“C’mon, eat up. Get some jam on that toast. Your mother bought your favorite yesterday because she knew you were coming over. Highlight of our week, your visits. And take my advice, don’t ever retire. All I do is watch the old timers playing bocce in Carroll Park. I’m too old to be sitting around. Going to get me a job on the wharf. They’ve been advertising.”
He nodded, smiling, shoveling. It was getting tough to listen to all the lectures. His father didn’t like Fina. He made it plain. And they didn’t like him living together with a woman. It wasn’t what Catholic men did, his father told him. “And besides, you can do much better,” his father added. His mother looked down at the tablecloth while the old man was talking. She might add something sweet like, “Remember what the nuns said about grace.” She’d tighten the belt of her pink terry cloth robe and shove grey strands of hair out of her face, and he felt such pity for her.
Last month she’d told him a story, made up, he was certain, about a friend of hers who prayed to the Virgin because her son was seeing this girl she didn’t like and lo and behold—one of his mother’s favorite expression—lo and behold, the girl dropped dead, dropped in her tracks.
“Now wasn’t that a message?” his father added. “The Lord doesn’t like you breaking the commandments.”
Denny knew he should have told them why he loved Fina and how much she meant to him, but they’d just look at him like he was speaking in code. Instead, he’d asked which commandment he was breaking.
“What does it matter which one?” his father said. “You trying to be smart with me? You might be old enough to be on your own with a badge and everything, but don’t come here trying to be a wise acre.”
Denny hadn’t gone to his parents for a month after that until his father called him and said they were wondering why he never came around anymore. If they said something that offended him, they were sorry. “But we love you, and only want what’s best for you, and believe me, we got plenty of years between the two of us, me and your mother, and we know what’s best. We miss you something terrible, son.”
He’d heard the catch in his father’s voice. Whenever he thought of it, how his father’s voice had cracked—didn’t cry or anything, his father would never cry—but when Denny thought of it, the hair on the back of his head stood straight.
“Yup, that’s my Lorraine,” his father said, breaking off a chunk of toast and wiping the last of the egg from his plate. “You got to meet someone just like your mother. Yup, a looker and a cooker, that’s what you need.”
Waiting For Results
Jane dropped the gun off at the precinct and directed one of her team members to drive it to the lab in Queens. “I asked them to make it quick,” she told me, getting back in the car. “Who knows, maybe they can get something. I told them about our prints being all over it, but they thought they’d be able to work with it. They said they might have something ‘soon.’ Anyway, I’ll be on it. I give great pressure.”
We circled back into Dumbo, rode up and down deserted streets a couple of times looking for our guy. It was quiet, even for a Saturday morning, so we stopped at Almondine Bakery on Water Street. I jumped out and got two black coffees.
“You don’t carry?” she asked as we sipped.
“Nope. Insurance is sky high for someone like me, so I do without,” I said.
We were silent for a while, trying to eat up the time, both of us staring ahead. There was something on Jane’s mind, I could tell. The Civil War warehouses on the block took on a silvery glow and I could see a span of the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance. The excitement of the chase was gone.
“I shouldn’t have drawn my gun,” Jane said.
I told myself to keep my mouth shut.
“Shouldn’t have drawn it unless I was ready to shoot the guy.”
I let the silence stretch. I was having a hard time, too, figuring out what to say until I remembered Mom’s mantra, “Say what you feel.”
“I admire you for saying that. I wouldn’t have had the guts to admit it.”
More silence.
“The truth is, I don’t carry, not because of the cost of insurance but because I … don’t know anything about guns, and I should, I know I should. I’ve always felt safer not being around them.” I took a swig of coffee, savoring it. Less said, I figured. I was beginning to like Jane.
“How much time we got?” I asked.
“Fifteen minutes or so.”
“I’d like to check in on my client if you don’t mind.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. Anyway, I want to wait for lab results before we go to New Jersey. If we go.”
