Tender Death Page 14

  Misha shook his head, smacked Teddy extra heartily on the back, and stood to look at something in the middle of the restaurant, a traffic problem of some sort that was making Ilena scream with frustration. Ilena stamped her foot. The music and dancing continued at a frenzied pace. Three men were kazatska-ing with more enthusiasm than technique while waiters continued to move precisely with trays of grotesquely heaped platters of food. On the periphery a quartet of people were fighting to get their coats. A brass coatrack toppled over, but it held so many coats, and the music was so loud, it made no sound. Misha, frowning, flung himself into the crush to take charge of the dispute.

  Wetzon shivered. The room felt cold. The ceiling lights traveled around and around overhead. The music suddenly sounded hollow. Diners were demanding their checks. “What—”

  Teddy turned away from the strange scene on the floor of the restaurant and stared at her. “What’s with your voice?”

  “Someone tried—”

  “What?”

  She closed her eyes briefly and shook her head. She rolled down the high turtleneck of her sweater. Teddy’s head snapped back. “Holy shit! How did that happen? Don’t talk. Shit! Let’s get out of here.” He touched her shoulder and she jumped.

  “Jeeze, I’m sorry, Wetzi. Should have been paying attention. You were gone a long time—”

  “What did you get out of Misha and Ilena? Do they know Ida?” She pitched her voice from the top of her throat.

  “They say no, but they know everybody.”

  “So what were you and Misha arguing about?”

  He was evasive. “I asked him if he knew anything about that stockbroker and a scam.”

  “Shit, Teddy.” She was upset. “That’s all confidential stuff—” The music grew thinner and thinner. Only the accordionist was still playing. Everyone was leaving the restaurant.

  Wetzon looked questioningly at Teddy. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get Misha and find our coats. I want to know what’s going on—”

  They walked out to the middle of the now empty dance floor. Misha was arguing heatedly in Russian with the accordionist, who was swigging vodka from a bottle next to his chair and packing up his instrument. When Misha threw his hands up in exasperation, Teddy moved in on him, pulling Wetzon along. The accordionist picked up his bottle and the accordion case and left.

  Only the waiters, Ilena, and a few stragglers still remained. A drunk lay with his head on one of the small tables, a long arm dangling on the floor, out cold. The kitchen staff were grouped around the swinging doors, whispering among themselves. Finally, a spokesman was designated. A tall man in a chef’s hat and a dirty apron stepped forward, his cavernous face and red-rimmed eyes gave him a look of dissipation. He spoke to Ilena, who immediately began shouting and waving her arms. Misha looked helpless. Volumes of uneaten food were left on the tables.

  “What’s going on here, Misha?” Teddy said, taking Misha’s arm.

  Misha shrugged elaborately. “Zere vas accident. People get nerwous.”

  “An accident? Here?”

  “Not here. Down za street. Who knows? You leave now, Tuvya.”

  What kind of accident would clear out a whole restaurant, Wetzon wondered.

  Misha smiled a cynical smile as if he knew what she was thinking and went for their coats. Ilena was still arguing with the kitchen staff. Wetzon’s eyes teared. She was sorry now she hadn’t taken another sip of vodka before they left the table. It might have made her throat feel better.

  Misha came back and silently handed over their coats.

  “Come on. I’m getting you out of here,” Teddy said, looking at her with concern. He helped her on with her coat and shook hands with Misha. Misha near-kissed Wetzon’s hand again with great ceremony. She pointed across the floor to Ilena and nodded at Misha.

  “I tell her bye-bye, Vetski. Vee see again, soon, no, Tuvya?” He stood on tiptoe to kiss Teddy on each cheek.

  On the street the frigid wind stung her face. Down the wide avenue in the direction of Tsminsky’s was a tremendous crowd of people and rolling lights in whites and ambers from police cars and emergency vans. A lot of lights and a lot of cars. Perhaps the whole clientele of the Cafe Baltic and Restaurant Odessa in glitzy array now milled on the sidewalk there. In the background was the steady crash of rough surf on the beach just beyond the boardwalk, and sweeping around them, the damp, salty, purifying blast of the ocean.

