Disturbed Earth (24 page)

"Zeitsev is a Democrat."

"For God's sake, Artyom, what's the bloody difference?"

"I'm not Zeitsev's publicist, OK? You sound like an old Commie."

"Yeah, well maybe I'm a new Commie. I'm a realist." He fumbled in his pocket for the cigar case and lit a Cohiba.

The aromatic smoke filled the room that was furnished with only a leather sofa and two chairs, a coffee table and the computer gear. On the balcony outside, a small mountain of snow trembled until it seemed it would topple.

Tolya was messing with the machinery and talking at the same time.

"You know something, Artyom," he said in Russian. "I consider you like a brother. You almost married my cousin Svetlana, who loved you very much. I took care of your Lily, and Beth, and I still take care of her, too, when Lily lets me."

"She's not my Lily anymore."

Tolya ignored me and said in English now, "You know what, I rescue your ass many times. But you don't trust me. I don't know if you like me. Maybe because I'm not American, maybe because I don't love your country so much, or I make you feel less American. I don't know." He sounded mournful. He gestured to the screen. "Is this what you want?"

On the screen were the pictures I had already seen, the goofball, the Honda, Billy getting into it.

"I want you to send them to this e-mail address I'm going to get you," I said, and picked up the phone.

I called Maxine's friend, Mel, a geek she knew who worked weekends and nights and could pull up license plate idents. He was brilliant with drivers' licenses; he could match numbers and pictures.

Mel said he could do it but he needed an OK from Maxine, needed to know that it was fine with her; so I called her. I didn't want to call her but I didn't have much choice. It was after working hours and I needed the information fast.

I could hear from her voice that she was happy to hear from me. I could hear she thought I was calling because I'd made a decision about us.

"I need help," I said. "I'm sorry."

I told her I had to get Mel to put some images through the system for an ID, and her voice was disappointed. She said she'd call him and hung up and I felt lousy about it.

I turned to Tolya, who was crouched over the computer. I watched him while I called Mel back; he said Maxine had called; he said I could put through the pictures, the picture of the guy, the picture of the license plate. I passed the phone to Tolya and Mel told him how to send the material.

I sneezed.

"Jesus, I've never heard anyone sneeze so loud," Tolya said. "Go make coffee while I finish sending this stuff."

My throat was raw. I sneezed again. I went into Tolya's kitchen and made coffee and poured brandy out of a two-liter bottle and knocked it back, as much as I could without puking it up. I hated brandy, but it warmed me up. I took Tolya a mug of coffee, black and bitter, and I drank one down myself.

In the living room, while Tolya drank his coffee, I looked over his shoulder at the printer which spat out the pictures: first Billy Farone, then the goofball. In another I could see Genia very clearly. For black and white surveillance pictures, they were pretty good. I stared at the goofball's face and waited for Mel to call.

Goofy was twenty-five, twenty-six, and big, but not fat or heavily muscled; just big and loose and large. He wore a puffy down-filled jacket and fat boy jeans that hung below his crotch and flapped around his ankles. He had dark hair and there was something vacant about his face. I remembered what Fred Capestro, the guy in the pizza store, said: he was a mongoose. He was a retard. The face was benign, almost sweet, but vacant.

Without any warning, the bedroom door burst open and Lara Sverdlova exploded into the living room, still in the pink sweatsuit, her gray hair springing up from her head as if she'd been electrocuted. Ignoring us, she went into the kitchen, where I heard the refrigerator bang open and shut, pots and pans rattled and, without a word, she emerged holding a plate of food and went back into the bedroom.

The rackety noise of the fax started up, the sound that was like cicadas in the bush at night in the countryside. Tolya reached for the pages as they fell off the fax into a basket. One at a time, he handed them to me.

The way things sometimes did, it floated into my head while I held the faxes that the only person who for sure knew I spoke Arabic was Sonny Lippert; he had known from the beginning.

"What's the matter?" It was Tolya and he was staring at me. "You look like you saw demons."

The fax in my hand distracted me. In it, Mel had scribbled the identification of the guy, the mongoose, the creep, in the video surveillance picture. He had matched him to the license plate and a driver's license. I knew for sure it was his Honda, the car Billy got into, the car that took him away.

30

His name was Herschel Shank. Heshey was what people called him, except when they called him Mickey because, in spite of his size, he was timid as a mouse. Sometimes, they actually called him Goofy.

All this and more was scribbled by hand in the margin of a piece of paper in the file on Shank. Because Shank had been in and out of state institutions, misdiagnosed variously as schizophrenic or bi-polar before someone figured out he was mildly retarded. He was twenty-five. Apparently, for years, no one had wanted him at home.

After he was diagnosed as harmless, his brother took him in and he was released permanently from the institutional treadmill. A job was found for Heshey and for years he stayed at it, working as an assistant janitor at a school in Sheepshead Bay. Like all school employees, he had been fingerprinted.

So much information, so easy to get. I had fucked up just because I didn't notice the surveillance cameras and no one else did either. There was a trail of material on Shank: he had a social security number, a current driver's license with an address on it, and a brother who was a retired cop. Name was Stanley Shank.

Shank was a name I already knew. Samson Britz had told me he was partners with old man Farone, Johnny's father. Shank who they called the "Keyster" because he liked scratching cars with a key. Farone, Sr., was older, probably Shank's mentor, his rabbi.

I looked at the paper in my hand. Shank lived in Gerritsen Beach, a few blocks from Mrs. Farone. It wasn't far from the marina where they found May Luca's body.

"I need your car," I said to Tolya.

"I'm going with you."

"What about your mother?"

Tolya glanced at the bedroom where his mother had resumed sleeping.

"She'll be fine," he said. "You don't trust me, do you? You want my fucking vehicle but you don't want me with you, is that it?"

