“We can look for more food in the galley.”
“I don’t want to see another mouse.” Aleksei began to feel his way across the deck. “Besides, I’m cold.”
“I’m not cold.”
“Then you stay out here.”
They had just reached the stairway when they heard a series of sharp thuds. Suddenly the deck was ablaze with light. Both boys froze, blinking at the unexpected glare.
Yakov grabbed Aleksei’s hand and tugged him under the bridge stairway, where they crouched, peering out between the steps. They heard voices and saw two men walk into the circle of floodlights. Both men were wearing white overalls. Together they bent down and gave something a tug. There was a scrape of metal as some kind of cover was forced aside. It revealed a new light, this one blue. It shone at the center of the floodlit circle, like the forbidding iris of an eye.
“Bloody mechanics,” one of the men said. “They’ll never get this repaired.”
Both men straightened and looked up at the sky. Toward the distant growl of thunder.
Yakov, too, looked up. The thunder was moving closer. No longer just a growl, it deepened to a rhythmic whup-whup. The two men retreated from the floodlights. The sound drew right overhead, churning the night like a tornado.
Aleksei clapped his hands over his ears and shrank deeper into the shadows. Yakov did not. He watched, unflinching, as the helicopter descended into the wash of light and touched down on the deck.
One of the men in overalls reappeared, running bent at the waist. He swung open the helicopter door. Yakov could not see what was inside; the stairway post was blocking his direct view. He eased out from the shadows, moving out onto the deck just far enough to see around the post. He caught a glimpse of the pilot and one passenger—a man.
“Hey!” came a shout from overhead. “You! Boy!”
Yakov glanced straight up and saw the navigator peering down at him from the bridge deck.
“What are you doing down there? You come up here right now, before you get hurt! Come on!”
The man in overalls had spotted the boys too, and was crossing toward them. He did not look pleased.
Yakov scurried up the stairway. Aleksei, in a panic, was right on his heels.
“Don’t you know enough to stay off the main deck when a chopper’s landing?” yelled the navigator. He gave Aleksei a whack on the rump and pulled them inside, into the wheel-house. He pointed to two chairs. “Sit. Both of you.”
“We were just watching,” said Yakov.
“You two are supposed to be in bed.”
“I was in bed,” whimpered Aleksei. “He made me come out.”
“Do you know what a chopper rotor can do to a boy’s head? Do you?” The navigator slashed a hand across Aleksei’s skinny neck. “Just like that. Your head goes flying straight off. And blood shoots everywhere. Quite spectacular. You think I’m joking, don’t you? Believe me, I don’t go down there when the chopper comes. I stay the hell away. But if you want your stupid heads sliced off, be my guests. Go on.”
Aleksei sobbed, “I wanted to stay in bed!”
The roar of the helicopter made them all turn to look. They watched as it lifted into the sky, the rotor wash whipping the overalls of the two men standing on deck. It make a slow ninety-degree turn, then veered off, to be swallowed by the night. Only a soft rumble lingered, fading away like retreating thunder.
“Where does it go?” asked Yakov.
“You think they tell me?” said the navigator. “They just call me when it’s coming in for a pickup and I turn the bow into the wind. That’s all.” He reached for one of the panel switches and flicked it.
The floodlights were instantly extinguished. The main deck vanished into darkness.
Yakov pressed close to the bridge window. The chopper rumble was gone now. In every direction stretched the blackness of the sea.
Aleksei was still crying.
“Stop it now,” said the navigator. He gave Aleksei a scolding slap on the shoulder. “A boy your age, acting like a woman.”
“But what does it come for? The helicopter?” ask Yakov.
“I told you. A pickup.”
“What does it pick up?”
“I don’t ask. I just do what they tell me.”
“Who?”
“The passengers in the aft cabin.” He tugged Yakov away from the window and gave him a push toward the door. “Go back to your bunks. Can’t you see I have work to do?”
