Neptune Avenue (6 page)

B
Y THE END OF
a long, frustrating, and unproductive shift, Jack was ready for a cold beer and an hour of mindless TV. He drove almost home, but at the last minute he started picturing Daniel Lelo’s face, there in the morgue, and so he didn’t turn off Coney Island Avenue toward his apartment. Instead, he continued on toward Brooklyn’s south shore and a certain McDonald’s restaurant.

The outdoor seating area was well maintained, with colored pennants overhead snapping in a stiff shore breeze. Above them, though, Jack saw an ancient plastic bag trapped in a tree, like a shredded ghost marking the spot where Daniel Lelo had been “innocently” caught in cross fire two years before.

Inside, business was slow—the quiet before the dinner shift. “WelcomeToMcDonald’s MayITakeYourOrder,” mumbled the girl behind the counter. Her eyelids looked as if they might roll down at any second, and stick.

“Hi there,” Jack said. “I’ll have a hamburger and some fries.”

When the food was ready, Jack paid, then flashed his badge. “I’m with the NYPD. Were you here when that shooting happened a couple of years back?”

The girl shook her head, a little more awake now. “I just started last month.”

“Is anybody working today who might have been here then?”

She nodded, went in the back, and returned with a short black teenager, name of Tyrese Vincent.

On top of his head the kid wore dreadlocks tied together and standing straight back like a bunch of asparagus. Jack asked to speak to him outside, on the site of the shooting.

“Tell Andy I’ll be back in a minute,” Tyrese said to the girl. Thankfully he seemed much more bright-eyed than his colleague, who just snapped her gum in response.

It was hot outside, but the kid looked glad to be free for a couple minutes. They sat next to a McDonaldland playground, presided over by a big grinning plastic Ronald. Jack found the character sinister; it reminded him of that famous serial killer who liked to dress as a clown.

He leaned toward the McDonald’s employee. “Can you give me a rundown of what happened the day of the shooting? Where were you when it started?”

Tyrese squinted at him, and not just because of the late afternoon sun. “Why you aks about this now? The police already checked this shit out.”

Jack dipped some of his fries in ketchup. “I know. It’s just that … some of our paperwork is not quite wrapped up.”

The kid shrugged. Why argue? He nodded toward the side of the restaurant. “I was on break over there, havin’ a cigarette.”

“How many people were outside?”

“It was lunchtime—we was full up.”

Jack looked around. There was seating for perhaps twenty-five customers. “Was there an argument or anything? A fight?”

“Naw, man, it was quiet. Everybody was eatin’.” Tyrese turned toward the sidewalk and shaded his eyes, remembering. “Then this white motherf—this white dude came walkin’ down the sidewalk over there. He had a backpack and he pulled out a Mac-nine or some such shit.”

Jack set his hamburger down in midbite. “How did you know it was a Mac-nine?”

Tyrese rolled his eyes. “I seen movies. If I was some kind of criminal, I wouldn’t be workin’ at no goddamn McD’s.”

Jack raised his hands, palms out, and smiled. “So what happened next?”

Tyrese shook his head. “There was a black dude sittin’ over there.” He pointed to a picnic table in the corner. “He was all dressed in blue; looked like he might’a been a Crip. He saw the white dude and then he pulled out his own gun. Then the white dude pulled off a coupl’a shots.”

“Do you think he was going after the gangbanger?”

Tyrese shrugged. “Can’t say for sure, but I don’t think so. White dude looked all surprised when he saw the other dude’s gun.”

“Who was he aiming for, then?”

“I ’on’t know, man. I kept my head down, you know what I’m sayin’? It went all wack.”

“What happened?”

“It was like the dolphin show over at the Aquarium, yo—people all divin’ over benches and shit. Then people lyin’ on the ground, all blooded up.”

“Who got shot?”

“There was this big old lady, got hit in the arm. And this Russian dude, ’bout old as you, he took one in the back.”

Daniel.

“Then the black dude pulled off a coupl’a shots, and the white dude ran off.” Tyrese wiped his forehead; Jack didn’t know if he was sweating due to the memories or his polyester uniform. “Some crazy-ass shit. All I can say, we get a lot of little kids out here. I’m glad none of them got kilt.”

Jack wiped his own forehead. Daniel had been reluctant to talk about the incident; his description had been considerably more spare. “What do you think it was all about?”

