It dawned on me that Al would have no problem leaving me here as body number three. Maybe Al wasn’t as dumb as I thought. He’d fooled his third corpse into coming out here under its own power. He worked with Danny, seemed to follow his lead, but it was Bavasi and Santoro who scared him. I didn’t know what, if anything, Danny could do to protect me. I watched Danny’s eyes, trying to find Al through their motion. But all Danny’s eyes did was plead with me.
Danny was right. It didn’t matter. Those bodies were nothing but empty shells. I wasn’t hurting anyone. If I didn’t burn them, Al or Danny would and maybe burn me with them. What had Danny told me in the car? None of us had ever been here, ever in our lives. Anything that happened here couldn’t be our doing. We were never here. What choice did I have but to believe him? Any chance to get out of this had passed me by long before Danny handed me that lighter. The lighter. I looked down at it, sitting, silver, innocent, and cool, in my palm. It was an expensive Zippo. What a waste. I pushed back the hood with my thumb, ignited the flame, watched it burn for a long moment, and tossed it onto a dead man’s chest.
He went up fast, low blue flames running frantic only briefly before igniting into leaping golden waves.
I backed away until Al and Danny’s dark forms merged into one black shadow before the fire. The trash around the bodies began to burn. The stench hit me like a kick to the back of my knees. I thought it might make me blind. I forgot not to breathe. I spit up a mouthful of bile and whiskey, wiping my mouth on my arm. What the fuck had I done?
The shadow broke in two as Al headed for the car. Danny waited for me by the fire. The fire gurgled and spat, feeding. The heat made me squint. It ruffled Danny’s hair.
“I need to know,” I said. “Who were they? What did they do?”
He threw his arm over my shoulder, walking me away from the car. He nearly pulled me down as he stumbled over something. I looked down. The head. We had dropped it again. Danny grabbed it by the hair. This time I didn’t look at the face. Al started the Charger.
“Remember how I told you,” Danny said, the head hanging from his fist, “how I took over for Santoro’s other tech guy?” He held up the head. “This is Santoro’s other guy.” Danny tossed the head into the fire. “He talked too much. Mostly to that other guy next to him.”
I doubled over, dry heaving.
“I know you can keep secrets, Kevin,” Danny said, rubbing my back. “I remember it well.”
“Let’s roll,” Al yelled, gunning the engine.
EIGHT
ON THE RIDE BACK TO BROOKLYN, DANNY AND AL ABANDONED ME to my thoughts and the last few swigs from the whiskey bottle. I drank it all, hoping in vain the alcohol would put me to sleep. Alcohol was how you treated open wounds, right? Hadn’t Grandpa taught us that? And I felt wounded, all right. The Continental Army, all they’d had for bullet and bayonet wounds was bad rum. If cheap liquor was good enough for George Washington, it was good enough for me.
As we crossed over the Verrazano, I curled up tight against the door, my forehead resting on the cool glass of the window. I stared straight down at the white lines passing underneath us. I thought about opening the door and falling out. I saw myself bouncing once off the pavement and dropping over the side, tumbling down through the night and splashing into the cold, deep Narrows. But that bastard Al had power locks on all his doors.
As a boy, I had loved crossing the Verrazano, the mammoth, sky-blue arc of steel and asphalt stretching from the northern end of Staten Island to the eastern edge of Brooklyn, its wide roadway hanging on heavy cables over the water. The Verrazano spanned the space where the Colonials and the Redcoats had fought the Battle of Brooklyn. I used to look down from the car and picture the British warships sailing from the coast of Staten Island and into the cannon fire from the Colonial forts dug deep into the Brooklyn soil.
On those Sunday drives, after we passed through the tollbooth, the road would rise onto the bridge and Staten Island would shrink away behind us, the world opening wide in the dirty windshield of our Dodge Dart. The gleaming silver spires of Manhattan spiked the sky on my left, the limitless slate expanse of the mythic Atlantic unfurled on my right. In front of us waited Brooklyn, sunlight washing over a thousand different hues of brick and brown and gray. A place of parks and pizza joints, of museums and libraries. The home of my grandfather’s fireplace and my grandmother’s grand piano. Of Easter egg hunts and twenty-foot Christmas trees. Staten Island only seemed to me a place still in search of a king, kneeling before the silver crown of Manhattan.
