Disturbed Earth (14 page)

"What is he?" I asked.

"Nothing."

"He's what, you were going to say? He's . . . Tell me!"

"Do you want some coffee, Artemy? I have cake. Cheesecake. Good cheesecake from Junior's."

Sometimes I thought, when I was in a better mood, that the biggest danger of being a cop was the cake. People who talked to you—and plenty did—wanted you on their side. They made coffee. They put out cake. I loved cake. You could gain a ton of weight on a long case. You could also get so wired from drinking coffee to keep them talking, you almost freaked out.

She said, "I can't remember."

"Remember what?"

"If Stevie's mother said what time they'd be back. I can't remember now. I'm confused." Her face was pallid, a whitish green and slick with a faint sheen of sweat. "What do you want to know?"

Again, I said, "What was Billy wearing when he left?"

"I told him, dress warm. I put his clothes out."

"He does what you say?"

"He's very smart," she said.

"He's a good boy. Very neat, you know."

"So what was he wearing?"

"I put them out for him. Jeans, OK. Sweatpants. T-shirt. A heavy sweater. The baseball jacket you got him, he likes the jacket, Yankees jacket, you remember? He doesn't care about baseball but he wears the jacket. I wanted him to wear his winter coat, but I knew he wouldn't so I put out a heavy sweater. I made him wear sweatpants under his jeans."

"Why wouldn't he wear the coat?"

"Because," she said. "I'm telling you, he always wears his baseball jacket, the one with the tear in the sleeve. He wouldn't let me fix it. He said he got the tear when you took him to the stadium. It had to be that way."

"Shoes?"

"Sneakers," she said.

"What color?"

"Green."

"Socks?"

"No socks. I put them out. He doesn't like socks."

"What do you mean?" I tried not to show what I was feeling.

"He doesn't like them. He gets obsessed with stupid stuff. Sometimes he starts yelling about nothing and I just say, OK."

"Did he have anything with him? Was he carrying anything?"

She nodded. "Sports bag he takes to school."

"But no socks."

"No socks. They make him itch."

"You're sure he didn't change his mind?"

"He does not change his mind. What is it about his clothes, Artemy?"

I hesitated. "Let's go over to Billy's friend and see if anyone's home yet. Come on."

She said, "I have to fix myself. I can't go like this."

"Then go fix yourself, Gen. Go on."

I waited in the living room while she went upstairs. I heard the water running. At first I wanted to run after her. She was febrile, fragile, weirded out; I thought Genia might hurt herself.

Did Johnny always spend the weekends at his restaurant? Was he asleep, drunk, knocked out? I got up and looked out of the kitchen window at the yard in back. Ice clung to the bare trees; the barbecue set, the furniture, the tool shed were shrouded in black plastic.

Upstairs I heard Genia moving from room to room. I waited for her at the bottom of the stairs. After a while she came down in a skirt and sweater and her pearls; Genia resembled an Upper East Side mother. She fidgeted with the sweater as if it were a costume.

"You look nice," I said, holding my cell phone.

She was panicky. "Who are you calling?"

"My boss. We need to get on this. You need to say he's missing."

"No! Not yet." She gripped the sleeve of my jacket. "Not yet. Let's go, OK? I'm ready."

I zipped my jacket. She went to the hall closet and pushed aside the furs and took out a camel's hair coat and put it on.

I looked at her fur coat on a hanger and said, "It's cold out."

"I don't want to look like Russian, like immigrant," she said. "I don't want to look that way, you understand?"

The streets were empty. Genia's silver Land Rover—Johnny bought it for her fortieth birthday—was parked outside her house.

"Which house?" I said.

"On the corner," she said, pointing to a white colonial with an ocean view. I turned to look back. You could see the corner of the Farone place from the white house.

There was an SUV in the drive. We walked up to the front door and Genia rang the bell. We waited.

The door opened. A woman in her late thirties stood in the doorway. She wore jeans and a loose plaid shirt. She had shoulder length hair, dirty blonde, a pencil behind her ear, and a placid expression.

"Hi," she said. "I was just going to call you back. I spent the night over at my sister's place. I just got back. Genny, I got your message. What's the matter?"

"Is Billy here?" I said. "Is Billy at your house?"

She said, "No, of course not. I thought the boys canceled their date. Come in," she said, but Genia shook her head.

"Stevie said sometimes your Billy just doesn't show up. I mean the kids are like that. But Stevie said Billy did call this time. He called before six yesterday morning. He said he wasn't coming. He had something else. He had to go out with his father. Stevie was pretty upset, but his father said, listen, never mind, honey, we'll go have a nice time."

"Where's Stevie?" Genia said.

"He's still out with his dad. They went to the country like they planned. They planned to come home this morning so Billy could go to church like his father wanted, but when Billy didn't show, they said they'd stay late. I'm sorry, Genny, I am, we thought Billy had something else on."

"Can you call?"

She shook her head. "They're skiing. They'll be on the slopes all day. The cell doesn't work there. I'll try but it never works. I think they'll be back tonight, you know, but sometimes they stay over. I'll try the cabin again tonight. What is it?"

Genia nodded, thanked her, turned to go.

"What's the matter?" the woman called as we went down the front drive, along the irregular paving stones set into the path, Genia looking down as if to count them one at a time.

"Thank you," I said. "Thanks. Call us when your family gets back."

Behind us, she closed the door and I realized I didn't know her first name.

Not crying, Genia walked with her shoulders held stiff and her arms hanging rigid by her sides. I put my arm around her, but she shook free.

