Disturbed Earth (3 page)

3

"Someone is stealing my stuff," Johnny Farone said to me. "Somebody is walking out of here with stuff, you know, I mean money, white truffles, some of my Super Tuscans, which pisses me off, Art, you know? You know how many dogs they have to use to snuffle around, dig up those white truffles? Jesus. I spent a fucking fortune. And the wine. I had to beg for them, you know, some
Guido,
worse, he was a
gavone,
in a vineyard in Italy thinks he's a prince, a duke, whatever, so I schlep to Italy to get the stuff and now some little pisser walks out with them under his coat, other stuff, not to mention cash, and I'm mad."

Johnny Farone sat in my car in the parking lot of his restaurant. He pummeled his chubby thigh with his fist and looked at me helplessly. He had fattened up over the years; his Armani jacket fit snugly over his hips. He glanced at the cream leather interior of my red Cadillac.

"Nice, very nice. New?"

"Yeah, I wish. Pre-owned, like they say. Pre-loved. Listen, how's Billy?"

"He's good, yeah, Artie, he's great." He beamed at me. "You really love the kid, don't you?"

I had stopped in to see Johnny at his restaurant that overlooked Sheepshead Bay and the fishing boats which were docked there; it was only a mile, maybe two, from Coney Island and more or less on my way home. Johnny had been leaving messages for a week. My head was ready to split: Lippert's recitation; the girl, Galitzine; the blood-soaked sneakers—I didn't tell Johnny any of it; it would scare him; Johnny was a sweet guy.

He'd been waiting for me. As soon as I pulled into the empty lot he emerged from the back door of his restaurant. He wasn't wearing a coat. His thighs rubbed together. Between his plump hands he held a tray with a pot of espresso, a pitcher of steamed milk and a plate loaded with biscotti. He got into the car. He balanced the tray carefully between us on the CD box.

"I made you coffee," he said. "Do you mind if we talk out here, Artie? I don't want the guys inside to hear this, and a few are setting up for dinner."

"At one in the afternoon?"

"Yeah, we don't do lunch on Saturday because Saturday night is huge, you know? You want some lunch? I could get you something fixed up."

"No thanks." I picked up the pot and poured myself some coffee and drank it.

I said, "The coffee's great. So tell me some stuff about how Billy's doing in school." I was shy about it; sometimes I felt I'd stolen Billy's affection from his real father.

But Johnny was OK with it; he had no malice, no jealousy, and he grinned and said, "Yeah, not bad. He's doing pretty good, Artie. It's good the way you and him are, you know? He needs to know some regular guys like you. He told me you even showed him how to drive a little. You put him on a telephone book or something, like my pop did for me?"

"Something like that. Is that alright, Johnny? I mean we only practice in parking lots."

"It's good, man, honest. I like that. I don't want a mama's boy. Biscotti?" he added. "Homemade. Pistachio. Go on. Please."

I'd been on a case in Brighton Beach when I first met Johnny Farone. Back then, he was a skinny guy in a short-sleeved nylon shirt and a cheap striped tie who owned an auto parts company off Brighton Beach Avenue. He was Italian but he did OK because he had learned some Russian and the locals trusted him. He was friendly to their kids. He didn't ask any questions. He paid cash for spare parts. When he opened his restaurant, he had plenty of local backers.

In the nineties, Brighton Beach was swimming in cash. People were always looking for cash deals. Older Russians, poor people, people who would always be immigrants, stuffed their money under the bed or stuck it into safety deposit boxes; the younger generation trawled for deals where you could turn a quick buck and the IRS didn't notice. In the beginning, when he was setting up, a business like Farone's served as a local laundry for dirty money. He was established now and I didn't think Johnny ever really knew, anyhow; he thought people put up the dough because they liked his food.

I met Johnny and because of it he met my cousin, Evgenia. Johnny opened the restaurant, he proposed to her, they got married. They had Billy, he bought her a big house and a car. The American dream.

