Disturbed Earth (11 page)

14

I should have gone to Maxie's right away. I should have picked up a pizza, or gone by and eaten the steak or humble pie or whatever the hell she wanted me to eat.

My head was swimming. May Luca was dead, the case was closed. May had been killed by a local crack-head. It was random; it had no meaning. May Luca had been dragged out of her yard and now she was dead. The baseball jacket was hers. The two bit crack-head who killed her had dumped the clothes, half buried, less than a mile away. That was it, I thought.

Genia was right. I didn't belong here. Unless I had business, there was nothing for me except grief along this coastal strip of Brooklyn.

It was after midnight. I got coffee from a deli and drank it black. My adrenalin was pumping. Almost fourteen hours since I'd met Sonny Lippert near the beach. I called Maxie to see if I could persuade her to let me stop by, but there was no answer. She had gone out. Or she was asleep. Or screening her calls and not answering because she was mad at me. Maybe I should have gone by anyhow, maybe I should have just gone and waited for her or used the key she gave me.

I didn't, though. I called Tolya and left a message that I was coming back to the city. I'd hang out with him in some Soho restaurant and drink wine that went for three hundred bucks. I'd get mindless drunk. I'd have stupid fun with the kind of women Tolya always had around him. Maybe I'd sleep better afterwards.

Just one stop, I thought to myself. One more stop before I went back to the city.

It was as if she knew I was coming. Ivana Galitzine was waiting on the porch of the house off Brighton 8th Street, a small, ramshackle house with layers of gray masonry, plastic shingle, fake red brick. The porch was enclosed with glass louvers; some of the slats were missing. Strips of damp wood were nailed over the holes.

The lights were on and I could see her sitting on the porch, looking out. Smoking a cigarette, she was framed in the window, staring, waiting, for someone? For me?

Before I could change my mind, she saw me and bolted out of the house and jogged towards the car. I slammed on the brakes. I reached over and unlocked the door and she got in.

Ivana wore a pair of tight black jeans and a short, thin white sweater. Her midriff was bare. There was a gold stud in her belly button. Her long hair fell over her face. She was a beautiful girl and I was sorry I'd stopped at her house. She was half my age and connected to a case I was working and I knew she had lied that morning. Lied about seeing no one near the scene, lied about how she found the clothing.

"You should have a coat on," I said because I couldn't think of anything else. I got out a pack of cigarettes and offered her one, but she shook her head, and I lit mine.

She looked down at her jeans and the old sweater and picked at a piece of lint that had settled on it.

"It's not so cold, is OK," she said. "I was waiting for you, you know?"

"You knew I'd show up?"

"Sure."

"How's that?" I asked "You like me," she said. "Don't you?"

"How old are you anyway?"

"Twenty-two, like I told you," she said.

"Yeah, sure."

"OK, I'm nineteen, but so what?"

Petulant and nervous, she was a kid. A kid with a great body who was coming on to me, who wanted something but what?

I said, "How can I help?"

"Take me out someplace. It's my birthday."

"I can't do that," I said. "I'm working. Anyhow it's after midnight."

For a few seconds she was silent and we sat in the warm closed car while the fog crawled up the window outside and the street disappeared. Then, out of the blue, she said, "I want to fuck you."

"No you don't."

"So I go down on you if you want." She licked her lips in a parody of a porn movie.

"Forget it."

She sulked and turned away.

"Come on," I said. "Tell me what's bothering you. Tell me what you know about the little girl."

"I don't know nothing."

"Sure you do."

"I don't like cops which scares me, also Chechens, also maybe Putin sends old KGB guys to live in America, gangsters also; everything is bad. Then I find the clothing and I know it belongs to a child, but who? Tell me who is this kid?"

"It's a little girl who lived over by Sheepshead Bay. It's on the TV. She's dead."

"I didn't watch. What's her name?"

"May Luca."

"Not Russian girl."

"What's the difference?"

Ivana looked out of the window as if someone were following her.

"Go on," I said and offered her some Juicy Fruit I found in my jacket pocket.

She peeled the gum wrapper and stuffed the gum in her mouth and started chewing.

"Radiation," she mumbled.

"What?"

"I work at a lab, yes?" she said in Russian. "It's a medical lab, and sometimes I read the material that comes in. I look at pictures in the books. This is radiation. I saw it in the clothes. This girl touched something hot, you understand? I know all about this hot bomb, you know, people think this doesn't exist, but I work in lab I hear people talk about stuff, cesium, plutonium, they are bringing it in suitcases, they bring to lab." She paused. "I see. Yellow Cake is everywhere now, you know, this radioactive shit? Girl who wore clothes touches something hot, I could see it on the clothing. Tell me your address, I send you evidence."

