Red Hook (27 page)

He had the nagging sense that he was supposed to be doing something, but he couldn’t force it into his consciousness. After a while, he looked up a side street and saw a familiar church. He turned off the avenue and descended the stairs into the basement meeting hall. He felt a strange thrill—as if he’d been given the password to a nationwide secret society, a subterranean world.

A speaker was just finishing, a twenty-something kid with a muscle shirt, a gold chain, and a thick Long Island accent.

“I didn’t tell my girlfriend I was in the program,” he said, “’cause I wasn’t sure I could stick with it. But then I finally broke the news, You’d think she’d be thrilled, ’cause all we ever did the whole time we were going out was sit on the couch all night, staring at the tube and drinking and getting high. “You wanna talk couch potatoes—we were a couple of
mashed
couch potatoes.”

Even though this was only his second meeting, Jack had noticed that the horrific AA stories were often accompanied by a dark humor. The cop in him approved.

He turned around to find a small, hunched man staring directly at him. At last, he thought, someone is on to the fact that I’m an impostor. The man’s heavy-lidded eyes blinked slowly and then he pulled his chin in and looked away.

“And then,” the kid continued, “I was telling her, hey, let’s get out, you know, do stuff, go to concerts, whatever—like I was realizing how pathetic our relationship had been. And you know what she did?
She broke up with me.
”

The kid paused, stared down at the floor, shook his head. “And I just can’t…I can’t get my mind around that. Like, instead of having a real boyfriend who wanted to take her out, she’d rather have me sitting on the couch like a vegetable. And it makes me so angry that I just want to drink, or snort up a big fat line. And that’s why I’m glad I’m in the program, ’cause I can come here and be pissed off and I don’t have to pick up a fucking bottle.”

Jack turned around. The hunched man was gone.

After the kid finished, others got up to sympathize and trade similar stories. Jack looked around and realized that they shared a deep pool of experience, a profound bond. He was sitting in the middle of a bunch of alcoholics—and he was jealous.

A woman told how hard it had been for her to go home for the Fourth of July and be surrounded by her drinking family. A man got up to say that he was starting a new job, and he was afraid, and tempted to drink to quiet his fear. And Jack sat and listened to the stories, soothed by the rhythm of their voices, these people who looked so calm but spoke of such incredible turbulence in their lives. He was startled every time someone stated, “I’m so-and-so, and I’m an alcoholic.” He watched their faces, revealed under pools of light. He was so used to people lying all the time, lying about the most trivial things just because it was their habit to lie—he didn’t know what to make of all these people struggling to reveal their most uncomfortable truths.

Priests were probably used to such stories. Many times he’d wondered what it must be like to sit in the dim booth of a confessional, whispering. But Jews didn’t have confessionals.

Cops did, though. Half the job was calling people in, trying to get the truth to surface. Contrary to popular belief, force was rarely used. The pros, the hard cases, knew enough to shut up, but a lot of perps—miserable, tired, guilt-ridden—seemed as if they had been praying for the chance to spill.

After the meeting, he wandered into a local Irish bar.

At six-thirty, Ben opened the wine and poured a glass before chopping the mushrooms. He had another glass while the lasagna was baking and felt guilty because there wasn’t much left for dinner. He cleared the kitchen table of a pile of film magazines, grant proposals, and other crap and set out the silverware and plates. He checked to make sure that the batteries in his Walkman were good, popped in a blank cassette.

By the time the food was ready, his dad still hadn’t arrived. Ben sipped more wine and watched a dopey sitcom, listening with one ear for the front gate to clang shut.

By nine o’clock, he was so hungry he sat down and ate.

By ten, he was so pissed off he was ready to clock the old man over the head with the wine bottle.

At eleven, he called the dive bar, Monsalvo’s, where he’d rescued his father before. The bartender said he hadn’t been in all night.

He was in bed just drifting off when he heard his father unlock the front door. “Thanks a lot,” Ben muttered, and fell into a restless sleep.

When Jack returned to his son’s apartment, the place was dark. He banged his shin on a chair, but was able to pull out the heavy futon bed without making too much noise. As he undressed, the urge to call Michelle again weighed powerfully on him and he “wondered if it was like an alcoholic’s thirst.