Tyrese shrugged. “The cops found a coupl’a witnesses who I.D.ed the black dude. Turned out he’d been busted a bunch of times for slangin’ rocks.” He looked at his white visitor and decided that some translation might be in order. “
Selling crack
. Cops said the dude with the Mac-nine must’ve been after him, some kind of drug thing …”

Jack rubbed his jaw. “You wouldn’t happen to remember the name of the detective who interviewed you back then?”

Tyrese nodded. “His name was Wright. Easy to remember, because I figured he was
wrong
. He didn’t want to listen to me—he had his mind made up.”

Jack frowned. They were in the Sixtieth Precinct. He knew the detective, Bobby Wright, an old-timer who was just riding out his days until he could take his pension and go sleep on the job as a night watchman somewhere. No Sherlock Holmes—and no civil rights crusader …

Tyrese shook his head. “He wanted me to say that the Brother did it, but I kept telling him that the Russian drew first. Typical cop bullsh—”

Jack held up a hand. “Whoa—the shooter was
Russian
?” Daniel had definitely never mentioned that. “How do you know?”

“Yo, mister, I live out here. I know what a Russian looks like. Blond hair, tight-ass face. And he shouted somethin’ just before he pulled the trigger.”

“What’d he say?”

Tyrese shrugged and raised his open hands. “I’m not no translator—just a burger prep specialist.”

Despite the general grimness of the day, Jack smiled again. He liked this kid. “Did they find the gangbanger?”

“Naw. Far as I know, they never caught up with his ass.”

Jack stared out across the hot asphalt. “The white guy—what did he look like?”

“He was all skinny, maybe twenty-five …”

“Blond, you said?”

“Yeah. With a crew cut.” Tyrese pressed his hands against his cheeks. “Thin face.”

“Did you see if he had any marks? Scars, tattoos, anything unusual?”

Tyrese raised his eyebrows. “I was runnin’ from the motherfucker, not dancin’ with him!” He frowned in concentration, though. “He had some kind’a mark on the side of his neck. A tattoo or somethin’.”

Jack wrote that down. “What was he wearing?”

Tyrese frowned, struggling to recall. “I seem to ’member … he had some kind’a old-school kicks: Fila, maybe, or Adidas, with the stripes. The backpack … and blue sunglasses, the kind that wrap around.”

Jack turned away for a moment, drumming his fingers on the picnic table. He turned back to the McDonald’s employee. “Anything else you remember?”

The kid shook his head.

Jack closed his notebook and stood up. “Thank you, Tyrese. I appreciate it.” He handed over one of his business cards. “If you think of anything else, just give me a call. …”

Tyrese stood up. “You’re welcome. I hope you don’t mind my sayin’ this, but you best be careful checkin’ this shit out.”

Jack stopped. “Why?”

“Them Russians are into some nasty business, man.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know I just work at McDonald’s, but I can still afford a
TV
. They got their own Mafia, yo, only more nasty than the Eye-talians. They all into
chainsawing
people, and shit.”

THAT EVENING, JACK CONSIDERED
going upstairs to keep Mr. Gardner company, but he just wasn’t in the mood. He went for a walk instead.

Monsalvo’s bar was a little bunker on the edge of Midwood, an anomaly in a neighborhood characterized largely by another puritanical Hasidic community. As he stepped inside, Jack was welcomed by several old-timers. They made him think of pigeons, the way you could often catch sight of a little flock of them wheeling over some low Brooklyn rooftop, bellies flashing as they caught the light, then returning to home base.

“Jackie L., how they hangin’?” called out Tommy McKettrie, a long-retired bus driver with a wrinkled face that always seemed subject to an extra dose of gravity.

Joe Imbruglia, retired welder, threw a copy of
The Post
down on the cigarette-scarred bar. The old man’s claim to fame was that he had helped build the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. “Jesus, look at this crap!” he said. “Who is this Britney Spears? And why should I give a shit? I remember when we used to have stars who didn’t look like kids working the counter of some goddamn convenience store. Remember Rita Hayworth? Remember when you first see her, in
Gilda
,
and she throws her hair back and gives Glenn Ford the eye? Cripes, I almost had my first heart attack when I saw that. …”

Jack settled onto a stool and ordered a draft from Pat, the ruddy-faced young bartender. One thing he liked about this place was that it wasn’t frequented by cops, and he could talk about other things beside who had gotten passed over for promotion, or the impossibility of making a decent living on the paycheck. He could just sit and stare up absentmindedly at some ball game on the TV, and try to forget the gruesome images of the day. He sipped his beer and watched Pedro Martinez finish off Derek Jeter with a called strike that must have been at least six inches outside.

