Red Hook (24 page)

“Yeah, of course I do. You always had a lousy memory. We were already together, you and me, just at the beginning. Crosby Street. Jack Santiago was getting married, I think it was his first, maybe the second, she was an artist, and the place was packed, and I brought
you and you brought Tolya, and McKay was Santiago's boss at the
Times,
or was once. We all knew that. Good band and vodka, gallons of it. I used to go out with Jack, did you know that?”

“Yeah.”

“Before you, OK? It was before we met.”

“Wasn't he a little young for you?”

I never knew how old Lily was but she was past fifty. She wasn't coy about anything except her age. I never knew why because I never cared how old she was.

“Fuck you,” she said, smiling. “He was really smart. He was a real hotshot, and then I think he went sour. He got so puffed up with his own legend, and there was poor Sid half in love with him, half wanting to make him into the world's greatest reporter, and then realizing Jack had his own agenda. But Jack would have betrayed anyone.”

“Including Sid?”

“Why not?”

“Santiago and Sid were an item?”

“Not lovers. Sid was his mentor. But I remember that wedding all the time. I think about it. I think about those times, downtown was still fun, and a little scary, lots of crack and crime, and people hung on to each other, people were still dying a lot of AIDS, there were memorial services all the time, and everyone was doing a lot of drugs, and fucking a lot, and crying a lot, and you could still see the chicken man out on West Broadway, you remember, he had this huge rack he pushed around, and it was hung with furry yellow toy chickens and you'd see it coming down Broadway and people would
stay at Raoul's, drinking half the night, and other stuff. Is that right? Am I mixed up? Maybe that was the ‘80s. Did we know each other already? I feel like we always knew each other. I think it was then.” She smiled. “I've had way too much. I got here early. I've been drinking wine for a while.”

“What other stuff, darling?”

“I met you.”

I reached for her hand, but she pulled it away.

“I don't want to talk about it anymore,” she said. “Everything is falling apart. I want to go home, let's go home, Artie, or let me go get a cab if you don't want to be with me.” Lily stopped suddenly and without warning burst into tears.

For a minute, maybe two, Lily, who never cried, wept; tears poured down her face. I held her hand and waited until she stopped sobbing.

“What made you cry like that?”

“I feel like I have to tell you something Tolya said to me.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that Sid had something he wanted badly, and he didn't know how to get it,” she said. “He said it was bothering him like crazy and it made him pissed off, he said to me, I am pissed off, Lily, I want this thing and McKay knows and he doesn't help me.” She looked at me. “I don't want to know any more about that. Don't tell me. Let's just go home now, or let me go home.”

“We didn't go, not then. We sat for a while longer—I couldn't tell how long—and drank a lot. Finally, Lily got up from the table, looked at me and scraped her hair
back from her face again and started for the door slowly, and I wondered if that was it, that I would never see her. I knew that she wanted me to come with her and I thought that if I went with her I was the world's biggest bastard and if I didn't I was a fool. So I just sat, and watched her.

I got to Lily halfway down the block.

“Where should we go,” I said. “Where do you want to go?”

“Let's walk.”

“What for?”

“You made me promise I wouldn't take you home,” she said. “Let's just take a walk.”

“Where?”

“The fish market, like we used to. It won't be there much longer,” she said, and she took my arm, and we started over towards the river.

During the week, before dawn, men in rubber boots waded through melting ice as they unloaded fish from the trucks parked near the stalls where bright lights were strung up on metal hooks. It was Saturday and there was no one out, just the faint stink of fish in the dark morning.

Lily looked around. “This time next year, the market will all be gone to Hunt's Point in the Bronx,” she said. “I'll miss it. You want an early breakfast?”

“Breakfast sounds good,” I said. “Sure.”

“We were quiet now. There was nothing left to say. “We found a diner that was open and we sat in a booth and she fiddled with the salt and pepper shakers and we
ate bacon and eggs and drank coffee. When we were done, Lily looked at her watch, and got up. She bent down and kissed me on the cheek.