W
HEN BEN GOT UP
, his father was sitting in the kitchen eating a bowl of granola.

His dad made a face. “This tastes like something you’d feed pigeons. Don’t you at least have any sugar to sprinkle on it?”

“No. I’m allergic to sugar.”

“Allergic? Whaddaya mean?”

Sugar made Ben’s skin break out, but he didn’t want to share that particular secret this morning. “What happened to you last night?” he asked instead.

“Last night? Why?”

“I made dinner. I told you I’d cook.”

His father clapped his hand to his forehead. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry, kid. I was at a meeting.”

“A meeting? What meeting?”

“You said you had the day off.”

His father didn’t answer the question. “Look,” he said, “I’ll make it up to you. How about we go get lunch somewhere, my treat. Someplace fancy.”

“I’m not in the mood.” Ben turned to the fridge to get some milk.

“Come on, we’ll get a great lunch, that’ll cheer you up. How about Peter Luger’s over in Williamsburg? Best damn steak in the city.”

“Dad!”

“What?”

“I told you: I don’t eat meat.”

His father looked startled. “You don’t? Since when?”

“Since about five years ago. Don’t you hear a word I say!”

“Hey—don’t bite my head off just because I offered to buy you lunch. We’ll get spaghetti. Vegetables. Whatever you want.”

They went to a fancy place down by the base of the Brooklyn Bridge. Ben didn’t say a word during the whole drive, even about his father smoking in the car. He was so quiet he scared himself: his silence mirrored his father’s long silences when he was growing up. A red burst of anger flared up in him. His film project was no use. Nothing was any use. It didn’t matter what the deep psychological reasons were: he was going to turn out just like the old man. A turtle. As usual, his dad ate his lunch section by section: meat, vegetables, starch. Watching him was torture.

His father had some cheesecake for dessert. “This is great,” he said. “You want some?”

Ben groaned. “That’s it. I can’t take it.”

His father looked bewildered. “Take what?”

“What did I tell you? This morning, when we were in the kitchen?”

“Oh, damn. I’m sorry—you’re allergic to sugar.”

He stared at his father in disgust. “I could have told you I had
cancer
and you’d hardly have noticed.”

“Whoa, come on, kid. Don’t be like that. I’m sorry. Really. I’ve been crazy busy these past couple of weeks.”

“You’re
always
so wrapped up in your own business.” Ben noticed his voice rising into an embarrassing higher register. “What you have to do is so much more important than anything else.” His voice cracked, as if he were regressing to childhood. “More important than being a father. Or a husband.”
You Left!
he wanted to shout.
I Was Only Eight Years old! How Could You Do That If You Really Loved Me?

“Now hold on—” his father started to say, but Ben cut him off.

“No wonder Mom got so disgusted.” Something inside him spiraled out of control. “No wonder she calls you a loser.”

His father’s eyes widened. “She said that? I mean, she told
you
that?”

“I’m fed up.” Ben’s voice cracked with anger. “I’m fucking fed up. Why do you even bother calling me anymore?”

“Hey. Come on. I know I could’ve done a better job with you guys. I know that. And I’m trying to do better now.”

Ben sighed. “Forget it. It’s not worth it.” He stood up, just wanting to get away. When it came to fight or flight, his family was much better at the second option.

“Where you going?”

“I’m going out to do some shooting.”

“Shooting?”

“Filming. It’s what I do—remember?”

“Wait up,” his father said. “I’ll give you a ride.”

Ben clenched his fists. “I’ll walk.”

Jack watched his son stride out of the restaurant. By the time he settled the bill and went outside to look for him, Ben was gone.

He walked down toward the East River, the massive stone anchorage of the Brooklyn Bridge hanging over his head. He crossed a cobbled street and stepped out on a sun-baked plaza. Across the water, tourists crowded the terraces of South Street Seaport. The metal-and-glass towers of Wall Street and the World Trade Center glinted cruelly in the afternoon sun. He stared across at the moneyed towers of Manhattan as he had stared years ago as a poor kid growing up in a poor housing project on the wrong side of the river.

