Red Hook (26 page)

Recina stood in the doorway. “He didn’t have nothing to hide. No drugs, no guns, nothing like that.”

“I know,” Jack replied. “But that piece of paper you found with the address might have been important. Maybe he left something else like that around.”

The wife shrugged, “You can look. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Most people would never have trusted a cop to pry around their bedrooms alone, but she seemed past caring.

The children were shopping with their grandmother, so the apartment was quiet, a museum of humble treasures.

Left to himself, Jack surveyed the hot little room—no air-conditioning here. The Crime Scene crew had already searched the apartment, but they hadn’t necessarily known what to look for.

The job took longer than it might have, for two reasons. First, since this was not a forced search, he had to be careful to return everything to its original state. Second, he kept pausing to muse about Tomas Berrios’s life.

Checking out the mattress, he wondered if this was where the little boy and girl were conceived (such sacred sex, when you knew you were making a child). As he ran his hand underneath the box spring, he wondered if the children had run squealing in the room mornings to leap on the bed and wake up their father with a game of hop on Pop (as Ben had when he was a little boy). It was not uncommon to find hidden pornography, even in a married man’s bedroom, but there was none of that here. He did find writing on the plywood back of the dresser, a newlywed couple’s pledge:
“Tomas + Recina para siempre. Jan. 4, 1993.”

Tomas Berrios had a wife who loved him. Children who depended on him. A family and a home. He was not important enough in the world for his death to draw the attention of the media, but in his own way he had been a rich man.

Tossing a white-collar home was time-consuming: you had to scan stacks of paper—business files, personal records, letters, computer data. But Tomas Berrios’s home was nearly devoid of reading material, save for a Spanish Bible, a local weekly newspaper, and some photo-comics. The search was an inventory of mute objects.

Jack explored the front room, the kitchen, the children’s bedroom, even the bathroom, without success.

On impulse, he returned to the bedroom. A place for private things. Secret. He opened the clothes closet and scanned the small collection of cheap suits and dresses. He dragged a chair over and stood on it to run his hand over the top shelf. Nothing but dust.

He sat on a chair, his shirt sticking to his skin in the hot, humid apartment, and looked around idly until his gaze fell once more on the local newspaper, which lay on top of a cheap laminated-walnut dresser. It was in English—aside from a
TV Guide
, it was the only English-language text in the house. Why?

The front page held articles about a proposed new mall on Atlantic Avenue and a vandalism problem in Park Slope. He kept going, past an article about a movie shoot disrupting neighborhood parking, a review of an Italian restaurant, a story about a school board scuffle. In the middle of the paper, a jagged space marked where an article had been torn out.

He took out his cell phone and called the number listed on the masthead. A receptionist referred him to the assistant editor, who found a copy of the paper and read him the missing article.

The headline was “Red Hook Residents Vow Garbage Fight.” It began:

Recent speculation had local residents concerned that a new waste-management transfer station is coming to Red Hook. At last Wednesday’s meeting of Community Board 6, a large and vocal group of residents and community activists pledged that any such plan would be met by protests marched and legal challenged, saying that the increased truck traffic and bad odors would threaten the revitalization of the neighborhood.

Jack went out and found Recina Berrios in the living room. He held up the open newspaper. “Do you know who ripped this article out?”

She looked at him blankly. “I don’t know. Are you going to find my husband’s killer?”

Jack folded the paper and slipped it in his pocket. “I’m going to try, Mrs. Berrios. I’m going to try as hard as I possibly can.”

Out on the sidewalk, he tucked his sports coat in the crook of his arm and walked away, convinced he was on the right track. When he returned to work, he would double his research into Randall Heiser’s business dealings.

In the meantime, though, he had an afternoon to kill. He paused on a corner at Smith Street, considering where to go.

An old couple approached down the sidewalk, the man a little sporty gent in a polo shirt and fishing hat, the woman in a tan overcoat despite the summer heat. They bickered. He threatened to walk away and leave her behind; she snapped, “Go ahead—see if I care!” They ventured out across the street, a cat and dog tethered together for life. They didn’t like each other, but at least they
had
each other. Jack’s maternal grandparents had lived like that: they argued and fought every minute of their lives together, and then his grandmother died. Without his sparring partner, his grandfather had been desolate, inconsolable.

