With that she clicked off her phone. “They’re going out to inform Winston Connors of his son’s death. That’ll give them something to do. I hope they surprise him in bed with his mistress. One hundred and one, one hundred and two …”
Denny was concerned about me, I could tell. He wasn’t talking much, just staying by my side.
As we stood there, the crime scene unit started filing in the door and Jane took the super aside and talked to her, telling her we hadn’t contacted the family yet, so no names should be given to the press.
The super rolled her eyes. “I’m surprised the jackals aren’t here yet. They usually shadow the van. Soon as we leave, they know something’s up.”
“It’s Saturday night,” Willoughby said.
“Makes no difference—they’re blood hounds.”
That reminded me. I texted Cookie. She called me two seconds later and I told her a bare bones of what had happened. Into the hollow space that followed, I suggested that if she wanted to pay her contacts back, this would be good time to do it, especially the night guy on the Eagle who’d kept both of us informed.
“Let’s get the hell out of here. I could use a drink,” Jane said.
Sunday
Sunday Morning Update
Jane called on Sunday morning and I put her on speaker so Denny could hear. She said they didn’t have definitive information on the autopsy yet. Toxicology reports hadn’t come back from the lab and probably wouldn’t for a couple of weeks at least, but they’d done a workup on both bodies. Ken Connors died of a 9mm gunshot wound to the head, shot by the same gun that killed Barbara Simon, a Sig Sauer P229 DAK and since that wound was self-inflicted, it was assumed she murdered Ken Connors.
She’d heard from her FBI counterpart in New Jersey. “Seems Winston Connors is a broken man. They took him into custody a few hours after they told him about his son.”
“When’s the arraignment? I want to be there,” I said.
It sounded like Jane was consulting her notes. “I know he gave me the date, but I can’t find it. The preliminary might already have been. In federal courts he’s not allowed to plead in the initial …”
“Where are they holding him?”
“I didn’t ask,” she said, “but it’s got to be the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Not exactly a palace.”
“The charge?”
“Three counts of murder in the first degree, kidnapping in the first degree, and over three-hundred counts of fraud.”
I could tell something was welling up inside me, something big, but it hadn’t surfaced yet and I didn’t say anything.
Jane had more. “I hear he’s singing like a canary in a cage. He lost his wife and his favorite son in one day. At first he blamed Mary Ward Simon’s death on her daughter, saying Barbara had contracted the Blue Eagle Corporation but after more probing, he admitted to masterminding the whole thing, and I mean everything, going way back to Heights Federal—the fraudulent loans, the setup of your mother as a scapegoat, her murder, his son’s affair with Barbara Simon, everything. He had to get rid of Mary Ward Simon the same as he had to get rid of your mother.”
Winston Connors could cry and confess all he wanted, but you know what? I didn’t feel a bit sorry for him.
“Three counts of murder?” Denny asked.
Jane said, “Mary Ward Simon, Detective Burton Cooper, and Carmela Fitzgibbons.”
I heard my mother’s name. I didn’t say anything but I just locked my soul in cold storage and threw away the key.
Denny knew something was wrong because he grabbed the phone from me and turned the speaker off. I heard him say, “Jane, she’s about to pass out. I don’t know … something you just said, I think. Give me a second, here, I’ll text you when she’s … oops, here she is.”
I snatched back the phone and hit the speaker icon. “I’m fine now,” I lied, tears streaming down my face. I wiped them away and slammed a fist into my thigh and told myself to grow up. Mom didn’t have to get that job at Heights Federal. As far as I was concerned, I’d rather we’d starved. What seemed like heaven at the time was the beginning of the end. Funny how good years can really be bad years in disguise.
I should have felt better when I heard that Connors was charged with the death of my mother. Someone said revenge was sweet, but not for me. Give me back my mother, that’s what I wanted.
Jane continued. “We’re still working on Detective Cooper’s death. We didn’t think to question it at the time since Cooper had a heart condition. Now we think one of Connors’ men, probably James Arrowsmith, stuck him with a needle loaded with digoxin, but it’ll be hard to prove.”
“And Ralph?” Denny asked.
“We still haven’t caught him, but no worries, we will. The newspapers are full of Winston Connors and Heights Federal. The New York Times is going to run it as their headline story tomorrow, and the Eagle’s streaming it all over the net. They got the exclusive for at least an hour. Cable news is full of it, so Ralph is bound to get the message. He’s got to come up for air sometime. We’ve taken the guards off you guys, but we’re keeping them on Charlie and Marie.”
Waiting For The Woman
Ralph made the bed and sat on it, trying to count his money, but gave up. He had plenty of time to do the job, it wasn’t three days yet, but his brother and sister kept fading away and he missed Charlie. He took a shower and found some clean clothes in the closet, brown pants and a black shirt. The shirt was too fancy for him. Ralph didn’t like buttons, but he couldn’t find any T-shirts. He sat down because the room was spinning a little and asked his sister to button the shirt, but she shook her head. “You already know your buttons, do it yourself,” her voice said. The clothes were Arrow’s, so the pants were too wide and weren’t long enough, but they’d do just fine. After he scooped the money off the bed, he put it into a pocket. He found a belt in the closet, but it didn’t have enough holes.
