Gravesend (16 page)

“Watch your mouth, eh?”

“Watch my mouth? I got my son missing over here, and you’re worried about Ray Boy. Typical.”

“Eugene’ll be back. He’s just scared. Your brother, on the other hand, he’s a troubled soul.”

“With this ‘troubled soul’ shit. I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt for years. But not now. I asked him to help me with this. ‘Help me find your nephew,’ I says. He goes running off back upstate or wherever.”

“Maybe he’s upstate, we don’t know. Wherever he is, we’ve gotta give him room.”

His mother started bawling. She talked through tears and spit: “Room? We’re talking about giving Ray Boy room here? My son is missing! No one cares.”

The Disney clock, the one Eugene hated so much, went off. “Circle of Life” from
The
Lion King
.

He slid back down the stairs, part of him wanting to stay and listen, the other part knowing it was time to go. So Uncle Ray Boy had split. No big surprise there. Timing was bad, but Eugene had to bet he’d headed to the house in Hawk’s Nest. Where else would he have gone? It wouldn’t be hard to track him down up there and then to come back for the card game. Two things he needed to do before they went upstate, though. One was convince Sweat to continue with this. To drive upstate. Dude didn’t like to miss meals at his house. The other thing was to scope Mr. Natale’s joint a little more and get a feel for what else went on there. Eugene had a feeling that the card game was sort of never-ending, but who knew? What if they stormed in there and the guys were having a pasta dinner prepared by the Gravy Stirrer? There’d still be stuff to take, sure, but it’d be better if they hit the card game.

Eugene left the basement, locking the door, keeping low again, and returning the key to the storm drain. He went back over into Henry Yu’s yard and scrambled out to where Sweat was waiting.

Sweat took some convincing, but not much. Eugene talked about bridges and trees, a chance to get the fuck out of the city. He said what he’d heard about Hawk’s Nest: the Delaware River cut through the town, his family’s house sat on a hill, the bar up the road was run by an Indian. Sweat didn’t seem impressed by any of it, except the Indian and his bar. Eugene sniffed the air again—snatch, snatch—and that was really the end of it. Sweat texted his mother and said he was staying over at Danny Marcone’s. Eugene punched him in the arm.

First they drove to Cropsey Avenue and parked across from Mr. Natale’s club. Eugene told Sweat to keep the car running. “We’re just gonna watch?” Sweat said.

“I guess.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Dude, this shit’s boring.”

Sweat was right. No action in the club. No sign of Bloody Birdshit Cheek or any of the other old guys playing rummy outside. Place was quiet. Eugene’s mind got to wandering and he imagined that the card game inside had grown, twenty guys hunched around the table, hundreds of thousands of dollars to be had. He pictured fat men too slow to chase him when he scampered away with their cash. He thought if they got up, huffing and puffing, he’d blow a hole in them and they’d deflate like dollar store birthday balloons.

“Fuck we doing here?” Sweat said.

Eugene said, “This is the place.”

“I know.”

“We gotta get some idea.”

“Dark out. We’re gonna drive upstate when?”

“We’ll get some Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“They piss in the coffee over there.”

Eugene watched the rearview mirror, hoping to see someone coming up the street, headed for the club. He wanted a sign that something was going on inside. He feared that there were other clubs he didn’t know about, that maybe this wasn’t Mr. Natale’s home base, that there were other card games in other parts of the city. Little Italy. Downtown. Bigger stakes. Maybe the game he’d walked in on was a fluke. He was confused.

He saw a guy staggering up the street, stopping to lean against a telephone pole, walking with a twisty swish. The guy wasn’t headed for the club, but Eugene noticed something over his head. Behind him was a two-story building—a Laundromat on the bottom, apartments on top—and in the sky over the building there was black, billowy smoke. It looked like the guy was part of the building and the smoke was coming out of the roof of the building. But really the smoke was coming from a few blocks away. It was starting to settle over everything. “Smoke,” Eugene said.

