Neptune Avenue (12 page)

Onstage the emcee, a hyper little guy with a spiky rooster haircut, came out and made an announcement in Russian. As a favor to the few noncountrymen present, he translated: “Good evening, ladies and gentleman. We welcome you tonight to Brighton Beach and Cosmopolitan nightclub! Is time for cabaret!” The stage dimmed and a strange blue light came up. The band churned out some sinister spacey music as a group of dancers in spandex tiger costumes strutted out from the wings; their stripes glowed in the dark. They arched their backs and pretended to claw at each other. The music picked up and they launched into a synchronized disco dance. After the tigers crawled away, a man and a woman came out wearing costumes from some prior century: he sported a ruffled shirt and a powdered wig; she was strapped into a corset with a plunging neckline. The guy serenaded her with a maudlin ballad.

Jack noticed a teenager at the next table covering his eyes in embarrassment—evidently the Russians had their own version of a generation gap—but the rest of the customers seemed quite happy with the entertainment. Most of them were middle-aged; they sat staring at the stage, nodding misty-eyed to music that reminded them of younger days, an ocean away.

Jack wanted to rest his elbows, but there was no room: the table was covered with food. He glanced around, noting the exits. A bouncer the size of a large bear had taken up a post nearby; he leaned against a wall, hands folded over his crotch.

The man suddenly straightened up. Jack followed his gaze out across the club: a stocky man was moving toward them from the back of the hall, leaving a ripple of nervous glances in his wake. Balakutis took his time making his way to Jack’s booth; he stopped along the way to greet other diners.

Jack watched him, frowning. Linda Vargas had checked out the man’s alibi for the night of Daniel’s murder; Balakutis’s wife had confirmed his story about being home for dinner and after—but so what? How reliable was a confirmation from a suspect’s own spouse?

The man sat down without a word. A waiter rushed up to ask if he wanted anything. He said something sharp in Russian, and the man backed away.

Balakutis wore a silvery dress shirt; it reminded Jack of the polyester outfits his patrol buddies had worn when they went nightclubbing back in the eighties. The man’s whole bearing seemed stagy and self-important, as if he were starring in some second-rate gangster flick. Such posturing was silly, but Jack had learned long ago not to laugh. The most dangerous people in the world were the ones with the lowest self-esteem, the ones who always felt they had something to prove.

Balakutis took a couple of cigars from his breast pocket and offered one to Jack.

Jack shook his head. He glanced over his shoulder: the bouncer had come around and stationed himself a couple of yards away. He turned and spotted another steroids fancier watching him intently from the edge of the dance floor.

Balakutis reached into his pocket for a lighter and set it on the table. He pulled out a silver cutter and slowly and deliberately clipped the end of his cigar. Jack’s chest tightened; he couldn’t help picturing the man hacking off a shop owner’s ear.

The waiter came back, set a big glass of red wine down carefully in front of Balakutis, then slipped away. Balakutis lit his cigar and inhaled with gusto. “
So
. Thenk you for coming.”

Jack frowned. “What’s this all about?”

Balakutis shrugged. “Nothing much. Somehow, it seems you have gotten some bad ideas about me. I want to make friends. That’s all. Is better to make friends than enemies, no?”

Jack shifted in his seat; he was supposed to be the one asking the questions. “What did you argue about with Daniel Lelo?”

Balakutis shrugged. “I already telled you: I knowed him just a little. We are both
biznessmeni
, and the community here is not so large.”

“What did you talk about?”

Balakutis shrugged again. “If I remember is correct, he asked to borrow money. If, like me, you are successful businessmen, this happens all the time.”

“What did you tell him?”

Balakutis sipped his wine. “I said, for a loan, go to a bank.”

“Did you argue about it?”

Balakutis shook his head. “He asked; I said no. No argument. Just business.”

Jack frowned. No progress. It was this man’s word against Zhenya’s.

Sometimes interrogators would purposely rile a suspect, as if throwing peanuts at a tiger in the zoo, just to see what he might let slip. The tactic took on a new dimension when you were both sitting in the same cage. Jack leaned forward. “Word on the street is that you might have been involved with Lelo’s murder.”

