Red Hook

by Reggie Nadelson

  “I don’t think so.”

  She looked at her watch.

  “Does Tolya know you’re going?” I said.

  Val got up and started for the living room and I followed her. We stood near the front door.

  “Daddy will just get crazy and say she’s going to work with kids, with AIDS, she’ll get sick, she’ll get offed by terrorists, you know, he’s a dad, right?”

  “Did you know that you wanted all this before Jack?”

  “It’s been coming.”

  “And Jack?”

  “He was fun, like I said.” She shrugged. “He was great for a week,” she added. “I have to get ready now. I have to get going.”

  “Where to?”

  “To the airport. Please don’t tell Daddy, Artie. Please let me have this.”

  I held out my phone. “At least call him,” I said. “At least tell him you’re going.”

  “He’ll stop me. You know that. He’ll call some creepy guy to meet me at the airport. I’ll be OK. Please. Just wait for me a minute, OK? I have to change. Will you wait for me, Artie?”

  Val went into her bedroom. I took the cigarettes back out of my pocket and picked off the remaining cellophane and the crackle of it seemed unnaturally loud.

  A few minutes later, Val reappeared wearing black jeans, black T-shirt, sneakers and a white denim jacket. She had a bag over her shoulder and a baseball cap on her head and she was dragging a red suitcase on wheels.

  “Did you know that Jack wasn’t in Russia, that he never went?” I said, asking the thing I had not wanted her to tell me.

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “When did you know?”

  “I knew all the time,” she said softly. “He asked me not to say that he wanted to take a couple of days off to do some writing before he left, he said he had stuff to tie up. After we left you at the restaurant Saturday night, I dropped him off at his place in Red Hook before I drove out to East Hampton. He said he wasn’t going to stay at his place, just wanted to pick stuff up. He was going over to stay at a friend’s apartment, some guy who was away, so he wouldn’t get interrupted and stuff. So I went to Long Island and I talked to him again from out there a bunch of times. He said, so don’t tell anyone I’m still in the city. I just don’t want anyone to bug me.”

  “But you saw him? He couldn’t have been calling you from somewhere else?” I said.

  “I called him on a landline so that’s how I know, and he was like I miss you, blah blah, kiss kiss, let’s meet tomorrow, and we made a date. We talked a lot, and then I said I had to go.”

  “When?”

  “Late yesterday. I think it was late.”

  “You told someone. You told someone that Jack didn’t go to Russia, Val?” I took her hand.

  “Yeah. I did. I don’t know why. Just careless I guess, or because it’s genetic, this betrayal thing. I don’t know why. He kept asking and asking, so I told.”

  “Who kept asking you? You want to tell me who you told?”

  Nervously, she picked at her short hair. “I should probably go now,” she said.

  “Who was it?”

  She hugged me. “I told my dad, Artie, OK? Please take care of him,” she said and went out and closed the door behind her.

  30

  I stayed, waiting for Tolya; for an hour, then two, I waited. I called him. I wandered around the huge apartment that covered the whole top floor of the building.

  In his bedroom, I opened the closets and stared at the rows of custom-made suits, dozens of them, over-scale suits made out of cashmere and alpaca and fabrics I had never heard of. He liked showing me. He liked taking me shopping. Brioni, he would sigh, like it was a girl’s name.

  I looked at the shoes. I opened drawers and found dozens of pairs of cufflinks with diamonds and other stones in them. There were drawers piled with brand new shirts, cotton so thin it felt like silk.

  On top of the dresser was the model for a group of buildings with a park around it; there were tiny green plastic trees, and little plastic people, the kind you put in a doll’s house. It stood on a wooden stand with a small brass plate that was engraved with the name of some architectural firm. It was like looking at a kid’s toy.

  Tolya wanted it all so badly; he wanted to be the biggest kid. I was alone in his place, looking in his closets, his drawers, spying on him.

