Icarus

SIX

It took Jack less than fifteen minutes to drive down to the Fourteenth Street meat market area. At five o'clock in the morning, it took less than fifteen minutes to drive almost anywhere in Manhattan.

His destination was two blocks south of Fourteenth, Gansevoort Street, where he turned right off Ninth Avenue. As always, over the past year or so, he was surprised by the almost daily change in the neighborhood. Much of it was as it had always been, at least for a long stretch of the twentieth century. The streets were old cobblestone, half the buildings were still warehouses – meat lockers and butchers – with generations represented by the words "And Sons" on almost every sign. Most could just as easily have read "And Grandson and Great-Grandson." The neighborhood was also still a haven – a graveyard, Caroline always said – for all the hot dog vendors in the city; these were the buildings where every street cart was stored. Watching the vendors roll out or roll in at the beginning and end of each day gave Jack the eerie feeling of being in a time long past, before fast food chains and department stores and Internet shopping. But the twenty-first century was rapidly encroaching on this last bastion of blue-collar Manhattan. Many of the butchers had succumbed to the high rents and disappeared, replaced by art galleries and chic women's clothing stores. Warehouses were being converted into precious co-ops. And upscale restaurants were springing up on every corner, luring models and actors and rappers with their posses. Briefly, Jack and Caroline had thought about opening up another place in what was being dubbed the Lower West Side but Jack had spent much of his adult life escaping from there. He loved taking quick dips back into this part of his past but, no matter how hip and trendy the area was becoming, he didn't want to retreat there on a full-time basis.

He eased the car over to the right side of Gansevoort and parked directly in front of Dominick Bertolini's Meat Mart. A burly guy, his back to Jack, his overalls and white T-shirt streaked with blood, was lugging a huge side of beef out toward a truck. He glanced at Jack's car, a hostile glance, started to yell that he couldn't park there, then as Jack stepped out the hostility turned to recognition. He turned back toward his heavy load and, as Jack walked past him, nodded a professional hello.

Jack stepped over a streak of light-red liquid – blood mixed with water – that was slowly streaming out of the warehouse. As he hopped up onto the metal-grating platform and toward the heavy sliding door that led to the enormous warehouse, he could hear, even from outside, the thudding and slamming of cleavers slicing through meat and striking into a butcher block.

He stepped inside and could see Dom, writing at a small desk. His right arm – what was left of it – was holding down a piece of paper. His left hand was busy scribbling. As usual, he was muttering to himself as he wrote. Jack waited; he didn't say anything, just watched the old man concentrate on his figures. His back was ramrod straight. And even under his butcher's whites it was easy to see that his stomach was still flat as a board and his good arm was still hard and muscular. The old man was astonishing. He hadn't aged a day since they'd first met, Jack thought. Still as feisty, still as hardworking. Still as strong and arrogant as ever. He was certain that Dom didn't know he was there and Jack was content to watch and admire, to let his friend work, but then he heard the familiar cigarette-and-whiskey-stained voice say, "What, you got the hots for me, you're just standin' there starin' at my ass?"

Dom turned now to look at Jack. His head was bobbing up and down – a sign of his usual nervous energy as well as his seventy-five years – and he growled, "Whaddya want?"

"Why do you ask me what I want every day when you know damn well you're gonna tell me what I want?"

"I don't want you to feel like you don't matter."

"So what do I want?" Jack asked.

"Baby lamb. Beautiful. All organic, four, five months old, twenty-four, twenty-five pounds. And before you ask, since I know you got weird notions of fair play and like to support the area, yeah, they come from around here, New Jersey, from Burden Farm."

"Okay, I'll take-"

"Jackie, gimme some credit, will ya? You'll take two hundred and seventy pounds, that'll cover you for three days. I already broke it down – shoulder, loin, chops, neck, and thighs for braising, no brain, no head. Although why you don't hire yourself a chef who knows how to cook brains…"

"You try selling brains to my customers, okay, Dom?"

"Your customers could use some brains, Jackie boy. That's a damn fact." He cackled, then walked over to one of the four-month-old lambs, not yet broken down, hanging from a ceiling hook. Dom slapped it and the thick sound reverberated for a moment in the warehouse. "Look at this baby. She's a poem is what she is, Jackie. You know how many people I give somethin' like this to? You. And you alone. And you know why?"

"I pay you more than anybody."

"Because you know the difference."

Dom walked back over to the desk, reached into an already open drawer, and pulled out a bottle of scotch. Nothing fancy. Plain old Johnnie Walker Black. Jack had tried to buy him aged and expensive bottles of single-malt but Dom would have nothing to do with them. A shot glass was already sitting on top of the desk and Dom filled it to the brim. "Care to join me?" he asked.