  Teddy looked torn. “Listen, Wetzi, if I were any kind of friend I would get you the hell out of here, but I’m a repor—”

  She put her hand on his arm. Nodding, she pointed toward the crowd and the lights. She was just as inquisitive as he was. What did another fifteen minutes matter now?

  “Wait here a minute. I have an idea.” Teddy went back into the Baltic and returned quickly with a bottle of cognac. He pulled the cover off and took a swig, skimmed the mouth of the bottle with the palm of his hand, and handed it to her. “Sip,” he ordered, scanning the crowd, beginning to edge away from her. “Just wet the inside of your mouth and let a little dribble down the back of your throat, if you can. It’s great anesthetic.”

  She did as he suggested and felt immediate warmth and then fire. Her eyes burned, her throat mercifully began to numb. She handed the bottle back to him. He recorked it and dropped it into a deep pocket inside his coat.

  “Come on.” He kept his hand in the center of her back, pushing her firmly closer to the milling throng of people. A siren sounded; a police car pulled away from the curb.

  “What happened?” he asked a bulky man with a large mustache, wearing a cap with earflaps. The man looked at him suspiciously. “Was there an accident?”

  “A shooting, zere vas,” a woman next to the man said. “Vas a—”

  The man muttered something harsh to the woman and she stopped talking. They moved away from Teddy and Wetzon.

  Teddy looked around in the garish light. A CBS truck pulled up on the other side of Brighton Beach Avenue and stopped with a screech of tires. A Channel 8 van followed almost immediately.

  “Hot shit,” Teddy said, jumping up and down with excitement, running to the van, leaving Wetzon. The pain in her throat was coming back with a vengeance. What was she doing here anyway? Peepsie Cunningham’s Fifth Avenue apartment and Hazel seemed so far away. This was another country. She wandered after Teddy.

  “Hey, Ted. How’d you get here so fast?” A lantern-jawed woman scrambled out of the van. She didn’t seem happy to see him.

  “Ear to the ground, Gretchen.”

  Gretchen glowered, came around to the back of the van, opened the doors, and pulled out a hand-held camera. “Christ, what a cold mother it is out here,” she said. She was built like a bantamweight fighter.

  “Let me help you,” Teddy said, reaching for the camera.

  “This is my story, Lanzman,” Gretchen said, putting her face in his, “so don’t try to muscle in like you always do.” She had a mean, tough look on her face.

  “I was here first.” Teddy gave her back mean.

  “Don’t mess with me, Lanzman. I have a long memory.” She thrust the camera at him. “You can hold the camera while I cover the story.” When he didn’t take it, she dropped it.

  “Fuck you, Gretchen.” Teddy grabbed the camera before it hit the ground. His voice was conversational, but there was a fury underneath.

  Gretchen locked the back of the van. “Well, let’s have it, yes or no? I don’t have time for this crap.” Her eyes skimmed over Wetzon, who stood behind them, watching.

  Teddy shrugged and hoisted the camera on his shoulder. “What went down here?”

  “Couple of Russian immigrants offed in their store.” Gretchen took out a notepad and pen and began to elbow her way through the crowd.

  24.

  WETZON CLUTCHED TEDDY’S coat. Their eyes met.

  “The Tsminskys?” Teddy called, moving quickly after Gretchen.

  “Something like that. Names all sound alike to me,” Gretchen said
over her shoulder.

  “Anyone else coming to cover us?”

  “Nah ... couldn’t get anyone. I was doing the storm out at Grand Army Plaza—nature stuff, you know—so Carl told me to get the hell out here.”

  They were almost to the front of the crowd. Wetzon followed in their wake.

  The police had cordoned off the area. Two CBS people—very preppie young men—were having trouble pushing through from the other side of the milling gawkers.

  “What’s happening, Officer?” Gretchen asked one of the two cops in front of the wooden horses that had been set up around the Tsminskys’ shop. Men were moving in and out of the narrow store.

  “Was it a robbery?” Teddy demanded, holding the camera and taping. Gretchen threw him a look of pure venom.

  The policewoman moved back and forth from one foot to the other, trying to keep warm. “Can’t say,” she answered Teddy. Her name tag said Reilly and she looked too young to be a cop. “Ask the lieutenant,” Reilly said, then she mumbled something to her cohort and they laughed.

