Manhattan 62 (2 page)

At first I figured it was Mafia. Like I told Tommy, the Mob used the desolate piers to beat up their enemies, sometimes murder them. Only the Mob did this kind of thing. Luca “Fat Cheeks” Farigno, that fat dwarf of a hoodlum, loved doing it; it proved his manhood; it was his signature. Everyone knew low-level hoods like Cheeks used the piers for payback; break your legs, cut off your ears. Ever since Pasquale Ebola's time, him and Tony Bender Strollo and plenty more that had been and gone. For sure this was a Mob deal; you talked too much, they ripped out your tongue.

Maybe the dead fellow was a homo who got caught in one of the Village queer bars the Mafia ran. The Mayor was getting rid of them, queers and gangsters both; he obsessed with the World's Fair coming in '64. Mayor Wagner didn't take shit from the Mob, he always liked to imply. They didn't like him. Hated him.

“Tommy?” I yelled out, but the kid had receded back into the fog. “Tommy?”

There was a payphone the other side of the shack. I put in a dime and called my precinct. The line was busy.

On a hunch, I got back on my knees, steeled myself, reached inside the bag. Fumbling in the mess of blood and gristle like an incompetent butcher, somehow I yanked out the left arm.

The tattoo was there, inside the elbow. The worm with the words entwined: Cuba Libre. Not again. Christ, not again! Not a second time. I had seen the tattoo before, months earlier, back in July; seen it on a dead girl's arm. Now this. The same goddamn thing.

I felt sick. Sick at the way people took human life like it was garbage and threw it away. Sick because once I saw the tattoo, in my gut I knew somehow Max Ostalsky was connected; or maybe it was what I wanted to believe; he had been my friend, once.

It had been four months earlier, but another life when I first met Ostalsky on a late spring day in Washington Square, the kind of day where girls with long hair lay in the green grass and read poetry, and somebody with a guitar on the rim of the fountain was playing that song about the damn lemon tree.

Next to me on the bench where I was taking some sun sat a young guy, looking at a hotdog guy a few feet away.

Until that day, I never figured buying a hot dog for a complicated operation. Never thought about it until that first time I saw Max Ostalsky, and he was sitting there on the bench next to the statue of Garibaldi, staring at the hot dog man with such a look of confusion, I felt for him.

Or was he standing by the statue? Afterwards, I can't remember if he was already on the bench when I first saw him, or if he sat down after me.

It's June, hot for spring, and he looks miserable in his heavy gray wool suit. He's maybe a few years younger than me, twenty-nine, thirty. Tall and lanky, handsome too, with dark hair that falls over his forehead, but in his glasses and that suit, he resembles a young old man.

He examines the change in his hand. He removes his glasses, then cleans them on the hem of his gray shirt, puts them back on, tucks in his shirt, then ponders the hot dog situation once more, face falling at his sense of failure.

In his hand is a notebook. Overhead the trees are already heavy and green.

Stretching my legs, I lean back on the bench and find a pack of smokes in my pocket, and think: I love this damn place. I love it. The Chesterfield I light up smells really fine. In my other hand is a Coke, the cold green bottle nice and icy in my hand.

Washington Square's only a few miles from where I grew up, but it's like the other side of the moon.

Washington Square!

That arch at the end of Fifth Avenue where Greenwich Village begins always feels like a gateway to all that's fun, free, interesting, sexy, an easy transit to a different world where there's music all the time, where nobody seems to care about making money, and artists and writers hang around the cafés and some of the girls consider a detective like me pretty exotic fare. Maybe seduce me away from my life as a cop into some decadent bohemia.

In my shirt-pocket is a red plastic transistor radio. I brought it for the game, but instead I'm listening to Ray Charles sing, “I Can't Stop Loving You.” Ray's the greatest; except for James Brown.

“Got a match?” The girl asking is sitting cross-legged on the grass near me, a blonde in tight black toreador pants and a sleeveless black blouse that's cut in a way you can see plenty of pale skin through the armhole. I snap open my Zippo for her. Raising herself on one long tanned arm to get the light, she says, “Thanks. Cool threads.”