"It's five-thirty in the morning."

"Is that too early or too late?" When Jack didn't answer, Dom said, "Besides, I'm celebratin'."

"What are you celebrating?"

"The fact that it's five-thirty in the morning. Always happy to see another one roll around."

He downed the shot, licked his lips happily, and put the glass back on the desktop. Then he stepped over to Jack, the sleeve of his apron covering the stump that was his right arm. With his left, he wound up as if to throw a punch. The fist moved toward Jack's cheek, a perfectly thrown hook, even now, even at his age, then the hand opened and curled around Jack's neck. Dom pulled Jack closer and smacked a kiss on his cheek.

"What was that for?"

"She's away, ain't she?"

Dom adored Caroline. And rarely called her by name. It was as if to name her was to insult her. She was, under most circumstances, "she." Jack always told her it was the royal version, with a capital S.

"Yes. She's away."

"Well, I figured you'd take a little smoochin' wherever you could get it then, Jackie."

With that, the old man cackled his raspy laugh again, gave Jack a hard slap on the back of the neck, turned and headed across the market. Jack knew he was supposed to follow so he did. He smiled, thinking of Dom's relationship with Caroline. A more unlikely pair never existed. Yet she was one of the few people Dom trusted. And it was the same for Caroline. She loved the old man. Could make herself vulnerable with him, which she couldn't do with many people. Jack wondered if Dom had had a similar relationship with his mother. Had Joanie Keller loved and trusted him, too? Whenever Jack allowed himself to think about it, the answer always came up yes.

"Do you have to keep calling me Jackie?" he said to Dom as he followed.

"Yeah, 'cause it's what I always called you. And always will call you. Now, you wanna do some business? 'Cause I got some other good stuff for you."

Jack sighed. "Okay, lay it on me, old man."

"Do you have to keep calling me old man?"

"It's what I've always called you."

Dom shook his head and grumbled to himself but soon was all business as he led Jack through the room to show him the merchandise. "I got you eighty pounds of organic chicken, should be good for two days, I got plenty more comin' in, no need to overstock. Your chef asked for three days' worth of veal, a hundred and sixty pounds. Three days of rib eye, four hundred pounds; another four hundred of sirloin; fifty pounds of hanger steak; thirty pounds of duck, cut up – you guys can take the meat off the legs and breasts yourself. What are you doin' tonight?"

"Jesus, you really are getting old. I'm having dinner with you, then I'm driving to Virginia."

"Drivin'?"

"Yeah. After we open I thought Caroline and I would drive back, take a couple of days off. Stop off at a bed-and-breakfast or two. Kind of like a hundred and thirty-seventh honeymoon."

"You know where I was gonna take your mom on the honeymoon?" Dom asked suddenly.

"Yes," Jack said. "Italy."

"I guess I told you that, huh?"

"I guess you did."

"Never been there," Dom said. "Never been to Italy."

"You'll go."

"Nah," Dom said, not a trace of self-pity in his voice, just stating fact. "I never been anywhere. I'll never go anywhere."

"My mom would have liked Italy, I bet. She would have liked going there with you."

Dom stared at Jack, his leathery mouth and chin moving in a kind of smile, then once again he threw a perfect roundhouse left. And again, he wound up grabbing Jack by the scruff of his neck. His grip was hard and firm and felt good. The old man's calluses scraped against Jack's skin and sent pleasurable shivers up and down his spine.

"You're a good boy, Jackie. You're a good boy."

"Forty-one in a couple of weeks. Some boy."

"Forty-one… Jesus… that makes me-"

"A hundred and eight."

Dom shook his head as mournfully as he could manage. "You never gave me nothin' but a hard time."

"'Cause you never liked nothin' but a hard time." Jack leaned over to him, gave him a quick hug and kissed him on top of the forehead. "Don't work too hard."

Jack heard a mumbled "Yeah, yeah, that'll be the day," on his way out, and when he turned back to wave good-bye, Dom was already busy lugging a 150-pound side of pork under his arm.

"See you at six," Jack said to nobody in particular. And for the first time in years, he found himself staring at the warehouse floor, at the spot where he knew Sal Demeter had fallen, and he was thinking about Sal and his sudden death, about Kid and his disappearance. No, he said to himself. Don't do this. No more ghosts.

Think about Caroline, his inner voice told him.

Think about tomorrow. And the restaurant. And Charlottesville.

Turning his back on the market, walking slowly out to his car, he even moved his lips, just slightly, and whispered to himself, "No more ghosts." And to be on the safe side, he did it one more time.

"No more ghosts."