Everything to Lose

As much as I tried to ignore it, the thought of last night kept drifting back.

Taking a break, I went online to the local newspaper’s site up there, the Bedford RecordReview. I needed to know who the crash victim was. What kind of person was he? A solid citizen? Or dirty? Had I taken someone’s life savings? Or a bundle of cash no one would ever even know was missing?

On the paper’s website, I scrolled past articles on safety in the Pound Ridge Elementary School and one about a Bedford investor who had been bilked out of millions in an insurance scam.

There was nothing on the accident.

Sipping my coffee, I switched over to the Westchester Journal-News, which I knew had a daily police blotter.

The big story of the day was of a Yonkers teenager who’d been eliminated from the TV show The Voice. And something about the second in a series of home break-ins in Chappaqua and Mount Kisco.

I kept scrolling down, passing over dozens of local stories, until under the heading of “More Top Stories.”

Then I saw it: “Fatal Crash on Route 135 near Bedford.”

My heart kind of spurted up, then became still. I told myself that whatever ultimately happened, I didn’t cause what happened to take place and the only reason I’d gone down there was to help. I put down my coffee and clicked on the link.

A man, identified as Joseph Kelty, 65, of Staten Island, New York, was killed last night at approximately 6:40 P.M., when his Honda Civic, driving east on Route 135 between Bedford and Fairfield County, drove off the road and down an embankment, rolling over several times and striking a tree. Mr. Kelty was the only passenger in the car.

Sergeant Neil Polluto, of the Bedford Hills Police Department, said an eyewitness spotted a deer cross the road just before Mr. Kelty’s car began to swerve. It was possible the deceased had been texting at the time of the accident. Mr. Kelty was described as a retired line maintenance manager with the New York City Transit Authority, and it was not known why he was in the area at the time of the accident.

My first reaction was relief. There was no mention of any missing money. No mention of anyone else being on the scene. I’d covered myself well.

My next thoughts were about Kelty. A retired line manager with the New York MTA. I brought back the lifeless, bloodied face. So he wasn’t a criminal. A job like that paid what, I guessed only seventy to eighty thousand a year? So what would he be doing carrying that kind of cash? And all the way up there? In rural Westchester.

I’d promised myself that if the money was legitimate, I’d find a way to get it back.

Fate had intervened. For both of us, I guessed. Before I decide to could keep it, I had to find out as much as I could about him.

I went back to the article.

Funeral services for the deceased are being made through Dellapone Funeral Home in Midland Beach on Staten Island.

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_282d5002-b8db-541e-bdc5-006d44a22c05)

That same day two men stood near a construction site on West Forty-fourth Street in New York City, just off Times Square.

One was large, with bushy dark hair in a black leather jacket that he wore open, as if he didn’t feel the February chill. He was devouring a sausage in a bun from a nearby food cart.

The other was in a blue-and-orange New York Knicks jacket, his baseball cap turned backward.

“Seventy thousand dollars is quite a sum,” the large one, whose name was Yuri, said in a heavy Russian accent. “I tell you that Sergei Lukov is patient man. He shows you restraint, out of respect for your circumstances. I think you know what I’m saying, right? But even a starving whore stays at home when her putchko is aching …”

“Meaning what …?” The man in the Knicks jacket put his back against the scaffolding.

“Meaning everyone has their limits,” the burly Russian replied. Then he shrugged. “Maybe the saying was not so good.”

The other man took a sip of coffee. “I think I get the routine.”

“’Course you get routine. Your people invented routine, right? You probably seen this movie a thousand times. Hey—you sure you don’t want one of these?” The Russian showed him the half-eaten sausage that looked small in his meaty palms. “I come all the way from Brooklyn just for these. You’re missing something good.”

“Thanks, but I never eat anything that would have killed me if it was alive.”

Yuri furrowed his brow. “Pig are so vicious over here?”

“Boar,” the man in the Knicks jacket said. “Cinghiale means wild boar. It’s Italian.”

“Oh.” The Russian looked askance at what was left of his sausage and chomped another large bite off nonetheless. “Boar, huh? Anyway, you know it goes up, Thursday. Three days. Eighty thousand then. Pig or boar.”

“Like the national debt.” The man in the cap pointed to the digital sign on a building high above them, the numbers racing. “Except with a Russian accent.”

