Peter Landesman: Blood Acre

"Buddy," Nathan says with false bravado.

"Mister Stein."

"It's cold."

"It's cold, yessir."

Behind the counter the old black man stands on wooden skids laid over pools of brine and sandy mud.

"Staying out of trouble?"

"Am, sir."

Nathan wags his finger. "You're bad for business."

Buddy smiles and his toothless face presses in like a rotten fruit.

"How many?"

Nathan looks over his shoulder at the stand-up bar lining the window. At one end, a pair of men eating: businessman, junkman. At the other stands Krivit.

"Three. With everything. And coffee."

"Four fifty."

Nathan peels off a twenty, holds up his hand. "Keep it," he says, and goes to the window bar with the tray. He passes a hot dog to his right.

"I don't like to be kept waiting, Stein." Krivit taps his watch. "One hour. How could you be late today?"

He grabs at the hot dog and the right side of his face balloons, his eye almost disappears. As Nathan lifts his coffee, his sleeve falls away. A patch of skin on the wrist has purpled.

"That's a nice little scratch there."

"Damn cat," Nathan says, spilling coffee, snatching at a used tissue on the counter. He dabs nervously at the brown puddle but feels Krivit's eyes on his wrist again and slides his hand deep in his coat pocket.

"You don't have a cat," Krivit says.

Nathan feels first surprise, then indignation, having believed for the moment his own lie.

"The cunt bit you too, you know," Krivit says. "You got to watch that these days."

Nathan grins, gathering his wits, and spreads out his hands dramatically. It is something he's good at, something he knows to do, screw up his mouth and arch his eyebrows in an attitude of profound disbelief: Can you believe it?-as he might do at Yankee Stadium when someone all of New York reveres and counts on does something incomprehensibly witless, drops a pop fly, boots a routine grounder; things thirty thousand rabid fans would not ever have done themselves-not for eight million a year. His profound disbelief in the face of dramatic but ultimately trivial things. Can you believe what the 'udge said? Can you believe she actually bit me?

"You shouldn't let them get away from you," Krivit warns.

Nathan knows there is a question he should ask but he sidesteps it, slides around, finds something else. "Just tell me what you have. "

"A little deep-sea fishing."

"The fishing," Nathan says, "is still better up north. Washington Heights-"

“Minnows, Stein. Greedy minnows. Bullshit. Boring."

"Boring," Nathan echoes.

"Today I'm offering ambition. Russian kikes."

Nathan sips at his coffee then sucks in, his tongue burnt. "I don't do ambition." He fingers his tongue. "Ambition is complicated."

A pleased smile plays on Krivit's lips. "I got you this because you fucked up, and you need to make new friends."

Nathan passes him a second hot dog. Krivit shrugs his left shoulder. Nathan glances over at the family standing by the counter. The father wears heavy black clothes, the mother a peasant dress and wool shawl. An older girl in her twenties, slim, tight 'eans and sweater. An anonymous boy levels at Nathan an expression darkened either by adolescence or plain wrath or some combination of both. They all have the parboiled features of Slavs, people with thick fingers and pillowy palms. No makeup, no flash. No one is talking, no one is having fun. It could be a regular family outing.

Krivit takes a swipe at his forehead, panting. "They look like peasants, but they're into smack, whores, rackets. Not big time. Not yet. But just wait. The Russians will own Brooklyn. They'll own everyone."

The parents and the girl nibble at their food, their eyes roaming over the plastic menu displays overhead. The boy glares on, unrelenting, as though waging some dumb high-school war.

"It's the kid?"

"His brother. Bail denied. That's all we're talking about. A simple writ."

"That's what I'm doing here?"

"It's due tomorrow."

Nathan looks at him. "Tomorrow."

"If we have to maybe we can have the case sent Rodriguez's way." Krivit wipes the corners of his mouth. "You can still arrange for that?"

Nathan considers his coffee, as though the cup itself holds the consequences of bribing a judge. "Tomorrow," he says again. He has taken liberties with judge Rodriguez only once, and even he would be hard-pressed to call it an actual buy: he'd given Rodriguez tickets to Madama Butterfly, his own coveted seat-eighth-eigth-row-center orchestra-in return for the small accommodation of rescheduling a hearing past the statute of limitations for a speedy trial, that magic date after which you fly as free as a bird But the business with Rodriguez was harmless, really, if not just. The defendant, a thief of petty sums in a neighborhood of crack dealers and junkies, an irritant to everyone, was set free on the condition of skipping town. Goodbye and good luck.

Nathan's hands settle before him in an attitude of prayer. Down the window bar it is just the junkman now, moved on to a paper cup of beer. "I had this friend who once mentioned that he knew somebody who once mentioned he might be able to do something."

"You still have these friends?"

"My friends can become their friends, but what are the terms?"

"Two-fifty."

Nathan darts another took back at the family.

"Don't look at them again. They don't eat on Mulberry Street and thumb their noses at the cops. They're in they're out, they'll slit your throat in broad daylight, bim-bam."

"Two hundred fifty thousand," Nathan murmurs.

"A rush job. They're anxious people, family people. Regular Waltons."

"What's mine?" Nathan asks.

“Fifty.”

“Fif-”

"Fuck you, Stein. You keep fucking up all over the place, you're stealing ball bonds, you have some real estate thing going on, this phone scam, your stock goes down not up, know what I mean?”

"How do you know-”

"Think of it as a temporary readjustment in your share price."

Nathan swallows. "Pricing yourself out of a future, Krivit."

Krivit's glasses have steamed over. "Look, you fuck. Don't you threaten me. I can get anybody. I'll get your bonehead partner. That schmuck. He'd sell his goddamn mother. He'd suck his own cock for twenty bucks. What's his name?"

Nathan shakes his head. "He's not a partner. He works with Milton.

"That's your problem."

"Schreck. Oliver."

"That's him. That fuck."

Nathan does not often look at Krivit. He doesn't, for instance, even know the color of his eyes. Now he sees that they are light blue, almost pretty. Nathan smiles to himself. A song comes to his head, the climactic aria from last night's Figaro, the sweet soprano in the lead opening her mouth to the cavernous Met and setting free the birds. And Isabel, sitting beside him in a lovely red dress, a flowery print, and black hair swept back in a bun. Her hand in his, her fingers long now and talented. Nathan begins to hum, falsetto.

"So why me?" he says between phrases. "Why not Milton?"

Krivit scowls. "He's got bigger fish to fry." He lifts his shapeless arm and waves it through the air to the muddy floor, the barren streets, the abandoned Wonderwheel. The sneakers kicking at the wind. Fuck Whitie.

"You're what I could get on short notice. You need- Will you just cut out that serenade?"

Nathan stops. His eyes follow a squad car rushing up Surf Avenue, its headlamps blinking and emergency lights spinning. It takes a corner fast and heads for the boardwalk. Twenty years ago, Coney Island children came to the windows of Milton's Silver Shadow and offered pocket change for a ride. Milton took the pennies and nickels and came out of Famous's with a box of hot dogs for all of them. He lifted them and put them behind the wheel, laughing; they stretched over the leather and touched the true wood paneling, black kids all of them, good kids, kids with half a chance until tomorrow. Then he drove away complaining to Nathan with sweeps of his fat hand, Nigger this, Nigger that. Spic whores.