Authors: Bill Loehfelm
Fresh Kills (30 page)
ELEVEN
I POINTED THE CAR INTO TRAFFIC AND FOLLOWED THE FLOW, drifting away from the park, from the high school, away from my parents’ house. I just floated wherever the green lights took me. I finally stopped when I hit the intersection of Elm and Bay Terrace, the northern edge of the island, and parked under a tree on the corner. Through the chain-link fence across the street separating the road and the docks, across the slate expanse of the bay, I could see the skyscrapers of Manhattan. I lit a cigarette, watched two dirty orange Staten Island ferry boats, squat and square, chug past each other through the water. Molly’s empty sky loomed over the southern tip of Manhattan.
I’d hardly thought about the Towers when they were there. Just the tallest among a faraway horizon of tall things looming in the distance, they were always just part of the larger picture. Now, in their absence, the Towers seemed more prominent than ever. Before that day, getting off the ferry, it had always been easy to separate the tourists from the New Yorkers. The tourists stopped and looked up as they left the terminal. The locals looked down, at their newspapers, their watches, their cell phones. I wondered how many New Yorkers snuck glances up at the sky now, at the hole in it, as if they couldn’t yet believe that what had stood there so large and so long was really gone. I wondered how many looked down at whatever was in their hands simply to still the impulse to look up. Either way, I figured they reacted more to the void left by the fall of the Towers than they ever had to their presence. I couldn’t remember if I had looked up or down the last time I crossed the water. It had been a long time.
And now, those Towers were nothing but remains and rubble scattered, of all places, across the Fresh Kills landfill. I couldn’t think of a more modest resting place for them. Fresh Kills was where the dump trucks went as The Pile was hauled away, in buckets at first, by hand. It was where cops and firemen searched the debris for identifiable scraps of bodies and lives. It was the final resting place for an uncounted number of people. Fresh Kills was where someone found Molly’s brother’s class ring. In a weird but very real way, the world’s largest landfill had become hallowed ground.
Shifting in my seat and staring up at that space over Manhattan, I thought of my conversations that afternoon, of how much went on unseen, unknown in a given day. Virginia and her elaborate plans to move halfway across the country. Molly’s secret, ongoing mourning for her brother. Her continuing life of deception with David. She had met the man she would eventually leave me for at a party I had taken her to. I thought of my mother’s secret hideout, of my father and Mr. Fontana. My sister’s notebook and her struggle with food. My parents’ whole fucking marriage.
I realized nobody knew where I was, or what I was doing at that very moment. There were any number of things I could do on that corner that no one would ever see. If I had a gun in the car I could take potshots at passing traffic and drive away and I’d never be caught. I could get out of the car and drop my lit cigarette in my gas tank—just immolate myself along with everything in a hundred-foot radius. In the thirty seconds it would take to complete the act, four or five cars would speed down Bay Terrace, and not one driver would remember seeing a thing. Hell, someone shot my father in front of multiple witnesses, and no one could recall a single telling detail about it. Just yesterday, that had seemed so impossible to me. Sitting there in the car, staring across the water at the air left in place of three thousand lives, it made perfect sense to me now. I felt utterly stupid for ever thinking any different.
Someone had taken the time to plan my father’s murder. To pick the day and the time, to get the gun and the car, to load the gun. Did he sit and contemplate which gun in his arsenal to use? Did he get one just for this task? Did he gas up the car on the way to the deli? Go through the drive-thru at Burger King? Did anyone other than the guy planning it know it was about to happen? How many people had seen the guy, a murderer, on his way to the deli? Was someone sitting in a secret room somewhere, waiting for news the deed had been done? The murder had started happening hours, maybe days, before the fatal shots were actually fired, right in front of God only knows how many people and no one had known, or even suspected, a thing. I marveled that Waters had uncovered any leads at all.
I’d always considered myself a smart man. Street smart and well read, at least, if not overly educated. I’d always figured my years in the service industry, years spent woven into its elaborate fabric of people and personalities, had taught me more than most about both, and about life. What did a bartender do but educate the masses? What did he do but spin webs out of accumulated wisdom with a dirty rag tucked in his belt? I spat out the car window. It was all bullshit. If I’d spun anything, it was a cocoon of elaborate lies around myself that let me look in the mirror. Two days ago, I’d been pretty damn happy in that cocoon. Now everyone and everything around me pulled at the threads, letting the daylight in and burning my eyes. And it stung so bad, pissed me off so much, that I snapped and bit at everything around me, at every hand that reached in. And when they stopped reaching, when they got tired of the effort or sick from the poison, I’d be twice as angry.
