“He’s missing and I’ve no doubt that the people who killed your mother—”
“She was murdered?”
I nodded.
“How do you know by looking at one photo that she’s the dead woman you found?”
I looked down at the ground. “I’d love to be wrong, but I’m not.”
She doubled over in shock and in grief. “My mother’s dead? She can’t be dead, can’t be. And my son. Where’s my son?”
She wailed and drooled and dripped, running her fingernails down the sides of her face.
“Is his name Charlie?”
“How did you know? There’s something you’re not telling me. I swear to God I’ll rip your eyes out—”
“You called him Charlie a moment ago. ‘I didn’t want Charlie to catch it.’ That’s what you said.”
“Charles. Charles Simon, but I call him Charlie. I’m Barbara Simon.”
“And you looked all over your mother’s apartment for him?”
“It’s a townhouse in a mews. And, yes, I looked all over. Upstairs, main floor, basement, garage. Not there. I called for Charlie, he didn’t answer. They’ve been gone such a long time. No windows open. No air on. Too warm.”
The woman was beginning to hyperventilate.
“My mother opens windows on days like today. No one’s been there since this morning.”
I know about sudden loss. It bites you in the behind and grabs you and shakes you. It takes everything from you, not just your loved one. And it takes it away bit by bit. There’s the first shock when part of your mind flushes away. Then your heart goes. Next your energy. Your sense of delight. It takes the you from you and either makes you numb or turns you into a screaming bag of bones. I wasn’t going to leave this woman while she disappeared, no, not for nothing.
“Is there any chance he could be with a neighbor? Did your mother have friends in the area? Perhaps she dropped him off while she ran an errand and—”
She shook her head. “She’d never do that. Never let him out of her sight. He’s only four.”
“Anyone live with you?”
She looked at me like I’d gone loopy.
“Bear with me. Answer the question.”
“Just a husband and wife. She cleans. He gardens, does the, you know, manly chores like fix the screens, mow the lawn, does some gardening, we have a small backyard, he greases the garage door, that sort of thing.”
“Home all the time?”
She nodded. “Except for shopping day, but that’s Wednesday.”
“Have you spoken with them today?”
“No, why would I? You’re wasting my time.”
“Your mother wouldn’t have dropped Charlie off at your home this morning? Perhaps the killer wanted to meet her somewhere and she brought him home, change of plans?”
“Oh my God I never thought of that.” She brought out a phone from her back pocket, made a quick call. “Dora, it’s Barbara. Fine. Listen, Mary didn’t drop Charlie off by any chance this morning did she? She listened for a bit and slowly lowered the phone, shaking her head, the tears flowing down her cheeks again. She rummaged in her purse, brought out a tissue and blew her nose, rocked her head from side to side.
I slammed a fist into my side. Why had I given her hope? My blood seemed to have turned to ice water and I saw bright lights, blinked and felt something slow and deliberate leaking from my bad eye. I swiped it away with my hand. “Do you have a recent picture of him?”
She nodded, scrabbled in her pocketbook, and held it up. I saw the picture of a little boy, perhaps four, so sweet, sad brown eyes, chestnut hair, serious mouth. She teared up and told me again how this couldn’t be happening.
“Do you have a digital copy?”
She didn’t understand.
“Do you have the picture in your phone?”
She made a few taps and the same photo appeared. I asked her to send it to me and gave her my cell number. In seconds I had it.
“Your mother’s name?”
“Mary … Mary Ward Simon.” She told me her mother lived in the mews at the end of College Place.
“Behind the old D’Agostino’s?”
She shrugged.
“Behind the CVS on Henry?”
“That’s it, a small street. The mews on College Place. She lives in the house at the end, 38 College Place.”
