Nadelson - Disturbed Earth: an Artie Cohen Mystery

Disturbed Earth

ALSO BY REGGIE NADELSON

Bloody London

Sex Dolls

Red Mercury Blues

Hot Poppies

Somebody Else

Comrade Rockstar

Disturbed Earth

Reggie Nadelson

Copyright 2004 by Reggie Nadelson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Walker & Company, 104 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.

All the characters and events portrayed in this work are fictitious.

Published in 2006 by Walker & Company

Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers

All papers used by Walker & Company are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Nadelson, Reggie.

Disturbed earth / Reggie Nadelson.

p. cm.

1. Cohen, Artie (Fictitious character)Fiction. 2. PoliceNew York (State)New YorkFiction. 3. New York (N.Y.) Fiction. I. Title.

PS3564.A287DS72005

813'.54dc22

2004065658

eISBN: 978-0-802-71855-6

First published in the United Kingdom in 2004 by William Heinemann

Published in the United States of America in 2005 by Walker & Company

This paperback edition published by Walker & Company in 2007

Visit Walker & Company's Web site at www.walkerbooks.com

Printed in the United States of America by Quebecor World Fairfield

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For Steven Zwerling and Rona Middleberg,
from Brooklyn

"Chapter One: He adored New York..."

Woody Allen, Manhattan

If it hadn't been for the The Queen of the Bay being full, maybe it would never have happened. As Billy watched the Queen slip out into the water of Sheepshead Bay, he felt the faint breeze off the water, hot, humid and salty, on his face, and listened to the voice of a fisherman selling his catch, and the noise of customers bargaining, and the music from a radio set down near the bucket offish. Billy could smell the catch. Often he went home and his mother said he smelled offish, and made him wash with soap and lemons. He shut his eyes tight and stayed calm. This was important when things went wrong, like missing the boat. He had learned it, at school, at home: you sealed yourself up from the inside out and then they stopped bugging you and asking how you felt and let you be, figuring you were OK.

He held tight to his half of the bag, feeling the rough canvas strap, and the weight of the bag that he and Artie carried together. There was bait in it they'd bought at the old bait and tackle shop overlooking the inlet; there were sandwiches and sodas and the sweater his mother made him bring though it was August and hot.

For weeks Billy had begged her to let him go out fishing at night. He was almost twelve, he said. It would be OK. He made a list of reasons he could and should go and he argued them so fiercely, she finally said, OK, just this once, go on. It was because of the sheeps-head. He had heard rumors that you could catch sheepshead best at night. All summer he was crazy to see the fish that had given the place its name and then disappeared decades ago, a fish, he had read, whose mouth and teeth made it look like a sheep.

Up to now he had seen porgies, weakfish, blues, fluke, blacks, sea bass, all the fish you could catch out here off the Brooklyn coast. Sometimes he rode his bike from home to the docks and watched as men cleaned fish from afresh catch. Sometimes they let him help.

He was interested in the boats, too, intent on learning their names. Party boats, they called them in Brooklyn, and they went from seven in the morning until three in the afternoon, or seven at night until three in the morning, and though Artie had taken him on a morning boat four times already that summer, this time they were going late. Billy wanted to fish by moonlight. There was a picture of a fishing boat in a book he had with the full moon making silver steps across the ocean; it would be like that when they fished at night. When the Queen went without them, he tried to stay calm, but he was having trouble, and a kind of panicky feeling came up inside. Then he felt a tug on the canvas bag.

He looked up at Artie, who said, come on, come on, let's run for it, he said, gesturing at the boat in the next slip, and they ran and there was just time and there was space on board. The boat was called Just a Fluke, and Artie explained it was a pun, a sort of joke, fluke being both a common fish and a fluke also meaning a chance happening. Like them being on this boat instead of the Queen. Afuke, Billy liked the word.

A heavyset man with a smile Billy could see was fake, a smile just plastered on his face that didn't mean anything, took their money. He wore a battered old Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap and told them it was his boat, brand new, space for over a hundred people, but only half full. His name was Stanley. Mr. Stanley, Billy thought. Mr. Stanley.

They fished all night, though you were only supposed to take two fish and even thefuke had to be 17 inches, but the fat man in the Dodgers cap let them keep extra, and they fished and ate salami sandwiches and Billy thought nothing had ever tasted as good.

Around midnight, the storm boiled up out of nowhere. The humidity rose even higher the way it sometimes did at night like steam in a bathroom with the door closed. The sky got dark. The moon disappeared. Out over the ocean lightning crackled up and zigzagged across the sky like a zipper yanked open. Rain poured on them.

They laughed, him and Artie, laughed and laughed, soaked to the skin. The boat returned early, and they got back to the pier still laughing as rain came down in huge horizontal sheets, the wind pushing it sideways.

Between them, each one with a hand on it and the other on his fishing rod, the bag was heavy. It was full of empty soda cans and sandwich bags and fish. They skidded over the wet planks of the dock, and the bag fell. Fish spilled out. Artie tried to capture them, but they slithered on the wet wood.

It's OK, Billy said, and pulled a net out of the bag, he always kept a net, and tossed it over the fish and trapped them and laughed gleefully. I've got them, he said. A man struggling with his own catch saw them, and said to Artie, Is this your boy? Is this your son?

Artie said, no, he's my godson. Afterwards, when they were safe in the car, Billy tugged his hand and said, very seriously, how come you lied, and Artie said, What? You know you're my real father, he said, and smiled. Come on, Artie, you know you're my real dad, and he could see how happy Artie looked. Suddenly Billy knew he was in on the game, too, pretending they were father and son.

Contents

A woman in a red fox coat walked down the boardwalk that was bleached white from snow and salt, a pair of large black poodles at the end of the leash in her hand. The wind whipped her backwards so the dogs seemed to pull her along as if on a sled. Above her the Parachute Drop, broken down, shut up, loomed against the winter sky, the Coney Island amusement park haunted by relics of its old dreams cape.

Inside Nathan's, as I passed, a trio of workers on the early shift, in their red Nathan's jackets, huddled together watching the cops outside. In the fluorescent light of the restaurant, I could see the faces of the three workers clearly; they had flat brown Indian faces, as if they'd come direct from some Andean village to the coast of America to serve up hot dogs dripping with yellow mustard. Like everyone in Brooklyn, they clung to their tribe; no matter how fragile or tiny it was, there was some kind of protection in it, or that's what I still thought that morning. One of them laughed suddenly. He flashed white teeth.