Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go

FIFTEEN

My uncle Costa is not my uncle. He is not my father’s brother, or my grandfather’s, or a distant cousin, and I’m fairly certain that there is none of his blood running through my veins. But to Greeks, this is a minor detail. Costa is as much a part of my family as any man can be.

Ten years younger than my grandfather, Big Nick Stefanos, Costa came to this country from a village outside Sparta. Though I’ve not confirmed it, it’s been said that Costa killed his sister’s groom over a dowry dispute the night after their wedding and then left Greece the following day. He worked for many years as a grille man in my grandfather’s coffee shop downtown and lived above it in a small apartment with his wife, Toula. In the forties, my grandfather hit the number in a big way and staked Costa in his own store, a lunch counter on 8th and K.

Children tend to force assimilation in their immigrant parents, and as Costa and Toula were childless, Costa never fully embraced the American culture. But he loved his adopted country as much as any native-born, and he was especially enamored of the opportunities available for men who had the desire to work. Fiercely loyal to my grandfather, he remained friends with him until Big Nick’s death. I saw Costa on holidays after that and spoke to him on the phone several times a year. The last time he phoned, it was to tell me that he had cancer and had only a short time to live.

The beer in my hand wouldn’t help Costa, but it would make it easier for me to look at him. I sat in my car on Randolph Street, off 13th, in front of Costa’s brick row house. When I had taken the last swig, I crushed the can and tossed it over my shoulder behind the seat. I locked my car and took the steps up to his concrete porch, where I rang the bell. The door opened, and a handsome, heavy-hipped woman stood in the frame.

“Nick Stefanos. I’m here to see my uncle.”

“Come on in.”

I entered the small foyer at the base of the stairs. The air was still, as it always was in Costa’s house, but added to the stillness now was the distinct stench of human excrement. The nurse closed the door behind me and caught the look on my face.

“He’s nearly incontinent,” she said. “He has been for some time.”

“That smell.”

“I do the best I can.”

I could hear Costa’s voice, calling from his bedroom up the stairs. He was speaking in Greek, saying that his stomach was upset, asking for some ginger ale to settle it.

“He wants some soda,” I said.

“I can’t understand him,” she said, “when he’s talkin’ Greek.”

“I’ll get it for him,” I said, and moved around her.

I went to the kitchen, dark except for some gray light bleeding in from the screens of the back porch. Two cats scattered when I walked in, then one returned and rubbed against my shin as I found the ginger ale and poured it into a glass. There were probably a dozen cats around the house, on the porch or in the dining room or down in the basement. Generations of them had lived here and out in the alley; Costa collected them like children.

The nurse sat in a chair in the foyer as I walked out of the kitchen. She fumbled in her pack for a cigarette. I struck a match and gave her a light.

“Thanks.”

“I’ll just go on up,” I said.

“There’s a metal cup by the bed. He probably needs to urinate. You might want to help him out. He won’t wear those panties from the hospital. You know I tried-”

“I’ll take care of it.”

I went up the stairs, made an abrupt turn on the narrow landing, and entered his room. Several icons hung on florid, yellowed wallpaper and a candle burned in a red glass holder next to the door. A window-unit air conditioner set on low produced the only sound in the room. Costa was in his bed, underneath the sheets. Even though he was covered, I could see that he had atrophied to the size of a boy.

“Niko,” he said.

“Theo Costa.”

I pulled a chair up next to the bed and had a seat. With my help, he managed to sit up, leaning on one knotty elbow. I put the glass to his lips and tilted it. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he closed his eyes and drank.

“Ah,” he said, his head falling back to the pillow, two bulged yellow eyes staring at the ceiling.

“You gotta take a leak now?”

“Okay.” he›

I found the metal cup on the nightstand, pulled back the covers on the bed. He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. Pustulated bedsores ringed the sides of his legs and the sagging flesh of his buttocks. Freshly scrubbed patches of brown, the remnants of his own waste, stained the bed. I took his uncircumcised penis in my hand and laid the head of it inside the lip of the cup. Costa relaxed his muscles and filled the cup.

“Goddamn,” he said. “That’s good.”

I put the cup back on the nightstand and pulled the covers over his chest. He left his arms out and took my hand. The American flag tattoo on his painfully thin forearm had faded to little more than a bruise.

“Does it hurt much?” I said.

Costa blinked. “It hurts pretty good.”

“That nurse taking care of you?”

“She’s all right. Now, the one before, the other one?” He made a small sweep of his hand, as if the hand had kicked her ass out the door. “But this one, she’s okay. Has two kids; she’s raising them by herself. She’s a hard worker. This one, she’s okay.” Costa licked his blistered lips.

“You want some more ginger ale?”

“I’d like a real goddamn drink, that’s what. But I can’t. It hurts, after.”

“I’ll get you one if you want.”

“So you can have one, too, eh?”

“What do you mean?”

“You been drinkin’ already. I can smell it on you.”

“I had a beer on the way over. Can’t get anything by that nose of yours.”

“You got a nose on you, too, goddamn right.”

He laughed, then coughed behind the laugh. I waited for him to settle down.

“You know what?” he said. “I think I had a pretty good life, Niko.”

“I know you did.”

“I had a good woman, worked hard, stayed here in this house, even after everyone else got scared and moved away. You know, I’m the last white man on this block.”