“So tie it,” his brother’s voice whispered. Ralph did, and it worked fine. The boots were Arrow’s too. They were a little small, but he could walk in them if he curled his toes. He needed some tennis shoes, that was it, tennis shoes like he used to wear in the Bronx when he climbed trees and ran up walls. He missed running the walls.
He opened the refrigerator and found some hamburger meat in a drawer, but he didn’t like the way it smelled, so he put it back and found another beer and put the empty bottles and pizza box in the trash can underneath the sink. He looked around to make sure everything was neat, took a towel from the kitchen and cleaned the counters and the bathroom. He dusted all the table tops and put the towel in with his dirty clothes.
On the way out, he locked the door and threw his old clothes and the towel into the incinerator. Arrow’s voice reminded him where it was, right around the corner from the laundry room where you needed coins. It was easier to wear the clothes for a week or so and get new ones and throw the old ones out—that’s why the incinerator is near the laundry room, Arrow said.
Ralph climbed the stairs to the bridge and walked across. The sun hit him in the back and his leg was a little stiff and his feet were cramped, but he felt good except when he thought about Charlie. “Don’t think about him,” his sister whispered.
“I’d like to see a middle-priced tennis shoe, not too cheap and not too expensive.” That’s what his sister taught him, and that’s what he asked for at the first store he saw with shoes in the window. The man nodded like he’d heard that all the time.
“What size?”
Ralph stared at him. “Tell him, real big,” Arrow whispered, “because you got big boaters.” Arrow laughed and disappeared. Ralph smiled.
“Take your boot off and stand on this,” the man said and fiddled with the sides and looked up at Ralph. “We don’t have too much of a selection in eleven and a half, but I’ll bring out what we got.”
Ralph chose the black ones and gave the man a bill and said he’d wear them out of the store. “Got any snap-on rubber cleats,
like for snow?”
“I might.” The man returned in a few minutes. “Here you go.”
“And a T-shirt. White, if you have it.”
Ralph tried to give the man another bill, but he said, no, the first bill covered everything and he gave Ralph more bills and some coins. He was a nice man and Ralph thought he’d buy all his shoes at his store from now on.
He put on the T-shirt and threw away the fancy one. Then he found a bench in a park near the bridge and a man selling hot dogs. He bought two dogs and sat on the bench and ate them and got three more. He looked at the cleats. They came in a box with pictures. He followed the pictures and put on the cleats like the pictures showed and walked around, but took them off and had to scrape off the grass and mud. They weren’t for walking, but they’d be good for gripping. He remembered his brother telling him to hit the building flat. He felt the sensation in his knee and the flat of his foot.
When he got back to Brooklyn, he walked around near the water and found one side of an empty building. He put the cleats on and tried them out. He hadn’t climbed walls in a long time, so the first times he missed. “Out of practice,” his brother said. “I told you, do parkour three, four times a day, jump between walls, find your own way.”
But the cleats were fine and they helped, and his brother stayed with him the whole time he practiced. After a while, he found his way and made it up the side, almost to the top. “Like lightning,” his brother’s voice said, “but remember find your own way, hit it from the left.” The brick was old and had a lot of grippers, including some steel grippers in the form of stars. Finally he reached the top and hoisted himself over the lip and sat on the ledge. He felt the wind in his ears. His brother was always right. He was a good brother, but he couldn’t remember what he looked like. His sister told him he died in the war, but that was when she’d had too many M&M’s and talked funny.
Ralph turned and could see most of the buildings all around, even across the water. He felt the breeze in his hair and thought of the Y’s of trees. He liked being on the highest edge of a building and looking out. He could see how the road rose and dipped toward the building he was sitting on and how a few blocks away, it rose again. He was afraid to look down at first, but when he forced himself to look, it was okay.
But he couldn’t remember how to get down, so he closed his eyes to think, but that made him dizzy. He looked out and could see the building where he knew the woman lived and thought of the boss and how he’d told Ralph that he wanted her out of the way and then Ralph could come back and get Charlie. He thought of Charlie and his softness, but that made him dizzy, too. “One job at a time, Ralph,” his brother told him.
At first, Ralph didn’t want to look at the building where she lived because it was close to the place where the woman and her friend had tricked him, but he remembered his brother saying he was a good boy and one day he’d grow into a man. He thought hard about yesterday morning and wondered what had gone wrong. His brother whispered, “If you’re going to do something, go ahead and do it, don’t mess around.” That was it, he’d taken too much time being nice. Next time he’d just squeeze until he heard the crack.
It was still early and he thought now would be a good time to get down. He needed a closer look at the woman’s building so he swung his leg over and used his abs like his brother showed him and flexed. He looked down. The ground wasn’t so far away, and it was soft dirt. “Fall and roll,” his brother said. “Hit the building going down, like you were walking. Then fly, be a ball and roll.”
So Ralph aimed and stepped and scrunched and rolled. After he stood up, he took the cleats off and looked around. There were no cars. He stayed as close as he could to the walls and moved down the block. Still no traffic and he got to the woman’s neighborhood in a few minutes.