It's true. I have on a sharp light-blue knit shirt with navy trim around the collar—it looks pretty damn Italian—that I wear, like they show you in
Esquire,
outside my new brown slacks. My tan leather slip-ons cost me fifteen bucks, but they're worth it.

I spend too much dough on clothes. My ma says I'm a vain bastard. My closet's jammed with sad items I never put on, including last summer's nautical navy blazer, and the white wash and wear pants, an outfit made me look like Joey Brown in
Some Like It Hot.
Not to mention the caramel-colored pinch-front made of some coconut fronds or something I ordered from Henry the Hatter.

The sun is hot on my face.

Then I realize that guy in that heavy gray suit is on his feet, still looking at the hot dogs, and I get the sense that he's foreign and lost. I toss my smoke away. “Can I help you, man?”

He looks at me. He smiles sheepishly. “No, thank you, I'm quite familiar with American customs, but thank you,” he says, approaching the cart with conviction, sweat on his forehead. He surveys the hot dogs boiling in water, the relish and ketchup. The food man stares back at him. Who is this clown, the expression on his face says? Who is the hopeless young man, hesitating about the purchase of a hot dog?

Does he feel we're all watching him, me, the hot dog man, even the girl on the grass? His mouth moving, he's like a new convert faced with communion wafers, and thinking: do I chew? Bite? Swallow?

“I will take one of these, please,” he says with real determination.

“Whadya want on it, pal?” says the hot dog guy, but the fellow just hands over some money, and hot dog in hand, retreats to the bench. He bites into the naked hot dog in a bun, no relish, no mustard or onions.

I can't stand it any more. “Man, you really do need help. Trust me. You can't eat it like that.”

He seems perplexed.

“Come on.”

I explain about the ketchup, the relish, the onions, the mustard, and he looks at me, clearly at a loss. “To tell the truth,” he says, “I was not quite sure how much it costs for each of these extra items, or if one can have several or all. I did not quite expect this, you see, though I have read many books on New York, and about the United States, but they did not say how to do this hot dog, and I had no idea what is this thick red sauce, and the green sauce, or if I must order both. I have no idea if it is normal to eat it with my hands, and if not, where do I obtain a fork and knife?” He lifts his shoulders to show how hopeless he is, and smiles again. This fellow has the kind of self-deprecating smile even a cranky hot dog vendor responds to.

“Give him the works,” I tell the hot dog man.

My new pal in the suit eats. “Yes, I see, very tasty, really, would you say, delicious? Is this the right word?” he says, after he gobbles the dog, and I wonder what the hell he means “would you say delicious”? Finally, he removes the thick gray wool jacket, folds it neatly, sits back down on the bench. A smear of yellow mustard remains on his upper lip. A little sigh escapes.

“Thank you. Sometimes it is quite difficult to figure out so many choices. Everything is so tasty.” His English is good, a little formal, a light accent, but fluent. “Are you also connected with New York University? I am an exchange student.” He gestures in the direction of NYU on the east side of the park.

“I'm taking a class this summer.”

Rising, the man puts out his hand. “Ostalsky, Maxim,” he says.

I shake it. “Pat Wynne. Pleased to meet you, Maxim. Where are you from?”

“The Soviet Union,” he says. “Moscow.”

“Yeah? No kidding. You're kidding me, right? How long have you been here?”

“It is true, definitely,” he says. “I have been here only approximately one week. This means I arrived in time for the summer sessions and I'll stay until next June. I have a Masters Degree in Moscow where I teach English at the university, now I begin my studies for a doctorate. Please call me Max. I am so grateful for your help.” He folds himself back onto the bench. “To be honest, I was very hungry.”

The Russki is looking around as if he's landed on some foreign planet, although he has solved the hot dog issue.

“I know how tough it is, being in a foreign place, man,” I tell him. You could say I'm feeling generous with my time. I have the day off. The weather is good. “Let me tell you, I went over to Europe last summer, visit my relatives in Ireland, then Liverpool, in England, you know? I couldn't make out what the hell any of them were saying, or what to eat, or the money. It drove me crazy. You had to say white coffee if you wanted cream in it, or something, not to mention they drive on the goddamn wrong side of the road. Jesus H. Christ, the money, they got pounds and shillings. I couldn't understand anyone in Liverpool, and they speak English, you know? But what am I talking about, you don't care about my cockamamie cousins.”