Sweat turned and looked. “Fire. Something’s up in blazes.”

“We should stay here.”

“Let’s go look.” Sweat pulled a U-turn and followed the smoke. Sirens blasted the night now. People were out on the streets, looking up at the smoke like it was an alien spacecraft hovering over the neighborhood.

The sidewalks and the streets were crowded. It was like a block party. Sweat parked outside Flash Auto, and they walked toward the house on fire.

Eugene put his hood on, cinched it around his face. He scanned the crowd for his mother, his aunt, his grandparents. “After this we go back to the club,” he said.

Sweat nodded in the direction of a corner pizza joint, Mama Mia. He said, “Let me get a slice.” They walked into the pizza place and there was a line, hungry fire-watchers, and it moved slowly, the Albanian guy in the sauce-stained whites behind the counter flustered by the sudden rush. When it was their turn, Sweat ordered two pepperoni slices and watched as they were tossed in the oven for reheating. Eugene ordered nothing. The slices came out hot, the pepperoni glistening, and the Albanian guy put them on two paper plates in a brown bag. Sweat ripped the bag off and threw it on a nearby table. Then they walked outside and Sweat folded one slice and took a big bite, orange grease cascading off the edge of the plate.

“Shit’s really on fire,” Eugene said, looking up.

Sweat mumbled, gnawing on crust.

Around the corner, the crowd was pushed up close to the fire trucks and police sawhorses like they were watching a movie being filmed. The house was burning bright and heavy.

Eugene said, “I know that house.”

“Who lives there?” Sweat said, his chin grease-shiny.

“It’s that dead fag and his brother’s house.”

“No shit.”

Eugene couldn’t believe it. He had the feeling that Uncle Ray Boy had set the house on fire, that his whole act had been building up to this. He’d waited for the chance, that was all. Let everyone believe he’d gone pussy and then he torched Duncan D’Innocenzio’s house and split town. Had to be the story. Eugene smiled.

“You smiling for?” Sweat asked.

“Uncle Ray Boy did this,” Eugene said.

“You think?”

“Hell yeah. Getting back at them.”

This was perfect in Eugene’s eyes. Might be a little tougher to get Uncle Ray Boy back to the neighborhood now. All eyes would be on him behind this. But at least Eugene knew that his uncle hadn’t stopped being his uncle. Eugene could convince him about the card game. That was small. What really mattered now was going on the lam together. Eugene needed to prove what he was capable of.

A few feet to the left of them Eugene noticed Stephanie Dirello and pulled his hood tighter. Looked down at the ground. He backed up and Sweat followed him. “You see someone?” Sweat said.

“That lady. Stephanie. She knows my grandma from church. Watched me a few times when I was a little kid.”

“One with the mustache?”

“Fuck. She sees me, she’ll probably call it in.”

“Maybe she don’t know you’re lost.”

“Maybe.”

“Who’s that fine bitch next to her?”

“I don’t know.” Eugene checked out the lady Sweat was talking about. Tight body. Wearing a long coat and not much underneath looked like. Black hair. Not his type, but beyond pretty. Especially standing next to Stephanie.

“I’d like to climb up in that.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“I wanna watch the place burn.”

“We gotta go back to Mr. Natale’s, scope it a little more.”

“That shit’s mad boring.”

“We got to. I don’t want Uncle Ray Boy thinking we ain’t prepared.”

Sweat shrugged.

They went back to the car. Eugene was glad he’d gone to see the house on fire. He felt hopeful. He pounded the dash.

Sweat sped through a light and made a left to get back to Cropsey.

“Shit’s good,” Eugene said. “Shit’s real good.”

Fourteen

For the second time in a few days Conway was driving to Hawk’s Nest. Ray Boy was in the passenger seat, looking almost happy. The radio was off. Conway felt loose and empty, the booze he’d had with Stephanie keeping him level. He was a vessel, he knew that now. He tried to see the future through the windshield. Gun. Shovel. Woods.