When the patrol car parked behind me, its red-and-white lamps muted in the fading daylight, I set my hands at ten and two on the steering wheel. Someone had ratted me out, gotten sick of my shit—one of the kids from South Beach, one of the Costanzas, maybe even Val or Theo. Those sharp pains darted across my chest again. I squeezed so hard on the steering wheel my knuckles turned white. I hoped it was Purvis walking up to my car. Maybe then I could bully my way out of a night in jail. Then I thought maybe a cell, preferably one with padded walls, was just what I needed.
It wasn’t Purvis approaching; it was just some guy in a uniform. He tapped on the passenger-side window. I leaned across the seat and rolled it down.
“License, registration, and proof of insurance,” he said.
I handed everything over and waited while he frowned at my paperwork.
“This registration is expired,” he said.
“I’ve been real busy lately.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “I can see that. Remove your sunglasses, please.”
I did. His frown got more dire. I guess I looked as bad as I felt. He handed me back my papers. “It expired six months ago.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just keep putting it off, and the time got away from me.” Cops love the truth; they hear it so rarely.
“Sir, step out of the car, please.”
I did.
“You can’t park here,” he said.
I looked around for the sign.
“You’re blocking a fire hydrant.”
I took his word for it. I hadn’t seen it when I pulled over.
“Anything in the car I should know about?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “Old books, empty packs of cigarettes.”
He jerked his flashlight out of his belt. “Mind if I take a look?”
Of course I minded. “Go right ahead,” I said. It wasn’t like I had anywhere to be.
I reached into my jacket for my cigarettes. His face tightened. “Don’t reach into your pockets,” he snapped. So I put my hands over my head.
The cop pulled open all the doors, giving the inside of the car a cursory sweep with the flashlight. I was sure it was the mess of trash that deterred a closer inspection. I knew I looked too exhausted to really be up to no good. He hitched his flashlight back on his belt when he was done.
“Get the registration legal,” he said, “and move along, please.” He walked back to his car, switched off the lights, and drove away.
I stood there, aggravated that he’d hassled me, relieved he’d not said a word about my recent adventures, or even written me a ticket. I was grateful that after two straight days of driving drunk, the only time I’d run into a cop I was stone-cold sober. Once again I was reminded that I attracted much less attention than I liked to believe. I did what he asked; I moved along.
A couple of blocks later, where Bay Terrace turned into Bay Street, I pulled over at a gas station that had a pay phone. I needed to call Julia and let her know I wasn’t going to be back until late, very late, in fact. Even though I knew it was the better idea, there was no way I was going back across the island to sit in that empty house with my failures.
After leaving Julia a message, I tooled down Bay Street, looking for somewhere to fuse my ass to a bar stool. I’d done my time for the day, faced up to enough. There would be more to deal with in the morning, and I would face it then. I’d spent all day keeping my composure. All I wanted with the night was to blow off some steam and disappear.
On Bay Street, I had my choice of watering holes. Among them was the Cargo Café, where I worked, but that didn’t seem like too good a place to be a stranger. I felt like drinking, not talking. I’d talked enough to last me the rest of my life. I kept driving past the Cargo and hooked a left onto Cross Street where I parked across the street from the Choir Loft.
It was a popular bar; I’d spent a lot of time there in my late teens and early twenties. It had a good happy hour that attracted a boisterous after-work crowd. It was early enough that I could get a seat at the bar, but enough people would eventually materialize for me to fade into the background. I praised my choice as I crossed the street. Only it wasn’t the Choir Loft anymore, as the sign above the door told me. Now it was the Crossroads Tavern.
The place was nearly empty. The dartboards by the front door were gone, replaced by pen-and-ink sketches of sailing ships. There were now flat-screen televisions in every corner of the ceiling. The old Mets jerseys, Koosman and Seaver from ’69, Wilson and Knight from ’86, no longer hung behind the bar. Now it was blasphemous pinstripes: Jeter and Williams and O’Neill. They hung among fake sailing artifacts: drift nets and telescopes and captains’ wheels. I was willing to wager number 4407 on the jukebox wasn’t “The Fly” anymore. My old watering hole looked like some bizarre sailors’ sports bar. Well, I thought, settling on a bar stool, any port in a storm.
