”
Red Hook Page 25