Another couple strolled by, hand in hand, content in each other’s company.

He stopped at a pay phone and searched his wallet for Michelle Wilber’s phone number.

A little white puff of a cloud drifted out across the blue sky, following Ben as he set off toward Red Hook.

An old Italian guy in an apron was sweeping the sidewalk outside a bakery on Sackett Street, crooning along in a cracked voice with the radio, Paul Anka and “Put Your Head on My Shoulder.” Up the block, a tiny East Indian kid was riding a broomstick, whacking himself on the butt with one hand, whinnying and galloping around like a snorting little pony.

Ben pulled out his video camera and collected a few shots, then continued on across the highway into Red Hook. He headed for a quiet back street called Imlay, home to the TIME Moving and Storage Company. During the day, the company’s fleet of small white trucks dispersed throughout the five boroughs, but at night they all returned here to park on the street like pigeons coming home to roost. Ben liked to film them, especially at night. In fanciful moments, he imagined that the company was the secret source of time itself, which the trucks delivered to the city.

Today he found a driver sitting in one of the few vans that remained at the headquarters. The old guy was reading the paper, leaning back with his feet up on the dashboard, a Yankees cap cocked high on his head. He looked mournful, yet content.

“Excuse me,” Ben said, “would you mind if I take your picture?”

“What for?” the man said warily, revealing a mouthful of crooked teeth.

“I’m making a film about Red Hook.”

“Suit yourself.” The man folded his paper, sat up, and posed stiffly.

Ben ran off a few feet of videotape. “Can I ask you a question?”

The man shrugged.

“I’ve been wondering—does it ever seem strange to you that your company is named after the one thing you can’t really move or store?”

The man didn’t show any surprise or amusement. He simply tapped the side of his head. “Whaddaya think this is for?” he said dryly. Then he opened his paper again and settled back to read.

Ben chuckled, then walked on, considering what to buy for dinner. That was the easy part—the hard part was thinking of something to talk about with his dad. What was it with fathers and sons, that weird, uncomfortable silence they couldn’t seem to escape? It must be a bummer to be a dad, he mused: one day you’ve got a cheery, talkative five-year-old who’s thrilled to play with you, the next you’ve got a sullen, uncommunicative adult on your hands.

He resolved to try harder. His father wasn’t going to be around forever. He rounded a corner, then stopped in the middle of the street. He’d started out with a hazy plan to make a film about the history of Red Hook. Then he’d realized that he was searching for his father’s history. Now it occurred to him that what he was really looking for was an explanation of himself. Maybe there was a reason why he was often lonely, why he felt estranged from other people. His father seemed to be the same way. Maybe it had something to do with his grandfather. Maybe the answer lay somewhere in Red Hook.

Tonight he’d find a way to interview his dad about the neighborhood. Set up the tape recorder without making a big deal of it. Say it was an “oral history.”

On the way back, he stopped in Carroll Gardens to shop for food. That was the great thing about the neighborhood: even in an age of giant supermarkets and convenience foods, it still had little mom-and-pop stores: butcher shops, a fruit and vegetable stand, bakeries, places where you could buy homemade pasta and olives by the pound.

He bought a bottle of wine and ingredients for the only fancy dish he knew how to cook: vegetable lasagna. It didn’t occur to him until after he was home that he’d gotten the recipe from his mother. He hoped his dad wouldn’t have some sort of flashback to his failed marriage after the first bite.

Jack had arranged to meet Michelle at five-thirty in a Greek diner in Park Slope. He arrived half an hour early with a copy of the
Daily News
; he figured he’d sit casually, sip a cup of coffee, and read, and that’s how she’d discover him—relaxed, carefree, mildly apologetic.

