“I’ll tell you everything tonight, I will, I promise.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t remind me of my uncles one bit,” she added, leaned over the table again and put her hands on either side of my head, and I thought to myself: don’t do this. I thought to myself: don’t feel like this. Stop. I was besotted, but it was temporary, it was a fantasy, it was like falling for a girl in a movie. Wasn’t it?
The hours she had spent in my bed weren’t casual for her, I knew, but it wasn’t for the long term. I was too old. I was her father’s best friend. I wanted her so bad I could hardly look at her, but I had to, I had to pretend we were still just friends, just family, the way we always had been. I felt, in the far distance, a little door closing.
“Tonight?” I said.
“You’re going to take me to dinner,” she said. “Don’t look so serious,” she added.
“I’m fine.”
“You look gloomy as hell,” she said, then leaned over, kissed me three times on the cheek and the little gold cross she wore on a thin chain dangled against my forehead, as if she were a priest making the sign of the cross so I’d be safe. “I have to go,” she added. “I’ll meet you. Dinner. Around nine. Ten? And we could go to a late movie after? Or dancing?”
“Dinner,” I said. “Yes. Where?”
“My friend Beatrice’s, over in the East Village, you know the place? She cooks that fantastic spaghetti carbonara, my dad loves it, we go and he eats like everything on the menu.”
“On East 2nd Street, right? Ten.”
“Around ten,” she said.
I kissed the top of her head and said, casually as I could, “See you tonight.”
“Darling, I always show up for you, you know that, sooner or later. Sometimes later, I know, it’s my vice, bad time-keeping, but for you, I always show up.”
“Promise?”
“Artie, I do love you.”
All I could do was scramble in my jacket pocket for some money to pay the check. I couldn’t look at her, I couldn’t say what I wanted to.
“Artie?”
“What?”
“People worry about me, I say, listen, I was named for Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, and she came back, so I always come back, too. I’ll definitely be there.” She kissed me on the cheek once more, stuffed the last piece of cake into her mouth. “You are stuck with me, Artie, darling. So I’ll be there, or as we used to say when we were little kids, cross my heart and hope to die.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The club on Sheepshead Bay was shut up. Closed on Sunday, a sign said. Tito Dravic had told me there was a house on the next block that the club owners used as an office, and I walked around the corner. A row of small ramshackle houses was on the narrow side street. The trees cast shadows on the sidewalk. Nobody was around except a tiny kid riding a tricycle up and down the street.
On the porch of one of the houses was a stack of beer cases, a crate of wine, another of vodka. I figured it was the right place. Next to the door was a piece of paper taped on the wall, a message scribbled on it: ‘Deliveries for Dacha’, and below it a cell number. I called the number. Nobody answered.
The door was locked from the inside. I called Dravic’s name. It was quiet. Too quiet. I was sweating in the heat, and unnerved. Dravic had said he’d be there, but when I knocked and then called out again, nobody answered.
At the back of the house was a patch of yard with scabby dry grass, a plastic table and chairs. The back door was shut but not locked and I went into the kitchen where crates of booze and glasses were piled everywhere. On a table was a package wrapped in brown paper. On top was an invoice from a local printer. Inside were flyers for the club. I was in the right place. The office, Dravic had said.
It was too quiet. No noise. Nothing. Somewhere outside, a car revved up, pulled away. I ran outside, but it had gone.
In the house again, I went through the kitchen into a room where computers and phones sat on two large tables, there were three scratched filing cabinets, a big flatscreen TV, more crates of liquor, a yellow fake leather couch, a few chairs.
I looked everywhere. There was something wrong, somebody had left in a hurry. Dravic maybe.
The drawer of a filing cabinet was open, paper spilled out. There was paper on the white shag rug. The couch was rumpled, the pillows tossed around as if somebody had been digging around, looking for something. When I pushed aside the dirty drapes at the window, I saw an envelope half-hidden on the sill. It had my name on it.
Did he leave in a hurry? Had he hidden the envelope on purpose? Did somebody come looking for it?
I didn’t wait. I took it and left, same way I’d come, through the back door and the yard and around to the street where my car was parked.
Somewhere I heard a door open. I looked down the row of houses. I didn’t see anyone. Then it banged shut and I got into my car, tossed the envelope on the seat next to me, and turned the key. As soon as I pulled away from the curb I stepped on the gas.
I was a couple blocks away from the house when my phone rang and it was Bobo. He said he had an address for Masha, that he was headed for her apartment.
“You want to come with me? I mean, could you come? I’m getting fucked up on this case, Artie, I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure,” I said. “Give me the address. Where is it?”
“Near Neptune Avenue,” he said. “Where the Paks live.” “Everybody here likes Masha,” said the guy at the video store who introduced himself as Mohammed Najib. “Nicest girl anywhere,” added Najib, a tall reedy guy with a little white cap on his gray hair and the stoop of a man who reads too much.
Music from some Pakistani film came from one of the sets in the video store. Teenagers browsed the racks, giggling and making cracks.
Najib, who said everybody called him Moe, said he would show me the apartment where Masha had lived above his store.
“Of course, Officer Leven has already seen it,” added Moe. I couldn’t judge the tone. The guy-Moe-was polite, but I could see Bobo made him nervous. When he offered tea, Bobo barely thanked him, and I thought: what the hell is wrong with him? Just say thank you, Bobo, I mumbled to myself. Moe excused himself to wait on a customer.
“You were here?” I said to Bobo out of Moe’s hearing. “You were already here?”
“Yeah, so what? I figured I’d take a look, other guys on the case had already been, I didn’t want to bother you. Now I need your help.”
“Never mind.” I was impatient. I wanted to look at the stuff in the envelope Dravic had left for me. Soon, I thought to myself, I’m going out to take my vacation days and go sit in the sun. I said it over and over, like a mantra. I hated the idea of myself as a guy who never took a break, who couldn’t let go. I said it, but I didn’t believe it.
Little Pakistan is how it was known, this large chunk of Coney Island Avenue, not far from Brighton Beach. Ever since the 1980s when some Russians began moving up and out, Pakistanis-out here they called themselves Paks- moved in. Before 9/11 it was a bustling crowded community where people got along. Once the planes fell on the towers, once the back-lash began, some of them fled. A cop I knew had called me about the tension, he was worried, he had said. Told me there were FBI guys snooping around, Homeland Security assholes, police brass wanting to look good, look patriotic.
In the end, maybe 15,000 residents had gone, some of them deported, others who just left temporarily out of fear. It was a shitty deal. But people came back. The community rebuilt. Some of the Pakistanis were doing well enough they could move on. Turks coming in now, take up the space.