I gave her my card to shut her up. She was crazy from fear. I didn't believe anything she said. She had read too many magazine stories, too many cheap Russian thrillers about hookers and nuclear gangs. I didn't want her running to the cops with her stories, though, so I sat and nodded and listened. I knew she was lying, and she was a dangerous liar.

She sulked for a few minutes and refused to get out of the car, so I leaned over her again and unlocked the door and opened it.

"Get out," I said.

She giggled, and leaned over and kissed me hard, her tongue shoved in my mouth. Then, abruptly, she opened the door and ran away into the house. From inside I could hear people yelling, kids laughing, the sound of something crashing to the floor.

I turned on the engine and pulled away, but afterwards I couldn't get her face out of my mind, the face with the high cheekbones and smooth forehead, the dark hair and light gray eyes. She was less than half my age. She was involved in a case. It was crazy. I was turning into a lonely, aging cop whose girl had dumped him.

On my way out of Brighton Beach, I called Sonny Lippert, woke him up and told him about the jogger and her radiation theories.

"Forget it. She's in la la land, or drunk, or stoned," he said.

"I'm not sure. She's a tease. She's holding back. She knows something she doesn't want to say. She says the clothes at the beach were hot, she works in a lab, she knows radiation when she sees it. I think she probably smokes too much weed and sees too many movies. I don't know what to think."

"So go back. Talk to her. Use your charm, man, isn't that what you do best?"

I said, "She's nineteen."

"It never stopped you before." He hung up without saying goodbye.

It was late. I called Maxie again and she picked up and I said I was sorry. She sounded sad. I said, can I come, but she said no. She said it was OK, but she didn't want to see me.

There wasn't any traffic and I was back in the city in fifteen minutes. I came out of the tunnel and turned towards home. When I was a few blocks away, I felt someone tailing me. I rolled through the cold empty city and I was sure of it. I turned onto Canal Street. I stepped on the gas, lit up a cigarette, glanced in the rear view mirror.

He came up alongside me and I could see Tolya's big face a few feet away. He was yelling, mouthing words. I opened the window a crack.

"Slow down," he said.

I stopped at the corner of Broadway and Canal in front of the post office. He stopped and got out. He was wearing a black mink coat.

I opened the window wider and said, "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Looking for you," he said, leaning in my window.

"You've been dogging me?"

"Not exactly, anyway you're here, I'm here." He sounded uneasy.

I looked at his vehicle. It was huge, square and yellow.

"What is it?"

"Is my Hummer," he said. "It is my tank. Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"I think to a party," he said.

"What party?"

Get in.

"You can follow me home. I'll park my car and I'll think about it," I said.

In front of my building, I parked, got out and climbed into Tolya's tank.

The dashboard was crammed with instruments, dials and clocks, and a massive CD system all glowing with blue neon light.

Jesus.

"You want to smoke, open the window," he said. "Upholstery is kid glove leather."

I gestured at the Hummer. "What's it for?"

He looked sheepish. "This afternoon, got bored, I went shopping."

"They found the girl."

"Tell me," he said.

"She's a kid, ten years old. She lived in Sheepshead Bay, not far from the water. The creep left a ransom note nobody found until it was too late. She's dead. He's dead. It's over. They're waiting for a match on the clothes they found this morning at the beach, but the mother said she had a baseball jacket. It's over.

"But you don't believe it's over." Tolya was serious now. He held out a pack of the Turkish smokes he liked and I took one, and we lit up. We sat in the car.

"I don't believe it. It's too pat. It's too easy." I told him about Ivana.

"You think she knows something?"

"I'm not sure. I don't trust her. Right now I don't even trust Sonny Lippert."

Tolya snorted. "Him I never trusted. He uses you, Artyom. He doesn't give a fuck except for his own promotion."

I didn't answer him, just smoked the black cigarette and leaned against the leather seat.

"What's bugging you about this?" he said.

"Why the blood-soaked clothes were near the beach. If the killer was just a local crack-head who wanted ten grand, why bother leaving the clothes a few miles away from the house. Why take the trouble? You think it was a cry for help?"

"Bullshit," he said.

"I get a call this morning from Sonny Lippert. A jogger finds some bloody clothes out near Coney Island. It's winter. The Russian girl is jogging. She finds the clothes. She calls a cop. She tells me she thought the clothes showed signs of radiation. She tells me she wants me to take care of her. What's she telling me all this shit for?"