Riding over the water with Danny and Al, I felt like one of Washington’s naïve, terrified soldiers staring down the British fleet: overwhelmed, outgunned, caught in the current of forces far beyond my control or comprehension. Like one of those poor, dumb farmers, I’d marched into a world far more brutal than the one I thought I saw from my porch, a world inhabited by people far more dirty and dangerous than me. I worried that even if I survived my stint in Santoro’s army, I’d already started leaving important pieces of me on the battlefield.
Far below me, the ruby and white lights of the bridge shimmered, reflected on the hard black face of the Narrows. The steel cables rushed by like the bars of a cage, of a jail cell. Every time oncoming headlights swept through the car I sank deeper into the backseat, hiding from the eyes of the drivers. The dark void over southern Manhattan choked on stars. Brooklyn still revealed herself shadowy and seductive before us, her white lights clustered like jewels against her Indian red flesh. But as we cruised down the highway and off the bridge the lamp-lit road stretched out like a bruised blue vein under papery, yellow skin.
Taking me to that graveyard, Danny had put me through something that should’ve driven us apart for good. But I knew it would only draw us closer. He knew it, too. It was why he’d insisted I go. Secrets, no matter how terrible, can bind as strong as blood.
Al opened his cell phone, projecting an eerie blue glow. The light faded when Al moved the phone to his ear, waiting for an answer to his call. I closed my eyes.
“It’s done,” he said. “We just crossed the water.”
There was a pause as the person on the other end spoke.
“Three,” Al said. Another pause. “Aw man, now you tell me that? No, of course I’m not complaining, it’s just—” Al snapped his phone shut and tossed it on the dash. “Motherfucker hung up on me. Fuck.” He slapped Danny on the arm. “Three-way split. Did you know about this?”
Danny shook his head, rubbing his eyes. He’d been asleep.
Three, Al had said. Three-way split. I wondered how close I had really come to Al’s answer being two instead of three. I wondered again, had I failed, what my brother would have done. Would he have let Al shoot me down like a deserter? A meaningless question, I told myself. I hadn’t failed and I had saved Danny from having to make that choice. For once in my life, I’d gotten to him before the needle did.
BAVASI WATCHED US CAREFULLY as we climbed from the car and walked toward the restaurant, slouched and plodding like zombies, the only noise on the street the buzzing of the streetlights. He pulled open the door and turned his head to double-check the empty street as the three of us filed into the restaurant.
In the lobby, Danny and Al took off their shoes and socks, so I did the same. Bavasi locked the door behind us. Instead of frightening me, the heavy shot of the bolt hitting home was a comfort. I was safe from the gaze of strangers.
Bavasi had the lights turned down, the wall lamps painting the restaurant in a warm, golden glow. The room smelled of buttery garlic and sharp pepper and fine coffee. We followed Bavasi to the booth where Danny and I had eaten steaks that same evening. As I slid across the rich leather, the memory of that meal drifted far back in my mind, floating ethereal among recollections I had of Danny and me from long ago, reading not at all like the newly minted memory that it really was.
A crystal decanter sat at center table surrounded by four shot glasses. A lone coffee bean sat in the bottom o
f each glass. Bavasi removed the decanter’s top and poured a shot of foggy, syrupy liquid for each of us. It smelled like burning licorice. Bavasi lifted his glass. We all did the same. Salud, he said quietly, and we all drank. The liquor coated my mouth and throat with a warm, simmering heat that was unlike the sharp, electric tang of the whiskey I’d drunk before. My whole head and throat felt purged and clean. The vomit, the dump, the smoke, they were all scorched away. I wanted a few minutes to recover but our host poured another round. He toasted again, we swallowed, and I reached for the pack of cigarettes my brother had thrown on the table. Bavasi capped the decanter and walked away from the table.
I stuck out my hand to Danny for a lighter but he just shrugged at me.
“That Zippo I gave you was the only one I had on me.”
I looked to Al. He shook his head.