Ray Boy turned to him as they drove over the Brooklyn Bridge. “Some people,” he said. “Some people in the neighborhood think I got a bum rap.”

“That so?” Conway said.

“Some people. Not me. I’ve been honest with myself over the years. Took me a little while, but I saw what really happened. Some people, they think it was involuntary manslaughter, that I shouldn’t have done much time at all. But I know, Conway. I wanted you to know I know. I murdered Duncan. Straight up. I was on his ass for years. Just the way of it. Picking on him. Fucking with him. I don’t know. It was some fucked up mission I had. I knew he was meeting up with dudes on the sly. I tricked him into coming out to Plumb Beach. We were gonna beat the shit out of him, that was it. He was scared.” Ray Boy paused. “He was so fucking scared he jumped a rail into traffic to get away from us. That’s not involuntary anything. That’s murder. I’m not gonna say I’m sorry and I wish I could have it back. That’s useless. Course I wouldn’t do it if it was me now. I had sixteen years of jail, sixteen years to suffer behind what a stupid fucking kid I was. I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in redemption, none of that shit. Why I got this tat. First few years in, I was the same guy who did what he did. Thought I got a raw deal. Then I started to realize things. I could’ve been out sooner probably, like Teemo and Andy, but I stayed stupid. By about Year Six I started to see and when I started to see I started to realize that you, you were it, all there was for me in the end.”

“Fuck you saying all this for?” Conway said.

“I want you to know why you need to do this. I know what you’re about. I know why you came at me the way you did on Saturday.”

“I didn’t—”

“You thought I was still me. You wanted to die the way I want to die. Secretly. Maybe not-so-secretly. You lied to yourself about it being a revenge thing. It was a kamikaze thing, you thinking I was strong enough just to kill you, you not being prepared.”

“I want you to die.”

“I know. But.” Ray Boy opened the window as they barreled up the the FDR. He took a pack of cigarettes out of his inner jacket pocket and lit one, ashing out the window. “And I don’t care what you do after you’re done with me. I don’t.”

“I’m not a coward.”

“You gotta understand I don’t care about any of that. I need you to act on behalf of Duncan here.”

Conway said, “I hate you. I always hated you. Duncan always hated you. Even in third grade. He didn’t think you were friends, not really. You just weren’t, I don’t know, totally fucking evil yet.”

“I got no excuses,” Ray Boy said. “How I was raised, that kind of shit. I was just, I don’t know . . . I was just the way I was. Put me in a time machine, let me go back and talk to that kid, let me tell him about jail and doing shit all wrong, wouldn’t change a thing. Guaranteed.”

“Duncan didn’t deserve anything bad.”

Ray Boy turned away. “You burned down your house back there, huh? Fuck was that about?”

“It was over. The house. Everything for me in the neighborhood.”

“Your old man inside?”

“He’s dead,” Conway said. “Was dead before I put the house up.”

“Huh.”

“It’s just a thing I did. Seemed better than a wake, a funeral, all that bullshit. This way, my father, Duncan, the whole thing, it’s just right there, ash.”

“I used to think, for a second, I used to think it was your father that was my end, that it was him that should be doing this. But then I realized he couldn’t. He was already dead. I killed him, too.”

Nothing about how this was going down made any sense to Conway. Here they were, talking. Accomplices. Almost like friends. “I did want to die when I came up to you on Saturday,” Conway said. “Why I went after you the way I did, haphazard. I didn’t expect any of this. I thought you’d be strong, bad.”

“I’m gonna close my eyes,” Ray Boy said, flicking his cigarette butt out the window. “I haven’t been sleeping. I feel like I can sleep now. You remember the way?”

“I think so.”

“Wake me up at the racetrack if you get confused—easy to make a wrong turn there.”

“I don’t think I want to die anymore,” Conway said. “I’m no coward.”

Ray Boy put his hands up against the window and rested his head against them. “I’m a coward,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’ve always been one.”