"The girl sounds scared," Tolya said. "But what of? And how come this Russki bimbo is running to tell the cops? I don't believe it."

"You know what?"

"What's that?"

"I'm sick of everything," I said. "I want to go home and get some sleep."

"Let's go to a party."

"I have to go home, Tolya. I'm going to pass out. I'm whacked."

He passed me a couple of pills and a bottle of Evian.

"Go on," he said.

"What is it?"

"Just take them."

15

The party was in the penthouse of an empty glass building that overlooked the frozen river. It was at the end of Perry Street. Between the building and the Hudson was only the strip of highway and the bike path but you could barely see them and water seemed to lap at the building.

Heavy with chunks of ice, the river looked white. Beyond it, New Jersey's lights were just visible through the fog. New Jersey looked romantic, exotic, but, then, I was drunk. The gin in my martini, ice cold, smelled clean and it was easy to get through two or three; the pills, the speed Tolya had given me, woke me up and mixed with the champagne and martinis and left me flying.

I went out onto the balcony and I could see the building reflected in its mate opposite. The apartments in both buildings were glass, floor to ceiling, and the two reflected each other like a see-through cubist sculpture. In one apartment I could see paintings propped up against a glass wall. In another furniture covered in ghostly dustsheets. A roll of paper, architectural drawings, maybe, fluttered on a trestle table made of shiny metal.

The apartments were still uninhabited. Architects and designers were at work, though, and you could see odd pieces of furniture and pictures and mirrors.

We had entered on Perry Street in the West Village, where security was tight. Men with bulging jackets talked into their collars and listened through earpieces. Limos were parked three deep.

The penthouse where I stood drinking heaved with a mass of people; celebrities swirled around, exquisite creatures, in the glass cage. Puff Daddy was on his way out when we arrived, and I wondered if I should call him Mr. Daddy. I thought I saw Nicole Kidman in the crowd talking to Denzel Washington. Her hair was red. Her silky dress was green. He wore jeans and a T-shirt. Martha Stewart made her way through the throng, the heaving mass of celebrity. People looked unsure how to address Stewart. Most expressed sympathy over her business problems, the pending indictment; a few shied away as if she stank like meat turned rotten.

Everywhere I heard chatter about the buildings, about Richard Meier's architecture, that it was awesome or dull, people dissecting the meaning of ceiling to floor glass and ways in which the structure expressed itself. I listened and laughed to myself and drank some more and wondered if Nicole would have dinner with me. Her red hair reminded me of Lily's. Over a sound system Charlie Parker played "Autumn in New York".

The booze took the edge off the drugs and both combined to make me mellow and alert at the same time. I thought of Parker and what he said once about New York somewhere. I couldn't remember his words, I tried, but I was too far gone. Something about how when he got to New York the first time, he rode uptown and downtown and loved it because you looked one way and saw rich people and the other a couple making love and behind you was a guy living in a cardboard box. Something like that.

Bird was right. I sipped the drink. I had come to this glamorous glass box from Brooklyn, from the blood-soaked clothes by the beach in Coney Island and a woman mourning her kid, yellow ribbons, reporters on TV, a grieving cop. It was only ten miles away, along the same coast.

Everything happened in New York at the same time. Love, murder, birth, kids playing in the street, people shopping, begging. Millions of people packed onto the island and the outlying territories.

New York was so big, so tribal, though, that stuff happening out in coastal Brooklyn seemed to be on a different planet from the party in Manhattan. The only things that connected May Luca's world in Brooklyn with this glass box in Manhattan were the candles, the candles everywhere, reflected in all the glass here, the votive candles on the cold Brooklyn street. One tribe barely cared about another or knew about it or understood its rituals; except for a few manufactured celebs and sightings of them as retailed by the
Post,
there was nothing that connected us all except the weather and the water. I looked out at the river. I could never get enough.

Sverdloff introduced me to the two women who owned the place, but I forgot their names. One was a famous food writer, the other was an astronomer who appeared on television. Both had dumped their husbands for each other. The astronomer's little girl lived with them and she swirled, a twelve-year-old straight out of
Lolita,
into view with a platter of tiny food. I snatched a tiny pastry sailboat filled with caviar off her tray. She moved away. There was also a boy, about fourteen, who played a gleaming black Steinway for a while. I didn't ask who the father was.

They had not moved into the glass house yet, one of them said. They were still in Tribeca, they said. Couldn't wait to get out. It was over; Tribeca was over, they said, and laughed at how astute they'd been in selling out.