Disgusted. Loser.
His son’s words rang in his head. He couldn’t believe it: he’d never once raised his hand to the kid—how could the boy have turned out so angry?

He remembered one time when he’d taken Ben swimming—the kid must’ve been about six years old. “Look, Dad!” his son kept shouting in his little voice, craving attention, proud as only a kid could be of his splashy dog paddling. Jack went out into the middle of the pool and asked his son to swim over to him. But he’d gotten distracted for a second when the kid was about halfway there. When he looked down, the boy had swallowed some water and he was panicking, beating the water with his little fists, desperately trying to stand up in water over his head. Jack scooped him up—that panicked, hiccupping little kid—reproached by his son’s look of disbelief that his father could let him down,
would
let him down.

No father could protect his son from the harshness of the world, but it was easier for a kid to put the blame close to home.

He spent a few minutes wandering around by the river feeling sorry for himself, then turned back to his car. Maybe he couldn’t win at love or parenting, but there was one thing he still had a chance to get right.

J
ACK SIGNED THE DAY
log, glad to be home in the task force office again. The phone rang.

One of his fellow detectives swiveled in his chair. “You’ve got a call, Leightner. Some guy named Larry—he says you’ll know who he is.”

Jack reached across his desk for the phone.

“You got something for me, buddy?”

“Yeah,” Larry Cosenza said. “I asked around the neighborhood, real low-key like you said. About that Sumner International company: last year they bought up a couple of big lots on the Red Hook waterfront, just across from Governor’s Island. Another thing: they own P and L Enterprises and that garage over on Coffey Street.”

Jack whistled. “Jesus, Larry, I owe you big-time. Tell you what: when I’m ready to kick, I’m gonna order the fanciest casket in your place.”

He walked into the supply room and paced. Randall Heiser had just been promoted from interviewee to suspect. If the man had been less prominent, the next step would have been to ask him to come in for questioning at the Seventy-sixth Precinct, screw with his head for a while in hopes that he’d break or let something slip. Legally, suspects were not required to come in unless they were formally charged with a crime, but thanks to TV cop shows many still thought they were supposed to make the trip. But someone as well placed as Heiser would immediately call his attorney, who’d tell him to simply clam up.

There was another option, though. If he could charge the man with some other, minor violation—failure to pay his parking tickets, say—then he could bring him in.

Sergeant Tanney got up and closed the door to his office. He turned to Jack. “We’re not going to arrest the man for three
parking tickets
.”

Jack gripped the arms of his chair. “He lied to me. He said he wasn’t in Red Hook.”

“He wasn’t under oath when he talked to you. He could just say he forgot. Why are you still on this? Didn’t I ask you to move on?”

Jack took a slow breath. “It was a direct lie.”

“You know what I think, Detective? You’re being a bit overzealous here.”

“Overzealous! Unless—by some incredible coincidence—Berrios and the barge captain both got randomly knifed in the same couple of weeks, we’re looking at two connected murders.”

“Do you have any direct evidence that Heiser was involved?”

“No, but I’ve got lots of good reasons to believe he was.”

“Such as?”

“Number one: he told Berrios to stay away from his apartment just a month ago. Number two: his company owns the garage, the address Berrios had in his pocket the day before he was killed. Three: Heiser himself was in Red Hook on at least one occasion recently. Four: he lied to me about that and said his company couldn’t be bothered with Brooklyn. Now it turns out they bought property there recently.”

“None of those brings us close to charging the guy with anything, not even conspiracy. Anything else?”

“I’ve been on the job long enough to know when somebody is not
right
, and the second I met the guy my Not-Right Meter started swinging off the scale.”

“I respect your judgment, but that’s not good enough. I want you to leave this man alone unless you have a concrete reason to charge him.”

Incredulous, Jack forced himself to take a deep breath. He raised his hands. “Okay. Listen—how about we at least get a warrant and send a forensics team over to the garage? Then we can get Alvarez and the Crime Scene people to analyze Berrios’s shoes. Maybe we can definitely place him there on the morning he died.”

“I told you already: we have more important cases to deal with right now.”