"No cops, Artemy. Promise me. Not yet. Nothing good comes from this going to police. You'll find him. You're a detective, you're good, you do it. For me. Please?"

"You're sure the sneakers were green? Were they All Star high tops?"

She looked at me. "He wears them every day. What is this about sneakers?"

"Does Billy wander away, Genia? Does Billy do that?"

"Sometimes," she said. "Maybe. Sometimes he goes to Johnny's mother."

"You're close with Mrs. Farone, with Johnny's old lady?"

"You met her?"

"Yeah I met her."

"Then you know. I can't stand her. I brought up Billy Catholic, it's still not good enough for her. She's a peasant, Artemy, she's a red-neck peasant villager, you know this type? Italian. Crude people. No books, no nothing in that house, just statues of Jesus Christ. Ugly pictures of saints, and the old lady dressed like a disco queen."

"You called her?"

"I called her. She didn't see Billy, she said. She hasn't seen him in at least two weeks, she was furious."

"What about the husband, Billy's grandfather?"

"Bastard," she said. "I called Johnny's sister. The old man is in Florida. He's in Florida. They say he needs rest."

"When did he go?"

"January."

"I want to see Billy's room," I said.

She led me up the stairs that were covered in the same pale carpeting as the living room. The first door on the right opened to the boy's room. I had only been inside a few times. Billy always waited for me outside when I picked him up.

"You've been cleaning? I don't remember his room this neat."

She shook her head. "Lately he changes. He wants everything perfect," she said, looking at the walls that were papered with pictures of fish, fishing rods, boats, nets. "He did it himself," she added. "He put those pictures up, one at a time, until there was no space left. I was very proud of that. He is smart, good boy, right, Artie? You know, he can name all kinds offish, he tells me. He can make what do you call them, flies to go for fishing with."

"Tell me who his friends were."

Genia sat down on the edge of the bed and fingered the bedspread. "I don't know, Artemy He didn't say so much about friends. I went to school and I ask, does he have some friends and they don't know. We take and put him in private school. I say to Johnny this boy needs extra help, for what do they call this, socializing. But Johnny says forget about it. He's perfect. He's OK."

I looked at the shelf of books over the desk that held his computer. Schoolbooks were neatly filed next to encyclopedias and there were more fishing books. There were volumes of boys' adventure stories that looked untouched. Three paperbacks by Joseph Conrad were next to the adventure stories. I pulled one out.

"He reads this stuff?" I said to Genia.

"Someone tells him these are stories of the sea and he gets them on Amazon. The teacher says he reads 11th grade level, even higher, like sixteen-year-old kid. I let him. If he reads so good, this is great, right, Artemy?"

"He still plays Little League ball?"

"He quit. He didn't like baseball. He wanted to be with his fish tank. He designs feeding system for fish. In garage, you want me to show you?"

We went back downstairs and while I tried to persuade her to let me call Lippert, she smoked, one cigarette lit from the butt of the one before, and begged me not to.

Finally I asked the question I had been dreading.

"What kind of shirt did he wear yesterday, under his sweater?"

"T-shirt," Genia said.

"What kind of T-shirt, what color?"

"Oh, Artemy, this is one of Billy's crazy things. He has this red T-shirt he always is wearing, always, too small for him, like from when he is a little boy, but he wears it like some prize, something, how do you say?" Again she switched back to Russian. "Something sacred," she said. 'Something holy."

It wasn't a holy shirt, it was a shroud. I told Genia about the clothes near the beach.

"You have to look at them, Gen. I have to take you."

"Where?"

"To police headquarters, where they have the clothes in a lab. Lippert will meet us. He'll be nice, I promise, and I'll go with you, but you have to look."

"This Lippert? He's the one you worked for before?"

"Yes."

"I don't like him," she said. "He reminds me of a KGB official that came to our school once, to tell us about security, I remember. He looked like that. No one said he was KGB, but we knew. We knew because he has this suit that is Western and no one has Western clothes."

"That was a long time ago. This is America. Brooklyn."

"Nothing changes," she said. "Except we become less safe, more frightened, terrorist, disease, war coming. I read they pick up immigrants now, they can arrest you for anything."

"That's illegal immigrants, Gen. Or maybe Arabs, you know? It's not us. You're married to an American. You're a citizen."

"How long?" she said. "How long since you found these clothes?" She was stalling, watching the door, listening for the phone, still waiting for Billy.

"Yesterday morning," I said.

"You waited so long?"

"I wasn't sure. I asked Johnny if Billy was OK, he said sure. Then the little girl, May Luca, you know, she turned up dead and we got the thug that killed her. We assumed the clothes were hers."

"You assumed?" she said.

"I didn't want to upset you."

"If I tell you this thing, you can't tell Johnny."

"Go on."

"Christmas time, Johnny's mother, you know, this old lady, very devout, Italian and Polack woman, forty-seven years she is married, she throws out the husband."

"Why?"

She leaned close to me and her voice was ragged.

"You can never say this, that you hear this from me," she said over and over. "I don't want it has any connection to me."

I was silent.

"Swear."

"Yes."

"On your father's grave."

"Sure, if you want."

"Johnny loves the old man, and he makes cuddly granddad for the kid, but I know something and maybe the mother figured it out. It was one thing that makes me wonder about marrying Johnny, but I want to marry him, so I deny it even to myself. I knew the old man, you see, before I married Johnny. He was Italian, but he was friendly with my father. He had also been in World War II."

"Like your old man."