The Sea Beach Line (45 page)

“Shut up. You're the one who snitched to the Glupsker Rebbe. We both know that. You work for him. Galuth was the rebbe's great-aunt, or something. That's a self-portrait of her downstairs. The painting where she is thrown from the tracks.”

“
The Sea Beach Line
, it's called.”

“
The Sea Beach Line
. The rebbe is the benefactor of this place. He keeps one of Galuth's paintings in his office. I know because I helped steal it for him with Roman. Timur paid me two thousand for that, and you stole four bills. Quite a courier fee. You recognized Rayna on the street as your boss's daughter. And you snitched on her and me for what, a little bonus?” Goldov stood silent and motionless. “Nu? Nu?” Goldov let out a long, pained sigh.

“Fine. You know this is true. What do you need me to say? Galuth is the aunt of the
alter
rebbe. She is the great-aunt of the current rebbe. And the great-great-aunt of your little playmate, for that matter. Galuth studied Torah with her brothers. She outpaced them in her studies, even delving deep into the kabbalah. Deep into aspects of mysteries they could never understand. But a woman could never be rabbi, so she fled to Paris and became next best thing, a painter. The rabbis, they still respect her. If only in secret.” There was reverence in his voice, and I could see that he respected her too. For all his faults, Goldov really loved Galuth. Then his face turned, became cruel.

“So you are not a complete moron. I work for the Glupskers. They are zealots, not lovers of art, but Galuth was one of theirs, and they honor her. At least the rebbe does. So I told my employer I am knowing where his daughter is. What of it? It was the right thing to do.”

“The right thing to do? We were happy. We had our little world. We weren't hurting anybody. And you destroyed it for us.” I jabbed the barrel of the gun in his direction as I spoke.

“What do I care about your happiness? Besides, your world, your little closet, the books you sold: that was all Edel's. He stole from me. He did worse to others. No joy is not built on someone else's pain. What do you think Alojzy did to obtain the favor of Timur in the first place?”

“He was loyal to Timur. To his organization. Even if they didn't deserve it.”

“To be loyal to someone means to be betraying someone else. Alojzy's great act of loyalty, do you know what it was?”

“No.”

“I thought not. A friend of his—a man from Israel who was trying to make a name for himself here in Brooklyn—made an overture to your father. They had served together in army, and he wanted Edel to come in with him as he made moves on Timur's operation. Edel pretended to go along with the plan, but only so he could inform on this man to Timur.”

“So Alojzy saved Timur's life.” Even as I defended my father, I knew Goldov was telling the truth. He was talking about the IDF soldier in Al's sketchbooks. The man was dead in Israel, dead in New York. Not dead from the war, but dead because Al had betrayed him. Goldov was telling me that my father was a rat—and Goldov would know a rat. The joke was on me; I was steadfast in my loyalty to a man who hadn't known the meaning of the word. My face flushed with shame.

“Sure,” Goldov said, “you could say so, but what do you think happened to his army buddy? His old
chevre
, who he had fought side by side with. How do you think his other Israeli buddies thought about him after this? After he sold his friend out to that butcher? Are you proud to have his name? I would not be. I spit on your father's name.”

Goldov spat on his own floor. I didn't care what my father had done; nothing gave Goldov the right to disrespect his name. I swung the rifle down toward his leg and pulled the trigger. The gun popped, and a disproportionately large flash erupted from the cut barrel. Goldov screamed out in pain. A black cat leaped out from behind a stack of canvases, and darted out the door.

“Do you think that I am a liar?” Goldov demanded, bent over. He held the wound and lowered himself the rest of the way to the floor. The fact that he was still speaking with such hostility meant that the small bullet had not hit an artery or anything important, but only embedded itself in the meat of his winter salami of a leg.

“No,” I said. “I know you're not a liar.” I worked the stiff bolt. The empty brass casing hit the floor with a little clinking sound, and I loaded another round into the chamber. I held the gun on Goldov with my right hand, and searched in my pocket with my left. I pulled out the photocopy of the dead soldier sketch that I'd been carrying around. The picture with the words
hidden in the background. Now
I knew what Al was sorry for. “You are speaking of this man, right?” I held up the paper so Goldov could see. He squinted, then nodded.

“Yes. That's him. Ezra was his name.” The last bit of legend I'd built around Al had been stripped away. I felt the loss acutely. If I'd been alone, I might have cried.

“Now tell me about what happened to my father. No one else will. He's really dead too, isn't he? You tried to tell me that last time. Tell me now. Did Roman and Timur do something to him too? I get that you bit your tongue when I asked before because you didn't want to cross Timur. But now you understand that I'll hurt you as badly as he will.”