  From the window I could see the High Line. I thought about Jack slipping off. Tolya had known that Jack was in the city; Val had told him. He had known even while he was pretending that Jack was gone, going along with me, playing the game, calling people in Russia. He had known. This was the thing I had been scared of almost from the time I had met him ten years ago, that one day I’d have to decide.

  I thought about my father and wondered if he had been frightened when he was a young officer and had to arrest people he knew and loved; I wondered if he ever did.

  So I waited. I knew he’d come back because he thought Valentina would be here. He had trusted me to stay with her and I let her go. I went out on the terrace and watched the water. I watched and waited and then it occurred to me that Tolya had put on a black suit on a hot summer day. Maybe he wasn’t coming back, not even for Val. Maybe he was gone. My heart pounded like crazy. I had to decide fast.

  “Where’s Valentina?” he said when I found him at the office in Red Hook. “What are you doing here?”

  “You went to the funeral home to pay your respects, they told me. Alex McKay told me. I figured there was a chance you’d come here afterwards. It’s not far.”

  He had taken off his jacket. His white shirt was stained with sweat and he was drinking Scotch from a coffee mug. It was dim inside the room, and the air conditioner rattled in the window.

  “Where is she?” he said, getting up.

  I told him and I thought he might punch me.

  “You let her go? You said you’d stay with her, and you let her go to the airport?” He went for the phone. I knew it was too late. Val would have gone already, but I let him call.

  “I have the files you wanted,” I said. “I have all of Sid’s stuff. You can have them. OK? Tolya? You want the files. I have them. They’re in my car.”

  Tolya stood over me, face pinched with rage. “You let my girl go and you offer me paper.”

  “I didn’t let her go. She’s a grown up. She did what she had to do. You keep a tight rein, man. Let her be. Let her grow up. She has her own grief.”

  He snorted. “She doesn’t mourn for Santiago.”

  “How do you know that?”

  It was after midnight. I looked around. There was a suitcase near the back door.

  “What the hell are you doing here anyhow? You’re leaving? You knew you were leaving when you left your place earlier, before you knew Val was going away?”

  “I told you last week I am leaving,” he said.

  “Where for?”

  He held up the Scotch bottle as if to offer me some, started to talk, then stopped, listening for someone or something outside.

  “Valentina was sick of him. She told me. Santiago hit on her, he fell for her. He follows her around to get to me. It was me he wanted. She liked to go dancing with him was all she told me.”

  “You think all they did was go dancing? Don’t be naïve.” I sat down on a broken desk chair. I was tired.

  “Whatever,” he said in English. “This is a very ugly expression, you know. Whatever. You should have stayed with her, Artyom. I ask you, you do what I ask. This is what friends do.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Santiago didn’t want her,” Tolya said. “He wanted me. He used her. Santiago was a bastard. He was a drunk and a junkie, and he hurt her, too. I saw the bruises, right? You saw, didn’t you? No? She didn’t show you? She was ashamed.”

  “She showed you?”

  “I walked in on her in her room. I knew. I saw on her arm.”

  “It could have been anything,” I said.

  “He didn’t want her, h
e wanted me.”

  “What did he want with you?”

  “You could have stopped all this, you know, you should have gone when Sid called you the first time.” His voice was cool. He poured some more Scotch, then held the bottle out to me again. I refused it.

  “Take a drink.”

  Tolya poured Scotch into a second mug, and when I drank it, the whisky tasted of stale coffee.

  I said, “We could eat. We could go eat something.” I knew it was idiotic, but I wanted him to talk to me. I wanted to cool things off between us.

  He drank.

  I said, “You think I betrayed you.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What’s the matter with you, Artyom? Just ask me what you want.”

  “Did you kill Jack Santiago?”

  “It was an accident, Jack Santiago.”

  “OK.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you,” Tolya said.

  Rummaging in the desk drawer, pulling out envelopes that looked as if they contained cash, Tolya stowed them in his pants’ pockets.

