by Mark Dawson
“Out of the way,” Mackintosh said from behind Milton.
He clenched his fists. He couldn’t ignore it any longer. He was going to have to take responsibility. He stepped into the room.
The room was lit by a single lamp that had been knocked over so that now it rested on the floor next to the bed. Its glow revealed a sorry sight. Manny was sprawled across the bed, surrounded by more empty cans. He was wearing boxer shorts and a white T-shirt that had been discoloured by beer that had been spilt onto it and then dried. Milton’s attention was drawn to his legs, and, in particular, to the fact that his right was missing from the knee down. All that remained was a stump decorated with a pattern of puckered stitches. The prosthesis that had previously been hidden under his trousers had been abandoned by the side of the bed.
Freddy was beside his father, gently shaking him by the shoulders as tears washed down his cheeks.
“Come on, Dad. Wake up. I need to talk to you.”
Manny grunted again.
Milton went around to the other side of the bed.
Mackintosh came into the room, too, but she stayed by the door.
Milton knelt down and put his hands on Manny’s shoulders.
“I know you,” the man slurred.
“That’s right,” he said. “It’s John. From the meeting.”
Manny blinked his eyes at the mention of the fellowship. His face passed through confusion to shame and then, finally, anger.
“What you doing in my house?”
“Freddy needs your help, Manny.”
“That’s right,” he said, the words tumbling over one another. “Because I can’t look after my own fucking boy, can I?”
Mackintosh cleared her throat. “Hello, sir.”
He managed to get an arm beneath him and pushed himself into a sitting position. “Who are you?”
“I’m Detective Mackintosh.”
“Police?” He swivelled back to look at Milton. “You brought the police into my house? I ain’t done nothing wrong. Just had a couple drinks, that’s all. There ain’t no crime in that.”
Manny swung himself around to the side and put down his left leg, pushing away from the bed. He was either too drunk to maintain his balance or he had forgotten that he wasn’t wearing his prosthesis, because he immediately toppled forward and fell into a pile of clothes that had been discarded on the room’s single wooden chair. He landed heavily, the chair’s legs splaying out and snapping off.
“Dad!”
Milton knelt down, hooked Manny beneath the arms and hoisted him up. The man was a dead weight, the smell of booze pulsing out of him in an almost palpable wave that made Milton want to retch.
“I got you,” Milton said, bracing his legs so that he might bear his weight.
“Get the fuck off me,” he slurred.
Manny started to struggle. Milton grasped him tightly, afraid to drop him, and tried to walk him back to the bed.
Freddy put his hands over his face in horror and shame. “Dad!”
“Settle down, sir,” Mackintosh said.
Milton allowed himself to be distracted. He glanced over at the boy and didn’t notice as Manny drew back his fist. Milton turned back just as the punch landed. It wasn’t a particularly powerful blow—Manny was much too disorientated for that—but it took Milton by surprise and he let go of him, dropping him back to the floor.
Milton stepped back, rubbing his nose.
Freddy hurried to his father. Manny was sprawled out on the floor, his arms braced on either side as he tried to push himself away.
“Get out of my house,” Manny spat at Milton. “Get out!”
Mackintosh slipped by Milton so that she could put herself between him and Manny. Milton noticed that she had popped the retaining clip that held her service pistol in the shoulder holster she wore beneath her coat.
“It’s all right,” Milton said. “I’m fine. He hardly hit me. He’s just—”
Manny tried to stand and lost his balance again. He fell into Mackintosh, his shoulder catching her on the side of the chin. She staggered back, and, as she regained her balance, her hand was on the butt of the pistol.
“Dad,” Freddy pleaded. “Stop!”
“Don’t get up, Mr. Blanco,” Mackintosh said, her voice laced with iron.
Manny had fallen onto his backside with his back propped up against the side of the bed.
Freddy turned to Mackintosh. “I got this,” the boy said. “You don’t need to do this. I can look after him.”
It was delivered with the dull acceptance of someone who was clearly used to finding his father in a state like this. Milton felt a flash of anger: Freddy needed his father badly, but it was Manny who would receive the help. Milton was angry and wanted to say something, until he realised that his anger was directed inward. He saw himself in Manny, and all the people that he had let down when he had drunk himself into similar situations. It reminded him of his own shame.
Mackintosh took her phone out of her pocket and dialled a number. “It’s Detective Mackintosh. I’m going to need a patrol car at number four Danforth Street.”
“Come on,” Milton said. “Is that necessary?”
As he said it, he felt a warm sensation running from his right nostril down onto his lip. He reached up with his fingertips and touched the blood.
“Step back, please, Mr. Smith.”
Milton backed into the doorway.
“Freddy,” he said, “come here.”
The boy reluctantly did as he asked.
“Do you have any other family nearby?”
“My mom. She’s in Queens.”
“You’ll probably have to stay with her tonight—is that going to be okay?”
“She hardly sees me no more,” Freddy said.
“But she’ll let you stay?”
“I guess. What’ll they do with my dad?”