Balakutis didn’t rise to the bait; he just made a pained face. “I tell you the same thing I telled the other police. I never kill Daniel Lelo. In my life, I never kill nobody. Why you peoples persecute me?”

Jack frowned. The man’s tone reminded him of an interrogation he had once conducted with a child rapist: the big creep, 240 pounds, had claimed that the eleven-year-old victim had seduced
him
.

“You’ve been very lucky with your court cases here in the United States. Nobody’s luck lasts forever. I’m watching you, and if I find out that you had anything to do with this, you’re going away for a long, long time.”

Balakutis’s mask of humility and forbearance dropped away. “I don’t know you, mister. I offer you hospitality. I never done nothing to you.” His fists clenched and his face grew red. “Now you come to my club and make threats to me? Who the fuck you think you are?” The man had worked himself into a rage. He slammed his hand down on the table, knocking over his wine, which splashed like a bloody red bomb across the white tablecloth.

And that’s when Jack realized that it wasn’t some old bully this man reminded him of—it was his own father. Sober, the Old Man had been reserved and relatively quiet, but when he got drunk he could be just like this, prone to sudden tempers that blew up out of nowhere, dark tornadoes.

The nearest bouncer stepped closer, but Balakutis waved him away. A bevy of waiters and busboys rushed up. Within literally two minutes, they had whisked the food and broken glass away, yanked off the stained cloth, replaced it with a fresh one, and brought Balakutis a new glass of wine. All of the diners at the neighboring tables seemed careful to avoid expressing the slightest curiosity. Jack blinked; it was almost as if the unpleasant little episode had never happened. That was the way things had been with his father, too; after a sudden blowup, everyone in the family had to pretend that it was forgotten, even though the damage remained, deep inside.

When he glanced back, the rage had completely left Balakutis’s face, replaced by a slight, canny smile that revealed his little teeth. The man spread his arms extravagantly along the top of the booth. “You know what I hear? Maybe it was the Russian mafiya who killed this Lelo. Very bad problem around here. Very bad people. Of course, I know nothing about this. I am biznessmen.” He shifted forward, crowding Jack. “I never been shot before. It must hurt very much, no?”

Jack resisted the urge to flinch. Evidently, he was not the only one who had done a little research.

The other man sat back, satisfied that his barb had found its mark. He glanced at his watch. “You must excuse me—I go to other appointment.” He stood up, brushed at his pants, scooped his lighter and cigar cutter off the table. “I hev nothing to hide, Detective. If you are looking for me, here I am. Anytime you want to come to the club and see the show, just give me a call.”

Before Jack could reply, he swaggered off.

J
ACK STEPPED OUT OF
the club into a dense, humid summer night. He felt a wetness on his face and looked up into a very light rain, barely visible below the streetlights. Brighton Beach Avenue had quieted now, due to the hour and the weather; the throngs of shoppers had taken their purchases home, and the place seemed lonely. Neon signs along the storefronts shone brighter in the wet; their bright colors smeared across the windshields and hoods of passing cars.

He took a couple of deep breaths. He shouldn’t have felt so stirred up—lord knows, in two decades with the NYPD he had run into no shortage of blustering thugs, and more than a few threats. Thankfully, though, even the dimmest street punk knew that the dumbest thing was to attack a cop; within minutes you’d have thousands of outraged colleagues hunting you down. A cop’s little metal badge acted as a real shield—or at least he had always thought so. But there was a fragment of metal inside his chest, and he also carried memories of lying helpless and bleeding on a dank basement floor, all because one thug had failed to play it smart.

He reached his car and put his hand on the door handle, but he paused for a moment. He put the keys back in his pocket, then turned away, down a side street, toward the ocean. Though his office was not far off, he rarely visited the Brighton Beach boardwalk—yet here he was, returning to it for the second time in one day. He needed to walk. The encounter with Semyon Balakutis had been unpleasant, and he wanted some fresh ocean air, as if to wash away the contamination. When he reached the boardwalk, he turned up the collar of his sports jacket against the wind and the damp. Only a few other hardy souls were out: a lone jogger, an elderly little couple in matching raincoats, determined not to miss their evening promenade. Streetlights radiated misty halos above the walkway; the beach was dark gray, the ocean purple with night.