“Ha! Good one! Except is Ukraine …” Yuri elbowed him good-naturedly. “Back home, you could get knife in skull for that. Or radiation bath. Chernobyl cocktail, we call it. Very popular at home today. Here, Ukraine, Russian … Like pig and boar, no one knows difference. No harm, no worry, right?”

“No harm, no foul,” the man in the Knicks jacket corrected him.

“Yes. Sorry my English is, how you say, work in progress.” Yuri shrugged. “But my math is still good. And real meaning is, what you don’t want is for this loan to become even more expensive. By that I mean you have no way to pay, so we need to collect, how you call it … in trade. Maybe at your job. I think you have strong idea what I mean by this.”

The man looked at him. Neither of them were laughing now. He nodded. “I have a strong idea.”

“Good. So then you know how life gets truly fucked up for a good guy like you. Where loan gets really expensive. Then it’s not just money—money you can always find. It’s kind of life loan, if you get what I’m saying? And you keep paying and paying. Clock never stops. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick …”

“I get it,” the man in the Knicks cap said.

“I know. Because people like us, once we get in your life, we don’t leave so easy. We like cousin from Tbilis who stays on your couch. Your wife cooks for him, mends socks, washes clothes. Then one day you come home and catch him fucking your wife on your couch. And he looks at you with pants down and says, ‘Fuck are you doing here …?’ You see my point? Like that, but whole lot worse. Anyway, I’m trying to do you good turn here. Even though I offer to buy you lunch and you turn me down. I still try to give you good advice.”

“You seem to have a lot of sayings, Yuri.” The man in the Knicks cap crumpled his Styrofoam cup and tossed it in a bin.

“Is true. And I have one more … You don’t need beard to be philosopher. And I’m glad you appreciate”—Yuri chortled and elbowed the man— “because Thursday, seventy thousand becomes eighty. Then goes to ninety. Then …” He wiped his chin with his napkin. “Don’t keep Sergei Lukov waiting too much longer.” He backed away, winking, but a wink that no longer had mirth in it. More like a warning. “Because next time, pig or boar, won’t make one piece of difference, understand what I mean, Lieutenant?”

CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_60d1efb5-6a77-5dbb-a1db-e98719c9ee8e)

It had been three months since the driving winds and unchecked tides from superstorm Sandy swept over Staten Island, battering the middle-class communities of Tottenville, Oakwood, and Midland Beach, situated along New York Bay.

A lot of us who lived in the area never fully appreciated the full impact of the storm. In Armonk, thirty miles to the north, it was mainly a wind event—downed trees and mangled power lines blocking the roads for weeks, resulting in close to two weeks without power.

The heartbreak of the Jersey shore and Staten Island seemed a million miles away.

But driving across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge three days later and seeing the devastation for the first time, it looked to me as if the storm had just happened yesterday.

Homes along the shore were split wide open. Streets were still blocked with whatever the tides and winds had thrown around. A tanker was aground, with the famous message written on the hull: FEMA CALL ME! There were mountains of random debris. From the bridge I could see boats and cars still piled in streets and driveways like discarded toys. Power lines twisted at right angles. My mind flashed to the angry residents who appeared on the news, screaming about how FEMA hadn’t even come around yet, how insurance companies were ignoring them, how they were living in cramped, remote motel rooms, unable to even gain access to their own battered homes.The rebuilding hadn’t even begun.

I swung off the bridge onto Hylan Boulevard. Midland Beach was about two miles south.

Where Joseph Kelty had his home.

I was lucky to even make it to St. Barnabas’s, ignoring what the GPS was telling me, searching for any street that was even open. I had to walk the last three blocks on foot. The church was on Rector Street, a few blocks inland from the demolished shore.

There was a line of people leading into the church, an old red-stone Romanesque-style structure with a bell tower. I took a seat in the back and waited while the pews filled in. Finally the organist played a hymn and people turned; the family began to file down the main aisle. I saw a nice-looking man in his mid-thirties with his arm around the shoulders of a young boy. He had to be Kelty’s son and a grandson. He followed a woman who looked around my age with her husband and two kids. They took their seats. Maybe a hundred people were there. The organist stopped. Finally the priest stood up.