“Cockamamie?”

I explain. He chuckles, a low laugh that rises and explodes out of him in a way that makes several people turn to look at us. From his pocket, he takes a pack of Lucky Strike and offers it to me.

“Would you like one? I don't know if this is your particular brand, but if you would care to join me?” Beside him on the bench is a book.

“Sure, Max. Pleasure. What's that you're reading?”

“I am reading again short stories by Ernest Hemingway.”

“They have American books in Russian?”

“Of course.” He tells me that many American authors are popular, especially Ernest Hemingway. “We all like John Steinbeck and Jack London. Many homes have a portrait of Hemingway on the wall.”

We light up and I'm, what? Surprised? Astonished?

Never in my life did I imagine I'd meet a real honest to God Russian Commie. Sure, I meet plenty of people in Greenwich Village who are pinkos—Reds, even; people who probably read Marx and do square dancing at Judson Memorial. This is different. This one's from over there, and my first impulse is that he's a spook. Has to be. Aren't they all?

If he is a spy, what the hell is he doing at NYU? Looking to infiltrate the university, or co-opt somebody, a vulnerable soft left-wing girl with sandals from 8th Street, someone he can seduce with all kinds of pie-in-the-sky promises?

Truth is, I'm pretty curious about the Russians. It's like some kind of itch. My time in Korea, son of a bitch little war, didn't make me exactly enamored of the Commies. I got drafted, and spent two miserable years there. Bastards wanted to slaughter you or brainwash you, turn you into some kind of dupe they could manipulate. It was how they got their kicks.

But it gave me this interest in Communism, and the Russians, who are the real goods and run the whole Commie show. So after the war, I got my BA on the GI Bill at Fordham. I studied a little Russian history.

I still read up. There's plenty to read—politics, economics, philosophy, old novels—but almost nothing about real people now, what they think, and feel, or wear or smoke. And now here's one of them, and he seems genial enough, with his smiling, and his compliments on the local food, and his curiosity, and I for sure have never thought of real Commies as sitting around looking to buy a hot dog, or grinning sorrowfully because they can't figure it out, or shaking your hand, seeming like a normal person.

Mostly, people think of them as dark dour men, like on that TV show,
I Led Three Lives;
me and my little sister would watch it on Friday nights, and she'd said, “Do Communists ever smile?” Our ma thinks they're Satan's messengers. Literally. She wrestles with the whole business, and goes to mass every day to pray.

My radio plays Gene Chandler doing “Duke of Earl”— Chandler had even dubbed himself the Duke of Earl—and I'm surprised to see this Ostalsky fellow listening attentively, and tapping his feet, just a little bit.

“These young men have quite such fantastic clothes,” Ostalsky says to me, as we sit in the park and watch the passing parade. He doesn't mind seeming dumb about the stuff he asks, and we smoke and I keep up a running commentary as if the fate of nations depends on button-down collars, Madras plaid Bermuda shorts, drainpipe jeans, skinny ties, high-lapel three-button suits.

“What do you say about those shoes?” He's looking hungrily at some spiffy black boots with elastic insets.

I tell him how people in Greenwich Village are different from people uptown who wear suits and go to work in big corporations, the big glass and steel buildings they put up on Sixth Avenue after the War, and I tell him nobody in my whole life ever called it Avenue of the Americas. I give him the lowdown about Beatniks, and jazz, peaceniks and folk music, even rock and roll, people who just live like they want.

Max mulls this over. “But no discipline, I imagine?”

“That's the point, man. It's called freedom.”

Does he have anything at all to wear except the heavy suit? Maybe I'll help him get some decent duds. Nosy son of a bitch that I am, I want to know what they wear over there in his dark mysterious evil country.

A cop who passes, glances at us and I can see he thinks we might be queer. I edge away from Ostalsky. It's getting to be late afternoon, and coming from the west side of the park right then is a nun; in her big black and white habit, she resembles a gigantic bird, and she's hurrying a clutch of little kids from St Joseph's towards the playground. A few of the older girls, in their pleated skirts and saddle shoes, set free, run in the other direction like young animals, their skirts blowing up so you can see their still chubby thighs and white underpants. “What is she?” Max asks.