The station was only a few blocks away and she wasn’t in any condition to drive. Somehow I held her shoulder as we walked and managed to send a text to Denny. Reluctantly I sent it to Jane as well, telling them I’d found the daughter of the dead woman and was able to identify the victim as Mary Ward Simon and gave them her address. “Headed there now with the daughter. Meet us,” I texted. I also told them that her four-year old son who was with Mary Ward Simon this morning, according to the daughter, was missing, giving them the particulars, telling them I feared abduction by Simon’s murderers. I attached the digitized photo and asked them to contact all law enforcement agencies in the area.
“The police will meet us at your mother’s house.”
“What about my son?”
“They’re doing everything they can right now to find your son. They’ve got all law enforcement agencies involved, including the FBI.”
Turning into College Place, I smelled something strange for the time of year. Cordite, as if someone had been setting off fire crackers, and there was a heavy smell of gasoline. The closer we got to the end of the block, the more pungent the odor became. Barbara Simon didn’t seem to notice, but I pulled out my book and wrote to myself. I’m always doing that, not that I follow up or anything, but this time I would.
I had another thought and tapped into my contacts to look up an associate from my days at Brown’s, Tig Able, now an FBI field agent and left a message for him to contact me asap about a missing four-year-old boy, a probable abduction. Then I texted him the same message I’d sent to Denny and Jane, attaching Charlie’s photo. In a few seconds I got a reply text from Tig saying they’d received the bulletin from NYPD and were on it and he’d call me in a couple of hours with an update.
We walked to the end of the block and I saw the street number, 38, in brass on the door. Barbara Simon opened her mother’s house and we went inside.
In the entryway I folded my arms and closed my eyes, taking two or three deep breaths. Going through her home was as close as I was going to get to meeting Mary Ward Simon. I tried to feel the spirit of the deceased. I imagined I heard her laughter, felt the warmth of her presence. If she were alive, she’d have been a gracious host, come to the door to meet us, all smiles, offer us tea or coffee.
Jane and Willoughby
Jane and her partner, Willoughby sat in the car, Jane at the wheel. They were stuck in early evening traffic.
“Why do they call it rush hour when no one moves?” she asked.
“Same as Good Friday, I figure.”
She didn’t expect an answer, not really, but she should have known. Ask Willoughby something and he always had an answer at the ready.
“Told you this was a bad idea,” she said. “Told you I shouldn’t have turned onto Adams. Why do I listen to you? Now I got to get us out of here and we’re standing still.” Jane stared straight ahead. When they didn’t move, she squirmed in her seat and gave him The Look.
Willoughby unwrapped the hot dog he’d bought from the vendor on Court Street two blocks ago, Jane pulling over so he could pay the man, losing her momentum and getting caught up in the clog of traffic heading for the bridge.
Not only that, it was his second dog. How could he eat so much and stay so trim? Must be all the bed exercise he got. She imagined him humping his girl. She’d met her, too. Sharp chick. How could she fall for him? Must like her meat raw. He’d be on top, that’s for sure, and she’d be sweating bullets and moaning underneath and wondering if she could afford the dress she’d seen that afternoon in Saks.
Jane got bored with the picture show in her head and switched gears. “I got reports to fil
e and I got to get on this new one big time, to say nothing of the other four homicides we got this week and the cold case they got dumped on us the other day.”
Willoughby bit into his hot dog. A huge blob of mustard fell onto the sensitive area between his legs.
“Shit,” he whispered.
Jane slid her eyes over to look, bit her lip. Perfect.
They were still, cars unmoving, exhausts fuming, engines revving.
Willoughby brushed the mustard off as best he could, getting bits of napkin on his brown wool slacks and all over the seat and carpet that she’d just had it cleaned at her brother’s car wash—interior and exterior, wheels polished and shiny, the Bensonhurst special.
“So flick on the siren,” he said. “You’re not the only one with a load. I gotta file my report before I leave, too, don’t forget. And I s’pose you’ll want to meet with the team on this one.”
“Too early, I don’t know where I’m at yet. We got nothing, not even the coroner’s report. But you got napkin all over your parts. Not good for your image and Sally’ll wonder what you been up to.”