  Gretchen hissed a warning at Teddy under her breath and made a note in her notepad. “What’s your lieutenant’s name?” she asked. A police van, lights flashing, stopped with a screech of brakes, spraying snow. Four uniformed men got out and began to force the crowd back.

  “Gelbart. That’s him.” Reilly pointed to a big man, broad as a wrestler, wearing a tan storm coat and a hat, like a fedora, with a brim. He came out of the store and held the door with a gloved hand, talking to someone in the shop, his massive back to the disgruntled onlookers who were shouting at him, demanding information.

  “Fantastic! The hulk. He’s my man.” Teddy took the camera from his shoulder and dumped it on Gretchen, who, surprised, caught it.

  “You fucking s.o.b.—” she sputtered, but Teddy was already talking to Gelbart.

  Wetzon and Gretchen, with the camera working, moved in to the edge of the wooden barricade. The horizontal lights from roofs of the police cars spiraled around and around, bleeding into the darkness, mingling with the orange flashes from the top of the ambulance. The crowd fell still.

  “Time to go home, folks,” a man in navy windbreaker announced through a bullhorn. “If you have any information you want to give the police, do so now or call us on our special number, 555-1111. We’ll keep all information confidential.” The crowd began to disperse silently.

  Funny, Wetzon thought, for such a noisy, exuberant people, they were terribly subdued. Was it generalized fear or the respect of foreigners for authority?

  The front window of the Tsminskys’ store was shards of glass. The display was smashed beyond recognition except for a lone orange banana. The killer had not even bothered to open the door. She thought of the shadow figure that had stood and watched them when she and Teddy had been talking to the Tsminskys and she shivered.

  Gretchen went beyond the barricade, right up to where Teddy was standing. He was talking to Lieutenant Gelbart, making rapid notes in his small notebook.

  “ ... Uzi,” Gelbart said. “They didn’t have a chance. These Russian bastards are brutal.” Two detectives came over and took him aside. “Okay,” he said, holding his hat against a sudden gust of wind. “Let’s get this over with.” A man carrying a small black medical bag left the store. “That’s it, Ted,” Gelbart said. “Stay in touch.”

  His eyes rolled over Wetzon, who had her lavender beret pulled down over her eyebrows. She had not dispersed with the crowd. She smiled at him. Maybe Silvestri knew him or he knew Silvestri. She had gotten soft on cops, Carlos said. He was probably right.

  “Who are you, bright eyes?” Gelbart said.

  “Friend of mine, Gelbart,” Teddy said possessively. He put his arm around Wetzon and turned her so that her back was to Gelbart.

  “Leslie Wetzon,” she said over her shoulder to Gelbart, the hulk.

  Gretchen took a quick spin around the area, getting footage, while two young stragglers watched.

  “You shouldn’t be so friendly with them.” Teddy was annoyed, pushing Wetzon in front of him.

  “Them?”

  “Cops.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re all lowlifes. There’s not much difference between them and the ones they chase.”

  “I don’t believe that, Teddy.” She knew Silvestri wasn’t like that.

  “Trust me, Wetzi. I see it all the time. You live in your own little safe white world.” He sounded bitter.

  Gretchen was loading the camera into the van when they came up and she was angry. She climbed into the driver’s seat. Teddy closed the door for her and leaned against it. “Sorry, Gretch,” he said, grinning.

  “I’ll get you for this, Lanzman.” She rolled up her window, started the motor. Her headlights snapped on. She raced the motor and was out of there in seconds.

  “Fucking bitch dyke,” Teddy said. “She didn’t even ask if we needed a ride.” He took out the bottle of cognac and they each had a swallow.

  “Well, we don’t, so forget it.”

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Wetzon’s throat was tight, but she was feeling better. In fact, she was feeling really good. She’d enjoyed her little flirt with the hulk, aptly nicknamed. She did a little time step on the windswept street. Good God, Wetzon, she said, stopping herself. Two people are dead and you are dancing in the street like some kind of fool. “I’m drunk,” she said out loud.

  “Come on, Wetzi, make tracks,” Teddy yelled at her from halfway down the block.