They were in the woods in Hawk’s Nest, digging a grave for Ray Boy. To get there they’d climbed a craggy slope behind the house. Oaks and sycamores and sugarmaples and sweetgums spread darkly over the land in every direction. The smell of cold and soil hung in the air. The river was a hush down in the valley. Owls in the trees made sounds that reminded Conway of a tunnel. Crickets sizzled. Ray Boy had put on a headlamp and guided them there, holding a shotgun across his chest. Conway had a flashlight. It was smaller, slick in his hand, shooting a beam of light that made the world small. They both had shovels, new ones with the stickers still on the handles from Home Depot. They clawed into the earth, digging deep. Conway felt damp in his blood. He thought the half-blade moon over them was alive and watching. Ray Boy let out billowy breaths that painted the darkness. Everything seemed to glow dully, especially the shovels. Ray Boy wasn’t talking now. He’d done his talking.

Getting to Hawk’s Nest had been a blur of roads and bridges and lights, that traffic circle again, other cars seeming hazy and unreal. Ray Boy had slept until Monticello and then had pointed out directions, but Conway mostly remembered the way. The world around the house was all dark when they got there. The door had been left open from when Conway snagged Ray Boy on Saturday and the porch light was still on. A flurry of moths ricocheted around it. Conway had followed Ray Boy into the house, which was country quiet and mostly bare except for a mattress and a wood stove and a percolator and a chipped Formica table and some old water-bit vinyl records stacked on a wicker chair, and they had gone back to a narrow mudroom where there were boots by the door, tools on the wall, flashlights, everything they needed. Ray Boy had leaned over and pushed aside a beady carpet and then opened a long hatch that was notched into the floor and withdrawn the shotgun and some shells.

Never once did Conway think that Ray Boy would turn on him with the shotgun on the way into the woods.

He felt secure.

Digging now, he felt something else. The dampness in his blood had spread to his teeth and the backs of his eyes. He was shivery on the inside. He hoisted dirt and tried to imagine using the shotgun on Ray Boy and pushing his body into the hole and then covering him back up.

His phone rang in his pocket. He’d forgotten he even had it with him. It was McKenna. Probably he’d gotten word about the fire from some of his cop buddies and now he was calling to see if Conway was okay. He considered picking up but then silenced the ringer. He imagined that Stephanie would be calling soon, too. Poor Steph. To fuck her the way he’d fucked her, that was low. He put the phone down on the ground and smashed it with the shovel and scraped it off to the side of them.

Ray Boy looked up.

“I don’t need it anymore,” Conway said.

“Sure,” Ray Boy said.

Conway looked at the shotgun, resting up against a tree. “You sure no one will hear the shot?”

Ray Boy said, “No one’s that close by. Even if someone hears it, probably won’t register. It’s not an unusual sound up here.” He moved down into the hole, which was deep enough to stand in now, and tossed out overflowing spadefuls of darker dirt.

Conway put down the flashlight and got into the hole with him. They were shoveling with their backs to each other.

“A little deeper,” Ray Boy said. “Couple of more feet.” He was doing enthusiastic work, making level walls, rounding the corners, back bent, sweating.

Conway was just chopping away at dirt, trying to get down further, sparking the shovel against rocks.

When they were done, when Ray Boy said it was enough, they both climbed out. Wasn’t easy. Must’ve been six or seven feet deep. Three big mounds of pebbly dirt surrounded the hole. Conway put down his shovel and picked the flashlight back up. Ray Boy went over and leaned his shovel against the tree and picked up the shotgun. The way the headlamp moved was starting to spook Conway out. He kept thinking it was lights from a car.

“Make sure you take the shovels and lights with you,” Ray Boy said. “Don’t leave anything here. Don’t mark the spot. Just cover me up. Try to use leaves and branches on top of the dirt so you can’t see the shape of the hole. If you need to, stay at the house tonight and come back out here first thing when it’s light to make sure nothing’s obvious. Chances are no one will be out here, but just in case. Could be my family comes looking for me up here. Don’t want anything too noticeable.”