“I’m with you. If the prints don’t match, it was just some schmuck trying to get his rocks off,” I said.
“If they match, we know we’ve seen the killer.”
“One of them,” I reminded her.
“The only one left standing,” she reminded me.
“But not the one calling the shots,” I said. “I don’t know about this guy. If he’s one of them, he’s not the only one. His smile was too gentle, his eyes too vacant.”
Jane said nothing. As the car whispered down Henry Street heading for Barbara’s neighborhood, I saw a white car about fifty yards ahead, barreling down the block, running a red light, just clearing a group of pedestrians crossing Montague.
Jane made a call to the precinct asking if they could intercept, but she didn’t have much of a description to give them. “It’s a newer car, probably an Audi, I didn’t get the plates, but they weren’t New York tags. The driver ran a light and definitely was breaking the speed limit.”
Jane held her phone out and I could hear them laughing.
“Shitheads. I get a lot of that,” she said.
“I’m sure you do.”
“They think I was promoted because I’m a woman.” She stared straight ahead and I saw her press her palms into the steering wheel. “Kooks out today.”
“It’s more than that, I think.” I told Jane about Cookie seeing someone following us at the service area yesterday morning and later in Allentown. “I didn’t see him myself, but I’d say he fits the description Cookie gave me.”
Jane didn’t say anything, but furrowed her brow.
We turned on Amity and again on Clinton. She parked on Barbara’s side of the street and I asked her to sit in the car while I ran up the stairs and rang the bell. No answer. I stepped back and looked up. Not a light on. I went around to the back but the gate was locked. Damn, where was Barbara? Craning my neck, I could barely see a swing set and sandbox and got a feeling in the pit of my stomach. Hope was fading and it was my fault. I hadn’t found Charlie within the critical time, the first forty-eight hours.
As I turned to go back to the car, I noticed someone sitting across the street wearing pink sunglasses and reading a book, a few of those old fashioned curlers peeking out of a bandana. I looked again. Cookie. Walking back to the 370Z, I punched in Cookie’s number and watched as the woman across the street reached into her pocket without looking away from her book and flipped open her phone. Some cover.
“I don’t believe you. What’s up?” I asked, getting into the car and putting my phone on speaker.
“I saw your client leave at 6:30. She was dressed like a high-powered attorney.”
“She can’t be going to work, she’s on a leave.”
“Maybe she’s freelancing?”
“On a Saturday?”
“Maybe. You told me she’s in corporate law or something, right? Well, they work when they have to work especially if she’s freelancing. And a few minutes after she left, Lover Boy ran down the steps, got into his car, a black Mercedes with New Jersey plates.”
“And you took them down of course?”
“I’ll text them to you, don’t worry.”
“What kind of Mercedes?” Jane asked.
“Sorry, I’m not good with cars,” Cookie said. “It was a little one with two doors. The guy had to fold himself in half to squeeze behind
the wheel.”
I told Jane about the man I’d seen Barbara with yesterday morning and described him. “Weekend sleepover. It must be serious,” I mumbled and wrote the tag in the back of my book.
“What do you mean she’s on a leave?” Jane asked.
I told her what I’d found out yesterday morning.
Jane said nothing.
“Maybe you should start following her,” I said. “But she’s my client so I didn’t say that.”
“Don’t worry, we have been following her,” Jane said.
My mouth opened but no sound came out.
“You guys still there?” Cookie asked.
“Yes. And I could kiss you,” I said to Cookie.
“Don’t, please.”
“Well don’t use up all your studying time. I’d feel terrible if you didn’t do well on the test because of me.”
Jane pulled out her phone and made a call, asked for the lab results, and sighed. Turning to me, she said, “This time they told me to sit on it, they’d call me. And it’s been way longer than ‘soon’. They all lie.”
“So? We’ll go to Teresa’s for breakfast.”
She shook her head. “Let’s camp out in my office. I’ve gotta sit on latent prints.”