  The picture of himself that he’d thrown in the garbage can Friday night caught his eye and he picked it up, carefully removed the shattered frame and looked at it, the picture of himself in a rock band in Moscow, the tall skinny boy who offended the officials when he played underground illicit rock in crappy venues. I looked at it.

  “I had left Moscow by then,” I said. “I only remember rumors of underground rock from when I was a kid. I was too timid. We were all scared at my house. I was never brave anyway, you know?” Tolya smiled and reached across the desk and put his ham-sized hand on mine for a second. “Brave is bullshit, you know? Brave is dead. Brave is cant,” he added, and then looked at the picture of himself again. “I don’t have my history anymore,” he said. “I’ve been too long in this country, Artyom.”

  He drank steadily, watching the window constantly as if he were afraid.

  I said, “Do you think that Jack killed Sidney McKay?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. One day. Family says McKay’s death is an accident. People here are happy if this is accident. Better for real estate. So all is OK, right?”

  All Tolya’s anger was gone. With his huge face like a supplicant bulldog, for the only time I could remember he invited pity. He slipped into his mix of English and Russian, not to mock me this time but because he seemed almost too tired to remember one or the other.

  “So all is OK, sure, my kid going to Russia to be with sick people, Sid McKay who was good guy dead, this man, the other one, his half brother, whatever you say he is, also dead,” Tolya said.

  “What about you, Tolya?”

  “What about me?”

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know.” He looked at his watch. “It depends on you.”

  I said, “You don’t want to be in Red Hook anymore? Buy buildings?”

  “No,” he said. “I dreamed to be here, but no more. It was a fantasy. A fairy tale. I think I would be oligarch. I would have my own piece of New York. I could never own New York. I dreamed it all up, and I don’t want anymore. I want to go.”

  “Where will you go? You said Russia’s dangerous for you,” I said. “They’re locking up rich people, people who don’t play the game. You said if you fool with property, the mafia kills you, if the government doesn’t put you away.”

  “Maybe I go for long vacation somewhere else. Nice place,” he said. “Maybe I invite Lily and her baby to come and I take care of them.”

  “Good,” I said and was jealous. “Good.”

  I picked up the picture of Tolya as a young guy in Moscow.

  “Can I have this?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Sure.”

  From outside came the noise of a truck pulling up to the building. Nothing moved in Red Hook this time of night, but now there was a truck and it ground slowly up towards the door, and then stopped. We waited.

  The gate on the front of the building was down and locked. It would be easy for someone to break a window, though, I thought.

  “Where’s your car?” I said.

  “I left it in the city. I came in a cab,” he said.

  I took my car keys out of my pocket. “I’ll take you.” I said. “My car’s in the back lot of the building.”

  “When it seemed quiet on the street, I looked out. I couldn’t see anyone. Slowly, I unlocked the door, and pulled at him.

  “Get in the car,” I said, and we ran for it.

  “Please go to the airport, JFK, please,” Tolya said when we were both in the car, waiting to leave the back lot of his building, lights still off, listening. I put the picture of Tolya in the back seat.

  All I could hear was the silence, and the sound of the single truck.

  “You’ll take me?” Tolya added.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’m OK.”

  “How do you know?”

  He smiled. “I’m hungry,” he said.

  “Tolya?”

  “Yes, Artyom?”

  “How do you know Jack killed Sid?”

  “He told me,” he said, reaching for a cigar.

  “Don’t light it. Not yet.”

  I looked out of the car window. It was dark. I couldn’t see much and I didn’t want to put on my lights, not yet.

  “When did he tell you?”

  “Last night. Sunday night.” Tolya said. “He told me last night before he fell over the railing. He fell down and got stuck on the fence. He told me, before he slipped.”

  There was a grinding sound from out front of the building. I realized the vehicle that had pulled up to the building and scared us both was only a garbage truck. I turned the key in the ignition.