“I know.”

“I did a few bad things, Niko, but not too many.”

“You talking about your brother-in-law, in Greece?”

“Ah. I don’t give a damn nothing about him. No, I mean here, in the old days, with your papou, before you were born. We got into some trouble, had a gunfight with some guys. Lou DiGeordano and a Greek named Peter Karras, they were with us. I was thinking of it this morning. Trying to think of the bad things I did. Trying to remembyinghter.”

“What happened?”

“It doesn’t matter. Your papou, he stopped that kind of business when you came to him. I stopped, too.” Costa turned his head in my direction. “You’re going to come into some money, Niko, when I go. You know it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your papou — everything he had, the money from the businesses, what he made from the real estate, everything, it’s going to come to you. I’ve been taking care of it, just like he had it in his will. I swear on his grave, I haven’t touched a goddamn penny.”

“I thought it all went to his son in Greece-my father.”

“ You are your papou’s son. He felt it, told me so many times. He always said that the best Greeks were the ones who got on the boats and came to America. It was the lazy ones that stayed behind. He thought his own son was not ready to inherit his money.” Costa grimaced. “He was waiting for you to grow up a little bit before he gave it to you, that’s all.”

“I don’t want his money,” I said as a cold wave of shame washed through me.

“Sure you don’t,” he said. “But money makes life easier. Anyway, when the lawyers get through with it, and Uncle Sam, there’s not going to be much left, believe me. So take it. It’s what he wanted.”

Costa sucked air in sharply and arched his back. I squeezed his hand. He breathed out slowly, then relaxed.

“You better get some rest,” I said.

“I got plenty time to rest,” he said.

“Go to sleep, Theo Costa.”

“Niko?”

“Sir?”

“Enjoy yourself, boy. I can remember the day I stepped off the boat onto Ellis Island. I can still smell it, like I stepped off that boat this morning. It’s like I blinked my eyes and now I’m old. It goes, Niko. It goes too goddamn fast.”

He closed his eyes. Slowly, his breathing became more regular. Some time later, his hand relaxed in mine and he fell to sleep. Sitting there, I found myself hoping that he would die, just then. But he wasn’t ready. For whatever reason, he held on until the fall.

When the light outside the window turned from gray to black, I left the room and walked back down the stairs. I went to the dining room and found the liquor cabinet, near an ornate wall mirror covered with a blanket. Costa’s nurse sat at the dining room table, smoking a cigarette. I took a bottle of five-star Metaxa and couple of glasses and had a seat across from her. I poured her a brandy, then one for me. We drank together without a word, beneath the dim light of a chandelier laced with cobwebs and already shrouded in dust.

When I returned to my apartment, I saw that Lyla sant› ‹ had left a message on my machine. I phoned her and she asked if I wanted some company. I told her that it might not be a good idea.

“What, have you got something else happening?”

“No,” I said. “I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”

“Maybe tomorrow night, huh?”

“Tomorrow’s looking kind of busy for me.”

“Nick, what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I said, and shifted gears. “Hey, how’d it go with your editor yesterday?”

“It went all right,” she said, and then there was a fat chunk of silence.

“What happened?”

“It was about that day, after we had lunch. In Chinatown?”

“Sure.”

“Well, I had a few wines that day, if you remember, and then I went back to the office and finished off this story I was working on. Usually, I wait, go back to it, check it for style and all that. But I was on a deadline, so I turned it in right after I finished it.”

“And?”

“It was all fucked up, Nick. Jack gave me an earful about it, and he was right. It was really bad.”

“So what’s the mystery? You shouldn’t be drinkin’ when you’re writing copy, you know that.”

“That’s some advice,” Lyla said, “coming from a guy who stumbled in this morning after sunup and couldn’t even get out of his own pants.”

“That’s me, baby. It doesn’t have to be you.”

“Anyway, Jack hit me right between the eyes with it. Said I drink too much, that maybe I’ve got a problem. What do you think?”

“You said yourself, I’m not the one to ask. All’s I know, you wanted to be a journalist since you were a kid. I guess you’ve got to figure out what you want more. I mean, fun’s fun, but the days of wine and roses have to come to an end.”

“ ‘The Days of Wine and Roses’?” she said. “The Dream Syndicate.”

“That’s my line,” I said.

Lyla said, “Yeah, I beat you to it. I knew you were going to say it.”

“It only shows, maybe you been with me too long.”

“I don’t think so, Nick.”

“Lyla, I’ve really got to go.”

“You sure there’s nothing wrong?”

“Nothing wrong, Notht="0em" w” I said. “Bye.”

I had a couple of beers and went to bed. My sleep was troubled, and I woke before dawn with wide-open eyes. I dressed and drove down to the river, looking for a crazy black man in a brilliant blue coa t. Nothing. I watched the sun rise, then drove back to Shepherd Park.

After I made coffee, I phoned Jack LaDuke.

“LaDuke!”

“Nick!”

“Get over here, man. Early start today.”

“Half hour,” he said, and hung up the phone.

I found my Browning Hi-Power, wrapped in cloth in the bottom of my dresser. I cleaned and oiled it, loaded two magazines, and replaced the gun in the drawer. Just as I closed the drawer, LaDuke knocked on my front door.