He stayed across the street and hid in the shrubbery and watched her house. She must be inside because he saw lights on in the third floor. Then the lights went off. The walls of her building were good ones for climbing, brick with some metal grippers on it and not too tall. He was glad, because the one next to it was made of boards and much taller. “Boards are no good for climbing,” his brother whispered, “but brick is always good, especially old brick.” Ralph could almost see the grips from here. A light went on in the front room, and he could see a man moving near the window. He crouched lower in the bushes. The time wasn’t right, so Ralph would wait. He knew how to be still. He knew how to be patient. His brother taught him that.
The sun was high in the sky when the door opened and the woman and man came out and got into a jeep and drove away. Ralph took a quick pee, crouching down in the bushes. Now was the time to move, he knew.
He walked across the road and snuck around the woman’s building, like his brother taught him. “No running, Ralphie. Move slow and they won’t notice you. Move quick, and you catch their eye.” So he moved slow and looked up, hoping there’d be an open window, but he heard noise coming from next door or maybe from down the block, he wasn’t sure. A man and woman arguing. He stilled, looking for a place to hide, and found an overturned wheelbarrow, small and cramped, but he managed to squeeze inside. He waited until the shouting stopped, got out, and kept looking for a way to get inside the house.
Finally he found an open window in the back on the top floor. It didn’t take him long to walk up the bricks as soon as he remembered his brother’s talk about rounding from the left and got into his stride. He missed three or four times because he was out of practice and should have gotten cleats a long time ago. His brother was always right. “Like greased lightning,” his brother whispered when he grabbed the ledge of the open window. He hung on, pushed the window up a ways, and using his abs, hauled himself inside—waiting for his breathing to still, crouching, in case someone heard him. He wiped sweat off his face.
Something creaked. He thought there was movement, someone coming up the stairs and his heart beat fast. He stayed near the open window, scrunched while he listened to a whirring noise from somewhere in the house, downstairs, maybe. His ears pounded and he began to sweat, but no one came. The house was empty. Except for Ralph.
He looked around. It was the woman’s room, he knew, because the clothes on the floor were like his sister’s. But the room was a mess. Ralph hated a mess. He saw ash trays with papers balled up in them, a box filled with candy bars, an old pizza, seven half empty cans of soda, two folded in half, and a couple glasses of wine and three coffee mugs.
When he looked at the mess, Ralph felt itchy, as if bugs were crawling all over him. He picked up a white container with a lid and smelled inside it but it didn’t smell good, so he placed it on the floor near the window. Underneath the desk, he found a basket filled with trash, some of it spilling over the side. He flattened everything so there’d be more room to place the fallen papers back into the basket. He drank the coffee and the soda from the cans and the wine, and ate a candy bar and the leftover pizza. He was still hungry, but he decided to save the rest of the candy bars in case the woman didn’t come into the room until tomorrow. He threw the candy bar wrapper into the trash, squashed the pizza box into a tiny square and threw that into the trash, too. Then he sorted all the other empty boxes and cans together in a neat row starting with the tallest can, and straightened the room up as best he could, dusting with an old rag he found in the corner. On the desk there were two small movie screens, just like in the boss’s office, but they were smeared so he wiped them off. “Bright and shiny,” his sister said. “Ma would be proud of you, Ralphie.”
When he looked around, he didn’t like the way the cans took up too much space on the table, so he straightened the bent ones and squeezed all of them down until they were silver circles and placed them in the trash. He folded the blankets and the clothes he saw lying over chairs and on the floor, and put them on two of the chairs in the room. He straightened the messy pile of books on the shelves, working as silently as he could. When he looked around again, he liked the room.
&n
bsp; He looked at the door and saw that it was hinged to open inside the room. He was afraid to go out, so he squinted into the keyhole, but couldn’t see anything except a hallway and some stairs. He shouldn’t have drunk all the liquid because he had to pee again, so he used the white container that already had a bad smell in it. He was glad it had a lid. He looked out the window and saw the bridges. Ralph liked bridges. He squinted up at the sky and saw an early evening star. He wondered if Arrow had become a star the way his sister and brother had. He sat on a chair in the corner in the dark and waited for the woman.
Feeling Jumpy
The phone rang. It was Jane.
“Mind if we come over? Willoughby wants to get the spreadsheets from Denny and any other information you might have from Mary Ward Simon’s computer pertaining to Heights Federal.”
“We’ll give you the computer, how’s that?” I asked.
I wasn’t looking forward to their visit so I had to psych myself up for it. Only trouble was, I felt a little antsy—I didn’t know why. I looked out the window. It was the ending of a spring day and clouds near the setting sun were a shade of pukey green I wasn’t familiar with, not in the sky at any rate. One good thing, the case was winding down. It wasn’t over, not by a long shot, but I felt good about playing a part in getting Charlie back where he belonged. And the events of the last few days, even with all their horror, seemed to have brought Denny and me closer. Maybe the black cloud over my head was beginning to lift. Only trouble was, tomorrow was the postponed dinner with his folks, and I dreaded it. Maybe that’s why I was feeling jumpy.
Too Quiet In Brooklyn (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 1) Page 23