Good natured, Johnny didn't have much education, but he was accommodating and he was making good money and Gen—Johnny called her Gen and it stuck and became her American name—she couldn't believe her luck: Johnny was an American; he had a business; he was crazy about her. Sometimes Genia's delight seemed a little robotic. There wasn't much passion. She learned to make great pasta, though.

Next to me in the car, Johnny picked up the coffee pot, then put it down. He was nervous.

"What's the matter?"

"You won't tell Gen, will you, you won't say I asked you to help me, you won't, will you, Artie?" He talked so fast the words seemed to fall out of his mouth like the letters in alphabet soup.

"Why, she'll beat you up with a piece of wet spaghetti?"

"She says don't stick our neck out, she says we don't want to get involved, we don't talk to cops out here, you know? She says, if someone is taking a little here and there, don't make a fuss. She's fucking paranoid, Artie."

"She's Russian. She worries. It's normal."

"Yeah, I hear you, but I want whoever is doing this. I don't want money walking out. I don't even mind the cash, but they take my best white truffles, they take wines I had to beg for at some vineyard, stuff no one else has, I'm upset. Did I tell you I got a 26 in Zagat?" He laughed. "Can you believe it, me, they call up and beg for tables. They come out here from the city! They pay cash for the privilege." Farone chuckled. "I charge them whatever. They like it if I charge a lot."

I'd eaten at Farone's a few times, but he always comped it.

"You only take cash?" I said.

He laughed. "It's an old Italian custom," he said. "If you can get away with it, why not?"

He pushed the plate of biscotti at me and I ate one and licked the crumbs off my lips. It was crammed with pistachios. I could still remember the taste of the risotto with the white truffles I'd had the last time I was at Johnny's place.

"You'll help me, Artie?"

"I can't do anything official, I mean I'm not on the job in this area, you know? But give me your receipts, a disk, your books, whatever you got. You put it on a computer? I'll take a look if you want."

Farone said, "I keep handwritten records, too. I already made copies for you. Gen goes through the books three, four times a year. She's studying to be a CPA, you know. She likes doing the books, she says it's good practice. She said we could fire the fucking accountant and save the money."

"And she didn't notice?"

"I don't know. But I didn't tell her I looked at the books. She'd tell me, lay off the books. You're making yourself nuts."

"Johnny?"

"What's that?"

"You have any ideas who's doing this? I'm sitting here and I'm thinking you have some ideas but you don't want to say the names, could that be right?"

He was silent. I tried to focus, but my mind was on the bloodied clothing and the Russian jogger and the missing girl.

"Johnny?"

"Yeah," he mumbled. "I think it might be a couple of guys that work for someone."

"I can't hear you."

"Whatever."

"Come on."

"I'm thinking it's Elem Zeitsev," he said. "Maybe. Maybe Zeitsev."

If Johnny was trying to pin it on Zeitsev he was out of his mind.

"Come on! Zeitsev doesn't need your white truffles. He's loaded. Also, he's straight now his old man is dead. He gave up all the crooked shit they did. It's over."

Johnny looked up.

"I'm not that dumb, man," he said. "I didn't mean Zeitsev himself, I meant some of his guys, some of the crooks he left behind, you know? I mean they're hungry now he dropped them all."

"I'll ask around."

"Thanks, dude, really, thanks."

"Sure." I looked at my watch. "I better get back to the city. Tell Billy I'll call him over the weekend, OK?"

"Wait a sec," he said. "Let me get you a good bottle for later. I have this fantastic Barolo. Please, let me. And I'll get the books, if you're serious, if you'll take a look."

I hesitated.

"We're family, Art. OK? Lily liked my Barolo. Remember?"

I remembered. I changed the subject.

"So tell Billy, right? I'll call. I'll try to come over."

"You're a good godfather, Artie, even if you don't believe in no religion shit. I saw how you held Billy when he was baptized. I remember. Hey, I found some old film I got developed, pictures of the kid, you want to see?"

"Sure."

Farone pulled them out of his pocket and passed them over, then opened the car door, got out and leaned down to pick up the tray of coffee and biscotti. He waddled away like a fat waiter and disappeared through the heavy bronze doors of the restaurant in search of Barolo.