  They turned the corner away from the activity and lights on Brighton Beach Avenue into an almost eerie darkness. The one streetlamp reflected light hazily on the snow in the parking lot behind the Cafe Baltic. The lot was deserted except for the Land Rover, a large friendly tank waiting for them. It was almost as good as being home. Only the large and friendly tank seemed to be listing to one side.

  “Fucking shit fuck!” Teddy shouted, and stamped his feet. They walked around the Rover. There were deep gashes in two of the tires. He kicked the closest tire hard and hopped around holding his foot.

  Wetzon laughed. He looked pretty silly.

  “This is not funny, Wetzi.” He ran back to Brighton Beach Avenue, and she followed him, taking giant steps.

  “May I? Yes, you may,” she said. She wanted another sip of cognac and he had the bottle. The police cars and the ambulance had gone. Brighton Beach was still as death. “Still as death,” she said.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Teddy was walking in circles, stamping his feet and raging. “How the fuck are we going to get back at this time of night?”

  “Cognac,” Wetzon said, holding out her hand for the bottle.

  “And that fucking bitch dyke went off and left us.”

  “She didn’t know—” He gave her a look of total blind fury. “Jesus, Teddy.”

  He pulled out the bottle of cognac and took a mighty gulp. “Here, keep it.”

  “We could take a cab,” she suggested, and put the bottle to her lips.

  “A cab? Oh really? Just like that we’re going to get a cab out here at this time of night. There isn’t even a fucking pay phone around.”

  He was right, of course. She took a swallow of cognac and corked the bottle, cramming it into her backpack. She looked up the street and blinked. A mirage was coming toward her. A cab with its center light on.

  She poked Teddy and pointed. “Sonofabitch, I don’t believe it,” he shouted, and ran out into the street like a jumping jack and flagged it down.

  Chains clanked on the bare street as the driver came to a slow stop. They ran to the door, opened it, and crawled in.

  “Where can I take you folks?” the driver said in a friendly voice, turning to them.

  It was Judy Blue.

  25.

  IT WAS A CHARITY affair for Russian dissidents at the Brooklyn MR Academy of Music. She was dancing a strange pas de deux with Ilena Milanova, Ilena in diaphanous red chiffon, Wetzon in white. Altho
ugh her feet seemed to know the steps, the music was unfamiliar. She and Ilena were totally in sync. Bearded dancers in black tights, white shirts, and bow ties were gliding around holding red lacquer trays of herring. Stock certificates were draped on their forearms, like napkins. She was thrilled to be dancing with Ilena.

  Suddenly the orchestra stopped. Wetzon looked up. For heaven’s sake, Leon was conducting the orchestra. He shook his shaggy gray head as if he were Leonard Bernstein, poked his glasses up his nose, and tapped his baton on the glitzy lectern. The music changed to “I Got Rhythm.”

  Her feet, in patent leather Mary Jane tap shoes, began the old-time step she had done as a child. She turned to her partner. It was Judy Blue.

  “What are you doing here?” Wetzon asked, not missing a step. “I didn’t know you could dance.”

  “You’re missing everything, my girl,” Judy Blue said. “Keep your eye on the conductor.”

  Where had Ilena gone?

  They finished the number with a shuffle off to Buffalo. Harvey Lichtenstein, whom Wetzon knew because he ran the Brooklyn Academy of Music and was very supportive of dance companies, was standing in the wings in black tie, talking to Smith. He nodded to Wetzon.

  “I’m worried about you,” Smith said. “You invest your money in stocks. If the market goes down, you won’t have anything.”

  “You have me,” Silvestri said, holding out his hand to her.

  “Do I?” Wetzon said.

  “You have me,” Carlos called from the other side of the stage. “At least for now.”

  “I’ll take your bow for you,” Smith said, rushing out on to the stage.

  Wetzon ran after her, taps clicking. “No, no!” Smith was wearing Wetzon’s costume and was bowing as if she had done the number.

  A trapdoor opened under Wetzon’s feet and she began to fall.

  “Silvestri” she screamed, reaching for his hand. But he wasn’t there. She clutched the stage where the trap had opened, her body swinging in space.

  “Where are you going?” Teddy asked, kneeling down.