The women held hands and kissed each other on the mouth a lot, kissed with open mouths, as if marking out territory like animals. They wore things—you couldn't exactly call them clothes—that seemed to be made of some rare species of Japanese moth. Floaty, drifty, pleated, subtly colored.

I stood on the sidelines and gaped at the famous faces.

"Incredible, right?"

I turned around. It was a woman I knew who wrote crime novels—her name was Janie; we went and sat on a couple of chairs in a corner and drank more martinis and talked about murder.

I liked Janie; she was sharp and funny, but she was taken. After a while, a guy with a young face and white hair showed up to take her home.

"Long way from Brighton Beach," another voice said, a man's, a light almost gentle voice, and before I turned I saw Elem Zeitsev reflected in a pane of glass.

I turned around and we shook hands. He wore black jeans and a black turtleneck, a tweedy jacket that was soft and expensive but unpretentious, and loafers, no socks.

I shook his hand. "You know these people?"

"I bought a place here," he said. "Some day it will be ready. Designers! Architects! They say getting your place done in Manhattan is like going through Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' Seven Stages of Dying," he added, laughing in the silvery, knowing, Manhattan tones.

"Like a goldfish bowl," I said. I'd had a lot to drink.

"That's what they all say."

"I should have been more original."

"It's OK," he said. "I love looking at the river. I love the way the structure of the building expresses itself," he added. "But I guess you've heard that too." Zeitsev turned to the right and I followed his gaze.

"Wow," he whistled softly.

A few feet away from us, a black model, six two, six three, was wrapped like a coat around Tolya. A few minutes later, his architect, the dour woman I'd met at his loft, came through the door, her face grim as if she was clutching razor blades.

The uncompromising wedge of black hair fell over her face. She wore a strict black dress and bright red lipstick. She glanced at Tolya, saw the model, and turned in the other direction. He looked miserable.

Zeitsev said softly, "I thought you'd be working on the Luca case. Poor kid," he added. "Bastards."

"The girl's dead, we found the creep who did it, I'm sure you know all of it. There's not much of a case to work," I said. "You enjoyed your dinner at Farone's place?"

"Sure."

"You're friendly with the Farones?"

"I go there to eat when I have business in Brooklyn. It's good, it's convenient, people from the city think it's exotic, you know? Brooklyn has Peter Luger and Farone's. I wish I'd bought into Williamsburg; if I'd had any brains I would have bought real estate there and in DUMBO. I remember when these were areas you wouldn't even walk around at night. You must have done pretty well yourself over near Broadway," he added in an approving voice.

"It did OK."

He smiled, making friends. "That's pretty modest."

I said, "You put money into the Farone place?"

"What? No. Why? I never put money into restaurants. Once in a blue moon it works out, otherwise you might as well eat the cash. You know what they say, never buy anything that eats while you sleep. Genia is your cousin, of course, so you keep on eye on them, isn't that right?"

"My father's cousin. Distant."

"But Billy, you're friends with Billy."

"Yes. We go fishing."

"I've met Billy," he said. "Smart kid." He lit up when he talked about Billy. "I like kids. Mine are almost grown up. I wish I still had a little one."

A girl passed with a tray of martinis and I pulled one off and drank half of it.

Zeitsev turned towards the window again and so did I. Side by side we looked out through the glass, our reflections visible. We were about the same height. Both of us in black sweaters. His hair grayer than mine. His face almost grave.

Speaking to my image in the glass, he said, "I know you don't trust me, I know you think I'm my father's son. I can't fix things like he did, I gave that up, but if you need anything, if you need help in Brooklyn, if your cousin needs something, or the boy, you can come to me."

"You're the boss?" I said.

"I'm just a guy, and I'm a little drunk. No, really drunk."

"Well, I'm just a cop, and also drunk."

"Yeah, well, we all have our problems," he said, smiling. "Call if you want to."

He laughed and took a miniature foie gras sandwich off a table near him and ate it. A woman in red and pearls the size of small eggs plucked at his sleeve. I recognized Zeitsev's wife. He followed her into the crowd towards the door.

It was four in the morning when I found a taxi on Greenwich Street. It was quiet as a tomb outside, everything shut up, the warehouses, the apartment buildings, even the bars. Sunday morning. Even Bleecker Street, when we passed, was quiet on the freezing night; in the hours before daylight, it was peaceful, silent.

I'd get a few hours' sleep before I went back to Brooklyn and tried to talk to May Luca's mother. It was just a wild shot. Just to make sure something hadn't been overlooked. Then it would be over. The case was already closed. I was coming down from the drugs and the booze and all I wanted was sleep.