I deleted emails while Jane did paperwork and called the lab every two minutes with another rant. Finally her phone rang and she listened and hung up. Folding her hands she looked at me. “They lifted prints, not a full set, but what they got matches prints on Mary Ward Simon’s neck.”
I swallowed.
“You okay? You’re pale as all hell,” Jane said.
I didn’t speak for a minute. I couldn’t, just stared straight ahead, thinking.
“Where should we be spending our time, at some horse farm way the hell out in New Jersey or doing a door to door in Dumbo?” Jane asked.
“Here’s the way I see it,” I began when I found my voice. “They got rid of Mary Ward Simon and—”
Jane held a finger in the air. “Just like they got rid of Carmela Fitzgibbons,” she said, looking at me hard, daring me to say something. But she didn’t have to worry because she’d just knocked my socks off. When I said nothing, she finished it for me.
“Just like they got rid of Cooper and they’re trying to get rid of you.”
“Cooper?”
“He’d been working on the Heritage Bank case for years. It involved suspect loans, misappropriated funds, the death of bank officers, including your mother. I inherited the case.”
I had to control myself, so I did some slow breathing and waited for the white spots in front of my eyes to disappear, but they just kind of circled and swam slow while I tried to remain calm and think.
“Looks like there’s a concerted effort to get rid of anyone who snoops around this case, including you.”
“What about you, Willoughby, and Denny?” I asked. “You’re in danger, too.”
“They don’t know about us. Not yet.”
“How’d Cooper die?” I asked.
“They’re not sure. Sudden heart attack, they thought at the time.”
“Did he have a history of heart problems?”
She shook her head.
There was something wrong with the words, they got stuck in my throat. My mind was moving in slow motion. Part of it was still on Mom and what Jane said about Detective Cooper’s sudden death. I couldn’t believe that being a cop and all, they wouldn’t have tried getting to the bottom of it, wouldn’t have investigated the pants off his death, but there it was.
As if she could read my mind, she said, “Life intervenes and other things get hot. Old cases just get colder. And at the time of Cooper’s death we didn’t have a high enough index of suspicion to test his body for toxins. Life’s not like it is in CSI. Toxicology tests take time, manpower, money. The upshot? The coroner ruled that he died of natural causes.”
I nodded and pictured Mom’s body on the sidewalk. So that was it, her death wasn’t important enough to investigate. But I talked to myself real good and thought of Charlie and moved on.
“What do you mean by ‘They don’t know us, not yet’? If they know about me, they know about Denny and maybe even Cookie.” I reminded Jane about our shoot-out with the Ford pick-up last night and Denny so proud at himself for spinning into a perfect turn and throwing the guy off our tail.
“If I can run tags, so can they, and maybe Mr. Ford Pick-Up got his plates last night and by now they know who Denny is and where he is.”
I watched her reach for her phone and saw her lips move.
I texted Denny asking him to call me. Thank the Baby Jesus my phone started vibrating. My head pounded and my voice trembled even though I was talking to him and he was fine. I told him what happened to Jane and me this morning. Silence on the other end while he digested my news. I told him we were in Jane’s office and asked him where he was.
“In Willoughby’s office. We’re going over spreadsheets,” Denny said.
“Good. Stay there. Order in.”
“Let me talk to him,” Jane said.
The old Jane was back, all business, and I was glad.
She grabbed the phone from me and spoke to Denny. “I’ve got a call in to the chief. Did Willoughby tell you about the Heights Federal case? … Good. Ask him to call me. More important—both of you, stay right where you are until you hear from me.”
When she hung up, I said, “You’re canning New Jersey and doing the door to door looking for this bozo, right?”
She nodded. “I suggest you stay in town. I’m putting a watch on your Vinegar Hill home, twenty-four seven.”
“Don’t worry about me, I can handle him. But I’m worried about Denny and Cookie. I can’t stand to think that one of them might get hurt because of this whole thing.”