Yakov was following Aleksei to the door when his gaze lit on the radar screen. So many times before, he’d stared at that screen, transfixed by the hypnotic sweep of the line tracing its three-hundred-sixty-degree arc. Now he stood before it again, watching the line circle around and around. He saw it at once, a small white sliver at the edge of the screen.
“Is it another ship?” Yakov asked. “There, on the radar.” He pointed to the sliver, which suddenly pulsed whiter as the line swept over it.
“What else would it be? Get out of here.”
The boys went outside and clattered down the bridge stairway to the main deck. Yakov glanced up and saw, against the green glow of the bridge window, the navigator’s silhouette. Watching. Always watching.
And he said: “Now I know where the helicopter goes.”
Pyotr and Valentin were not at breakfast. By then the news of their departure during the night had already spread to Yakov’s cabin, so when he sat down at the table that morning and faced the row of boys sitting across from him, he knew the reason for their silence. They did not understand, any of them, why Pyotr and Valentin should be the first to leave the ship, the first to be chosen. Pyotr, they’d all thought from the start, would be among the leftovers, or would be consigned to some unlikely family who favored idiot children. Valentin, who’d joined the group in Riga, had been clever enough, handsome enough, but he had a secret perversion known to the younger boys. After the lights went out at night, he would crawl into their bunks without his underwear, would whisper: “Feel that? Feel how big I am?” And he would grab their hands and force them to touch him.
But Valentin was gone now, he and Pyotr. Gone to new parents who’d chosen them, Nadiya said.
The rest of them were the leftovers.
In the afternoon, Yakov and Aleksei climbed to the deck and stretched out on the spot where the helicopter had landed. They lay gazing up at the hard blue glare of the sky. No clouds, no helicopters. The deck was warm and, like two kittens on a radiator, they began to feel drowsy.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Yakov, his eyes closed against the sun. “If my mother is alive, I don’t want to be adopted.”
“She’s not.”
“She could be.”
“Why didn’t she come back for you, then?”
“Maybe she’s looking for me right now. And here I am, in the middle of the sea where no one can find me. Except with radar. I’m going to tell Nadiya to take me back. I don’t want a new mother.”
“I do,” said Aleksei. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Do you think there’s something wrong with me?”
Yakov laughed. “You mean besides the fact you’re retarded?”
When Aleksei didn’t answer, Yakov squinted up at his friend and was puzzled to see the boy had his hands over his face, and his shoulders were shaking.
“Hey,” said Yakov. “Are you crying?”
“No.”
“You are, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“You’re such a baby. I didn’t mean it. You’re not retarded.”
Aleksei had folded into a ball of arms and legs. He was crying all right. Though he didn’t make a sound, Yakov could see his chest spasmodically sucking in gulps of air. Yakov didn’t know what to make of this or what to say. A fresh insult was what automatically came to mind. Stupid girl. Crybaby. But then he thought better of it. He had never seen Aleksei this way, and he felt a little guilty, a little scared. It was just a joke. Why couldn’t Aleksei see it was a joke?
> “Let’s go down and swing on the rope,” said Yakov. He gave Aleksei a poke in the ribs.
Aleksei lashed back with an angry shove and jumped up, his face red and wet.
“What’s the matter with you anyway?” said Yakov.
“Why did they choose that stupid Pyotr instead of me?”
“They didn’t choose me either,” said Yakov.
“But there’s nothing wrong with me!” cried Aleksei. He ran from the deck.
Yakov sat very still. He looked down at the stump of his left arm. And he said, “There’s nothing wrong with me either.”
“Knight to bishop three,” said Koubichev, the engineer.
“You always do that. Don’t you ever try anything new?”
“I believe in the tried and true. It’s beaten you every time. Your move. Don’t take all day.”
Yakov rotated the chessboard and studied it first from one angle, then another. He got on his knees and peered down the row of pawns. Imagined black-armored soldiers standing in formation, awaiting orders.
“What the hell are you doing now?” said Koubichev.
“Did you ever notice the queen has a beard?”