Bavasi returned to the table and set down a pitcher of ice water and three glasses. He slid a glass ashtray, a pack of matches from some other restaurant in it, across the table to me.
Danny sighed as I lit up. “If you get back in the habit because of me, I’m gonna feel really guilty.”
I exhaled a long cloud of smoke and shook out the match. The alcohol was making things distant and fuzzy. “Don’t worry about me. I’m a grown man. Besides, I’m the oldest, you can’t tell me what to do.”
After pouring us each a glass of water, Santoro leaned on the table, his weight heavy on his palms. Like my father, thick veins roped his hands and forearms. There was plenty of room in the booth, but he showed no desire to sit.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I know you wouldn’t be here accepting my hospitality if the work wasn’t done”—turning to Al—“and done right this time, so I congratulate you. I know you’re anxious to get clean. Everything is ready for you in the locker room. Leave your clothes by the back door, as usual.” He turned to me. “Kevin, you are the new man here so I’m sure you’re the most eager to get started. Why don’t you go first while I review the night’s events with my paisans here?”
I knew a polite dismissal when I heard one and got up from the table. The colonel wanted a moment with his senior officers. Bavasi rested a hand on my shoulder. His grip was firm.
“Through the kitchen to the right,” he said. “Take your time. There’s no hurry now.”
THROUGH A HEAVY DOOR marked STAFF I found a long row of tall, narrow lockers. Three shower stalls stood off to my right, clean towels stacked by each one. Hanging from the nearest locker was a fresh set of clothes: dark pants, a long-sleeved, deep green T-shirt, a black suit jacket. Inside the locker waited new underwear, socks, and a brand-new pair of black leather shoes. At first, I thought I’d found Danny’s stuff but everything was in my size, all of it too small for him. There was even a fresh stick of deodorant and a new razor. A goddamn toothbrush. A few lockers away hung new clothes for Danny and Al.
Listening for anyone coming through the door, I walked the lockers, peeking through the vents. I jiggled a couple of the latches but they were all locked. Through the narrow vents, I couldn’t see anything other than white clothes I took to be chefs’ jackets and waiters’ coats. Did Bavasi’s regular employees know what went on here late at night? Were they part of it? When they came into work tomorrow would there be any sign of us? I couldn’t see Bavasi letting that happen. He probably knew everything I was and wasn’t doing at that moment just from the sounds he didn’t hear.
I headed back up the aisle to my own locker and undressed, leaving my old clothes in a pile on the cold concrete floor. The room felt plenty warm, telling me the goose bumps on my naked flesh weren’t from being cold. I was afraid of being alone, and afraid of walking back into the restaurant not having done what I was told. Was Santoro out there, waiting to meet me?
Who had Santoro really had in mind when he built this room? Was it for Bavasi’s cooks and waiters and bartenders, or was it for their other, more specialized employees? Who hid behind whom? Where had it all started? I couldn’t even conjure a face for Santoro. All I saw when I thought of him was a pair of long, long arms. I reimagined Bavasi at twenty, thirty, a backroom butcher for some neighborhood meat shop in Italian Brooklyn—his thick, hairy forearms coated in the blood of his work, his white apron splattered with crimson gore as he stood at the butcher’s block. Santoro walking in, eyeing the blood, offering his hand and asking for a favor.
The shower smelled of bleach and disinfectant. Waiting for the water to warm, I ran my fingertips along the cool white tile. Was this what a gas chamber was like? Did anyone use gas anymore? I stepped under the steaming water, washed those questions from my mind. Surely what we had done, gruesome as it was, didn’t warrant that kind of punishment. But it was a crime. A serious crime that covered others. Like murder, for instance. I was a criminal now. A felon. Guilty of aiding and abetting, accessory after the fact, and probably plenty more charges I couldn’t name. I studied my hands. They looked the same as they had that afternoon, back when they were just a teacher’s hands.
I unwrapped the soap and lathered up, scrubbing every nook and cranny. Bowing my head I let the water pound my shoulders. Through half-open eyes I watched the suds and water pool at my feet before it ran down the drain. How many people had washed the filth of the dead off their skin in that shower? My brother had. I lathered and rinsed again.