She frowned at the road ahead, swimming with fumes and dust. Inched forward. Stopped. She stared at the Watch Tower, slashed with blood from the setting sun. It was squat and unmoving, just like her mind. Didn’t have a clue on this one.
“What’s the matter with you, anyway? You’re getting to be no fun.”
“It’s the pressure. And wipe your mustache—you got napkin and hot dog flakes and God knows what else caught between the hog bristles above your lips.”
She shouldn’t have said that, the bit about the pressure. Willoughby got passed up last month and she was promoted. It meant a raise and he could have used it. His ego was bruised, even she knew that, and she felt ashamed. Ever since then, she’d felt the space between them like a raw hunk of beef she’d swallowed without chewing.
He swiped at his face with his sleeve. “You’re kidding. Better now than it’s ever been since they hired more men.” He looked at her. “And women. And the crime rate’s down. I don’t think pressure’s it. Something else is bothering you.”
“Funny, I must have missed the meeting where they made you Queen Shrink.”
They were silent, the car unmoving.
Jane worried her lip. Damn. He wasn’t her bat boy. “So what do you think it is?”
“No, no. You’re right,” he said, brushing crumbs off his sleeve. “Shouldn’t have said anything. How the hell would I know what’s going on with you, anyway. Sorry I mentioned it.”
“Oh, what the hell.” Jane flipped on her lights and yelped the siren a couple of times. The motorist ahead of them looked in his rear view mirror, his car fixed to the spot. He must have seen that it was a woman driving. Just her luck. Surrounded by the buzzards. Other cars got out of their way, but not Mr. Belligerent. She got on the horn, flicking it a couple of times before she growled, “Move it, buddy and fast or you’ll be obstructing.”
“Now you’re spilling your shit all over the road, Templeton. Grow up.”
That did it. Jane worried the car ahead, almost touching the guy’s rear bumper before he folded. When he did, she sped the rest of the way, pulling into a spot opposite precinct headquarters, jerking and stopping and rocking as much as she could.
Willoughby unfolded his big frame and catapulted out of the car, slamming the door shut and brushing himself off. “Not the pressure, that’s not it,” he said as they walked across the street. “It’s the raccoon with the red curls. You’re so afraid someone’s going to show you up, you got her tits in your sight.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Hell I don’t!”
What was wrong with him, anyway? She wasn’t about to tell him if he couldn’t figure it out. Not now. Too much work right now. And this was going to be a high profile case, she could feel it coming. A high class woman found strangled on the sidewalk of a leafy street in historic Brooklyn Heights. Jesus H. The Eagle was going to have a field day. It would make the neighborhood section of the Times for sure. She’d have to brief the precinct captain as soon as she got to the office. And the chief would call, that’s for sure, he’d be all over her this afternoon, asking her this, telling her that, reminding her how important to her career and to the bureau this case was. Her head was pulsating.
She bit her lip. “The cold case I got last week when Cooper died?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Ever heard of Heights Federal Bank?”
He shook his head and opened the door, making way for her to enter. “Oh, right, I remember now, the bank on Montague that folded a couple of years ago?”
She hated it when he did that—said he didn’t know anything about something, when in fact he knew all about it.
“Can of financial worms crawling all over that one, I remember,” Willoughby said.
She wasn’t about to let him hold the door for her. No sir. So she stopped. “Fina’s mother was up to her eyeballs in it. Carmela Fitzgibbons. Well-liked. Respected. Some kind of executive vice-president. Course they’re all VPs if they work long enough at a bank, but she really was one, she was up there—you know, nose bleed territory. The bank got involved in some shady deals at the height of the real estate market Cooper told me, allowed them or instigated them, whatever. Auditors all over the place. I’ve got to read up on their findings, and I’ll need toothpicks for my lids on that one. I don’t understand the whole thing, not yet at any rate, but I’m going to have to.”
“I want in on that one. I’d like to talk to Carmela, and I studied accounting before switching to criminal justice.”