“I think they’ll take him to the precinct until he sobers up,” Milton said.
Freddy looked up at Milton’s face, pointing at his nose. “You won’t…”
“Press charges?” he finished for him. “No. Of course not. Nothing bad is going to happen. They’ll let him sleep it off and he’ll be out in the morning.”
Freddy exhaled with something akin to relief. “You’re sure?”
“Positive. Can you call your mother?”
He nodded.
“Go on, then.”
Freddy left the bedroom and went into the living space. There was a cordless phone on the table. He took it and dialled a number. The call went unanswered for twenty seconds—Milton guessed that Freddy’s mother was asleep—before he started to speak. He apologised for waking her and then explained what had happened and that he needed her to come over.
Milton saw flashing lights outside, the pulsing blue suffusing the thin curtains. He heard doors open and close and the sound of footsteps approaching the door. There came a heavy knocking and a voice barked out, “NYPD. Open up.”
Milton crossed the room and opened the door. There were two male officers standing outside; they both had their pistols drawn and held ready.
“Everything is fine,” Milton said. “Detective Mackintosh is in the bedroom at the back of the house. The owner of the house is drunk, but she has it under control. So you two can take it easy.”
“Excuse me,” said the man in the front, bumping Milton aside as he went into the house and hurried to the rear.
The second officer stayed by the door. “Who are you?”
“My name is Smith,” Milton said. “I came here with Detective Mackintosh.”
The man nodded toward Milton’s bloody nose. “How’d that happen?”
“Just a misunderstanding. It’s nothing.”
“That right? You stay where I can see you.”
Milton nodded and turned away from him. Freddy was still talking on the telephone, but the conversation was coming to a close. His cheeks were red and his eyes were wet when he finally finished the call and put the tel
ephone back into the cradle.
“Okay?” Milton asked him.
“She’s coming over now. She’s mad.”
There was a shout from the bedroom and the second officer hurried to the open door.
There was a pen and a pad of paper on the table next to the telephone’s cradle. Milton took the pen and wrote down his telephone number.
“If you need me, I’m here. Okay?”
“What about the police? What do I do?”
“They’ll speak to you tomorrow.”
“And the man I saw? The one in the video?”
“Don’t mention it to anyone. I wouldn’t even mention it to your father. Let me think about it.”
“But you don’t think I can trust the cops?”
“We need to work out who we can and can’t trust.”
Mackintosh and the two officers now emerged from the bedroom with Manny between them. His hands had been cuffed behind him and his prosthetic had not been attached; he was hopping, supported on either side.
“What about my boy?” Manny slurred. “I gotta look after him.”
“Mom’s coming to get me,” Freddy said.
The news seemed to suck all of the fight out of Manny, and he slumped forward. The officers changed position so that they could bear his weight. “Fuck,” he breathed. He looked over at his son. “Don’t listen to her, Freddy. You hear me? Whatever she says, all the poison, you don’t listen to any of it.”
The boy looked away.
“I’ll stay until she shows up,” Mackintosh said. “He’ll be fine.” She nodded to the officers and they proceeded to the door, Manny hopping impotently between them. Mackintosh turned to Milton. “I’d like you to go now, please.”
“What about Manny?”
“Drunk tank until he sobers up.” She indicated Milton’s nose. “You going to do anything about that?”
“No,” he said. “It was a misunderstanding. Just make sure he’s looked after.”
She nodded and indicated that he should make his way to the open door. Milton did as he was told. He glanced across at Freddy. The boy looked at him for a moment and then looked down.
Milton stepped outside.
35
It took Milton twenty minutes to find a cab and then another thirty to get home. He gazed out at the deeper darkness out to sea, at the few lights that blinked on ships that were passing out into Jamaica Bay and the broad ocean beyond.
He allowed his thoughts to drift back to what had turned out to be a much more momentous day than he could have anticipated. He kept returning to the boy. Freddy was obviously a smart kid, but the events of the night had stripped away the premature ageing that had been bestowed upon him by his life on the street. The sass and lip were necessary for a childhood spent in this part of Brooklyn but, at the end of it all, they were props designed to mask the fact that he was a thirteen-year-old kid. He was not equipped to deal with the trauma of finding a bloodied murder victim, but, then again, what child would be equipped to handle that?
And then, when he needed his father to help him navigate the aftermath of everything that had happened that night, Manny had not been there. He had stood up his own son to go to a bar and drink himself into a stupor. Milton knew why: Manny was drowning out the voice in his head that told him that he wasn’t good enough. Milton would have been angry but for the fact that he heard the same voice, and that his resistance to its siren song was hard won and precarious, always to be defended.
That didn’t make things any fairer for Freddy.
Milton wondered, again, whether he bore any responsibility for what had happened. He had tried to do the right thing with the dealer in the shooting gallery on Danforth Street, but now he worried that he had emasculated Manny. He worried that he had compounded the slight by replacing the stolen sneakers that Manny would not have been able to afford to replace. Manny had fallen off the wagon because of the things that he had done. His intentions had been good, but the consequences were damaging. Milton found that he felt stupid and culpable.