The pictures were 4 by 6, and while I waited, I looked through them, fanning them out idly, like playing cards: Billy on the deck of a fishing boat; Billy sitting on the edge of a pier with a fishing pole; Billy holding a huge plastic fish between his hands; Billy outside a church in a navy blue blazer and a tie. Farone was Catholic; Gen didn't care. Like me, she was raised nothing. She was happy for Johnny to take the boy to his own church. For him, she converted. They had named him William John, but everyone called him Billy.

I lit a cigarette and looked at the last picture. Billy, not looking at me or the camera, his face seeming distracted, aloof, and in his hands a dark blue Yankees jacket. He was holding it out to show the logo, as if someone on the other side of the camera had said, "Show us the jacket, Billy. Come on. Hold it up." My heart banged in my chest; my throat dried; the hair on my arms stood up.

The radio was still on and I turned it off. The sun streamed in and dappled the cream leather upholstery. The heat was on, but my skin felt so cold that I started shivering. I reached in the back seat and got my jacket. Then I started to sweat.

I picked up the photograph. It was the jacket I'd bought for Billy the day I took him to the World Series at Yankee Stadium the year before last. They gave out tickets to cops and firemen, and I got two and I wanted him there with me; I wanted him to experience New York that way, so I got Gen to let me take him, though she was scared of Billy being in crowds right after 9/11.1 said, I'll take care of him, and we went and we cheered for the Yanks and the crowd swayed together in some kind of communal mourning ritual; no one was scared, no one worried, just the game and the songs, and me and Billy. I could feel his weight beside me; he was warm against my side. But he was distracted all day. He spent the day looking at a book about fish.

I had assumed the blood-soaked clothes belonged to a girl. Sonny Lippert assumed it. Missing kids, the ones you heard about, were mostly little girls. I looked at the baseball jacket again and at Billy. There were a million Yankees jackets. A million kids wore them. I couldn't see his shoes in the picture. I looked at the jacket hard. There was a tear on the sleeve. I remembered Billy caught the sleeve on a nail as we'd left the stadium.

Johnny reappeared with a bottle under one arm and two plastic shopping bags in his other hand. He got into the car and put the bags on the floor, then held out the bottle to me.

"The last one," he said. "Let me know what you think, Art." He picked up the first plastic bag. "The account books, OK, man?" he said, and noticed, finally, I was looking at the photograph of Billy with the Yankees jacket.

"You remember?" he said.

I didn't answer.

"Yo, Artie."

"What?"

"You took him to that game and I took that picture when he got home. I kept asking him about the game, the players, but it was like he wasn't there, Art. All he could think about was his fishing stuff. I don't get it. He's a bright kid, you know? The teachers say he's really smart. His IQ is really up there. He was talking whole sentences way before he was three. And street smart, right? I mean he goes over to his grandmother alone and helps her sometimes, you know? He's very OK, like that. He's OK. You think he's OK, don't you?"

"Sure, Johnny," I said. "He's a great kid."

"I worry, man. I mean they fight, him and his mom, and then I go to him and he won't talk to me, I can see in his face he thinks I'm a dumb-ass. He just shuts the door to the garage and fools around with that fish tank I got him, and stays in there. Sometimes I think he likes the fish more than me."

"It's a stage," I said because I'd heard people say it. "All parents go through that stuff with their kids," I added and saw Johnny's sweet dumb face light up.

"You think?"

What I knew and Johnny couldn't was that Billy was a special kid; he was really smart; he had been talking like a grown-up since he was seven or eight; he made me show him how to drive and he picked it up fast.

Billy invented worlds of his own with characters and languages; it was the kind of stuff you read about in the papers when some kid suddenly produces a whole book and people go nuts about it. If it was your kid and you were Johnny, though, you could think he was weird, or sullen, or strange. I understood Billy and Billy knew it, and we had a thing together, but I didn't want to hold it over his father, I didn't want to play tug of war over his boy; I'd seen that happen.