He walked, and it didn’t take him long to figure out that his restlessness was not just due to concerns about Semyon Balakutis. He paused by a railing and stared unseeing toward the water, remembering the feel of Eugenia Lelo’s lips. He wondered if she was home right now, just a couple of blocks down this same boardwalk. “Please,” she had murmured to him.
Please.

Daniel’s grieving wife. He scowled at himself and shivered, though the night was relatively warm. He felt uncomfortable in his own skin and wondered if this was what it was like to be a junkie, this prickly mix of shame and desire, of desperately wanting something you knew was bad for you.

He groaned. Stupid. He was acting like a goddamn teenager, all hormones and no brain. He had finally gotten his life settled again, so why shake things up? Happiness didn’t come from some other person; that was a sucker’s game, and he was old enough to have that figured out by now.

He moved toward his car.

He stopped.

And then he turned back toward the boardwalk.

ZHENYA ANSWERED THE DOOR
in some old sweatpants and a faded red T-shirt, and he was surprised to find that she wore reading glasses, and he was surprised again that she looked more attractive than ever. He had expected to catch her in another sad mood, maybe half drunk, but tonight she seemed alert, as if she had been interrupted in the middle of some household chore. Not very romantic.

He realized that he had not prepared any good reason to be standing here in her doorway at this hour of night.

She looked up at him quizzically. “Is about my husband?”

He shook his head. “Can I come in?”

She nodded gravely and stepped back a little. “You are wet. May I take your coat?”

He nodded, tempted to smile at her phrasebook English.

She reached into a closet and hung up his sports jacket. Overhead, the chandelier glittered. He glanced at her shelves of knickknacks, his eye stopping on a little shepherd kneeling at the feet of some fair damsel—like the couple who had just sung the corny ballad in the club. A sucker’s game …

He brushed his palm over his damp hair.

“Wait here,” she said. She went off down the hall and came back with a towel.

“Thanks,” he said, and took a moment to dry himself.

She looked at him, puzzled. “Something has happened?”

He handed the towel back to her. “Not really.” He frowned. “Maybe I better go.”

“You just arrive,” she said, and her face broke open in a sudden, shy, gap-toothed smile.

It pierced him to the core.

“I just … I came by to see how you were doing,” he lied. Unbelievable—he actually felt himself shivering.

“You are cold?” she said.

“I’m fine.” The last thing he wanted was for her to go away and come back with some of Daniel’s clothes. He wondered what he could possibly be doing here. He had never committed adultery in his life—not when he had been married, and not with someone else’s spouse. But could you call it adultery if the third party was deceased?

“I was making a snack,” Zhenya said. “You are hungry?”

Yes, he wanted to say. I’m hungry for another taste of your mouth. He just nodded.

She led him down the hallway into a small bright kitchen, where she turned with an embarrassed shrug. “I was going to eat some cereal. But I can make you something. An omelet?”

He smiled. “Some cereal would be fantastic.”

She lifted a stack of papers off a little dining table set against the wall and laid them down on top of a microwave.

“Bills?” he said.

She shook her head, serious again. “No. I am trying to understand Daniel’s business.”

She poured two bowls of Cheerios, and they both sat down to eat. It was hardly the romantic scene he had envisioned, back on the boardwalk a few minutes ago, thinking about being with her out on the dark balcony, overlooking the sea—

“How’s it going?” he said, nodding toward the papers, though he did not want to talk about her late husband.

She raised her slight shoulders. “It’s all Greek to me.” Her eyebrows went up. “You say this, yes? American idiom?”

He nodded. “I suppose we do.”

She frowned earnestly. “Why ‘Greek’? Is difficult language for Americans?”

He smiled, charmed. “I never thought about it before.” He did so. “Maybe it’s because the Greek alphabet is hard for us to read.”

She considered this answer for a moment. “Then I think you can say, also, ‘It’s all Russian to me.’”

He realized that, despite her serious expression, she was making something of a joke, and he smiled. He watched her lift a spoonful of cereal to her small, perfect mouth. “You didn’t eat dinner?”