“I'm going home, Artie. I'm going to try to be a good person, OK? I'm going to try, so I'm going, and then you go and get your stuff and go meet Maxine, your wife, I have to make myself say that, and maybe we can be friends some time. Look, I'm just going,” she said, and turned and went out of the diner and out into the street and jogged away. This time I didn't try to follow her.

For a while, until it was light, I sat and then I walked over to the edge of the river. I lit a cigarette. I felt that someone was watching me. I'd felt it before during the week, the sense of a shadow, someone's shadow falling on me. I wondered if it could be the creep from Brooklyn who got away, or just my tumbling towards chaos. I moved away from the edge of the pier.

The ground was slippery from some garbage, remains from the fish market, something a tourist had tossed on the ground. I threw away my cigarette, and started to walk. I walked faster, still feeling someone following me.

When I got back to my block, I saw my car was parked out front of my building. I figured that one of Tolya's guys got it repaired, then delivered it. From the coffee shop across the street, Mike Rizzi waved me over.

“This came for you yesterday,” he said holding up a large flat package as I went in and sat at the counter. “I forgot. You want some pie, Artie? I got really nice lemon meringue.” I shook my head but he gave me a slice anyhow. “On me,” Mike said.

Inside the padded envelope was a note from Sid. Congratulations on your marriage, it said. The envelope also contained a photograph of Stan Getz by Herman Leonard. My favorite musician, favorite photographer. I looked at the postmark on the package. Sid had sent it the Saturday he started calling me.

“Great party,” Mike said. “Terrific. What's the matter? You look like you saw a ghost. Good pie, right?” Mike invested heavily in the fact that he served the best pie of any coffee shop in New York.

He watched while I dug into it. It was good, sweet and tart and wet, the meringue sugary and firm. Even in my lousy mood I couldn't resist and while Mike watched me, I ate the hefty slab of pie, drank two cups of black coffee and, since there was no one else in the place, leaned on the counter and held up a pack of cigarettes.

“Sure,” Mike said. “Smoke if you want.”

“There's something on your mind, Mike?”

“I heard they're going to hit the stock exchange and other financial stuff next week, third anniversary of the Twin Towers, fucking terrorists, that's what they're saying, you believe it?”

“I don't believe anything. I sure as shit don't believe any politician, not this summer, Mikey, what about you? You buy it? You think it's real, or it's the election coming and us falling for fear like we were two years old?”

He reached up and turned on the TV that sat on a shelf over the cereal boxes. “All I know is I was supposed to take the truck out to Jersey and that getting through the tunnel's a nightmare and there are guys with AKs
walking around near the bridges again like the winter before last, nothing's any better, and I feel like, you know, tired of it, Art. I feel like I want a permanent vacation.”

“Yeah, I know.” Out of a corner of my eye I was watching the TV. Stories of dead children were coming out of Russia. The picture changed to Bush.

Mike looked up and said, “He's OK. He's like a regular guy.”

“You're kidding me.”

“I like Bush. I got a right.”

“But that's stupid, man.”

I had never seen Mike Rizzi get mad in all the years I had lived on the block. His face was red.

“I don't think I'm stupid,” he said. “And I don't think it's any of your business who I vote for, OK? I'm not stupid, you know, I listen to the news, I watch Fox, I watch CNN, I like Bush. He makes me feel he gets it about ordinary people, like me. He makes me feel safer.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Who for?”

I started to apologize, but he just kept his back to me and waved his hands to acknowledge what I said or maybe tell me to get lost, then threw some bacon on the griddle. The fat spattered. Mike turned around.

“It's OK,” he said.

I didn't want to put my foot in it, so I left. Outside I almost tripped over a black guy lying on the ground. He was naked except for a filthy undershirt and a ragged towel over his dick. That was it. Nothing else. Just lying there. I bent down and took his pulse. He was barely
alive. I saw a lot of guys like him now, a lot of bad drugs coming back into the city, no housing, no nothing except politicians saluting the flag and talking tough.

Everyone was tired, everyone drinking too much. I remembered suddenly that Mike Rizzi had a boy in the Air Reserves who had been posted to Iraq.