I drank my beers, scratching at the labels with my thumb, trying to look like a guy waiting on his friends and not like a guy who didn’t have any. I stepped outside and chain-smoked three cigarettes. I backed up my fourth Brooklyn Lager with a shot of Jack Daniel’s. I thought of the night Jimmy and I shot JD from his shoe at a New Year’s Eve party. I thought about calling him, but decided against it. He’d have to come all the way across the island on a school night. It seemed a lot to ask. I’d see him at the wake.
I ordered a second shot, dropped a big tip when it arrived, and tried to make small talk with the bartender. I asked about the old bartenders I’d known, when the place was still the Choir Loft. None of their names rang any bells for him. I asked him who was playing at the Dock of the Bay, a blues and R&B club a few blocks away. Jimmy and I, Virginia and I, we’d spent hundreds of hours in that place. Darker and louder than the Crossroads, the Dock seemed a better place to be shit-faced, which I would certainly be by showtime. I knew the exact corner table in the back where I would sit. Live music suddenly sounded like a great idea; the noise would be that much more for me to hide behind. But the bartender just looked at me funny.
“Nobody plays there anymore,” he said. “Place changed hands. It’s some late-night hip-hop club now.” I felt like somebody had told me an old friend had died. The bartender just walked off down the bar.
BY NINE O’CLOCK
the bartender had moved the Jack Daniel’s bottle to my end of the bar. I drained another Brooklyn and tried to figure out how I could make a bathroom run without losing my seat. I was dying for a smoke. The place had filled up around me, suddenly it seemed, and I’d chased a couple of vultures away already. I hunched over my drinks, crowded on all sides by backs and shoulders. Name change or not, this was my bar. We had a history. I’d logged more hours there than these kids surrounding me had put into college. They figure you can’t last forever. But I can. I can hold a bar stool till it rots out from underneath me. But, then again, as territorial as I was feeling, I didn’t feel like pissing on the floor. Leaving my cigarettes was an option but I couldn’t trust any of these motherfuckers not to rip them off while I was gone. Same with my money. Then I remembered another rule of drinking alone—it makes people afraid of you.
the bartender had moved the Jack Daniel’s bottle to my end of the bar. I drained another Brooklyn and tried to figure out how I could make a bathroom run without losing my seat. I was dying for a smoke. The place had filled up around me, suddenly it seemed, and I’d chased a couple of vultures away already. I hunched over my drinks, crowded on all sides by backs and shoulders. Name change or not, this was my bar. We had a history. I’d logged more hours there than these kids surrounding me had put into college. They figure you can’t last forever. But I can. I can hold a bar stool till it rots out from underneath me. But, then again, as territorial as I was feeling, I didn’t feel like pissing on the floor. Leaving my cigarettes was an option but I couldn’t trust any of these motherfuckers not to rip them off while I was gone. Same with my money. Then I remembered another rule of drinking alone—it makes people afraid of you.
I made a big production of standing and stretching. Anyone with an eye on my seat had seen the shot glasses and beer bottles come and go. I tucked a cigarette behind my ear and left the pack and two twenties on the bar. I peeled off my leather and hung it on the back of the stool. Fuck all you motherfuckers. A fight wasn’t on the agenda, but there was always room in my game plan for improvisation.
When I got back from the bathroom, the jacket, the money, and the cigarettes were where I had left them. And Carlo Purvis was sitting in my seat.
I pushed my way up to him. “Purvis, ya mind?”
He swayed as he stood. I wasn’t the only one who’d started hitting it hard early.
“Just keepin’ it warm for ya,” he said. “I knew it was you. I recognized the jacket.” He tipped his beer bottle at my empty bottle and glass. “Getting a start on the old-fashioned Irish wake?” I noticed he was alone.
I raised an eyebrow at him. He conformed well to the standard for a slick Staten Island guinea—hair gel, fog of Drakkar cologne, open collar, gold chain with Christ’s head adangle. Not quite seventies mafioso, but attire as subtle as, say, a kilt, or yarmulkes and a black hat. I always figured he overdid it to compensate for his mom marrying a Polack, the only one of six daughters not to marry another Italian. Hard-core as he was about proclaiming his Italian heritage, Purvis had been fascinated by my “Irishness” since we were kids.
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