“What?”
“She has a beard. Look.”
Koubichev grunted. “That’s just her neck ruffle. Now will you make your move?”
Yakov set the queen back on the board and reached for a knight. He set it down, picked it up. Set it down in a different place and again picked it up. All around them rumbled the engines of Hell.
Koubichev was no longer watching. He’d opened a magazine and was flipping through the pages, eyeing a succession of glamorous faces. The one hundred most beautiful women in America. Every so often he’d grunt and say, “You call that beautiful?” or “I wouldn’t let my dog fuck that one.”
Yakov picked up the queen again and set her down on bishop four. “There.”
Koubichev regarded Yakov’s latest move with a snort. “Why do you always repeat the same mistake? Moving your queen out too early?” He tossed the magazine down and leaned forward to move his pawn. That’s when Yakov spotted the face on the magazine page. It was a woman. Blond hair, with one wisp curling over the cheek. A melancholy smile. Eyes that seemed to be gazing not at you, but beyond you.
“It’s my mother,” said Yakov.
“What?”
“It’s her. It’s my mother!” He lunged for the magazine, knocking against the crate that served for a table. The chessboard toppled. Pawns and bishops and knights flew in every direction.
Koubichev snatched the magazine out of reach. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Give it to me!” screamed Yakov. He was clawing at the man’s arm now, frantic to claim his mother’s photo. “Give it!”
“You crazy boy, it’s not your mother!”
“It is! I remember her face! She looked like that, just like that!”
“Stop scratching me. Get away, do you hear?”
“Give it to me!”
“All right, all right. Here, I’ll show you. It’s not your mother.” Koubichev slapped the magazine down on the crate. “See?”
Yakov stared at the face. Every detail was exactly as he’d dreamed it. The way the head was tilted, the way her skin dimpled near the corners of her mouth. Even the way the light fell on her hair. He said, “It’s her. I’ve seen her face.”
“Everyone’s seen her face.” Koubichev pointed to the name on the photo. “Michelle Pfeiffer. She’s an actress. American. Not even the name is Russian.”
“But I know her! I had a dream about her!”
Koubichev laughed. “You and every other horny boy.” He glanced around at the scattered chess pieces. “Look at this mess. We’ll be lucky to find all the pawns. Come on, you knocked it over. Now pick them up.”
Yakov didn’t move. He stood staring at the woman, remembering the way she had smiled at him.
Koubichev, grumbling, dropped to his hands and knees and began to crawl about, retrieving chess pieces from underneath machinery. “You’ve probably seen her face somewhere. The TV, or maybe some magazine, and you forgot about it. Then you have a dream about her, that’s all.” He set two bishops and a queen on the board, then heaved himself back onto the chair. His face was flushed, his barrel chest panting heavily. He tapped his head. “The brain is a mysterious thing. It takes real life and spins it into dreams, and we can’t tell what’s made up and what’s real. Sometimes I have this dream where I’m sitting at a table with all this wonderful food, everything I could want to eat. Then I wake up and I’m still on this fucking boat.” He reached for the magazine and tore out the page with Michelle Pfeiffer. “Here. It’s yours.”
Yakov took the page but didn’t say anything. He just held it. Looked at it.
“If you want to pretend that’s your mother, go ahead. A boy could do worse. Now pick up the pieces. Hey! Hey, boy! Where do you think you’re going?”
Yakov, still clutching the page, fled Hell.
Up on deck he stood at the rail, his face to the sea. The page was wrinkled now, flapping and crackling in the wind. He looked at it, saw that he’d been holding it so tightly a crease now cut across those half-smiling lips.
He grasped one corner with his teeth and ripped the page in two. It was not enough. Not enough. He was breathing hard, close to crying, but no sound came out. He ripped the page again and again, using his teeth like an animal tearing at real flesh, letting the pieces fly off into the wind.
When he’d finished, he was still holding on to one scrap of the page. It was an eye. Just beneath it, pinched by his fingers, was a star-shaped crease. Like the sparkle of a single teardrop.