After all, it was one old and long piece of shit, wasn’t it, starting a long time ago when Mom was alive. But murder always starts way back in the crazed part of a looney, keeps eating up all the sane parts of his brain, festers and grows for years. What’s more, murder begets murder. I slammed a fist against my thigh and stood up.
“Where you going?” Jane asked.
“Not sure yet.” I looked at my watch. It was still early, plenty of time to plan, to think, make a few calls before I decided how best to spend my time. Cookie. I’d forgotten about her, I called her cell, the only phone Cookie has, but there was no answer. I left a message. I wasn’t all that worried about her, though, probably studying hard for her test.
“I’ll give you a lift,” Jane said, getting up.
I waved her off. “Takes me two minutes to get home from here. Besides, you’ve got plenty to do.”
Alf’s Car & Truck Towing
I pulled away from the curb and decided I needed to see Mr. Baggins. It being the weekend and all and no Minnie for him to bother, I parked in the hydrant space across the street, unlocked Lucy’s, and called out to him. The little bugger appeared in a flash, jumping from the trash can he was currently inspecting and onto the spare desk. He pawed the treat drawer. I palmed him a few Feline Greenies and watched as he ate, his tongue sandpapering me while he made his grunting, slobbering noises. I filled his water bowl and gave him a kiss which he returned by giving me his solemn look, and I whispered goodbye, flashing in my head to the time when Mom was the only one he’d go to.
I’d made sure I had everything with me this time—laptop, power cords, flashlights, binocs, you name it. Remembering the importance of disguises from my days at Brown’s, I’d taken the Stetson from Denny’s study and wore it low on my head along with my Kathryn Hepburn shades. My eye had stopped its throbbing and just a few red curls poked out around my ears.
I made incredible time over the bridge and through the Holland Tunnel. Soon I was on the Turnpike. My eyes took in the speedometer and saw it was hugging eighty-five, but a few cars were passing me, so I settled back. Besides, I told myself, I had to compensate for all the traffic I’d be running into up ahead, maybe.
I ca
lled Denny, told him I’d taken the BMW for a look around his favorite farm, just to check out a hunch. Silence on his end for a second.
“I don’t blame you. Your case. You’ll be glad you took the BMW. Did you tell Jane?”
“Not really.”
“Don’t worry, I will. She’s busy now setting up the parameters, and I’ve been assigned to the door to door in Dumbo.” I heard the excitement in his voice. “Got uniforms and plain clothes in on this one. Chief’s got our helicopters up there doing their thing. Place is swarming, but they keep telling us to be low key.”
“Right up your alley,” I said. “Got your vest?” I asked.
“Got it.”
There was a pause. I should have told him how much I loved him and needed him while my heart flipped and the blood pounded in my ears, but the words stuck in my craw like the idiot I am. Another missed opportunity and if anything happened to him … I couldn’t finish the thought, but I didn’t want to hang up. Not now, not ever.
“Denny,” I began. “I just wanted to say … please take care. I’d feel awful if ….” God, I was pathetic.
“I love you too, Fina.” Then he switched into his operations mode. I could tell he was psyched, but I was glad we finally talked. That’s what we’d done, wasn’t it?
He was speaking fast now. “Feds in on it too. Word is they’re working New Jersey with local law enforcement units. Going to get a court order, send a couple of agents and uniforms to the farm and poke around.”
The scenery was blurred as I neared the exit off the turnpike into the bowels of Central New Jersey. “Before I forget, I’ve called Cookie a couple of times. She’s not answering. You got her cell?”
“Yes. I’ll try her, too. Feds tell you anything about it yet?”
“I haven’t heard from Tig,” I said. “They probably don’t want to send choppers in because of the noise. In Brooklyn, nobody notices, it’s the usual, but around that farm you can hear grass grow. DHS says they can do satellite surveillance for local law enforcement, but I have trouble with that from a privacy standpoint unless it’s a matter of life and death.”
Too Quiet In Brooklyn (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 1) Page 19