Soon the old men were embroiled in a lively jukebox-inspired argument about the relative scat-singing abilities of Tony Bennett and Mel Tormé. Jack tuned them out; he nursed a couple more beers, and soon he found himself thinking about Daniel Lelo’s widow. Zhenya. He had missed something there, no doubt about it.

Back when his son Ben was little, the boy had gone through a phase of being obsessed with Spiderman. The character had always talked about how his “spider sense” tingled when something was wrong. Likewise, being a good detective was largely about developing a profound sensitivity—not ESP or some other superpower, but an awareness acquired through years of learning how to read subtleties in an interviewee’s body language and voice. Learning to recognize lies—and most people stretched the truth even when they didn’t have anything to hide. Problem was, as a detective in New York City, you had to deal with all sorts of cultural and ethnic groups, from Dominicans to Senegalese, Poles to Bengalis, each with its own codes and mores, and that made it harder to understand what was really going on. Stepping into someone’s personal space, for example; that meant one thing to someone in Sunset Park’s Chinatown, something completely different to a Brooklyn Heights WASP. The Russians were a tough group: they tended to hold on to their native tongue, which meant you often needed a translator to deal with them, and they were notoriously wary of the police, perhaps because they thought the police were like the KGB. Even so, Jack reflected, he had gone too easy on the wife, out of consideration for her recent loss. He should have pushed harder.

He exhaled. Enough with the work thoughts; he was off duty. He took out his cell phone again. Thinking about his son had reminded him that he hadn’t seen the kid in way too long. It also reminded him why. Jack had gotten divorced when Ben was eight. Ever since then, he’d done his best to stay involved in the boy’s life, but his son had turned sullen and resentful. It was only in the past couple of years, after Jack had gotten shot, that he’d started to make some headway at repairing the damage. And Michelle had helped. Ben liked her; he would come over for dinner sometimes, and they’d almost started to feel like a family. When that relationship suddenly ended, Jack got the sense that his son blamed
him
, as if he was just naturally incapable of maintaining a relationship, of holding on to a woman’s love.

He called the kid and made a future dinner plan, then put away his cell and sipped his beer. His mind drifted again.
A woman’s love
… he pictured Zhenya Lelo tucking a loose strand of fine blond hair behind her ear; he thought of that endearing little gap between her teeth.

He frowned.

He finished his beer.

A few minutes later, he stood up and threw some money on the bar.

HE KNOCKED SOFTLY ON
the mint green door. He stood waiting. Checked his watch: only nine thirty. Not too late to pay a little official call. He heard a TV murmuring somewhere down the hallway, smelled boiled cabbage. He shifted his feet; he wouldn’t knock again. Maybe she was sleeping. Or maybe she was out, being comforted in the home of some friend or family member.

The door swung open just as he was pivoting away. Zhenya, now wearing slacks and a navel-revealing blouse. Barefoot. Somehow, she didn’t seem to be quite so surprised to see him this time—and then she surprised
him
by turning away without a word, leaving the door open behind her. He paused on the threshold, then followed her in.

She walked down the hall, hips swaying—it occurred to him that maybe he wasn’t the only one who’d had a couple of drinks. She continued on through the dark dining room—he could see half-eaten platters of food still sitting dejected on the table—and led him into the living room and out on the balcony. Sure enough, there was a bottle of Irish whiskey sitting on the little glass coffee table.

She turned. “You will have a drink?”

He shrugged. He had expected to have to press her, and her lack of resistance left him off balance, leaning forward, unsure of how to proceed.

She stepped back into the living room and then came out with a glass for him. Poured him a healthy measure.

He stepped to the railing and looked down: on the boardwalk, old couples with their arms around each other strolled in and out of cones of light cast by yellowish sodium-vapor lamps. Beyond, the dim beige expanse of the beach, and then the gray ocean stretching out into the night … He breathed deeply of the salty air and turned to find Zhenya sitting in one of the rattan chairs, legs tucked beneath her, regarding him coolly. He could see the light from the condominiums reflected in her impenetrable cat eyes. As she reached out for her drink, he saw her nipples press against the soft blouse, and he quickly looked away.