The black guy on the sidewalk didn't move. I went back into Mike's and asked him to call 911 and I waited until the medics came and loaded the guy up into an ambulance. While they were loading him, the filthy towel fell off and left him naked, except for the undershirt and one dirty sneaker.

I recognized Sid's son as soon as I saw him through the open door of Sid's loft in Red Hook. I went in, introduced myself as a friend of Sid's. I'd been hoping I could get another look; I still had the key I stole, but the door was open.

“Alex McKay,” he said briefly, then introduced the woman who sat near him on the edge of a chair as Miss McKay.

She was Sid's sister. I had seen her at the hospital. Holding a box of photographs, she sat straight, her back not touching the chair. Her hair was gray, cut short, she wore pearl earrings and a black linen dress and though she was older, she was a dead ringer for Sid.

Alex returned to the shelf where he had been examining his father's books.

“What's your interest?” he said.

“I was a friend of Sid's,” I said again and didn't mention I was a detective.

He looked like his father. He had a light smooth face that was expressionless and looked as if it had been
poured that morning. He looked young for his age—I knew he was about forty—it was what I noticed first about him. He wore an expensive blue summer shirt and black jeans. He was taller than Sid and he had broad shoulders and big arms. Sid had married briefly and Alex was the product of that marriage.

Obviously rattled by his father's death, he moved around the loft fretfully but I didn't see any sadness.

“What kind of friend is that?” he asked, faintly sarcastic. “I bet he had a lot of those friends.”

“Alex,” his aunt said, “enough.”

As casually as I could, I said to Miss McKay, “Tell me about Earl. Sid told me that he had a half brother named Earl and they were friends when he was a boy. You must have known him. Sid said they were very close when they were teenagers.”

She remained expressionless. “I've never heard of such a thing,” she said. “I don't know of anyone named Earl. Not in our family. No, no one that I can imagine.” She looked down at the box she held. “There were so many pictures of Sid. I don't even know who most of the people are.” She held one up and looked at it. “I wish I knew.”

When I asked for her phone number, she reached into her handbag and gave me an engraved card with her name, address and phone number.

“You're a cop,” Alex said to me, putting down the book he held. “Aren't you?”

“We've already seen the police,” the aunt said. “We've told them everything. It was an accident. Right, darling?” She turned to Alex. “We agreed that, didn't
we? I know we talked about suicide, but I think it was an accident.” She said it as if she could prescribe the means of Sid's death.

“I need some air and a smoke,” Alex said to me. “You want to walk?”

We went outside and walked along the pier out over the water. In the gusts of wind that came off the river, a few boats bobbed around.

Alex took a thin ropey little joint out of his pocket and lit it. I had assumed he meant cigarettes when he said he needed a smoke. He seemed unconcerned that I was a cop. He didn't pass the joint to me either.

He was tight as a drum, the skin was stretched taut over the bones. Alex was a tense man.

Finally I said, “When's the last time you saw him?”

“A year. Around a year ago,” he said.

“But talked to him, I mean.”

“I don't know. Months.”

“He told me you sent him an iPod,” I said, remembering how Sid told me he was listening to it on the deck of the Mexican restaurant the day before my wedding. “You didn't talk to him but you sent him a gift?”

“Say that I was a dutiful son.”

“Why didn't you see him? How come?”

“I didn't like him,” he said quietly.

“That must have been rough.”

“Who for?”

“You want to tell me where you were over the last week or so?”

“I think I already told about ten people, but if you
want to know, I'm OK with it,” Alex said. “I was working in Borneo. I'm a DP.”

“What?”

“Director of photography,” he said. “A cameraman. I make ethnographic documentaries for people like
National Geographic,
I probably thought somehow in a Freudian moment that it would put them right out of joint, the family, me doing stuff about tribes, you know, black people with lip plates, the kind my family figure for cannibals. Maybe I hoped it would drive them nuts or something, and then I won a few prizes so they all talked about it for a while, and I was a kind of family star for a month, and then it was just what I did. I heard about my father and I had to get about six damn planes to get here.”