If things went bad for Danny, I’d have a lot more than student complaints on my permanent record. I had to keep him close, figure out a way for both of us to break free of Santoro’s orbit, though I had no clue how and when I would do that. One major complication was that Danny seemed happy where he was. Good luck getting him to do something he didn’t want to. Another problem was the fact that crossing Danny’s superiors was a quick way to make us both dead. Even I, minor player that I was, could see that. I was washing off the proof in their shower.
I turned off the water and stood there dripping, staring at my hands again. What did any of it matter to me? I’d never be here again. The graveyard, the dump, Santoro’s, “putting the kids to bed”—this wasn’t my world. I was a teacher. I taught American history for Richmond City College in Staten Island, New York. I lived in a crappy apartment in a forgotten neighborhood in a minor borough of a major city where I graded papers, reread the same old textbooks and lesson plans, jerked off, and watched TV. Sometimes I varied the order, but not often.
I sat on my balcony and watched my neighbors throw their despair all over each other between drug deals. Sometimes I went out to a bar down by the water. I had nothing to do with this world. I was only visiting this other place, like going to a museum or a movie. Those bodies would’ve burned with or without me. Right at that moment, some other poor schmuck was probably sinking into the swamps of Jersey. And the world kept right on turning. What I’d done that night didn’t matter to anyone, and no one would ever know. I lived on scraps and needed new clothes, but I wasn’t a foot soldier fighting for a place in history in any general’s rebel army. I wasn’t even a footnote in Santoro’s story.
I took a few minutes to smell my skin everywhere I could reach with my nose. Nothing but skin and soap. Everything else had gone down the drain. I was clean.
Millions of people across the city smelled like I did. I was just another one of the freshly washed masses. Nothing of the night clung to me, not even under my nails.
I toweled off and dressed in my new clothes, happy to have them. They made me feel that much further away from the graveyard and the dump. I wiped the fog off a mirror over the sinks. I looked pretty good, not much the worse for wear considering the night I’d had. I checked the whites of my eyes, like what we’d done would leave traces. There was nothing to hide in them. I stepped back from the mirror. I would walk into the dining room looking a lot like my brother, wearing his uniform.
I left my old clothes in a pile by the back door, like Bavasi had said.
BAVASI, DANNY, AND AL were laughing when I walked into the room.
“That’s fucking disgusting,” Al said, r
ising from the booth, jamming half a breadstick into his mouth. “Kevin, there better be hot water left.” He walked into the kitchen. I took his seat at the table.
Bavasi poured another shot and walked away from the table, wiping his hands on his apron. I protested when Danny slid the glass toward me.
“Sip this one,” he said. “There’s nothing better after a hot shower.”
I left the glass on the table.
Danny sipped his own shot. “Okay, I’ve got one more slice of advice for you. Easy to follow, but important. As we leave, which we will do right after I get cleaned up, Bavasi will hand you an envelope. In it will be cash. Not enough to retire on, but probably more than you’ve ever seen. Put it in your jacket pocket. Don’t protest, don’t even thank him, just put it away. Remember the guard at the dump? Do it like him. Count it when you get home.” I started to say something, but Danny cut me off. “If you have moral troubles over the money, throw it in the trash, give it to a bum on the corner. Nobody will ever ask you about it. Just take it when Bavasi offers it. And, yes, you get to keep the clothes.” He pulled back the lapels of his jacket. “Obviously.”
“I think I can handle all that,” I said. “Listen, Al said something about a three-way split in the car. I’m taking a cut of his money, aren’t I?”
“And mine,” Danny said, sinking back into the plush leather of the booth, seeming to grow larger as he did so. “But don’t worry about it. Al defied an order. He’s lucky it’s only his pay and not his throat that’s getting cut.”
Danny leaned his head back and closed his eyes, putting his feet up on the bench, a man comfortable and at home. I realized, suddenly, I was witnessing something I had rarely ever seen: my brother still and at rest. I enjoyed it, regardless of the circumstances. Like with heroin, there’d be no forcing or tricking or fooling Danny into leaving Santoro behind. Danny had to make that decision for himself. What I had to do was be there when the moment came and give my brother a push in the right direction.
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