He threw the scrap over the rail and watched it flutter away and fall into the sea.
15
She was in her late forties, with the thin, dry face of a woman who had long ago lost her estrogenic glow. In Bernard Katzka’s opinion, that alone did not make a woman unattractive. A woman’s appeal lay not in the luster of her skin and hair, but in what was revealed by her eyes. In that regard, he had met a number of fascinating seventy-year-olds, among them his maiden aunt Margaret, whom he’d grown particularly close to since Annie’s death. That Katzka actually looked forward to his weekly coffee chats with Aunt Margaret would probably bewilder his partner, Lundquist. Lundquist was of the masculine school that believed women were not worth a second glance once they’d crossed the menopausal finish line. No doubt it was all rooted in biology. Males mustn’t waste their energy or sperm on a nonreproductive female. No wonder Lundquist had looked so relieved when Katzka agreed to interview Brenda Hainey. Lundquist considered postmenopausal women to be Bernard Katzka’s forte, by which he meant Katzka was the one detective in Homicide who had the patience and fortitude to hear them out.
And this was precisely what Katzka had been doing for the last fifteen minutes, listening patiently to Brenda Hainey’s bizarre charges. She was not easy to follow. The woman mingled the mystical with the concrete, in the same breath telling him about signs from heaven and syringes of morphine. He might have been amused by the quirky nature of this encounter if the woman had been likable, but Brenda Hainey was not. There was no warmth in her blue eyes. She was angry, and angry people were not attractive.
“I’ve spoken to the hospital about this,” she said. “I went straight to their president, Mr. Parr. He promised he’d investigate, but that was five days ago, and so far I’ve heard nothing. I call every day. His office tells me they’re still looking into it. Well, today I decided enough was enough. So I called your people. And they tried to put me off too, tried to make me talk to some rookie police officer first. Well I believe in going straight to the highest authority. I do it all the time, every morning when I pray. In this case, the highest authority would be you.”
Katzka suppressed a smile.
“I’ve seen your name in the newspaper,” Brenda said. “In connection with that dead doctor from Bayside.”
“You’re referring to Dr. Levi?” r />
“Yes. I thought, since you already know about the goings-on in that hospital, you’re the one I should speak to.”
Katzka almost sighed, but caught himself. He knew she would take it for what it was, an expression of weariness. He said, “May I see the note?”
She pulled a folded paper from her purse and handed it to him. It had one typewritten line: Your aunt did not die a natural death. A friend.
“Was there an envelope?”
This, too, she produced. On it was typed the name Brenda Hainey. The flap had been sealed, then torn open.
“Do you know who might have sent this?” he asked.
“I have no idea. Maybe one of the nurses. Someone who knew enough to tell me.”
“You say your aunt had terminal cancer. She could have died of natural causes.”
“Then why send me that note? Someone knew differently. Someone wants this looked into. I want it looked into.”
“Where is your aunt’s body now?”
“Garden of Peace Mortuary. The hospital shipped it out pretty quick, if you ask me.”
“Whose decision was that? It must have been next of kin.”
“My aunt left instructions before she died. That’s what the hospital told me, anyway.”
“Have you spoken to your aunt’s doctors? Perhaps they can clear this up.”
“I’d prefer not to speak to them.”
“Why not?”
“Given the situation, I’m not sure I trust them.”
“I see.” Now Katzka did sigh. He picked up his pen and flipped to a fresh page in his notebook. “Why don’t you give me the names of all your aunt’s doctors.”
“The physician in charge was Dr. Colin Wettig. But the one who really seemed to be making all the decisions was that resident of his. I think she’s the one you should look at.”
“Her name?”
“Dr. DiMatteo.”
Katzka glanced up in surprise. “Abigail DiMatteo?”
There was a brief silence. Katzka could see consternation clearly written on Brenda’s face.
She said, cautiously, “You know her.”
“I’ve spoken to her. On another matter.”