He took the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to me. He opened a closet and pulled out a ski jacket, a hat and gloves and threw them in my direction. From a shelf he got boots for me and dumped them on the floor then put on his own coat that resembled a big black animal.

"Leave the mink, please," I said.

"Why? You think I look like some fat transvestite fuck? I'm not coming with you anyhow, you remember, you asked me not to."

I said, "I'm sorry. I am. Come with me." I put on the jacket.

"I'll think about it," he said and opened the door.

We went into the hallway and took the elevator down and I said, "Tolya?"

"What?"

"So, I have this thing going."

"What thing?"

"You're going to think this is crazy."

"I know you're crazy."

"There's this woman I like. I'm getting married."

He was silent.

"Tolya?"

"Who is she?"

"She's a really nice girl. She's a good friend. I like her, we have a good time."

"I'm listening," he said, but I could see he had shut down.

"What?"

"You won't be happy."

"Why the fuck not? I want a life. I'm sick of everything, I just want to stop."

We walked out of the building without saying anything and when we got to the street, he hurried away.

I wanted to call out. In that second I realized I'd been insanely stupid about Tolya. He was my friend; in the Russian way, he was completely loyal. It had hurt him bad that I seemed not to trust him. I hesitated. But I had to get to Shank, and I climbed into the yellow Hummer and turned the key. I hated driving it; people turned to stare; I felt like a monkey in a cage.

Stanley Shank opened the door and let me in grudgingly. He wasn't surprised I had come, though. From another room I could hear the TV and the sound of voices.

Shank was fat. He had soft heavy shoulders and a round head set between them like a bowling ball between mashed potatoes. His hair was thinning and his pants had slipped so the enormous belly rested precariously on his belt. I got the picture out of my pocket and held it up.

"Is this your brother, Herschel?"

"Half brother," he said. "My father remarried. She was younger. The woman."

"He lives here?" Shank looked past me at the yellow Hummer. "That yours?" he asked.

"Let's talk about your brother."

"He uses the address. Sometimes he stays. There's a room for him over the garage. I'm a Christian," he said as if it explained why he kept his crazy brother at all, as if the deal with the room over the garage made him a good man. "Jesus," he mumbled and I couldn't tell if he meant it as the source of his religion or as an expletive about his brother.

"The car is registered to this address," I said. "How did he get a car?"

"I gave him an old car so he could go to work. It was a piece of crap but I got it tuned up. It was OK to get him to his job. He works at a copy shop off Brighton Beach Avenue."

"You're a cop, right?"

"Was. I was on the job. I retired."

I said, "You didn't think about it when your brother didn't show up for a few days?"

"No. Like I told you he moves around. He's twenty-five years old. Something the matter with him?"

"I think you already know."

"Listen, I don't fucking know what you mean. All I know is that I heard from Samson Britz and Britz said I owed him and I told him, OK, I knew Farone, sure, he was my partner. Now tell me what's wrong with Heshey?"

"And you like doing him a favor, Britz, I mean."

"Don't we all," he said. "I'll tell you something, detective, I'll tell you why we're standing in the hallway here and I don't ask you into the parlor for a cup of coffee with the family, OK? You want to know?"

"Sure." I waited.

"Britz asked me to say hello to you if you came by," Shank said. "But I don't like you, though, or your Russians, and I hate that prick Lippert you work for. I can't stand him. He doesn't understand anything. He's a fucking liberal, man, and he's a snob, and I don't trust him, I don't like him, I don't think he's in any of this except for the glory. Maybe money."

I didn't answer.

"Listen, I get it. I can talk some Russian. The army sent me to language school and I came back and I went on the job, it was the seventies, and they threw me into it, no one else spoke any Russki and the thugs out here bit my head off. I got beat up and one of my kids got hurt. I don't like them. Or you," he added.

"What about your brother? What about him and the little boy? We have pictures. We have pictures of your brother and that boy in the Honda. Your car. The boy is John Farone's grandson, John, Sr., your ex-partner, maybe more than your partner. Isn't that right? Wasn't Farone your first boss, your rabbi?"

"Yeah, he was. I was a kid, twenty years old, he took care of me when we partnered," he said.

"You knew the kid that disappeared is his grandson?"

Shank stayed standing but he put one hand against the doorframe as if he needed support.

"I heard that, sure I did. I called him in Florida to say I was sorry. You don't think word doesn't get out? You've been messing around with forensics, with the people downtown, you been calling and making waves with old man Farone's wife that tossed him out on some stupid trumped up thing about little girls, just like they tried to lay on me.

You think I wouldn't know? I don't believe it is what. Heshey is a retard, my father married an idiot after my mother died, a Russian, a Jew. She calls the kid Herschel. Then when he turned out to be a moron, she dumps both of them. OK, so Hesh was slow in school, but he was harmless."

"Then where is he?" I said.

"My father's dead." His face was closed, expressionless.

"I mean Heshey."

"I don't know. He took the car. He said he was going away for a few days. Before the storm. He said he had to be like a grown-up and he wanted to go away by himself."

I said, "And you thought maybe he'd never come back, right? Maybe he would go forever and you wouldn't have to bother with Heshey anymore?"

"Get out," he said. "Get the fuck out."

I was halfway out of the front door. Then I turned around and said to Shank, "So where did Heshey say he was going?"

"Fishing," he said and slammed the door in my face.

It wasn't until I was halfway to Farone's restaurant that I realized I'd met Stanley Shank before.

It took me a couple of minutes to play his face back through my memory, and at first I put him somewhere by the coast, somewhere with water, until I remembered: Stanley Shank was the owner of the party boat when Billy and me went night fishing; he was the guy who took our money when we made it by a couple seconds onto his boat that was called
Just a Fluke.