  Finally, I asked Tolya what he was doing with Jack Santiago on the High Line the night when Jack told him he killed Sid McKay, before Jack slipped over the edge.

  Tolya looked at me and said simply, “I invited him up.”

  “What for?”

  “Let’s say I invite him to talk about Valentina, OK? Or maybe just to see the view.”

  By the time I pulled away, a faint light was just fingering the sky over Red Hook. Tolya glanced out of his side window at the old brick buildings turning pink in the light, and at the water, and the Statue of Liberty, and then stared straight ahead while I drove him to the airport. He asked me to stop near a hotel. He opened the door.

  I said, “You’re going to Russia, aren’t you? You’re not going to Cuba or Italy, you’re fucking going to Moscow. They’ll kill you.”

  He leaned across to me, kissed me three times, reached in the back seat for his suitcase, got out of the car and walked towards the airport hotel.

  31

  It was warm and bright out on Tuesday afternoon, and quiet in this part of Brooklyn Heights where the trees were still loaded with leaves. Heavy and green in the late summer, they rustled, a canopy over the wide street of handsome brownstones and the big church, its stained-glass windows alight with color.

  Up and down both sides of the road, black limos were parked. The drivers in black suits and caps stood near the cars, some smoking, others leaning against them, dozing in the warm afternoon.

  The doors of the church were slightly open and the sound of music poured out, Russian music, a choir singing, then a solo singer, a deep bass voice. And then the sound of people getting up. I couldn’t make out the words of the song, but I went to the door and looked in as people rose from the pews; I could see Sid’s coffin at the front, white flowers on it.

  I went down the steps again, leaned against a thick tree trunk and listened to the soaring sound of the music. I’d left Tolya at the airport hours earlier, and I didn’t try to call him or ask around, just went home and got a shower and changed into a suit. I called Maxine. Tried to make up with her. All I had left was Sid�
�s funeral. I had come because I was Sid’s friend, or maybe I wanted to see who showed up.

  I didn’t feel right about going in somehow, so I just listened and thought about Sid for a while, and about Earl, the “John Doe” up in Potter’s Field on the island in the East River. I would get him a different place when this was all over and no one would ask what my interest was.

  Jack Santiago was dead. He had killed Sid McKay, but McKay’s family had already made sure it would go down as some kind of accident. As for Earl, only I would ever know that Sid killed him. No one would remember Sid McKay as a guy who killed a homeless man, his half brother.

  No one would mention Earl again unless I raised it: a derelict black guy, his head pinioned under a dock in Red Hook, wasn’t much of a story. Everything would be reduced to a crawl along the screen on the local evening news, the kind that runs alongside weather warnings: homeless man found dead under dock in Red Hook; man in accidental death by drowning; man found under the High Line.

  Maybe there would be some celebrity stuff about Jack Santiago, some of his women would show up and talk about how brilliant he was, or some writer would say he had been a natural, something like that. But unless I made a fuss, it would all be over. Unless I opened it up, and what was I going to do, play Moses? Part the fucking waters? Everyone in the city wanted a few quiet days; anyway there wasn’t much crime in New York. Crime in the city went down for another year. Fear went up. The weather got warmer.

  Inside the church, people were beginning to rise from the pews. A group of men in dark suits went solemnly up towards Sid’s casket.

  Outside, I backed away. I stayed leaning against the thick old tree for a while, didn’t know how long, scanning the people as they emerged, looking for cars to take them to the cemetery. It was getting late. Late for a funeral. Maybe Sid had requested burial at sunset. Who the hell knew?

  I didn’t know who I was looking for. Maybe I’d wait for Alex McKay, tell him I was sorry about his father, leave it at that, let it be.

  Lighting a cigarette, I half noticed the little man who emerged from the church. He came out alone, ahead of the others. He was a small thick man with a barrel chest, not more than five-two, and he walked half a block, and sat down suddenly on the third step of a brownstone as if he had run out of steam.