“Why don’t you get a new camera?” I said, gesturing at the camera that was always around her neck.
“It may look like a junk-store relic to you, but it’s a Stradivarius to me, my darling,” she said. “I love my Leica M3-it puts me in the frame with all the greats, the guys from Magnum who invented photojournalism. Cartier- Bresson always said it opened his eyes and allowed him to grab those, you know what he called them, Artie? The decisive moments. I read he thought the silky noise of the shutter was like a Rolls-Royce door closing. Silky noise, wow. And it let him get close to things, this funny camera. Robert Capa took it to war, Eve Arnold took it around the world and into Marilyn Monroe’s secret life,” she added. “Okay, so I’m a fool for it, so I read too much about these people, but they’re my heroes. I love the feel of it-it’s like, I don’t know, like a part of me.” She picked up the camera again, and took my picture. “Anyway, it belonged to my grandfather in Russia. Am I boring the shit out of you? I bore all my friends with this camera shit.”
“You never bore me,” I said. “You want me to take you back to the city?”
“You have any gum?” said Val.
I put my hand in my pocket, digging for some chewing gum, and found the chain with the charm.
“Val?”
“Yes, Artie, darling?”
I took the necklace with the little blue and white charm out of my pocket.
“You ever see something like this?”
“Sure.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere that there’s crazy, superstitious people. Or fashionista babes, same thing. Rich Russian girlies like them with diamonds. Some believe this shit, remember the Kabbala stuff, Madonna’s red strings she was pushing? They buy into anything, even Landmark.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s the East Coast version of Scientology. No matter how many get degrees at NYU, the Russkis still believe hair grows on billiard boards. My best friend’s grandmother-she’s Ukrainian-is so superstitious, she thinks if you touch a Jew, you’re going to die from some Christ-killer disease. I once saw her staring at another friend of mine’s hair. I asked how come, she said she was wondering if this girl, who’s Jewish, had horns. She was serious.”
“What about this charm?”
“It’s just fashion. Artie. Where did you get it?”
I told Val and as soon as I told her I was sorry.
She turned it over. “Look, see, there’s this D on the back, it’s a party favor from a club named Dacha. Over in Sheepshead Bay.”
“You go there?”
“Once in a while,” she said. “People think Heaven is a cooler club, but Dacha has more action and also people eat pickles with their vodka like the old country and everyone dances like crazy. You want me to walk you over?”
“Yes,” I said, and suddenly there was a crack in the sky, a noise that split my ears. Boom. I started. Val jumped. She grabbed my hand and we ran up on the boardwalk as another rumble, like thunder, like war, and then we all looked up.
Fireworks exploded over Coney Island, red, white, blue, gold, Roman fountains, pinwheels, flowers, flags, somewhere the sound of a band, live, from loudspeakers, and everybody along the boardwalk, a solid wall of people almost a mile long, yelled and cheered.
“Happy July 4, Artie, darling,” Val said, kissing me on the mouth where the smell of her perfume and lipstick and suntan lotion stayed for hours.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Val, Val, Val, the girls cried out when they saw her, all those young girls, eighteen, nineteen, long legs, long hair, faces already flushed with anticipation and now with recognition, as if a celebrity had suddenly appeared. She smiled and hugged them, and exchanged kisses, a big sister to these girls waiting outside the club. Wound around Val’s wrist was the chain with the blue ceramic bead.
Overlooking the water in Sheepshead Bay, a mile along the Brooklyn coast from Brighton Beach, was Dacha. A free-standing building painted to resemble a Russian country house, it was dark green, with silver birch trees stenciled on the side. Dressed up in a puffy shirt, his pants stuffed into high black boots, a large guy with a shaved head the size of a basketball barred the outside door, and manned the velvet rope.
“You’re coming,” I said to Val, and she shook her head.
“Oh, Val, come have just one drink,” a girl with carrot hair said, and Val said, “Take care of my friend Artie, okay, girls? Whatever he needs,” she said and gave me back the chain with the bead. “Artie?” She took her packages-the books from Dibi’s shop-from me.
“What, honey?”
“You’ll talk to him tonight? My dad? okay? See you later.”
“Disco night,” said a kid, a Russian boy, not more than twenty, with contempt as I went into the club where the Bee Gees were wailing their stuff. He had a thick accent, slicked-down hair, sharp suit, no tie. He fondled a wad of bills.
The multi-level club was filling up, as more and more people poured in, talking English, Russian, the boys on the make eyeing the spectacular girls with long legs, cheekbones to cut glass, perfect tits, tiny skirts, glittering jewels, stilettos. The air was thick, heavy with perfume and hormones, and the music, the Bee Gees, Village People, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor.
I looked at my watch. It was still early, just after nine, and there were people eating dinner, families, some of them getting up to dance, kids, older people. And could they dance! The middle-aged dancers knew all the songs and they could cut it, singing along, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Abba.
I went looking for the manager, up a spiral staircase that led to a bar and a roof garden. At a corner table, Val’s girls had gathered, and they waved at me, and smiled, and beckoned me to their table. I waved back and went out on the roof so I could use my phone.
People were sitting around tables up here smoking, drinking cocktails, watching the last fireworks over the ocean. I walked to the edge of the roof and looked out over the canals, the fishing boats, the low-lying houses that ran right up to the beach and the ocean. I called my old pal Gloria Lopez and I got lucky. She was working the night shift.
Gloria had been on the job, a young detective in Red Hook when I met her, but after she had her baby and dumped the creep she married, she did some forensic courses and went to work in a lab. Mainly she worked on fibers. But could network better than anyone I ever met, not counting Sonny Lippert, and she was a great girl with a low humorous voice.
We went out to dinner once in a while, we caught a movie, a couple times I stayed over at her place. If I wasn’t hung up on Valentina, I could have gone for Gloria but I’d already screwed up enough lives, and we kept it light.
I told her about the dead girl in the playground. She had already heard. Had seen it on TV, had heard from colleagues asking for forensic help on duct tape. She asked what I wanted and I said could she get a picture. A couple of minutes later Gloria called back. She was sending a picture of the girl to my phone.
“Thanks. You have anything on the time of death?”
“They’re saying maybe around one, two in the morning, something like that, I could get some more on it, if you want,” said Gloria.
“Thanks again.”
“That Russian cop, Bobo Leven, you know him, right, Artie? He’s been sniffing around me.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t get him. Somehow he got one of the guys here to send him a picture of the dead woman, he said he needed it right away, said he was on the job, the primary. He’s very ambitious, yeah, he hangs here whenever, he’s always looking into microscopes and asking about fibers and shit, he was here today, so I did what I do, I humored