Well float my boat. Jane smiled her special smile. “Willoughby, you got a deal. The financials are all yours. You can give me one-sentence briefings from time to time, but no detail, please. Only you can’t talk to Carmela. She’s dead. Her body was found on the sidewalk in front of their brownstone, wrists slashed to make like it was a suicide. Only it stank to high heaven—no hesitation marks, no note, no blood. Perp never found. And wouldn’t you know, insurance called it a possible suicide.”
“They would. Funny suicide if you ask me. Find a body like that outside? In the bathtub, sure, but outside?”
“It was never solved.”
“How old?” he asked.
“Her body was found October 1, 2006. Fina was in high school. Father long gone.”
“Poor kid. No wonder she’s so …”
“So what? Finish your sentence. ‘No wonder she’s so snotty’?”
“I was thinking more like intense. No wonder she’s so intense. The body of her mother found in the same spot as the woman was today?”
Jane looked at Willoughby and at the door. He was still holding it open. “Almost. If she’d just be half-way decent, I’d sympathize, but she comes across like a Russian tank. Gotta get there before everybody else. Rolling, rolling, rolls right over you.”
Her phone buzzed. So let him wait a little bit longer with the door and all. She read the text, read it again and felt her tits tighten.
“Holy Be-F’in’ J”
“What?”
“Fina’s got the vic’s ID. Lived in the mews behind Henry.”
Willoughby rolled his eyes. “So she’s real Heights.”
“As opposed to?”
“Yuppie Heights.”
“That’s not the worst. The four-year-old grandson’s missing.” Jane told him about Charlie and felt her skin prickle. “Ready or not, get the team together. My office in five minutes. Got to call the chief first. You can brief the captain. After that, we’ve got time for a two-minute team huddle, that’s it, before we roll. I want to hear what the lab’s got.”
“Probably nothing yet.”
“So stick a wick up their ass, then you and me gotta get over to College Place.”
“But Sally’s cooked my favorite—lasagna with meat balls and sausage, steamed onions in olive oil and pecorino. And no comments. Gonna get laid afterward
, I can feel it stirring already.”
She shook her head. “Feds going to be breathing down our backsides something fierce, and I need you in on this one.”
He was still holding the door for her, his mouth open.
Oh, what the hell. She entered, looking down at the bald spot on top of his head and straightening her jacket, her head down like a charging bull. Feet splayed, she made for her office.
College Place
Barbara’s eyes locked onto mine. I saw tears of desperation.
“Will you help me? Please say yes. It’s not that I don’t trust the police, but I know how it is. One crew begins this case and there are two more deaths the next day, four or five more by the end of the week—to say nothing about the cases they were working on before my mother’s death. I’m afraid they’ll get sidetracked up one street and down the next. I want to find my boy. I want to find him now. I hope whoever took him is after money, oh God, I hope that’s what it’s about. And whoever killed my mother, I want him put in jail. I want him to rot there forever.”
She was a junior partner in a downtown law firm, successful because she made gutsy decisions grounded on what she believed. She never doubted her instincts, she told me, and her gut screamed at her to hire me.
“I’ll pay you anything.” She began weeping again. Suddenly she sat. “All alone. My father’s dead. Now my mother’s … dead. Husband is God knows where. My boy is all I have. Please find him. Say you will. Please.”
“Of course I’ll help and we’ll find him.”
I felt so sorry for her. She was steeped in pain and there was nothing I could do or say to lift it from her. I honestly don’t know how she was managing to function. She’d gotten the double whammy—her mother’s murder and a missing son. Her whole world had crumbled in one day—no, in one minute—and I was the one who had given her the bad news. If it had been me, I’d have been a mess, screaming, biting, and kicking the messenger.
I stood in the living room of her mother’s home, texting Cookie with what I’d discovered and asking her to give me a call while Barbara wrote a check and gave it to me. Pretty efficient for a woman who’s just lost her mother and son. In a second, my phone buzzed.
Too Quiet In Brooklyn (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 1) Page 6