The problem was that he couldn’t focus on even the shortest articles. He looked up every time the door opened. As the clock over the grill parceled the time out in endless minutes, he was surprised and then alarmed by his level of eagerness and anxiety. As he thought about his short time with Michelle, it wasn’t the lovemaking he remembered most, but the fun they’d had on that first date. He was sad to think how long it had been since he’d known that lightness of spirit, that sense of adventure in his life.

Finally, Michelle walked in. She frowned as she set her purse down and slid into the booth.

“Hey, thanks for coming,” Jack said. “I just wanted to tell you—”

A sad-faced middle-aged waitress bustled up. “What can I get you folks?”

“I’ll have a cup of coffee,” Michelle said.

“I’ll just have a refill,” Jack added.

The waitress pointed to a folded card on the table. “We have a three-dollar minimum per customer after five o’clock.”

“It’s too early to eat,” Jack said. “We just want coffee.”

“I understand that, sir, but we have a policy here.”

He pulled out his wallet, yanked out a ten-dollar bill, threw it on the table. “Here. Why don’t you buy yourself a personality?”

The waitress drew herself up. “There’s no call for that kind of talk.” She left the bill lying on the table and walked away.

“I was a waitress once,” Michelle said. “It’s a tough job.”

Jack sighed. “I’ve had a rough week. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tell me—tell her.”

He put his hands up in surrender. “You’re right.”

When the waitress walked by again, he apologized.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said gruffly. She walked over to her station and poured them some coffee.

Michelle leaned forward as soon as the waitress left. “I want you to understand something: maybe you got the wrong impression, but I don’t do that.”

“What?”

“What we did. One-night stands. Maybe you think that’s the kind of person I am, that you don’t have to call again.”

“Whoa, wait a minute. I just called you, didn’t I?”

“Jack—it’s been a week.”

“I’ve been going through a lot. I figured Jeannie would have told you. My landlord had a stroke.”

“She told me and I’m sorry. He seems like such a nice old man.” She was silent for a moment. “But that’s not enough.”

His eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

“You could have called and told me directly. Don’t you think I would have cared?”

He didn’t respond.

“There’s more to it than your landlord,” she said. “Isn’t there?”

He picked up a spoon and rolled it in his fingers. “I don’t know. Look, if you want the truth, I haven’t been very good with women since my divorce. Sometimes I think I might be too old for this dating business.”

“That’s not good enough.”

He sat up. “
What’s
not good enough?”

She pushed her coffee away. “Listen, I was really hurt when you didn’t call. And I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I think you just want to be let off the hook. “You figure maybe if you admit that you’re nervous, some woman is going to come along and say, ‘That’s all right, honey.’ Well, it’s not all right. Everybody’s scared—the question is, what are you going to do about it? I don’t need another fifty year-old man who doesn’t want to grow up.”

“Hold on—I wanted to apologize. I just…I wanted to talk to you.”

She looked down at her lap for a moment, then raised her head. “There’s a problem.”

“A problem?”

“I’m sort of seeing someone. There’s a guy at work, a sales rep, who’s been asking me out for a while. After I didn’t hear from you for a few days, I accepted his invitation. He’s very nice.”

“Nice? This is what you want—
nice?
”

“He may not be the handsomest man in the world, and he doesn’t have some glamorous job like
homicide detective
, but he’s not afraid of a little responsibility.”

Jack put up his hands. “Look, I just wanted to see you again. I know I should have called, but I thought we had something special the other night. Are you all committed to this guy, or what?”

She pulled some bills out of her purse and set them down. “I’ll see how it goes. Who knows? If it doesn’t work out, maybe I’ll give you a call.”

Jack whistled in disbelief. “‘Maybe’ you’ll call me. Jesus, you’re a tough cookie, aren’t you?”

Michelle slung her purse over her shoulder and stood up. “The dating business hasn’t been much fun for me either.”

Jack stayed at the diner, moping. He couldn’t believe how hurt he felt. Evidently you never got too old for heartbreak. When the waitress returned to check up on him, he absently ordered the meat loaf special, which he then pushed around the plate for half an hour.

Out on the side-walk, the heat was finally draining out of the day. He took a walk, joining the flow of pedestrians along Seventh Avenue.