“Okay,” Conway said.

Ray Boy came over with the shotgun. “You know how to use it?”

“Not really.”

Ray Boy demonstrated how to pump and fire. “It’s loaded already. Hold on tight. Be steady. It’ll kick you back.” He took some shells out of his jacket pocket and put them in Conway’s pocket. “Should be hard to miss me, but you fuck up, here’s extra shells.” Then he showed him how to load the gun. “Got it?”

“Think so.”

Ray Boy took off the headlamp and put it on Conway’s head. “I’m going down in the hole.”

Conway nodded.

“Anything else?”

“I’m good.”

Ray Boy handed him the shotgun. Conway took it and put the small flashlight on the ground, leaving it on. The headlamp would be more than enough. He held the shotgun out in front of him and tried to imagine making it work the right way. Ray Boy got down on his knees and climbed back into the hole. He sprawled on his back, eyes closed, arms out. Conway had the light on him. It was shaking, not steady like a spotlight. He was waiting for Ray Boy to say something, one last thing, an order, or an apology to Duncan, but Ray Boy was silent. Conway thought of Ray Boy’s Duncan tattoo and wondered if he’d have to get one with Ray Boy’s name and death date.

Conway pumped the shotgun and put it on Ray Boy. His hands were sweaty. His instinct was to close his eyes and not fire. But he kept his eyes open and pulled the trigger.

Ray Boy’s chest exploded in a pulpy thump. The sound filled the woods, echoed around the trees. Blood fountained out of Ray Boy’s chest. Gristle covered his face and legs. Conway had been someone else for a minute and done the job. Or maybe he’d just been himself. He didn’t know. He thought about reloading and turning the gun on himself, eating the barrel, blowing the back of his head up to the moon. But he didn’t. He was on some kind of sicko autopilot. He was not a coward.

He found his broken phone on the ground and threw it and the gun and the rest of the shells and one of the shovels down in the hole with Ray Boy, feeling nothing. He didn’t look at Ray Boy’s body again. He started to use the other shovel to fill in the hole with dirt from the nearby piles. He was sweating. His blood still felt damp. He heard the river and was very afraid he would hear other things—people, cars, sirens, shots, coyotes, ghosts.

When Ray Boy was under the dirt he looked in the hole again and was glad to see only dirt. The shape of a body was there but it was more like a shadow.

It took him a long time to fill in the hole alone. Couple of hours at least. The moon shaded rusty. The small flashlight he’d left just sitting on the ground sputtered out and died. Owls made tunnel sounds. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

He looked at the square outline in the earth and proceeded to follow Ray Boy’s directions. He gathered armloads of branches and dead leaves and spread them over the grave, tamping it all down with the shovel. He had no instinct to put a marker there. Not a cross. Not a rock. Nothing. When it was over, when the spot looked like the rest of the earth, he sat down and put his head in his hands and tried to feel something.

He picked up the shovel and the dead flashlight and trudged back to the house. The headlamp scattered the land in front of him. He pulsed down the final slope on his backside, rocks scurrying, and saw bats moving against the moon.

Inside the house he took off the headlamp and put it and the dead flashlight back in the mudroom. He washed the shovel in the kitchen sink, clumpy dirt backing up the drain so much that he had to break it up with his fingers and it felt glassy and cold. Brown residue edged around the sink. He pinched his fingers together and scrubbed. Dirt hummed under his nails.

The wood floor in the house was darkened with the dirt he’d trailed in. He found a broom in a closet and swept it all up and took off his shoes and set them on the front porch. Walking around in his socks felt strange in the quiet house. He’d never experienced this world of sound. The city was always a scratchy mess of noises. All night from his room he heard buses and cop cars and radios and boys down on the corner and sometimes fireworks. Here, apparently, it was just woods noises and the occasional shotgun and in the house it was your feet on the floor and the trembling walls.