“
Ladno
,” Goldov sighed again. Despite the stakes, it seemed that our whole interchange bored him. “Never should I have sent the postcard. I only wanted that maybe your rich mother would cut me a check. But I did not lie. Your father is dead, of a heart attack.” It was true. I knew it was true. Al was dead. He wasn't coming back. “He was helping Roman with some job in Red Hook, receiving something stolen that had been smuggled from overseas, paintings or something of that nature. The excitement of the job was too much for his ticker, it must have been. Roman and his thugs threw Edel's body into the harbor. They couldn't call 911 to bring an ambulance to their crime scene. They couldn't carry a body nonchalantly off ship. So they tossed him in the harbor. Roman mentioned it to me, because I was the closest thing Alojzy had to a friend. I guess he thought I'd miss him.” He looked up at me, to see if I was satisfied. I nodded. More than anything, it was a relief to finally know where Al was. “You do believe me?”

“I do.” Goldov's account sounded true. Al ate horribly. He never exercised, and he never went to a doctor. He'd self-medicate with liquor, or occasionally with the black-market medicine that old women sold on Brighton Beach Avenue like it was dope. Roman himself had said that Alojzy was his go-to man for jobs like that, so it made sense he'd be in that situation. Roman wouldn't have thought twice about throwing Al in the water. Get another bird. Get another friend. Get another father. There were no great mysteries. Just the usual bullshit and suffering.

“And Rayna?” I said.

“What of her?”

“She's still in Brooklyn? They haven't rushed her off to Israel yet, or hidden her in Lakewood or Monsey or someplace? You seem to know what goes on with the Langer family.”

“Yes, I believe she is.” This was good news. I didn't know how I would have been able to follow her to Israel. “The whole family will depart for the wedding next week. Until then, they are keeping her under lock and key.”

“Good. Now,” I said, “I want my money. That hasn't changed.” I pointed the gun at Goldov's face again. I didn't want to kill the man, but I knew that I would if I had a reason to.

He gestured toward a coffee can sitting amongst the paint tubes on the windowsill. I pulled out the wad of bills without counting them, and stuffed them in my pants pocket.

“That's my whole savings . . .”

“I don't care.” This was no time for hesitancy, or second-guessing. I would take what I would take. I was different than Al, but I was just as tough. Besides, I was sure the old thief had money hidden in plenty of places. He would never starve.

Turning my back on Goldov, I went down the stairs. I listened for sounds that he might be making a move to call someone or attack me from behind—I wouldn't be surprised if the old man had a rusty Makarov tucked away somewhere—but I didn't hear anything. I stopped in the gallery and took a long look at
The Sea Beach Line
. Rayna flew in the air, just above death, for all eternity. She'd been flying there before she was born, and she'd be flying there still when she'd grown wide and blank-eyed, holding one brat against her hip and pushing two more down a narrow street in a double stroller. For a moment, I thought I could reach out and catch her.

But I couldn't. This was just a picture. It wasn't a window to anything real. I'd taken Goldov's money, same as Al would have. Same as Al had. But he wouldn't stop there and wander out misty-eyed over a painting. He'd have stayed on his toes, played every angle. I took a box cutter out of my pocket and cut the canvas from the frame. I rolled it up as carefully as I could, and tucked it under my arm.

I walked back up the stairs. Goldov was lying in the middle of the room, gripping a dirty rag to his bleeding leg. “Something else you need to take from me?” There was fear on his face; he wasn't mocking me.

“Yeah. I'm taking this picture,
The Sea Beach Line
.”

“You know that the pictures do not belong to me. They belong to the Glupskers.”

“Yes, I know. Tell your boss, the rebbe, that I'll be happy to trade him back the picture for a meeting with Rayna. I won't try anything. I'll come unarmed. He can send his guards or chaperones or whoever. But if I can't see her once more, I'm keeping her picture. Roman and Timur know the number to reach me at.”

I went out onto the fishing pier to ditch the gun. It had served its purpose and was now just a liability; if a cop caught me with it, I would be going to Rikers. If the rebbe wanted to send his and Timur's people after me, one little .22 wouldn't be anywhere near enough firepower to make a difference.

Luckily, the pier wasn't too crowded, at least down at the very end. A couple of old men were fishing, but everyone else had packed it in. A small group of teenagers were hanging out, but they were coupled up, and too busy flirting and playing grab ass to notice anything an adult was doing. I managed to work the gun out from under my sweater and tossed it off the pier. The weight carried it farther out over the water than I'd expected, and for a moment it seemed to hover in the air.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a freighter moving out toward the Atlantic. The ship was moving quickly. I turned to watch it. My eyes were suddenly telescopes, and I zeroed in on two figures standing on the ship's deck: a man in his early twenties, and an older man pushing sixty. They wore thick work jackets, and grinned as the wind whipped their hair. The ship was three hundred yards away if it was a foot, but I could see the men with perfect clarity: Al and me.

He had not died. He had not been thrown into the harbor. He had been waiting for me at the docks this whole time. The postcard had told me what ship to board. We sealed ourselves inside a shipping container, and slipped past the Port Authority. We would spend the
six-day journey bunking with the sailors, then be sealed back in the container before the ship landed in Rotterdam and was inspected by EU customs. The container would be offloaded onto a freight train, and we'd ride until we'd made it to Berlin, where Al knew people.

I heard a splash, and turned back just in time to see the gun disappearing beneath the surface of the water. I looked back up again, and the ship was gone too. There was no Al, and no escape. My father was gone. I had to see Rayna, before I lost her too.