He had already decided, but, as he probed the nose that still stung a little from Manny Blanco’s drunken swing, he nodded and made it certain: he would help Freddy and, if he would let him, he would help Manny, too. He would protect them both and do whatever it took to make things right.
The driver eventually turned west and arrived in Coney Island.
“Where you want?”
“West 24th,” he said.
The driver turned off Mermaid Avenue and Milton directed him to the other side of the road. He paid him and stepped out into the cold. The air was fresh and he could taste the salt. A jet passed high overhead, its lights winking in an endless pattern. There was no one else around: no traffic, and no one on the street. He looked at his watch. Two in the morning. He suddenly felt drained, as if the last drop of energy had been poured out of him. He needed to sleep.
The building loomed high overhead. It was ugly and brutal, but it was in the part of town where he wanted to be and it was cheap enough for him to afford without exhausting all of his funds. It suited him well. He pulled up the collar of his jacket and trudged across the sidewalk, around the perimeter of the children’s playground that was littered with debris and dotted with dog excrement, and made his way inside. He had work later. He needed his bed.
36
Milton awoke at seven. He could have done with more sleep. He came around to a familiar aching in his bones, more and more common when he didn’t get his hours in. There had been a time when he would have been able to go out and drink until four or five and wake up feeling reasonably refreshed after just two or three hours of sleep. Those days were long, long gone. There was no way around it: he was middle aged now, and the aches and pains were the badges and banners of his advancing years.
He had to get to work this morning, but he needed his exercise first. He got up, took his running gear from the back of the radiator where he had left it to dry, and pulled it on. He pressed his earbuds into his ears and put his phone into his pocket. He took the stairs to the ground floor and stepped outside. It was bright and clear and bitter once again; if anything, even colder than it had been the day before.
Milton set off, trusting that the exertion would warm him up. He headed south, following his usual route, and made his way to the boardwalk. He skipped through the music on his phone until he found Pendulum and, using the throb of the track to pace himself, he picked up speed.
The run was the same as always: Milton saw the tractor on the beach and nodded a hello to the old woman with her toy dog. He was coming up on the Aquarium when he saw a man leaning against the railing, looking back along the boardwalk in his direction.
The man stepped into Milton’s path and held up a hand.
Milton slowed to a walk. He appraised the man as he approached him: he was the same height as Milton and of similar build. His hair was swept away from his forehead in neat waves, and his salt-and-pepper goatee was carefully clipped. He wore a black overcoat, a thick woollen scarf and leather gloves.
“Excuse me,” the man said. “Could I have a word?”
Milton stopped and removed his earbuds. “Who are you?”
“My name is Fedorov.”
“Do we know each other?”
The man shook his head. “We do not. But you are the man who went into the sea to rescue a girl yesterday morning? Around this time?”
His accent was unmistakably Eastern European: he rolled the R in rescue, and the consonants at the end of his words were not voiced.
Milton looked at him more carefully. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”
“I am her father,” the man said. He turned and pointed to the bench by the railing. “Please. Can we sit?”
Fedorov smiled, his arm extended toward the bench. Milton was just getting started with his run and would have preferred to continue. He wasn’t interested in being rewarded for what he had done, but he also did not want to appear rude. He decided to accede. It wouldn’t take l
ong, and then he would start again. He nodded his head, went to the bench and sat down.
Fedorov sat next to him. “What is your name?”
“John.”
“You run here every morning?”
“I do,” Milton said.
“The cold weather—it must wake you up.”
“Something like that.” Milton would get cold if he didn’t get started again soon. “What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Nataliya,” Fedorov said.
“How is she?”
“She spent the night in the hospital,” he said. “It is a precaution. She had mild hypothermia. They say that if she had been in the water for another ten minutes, she would have died from the cold.”
“She wouldn’t have lasted for another ten minutes,” Milton said. “She was underwater when I got to her.”
“Did you see what happened?”
“It was a riptide. It was strong. I’m not surprised she was struggling. I’m a good swimmer, and I could barely make it back. And it was very cold.”
Fedorov stared out to sea. “We have winter swimming at home. There is a contest every year. Teams come from all over: Feodosiya, Yalta, Salem, Sevastopol, Balaklava. I used to enter with my brothers. My daughter saw that New York will have a winter swimming contest in January. She wants to enter. She wants me to be proud of her. I tell her not to go into the sea here when there are no lifeguards, but she ignores me. She has learned a harsh lesson. She will not ignore me again.”
“Where’s home?” Milton said. “Russia?”
A flicker of displeasure passed across his face. “No. I am from the Crimea. We came here after Putin stole it from us.”
It was obvious that the subject was a tender one; Fedorov’s passion was just below the surface and ready to bubble over.
Milton wasn’t interested in the effort of choosing his words carefully. He was getting cold, and he wanted to continue with his exercise. He stood. “I’m glad she’s okay.”
Fedorov stood, too. “I would like to thank you properly.”
“That’s not necessary. Really. I’m just pleased to have been able to help.”
