by Triss Stein
“Not yet.”
He pushed himself up out of his chair and opened the office door. “Time for you to go. We’re done. I’m done.”
I was relieved. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I went straight to Torres.
I believe he knew I would, because by the next morning, he had already resigned from his position with the council, effective immediately, and could not be reached at the office phone or by email.
Meanwhile, Torres was not as excited by my story as I expected.
“Yes, it solves a mystery. So what? There’s hardly a crime here. I can’t arrest two citizens for behaving like sixth graders, now, can I?”
“But.”
“Oh, please. I have real crimes to handle here. Ya know? This isn’t Mayberry RFD.”
Then she took pity on me and added, “Look, the DA’s office will laugh in my face about this. Yes, I’ll look into it. Do you want to follow it up? Press charges, if asked?”
I know I hesitated.
“Yeah. Like I thought. I’ll talk to Mrs. Gibbs, too. Or send someone. Or wait and see what the DA office says. You’ve heard the intro to Law and Order? The part about two separate yet equally important groups? This would be theirs.”
“The district attorneys who prosecute the offenders?”
“Yeah, them. Their call.” She smiled. “Don’t look so sad. You have the end of your story, right? Now go on. I have to investigate a real crime or three.”
I hate loose ends. I always have, but what she said was true. Fitz loved the revision to my chapter, and there was nothing else on the letters. No further reaction. Louisa was shocked deeply by the story and said it would make her too sad to pursue any action against Dr. Kingston. She would be too busy fighting with the Prince organization about her property. And if she could find a way to use my research in that ongoing battle, she would be happy to do that.
But she did ask me to talk to Jeremy Kingston if I could. Find out if he was all right, even though he’d been a false friend. She had his address. And I had some things for her, too. It was neat stack of mail, the items that had been stuck haphazardly in one of the albums.
Her face brightened at the magazine. “I wondered where that had gotten to.” Then she looked over the loose letters and turned pink. She sat down suddenly.
“So you know, now?”
Her voice shook.
“Well, I can make a good guess.” I said it as gently as possible. There was a letter from a doctor, a list of appointments, some financial papers, all from a famous cancer hospital. “That’s where you were, those times you wouldn’t tell anyone?”
She nodded once. She could not, or would not, look at me.
“It’s my private life,” she muttered. “I am not obligated to share it with the NYPD or the news media or anyone.”
“Or friends?”
“Them least of all. I don’t want pity, and I don’t want help, either. People hovering around, asking how I am? Never, never, never.” She finally turned to me. “You know Dylan Thomas? I’m with him, not going gentle into the dark night. Hell, no.” She sank into thought and then surprised me. “I did know him, you know, Dylan Thomas. Met him in a Greenwich Village bar one time. He was a drunk, but he was right about this. You will keep this to yourself.” It was not a question.
“I think you’re wrong not to tell the people who care about you.” It was hard to say.
“You, my dear, are a whippersnapper.” She almost smiled. “You do not get to have an opinion. Promise?”
“I will keep it to myself.” I would, too, but that didn’t mean I would not try to change her mind.
Before I left, Kingston’s address in my pocket, I did the unthinkable. I hugged her. I don’t think I imagined she hugged me back.
I found Kingston in a charming apartment with a fireplace in a Victorian apartment building, probably one of the first in the neighborhood. There was even a turret at one corner that formed a nook in his living room. No wonder he did not want to leave.
It was stripped almost bare and full of cartons.
“I have to be out in two more days. Why are you here?”
“Louisa sent me.”
“Ha. She wanted you to yell at me? Beat me up?”
“No. She is way worried about you.”
He stopped his rummaging through the boxes.
“Now? Now she is worried, after it is too late?”
I stared at him, and he stopped. “I don’t—I wouldn’t—I really don’t deserve her concern. I know that.”
“I agree. But she asked me to find out.”
“Well, tell her I am not getting away with my bad behavior.” He smiled the least convincing smile I have ever seen. “I am moving to Mesquite, Nevada. They play golf there, I am told. And have ballroom dancing. It’s eighty miles from Las Vegas, in case you want to know.”
I could not find any words for this news. I could not imagine Jeremy Kingston away from New York.
“My only sibling, my sister, lives there, in a house with room. She’s been begging me to move in for years, ever since her husband died. Hot as purgatory there, suitably enough. It will be purgatory in every other way for me, too. Not far from where I grew up, so it’s not like I don’t know what I’m getting into.”
“Good grief. How long have you been a New Yorker?”
“Since I was eighteen. Couldn’t wait to leave Nevada. You know that line from Chorus Line about how committing suicide in Buffalo was redundant? That was me then. So when you think of me, remember that. Me, back home. A life sentence.” He got busy with the boxes again and muttered, “I don’t even like my sister that much.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Afterwards, the Prinzigs and the Witnesses left Louisa entirely alone. The possible scandal apparently intimidated all of them, an accidental good result. Of course Joe never had any business from the Prinzigs again.
Willow Lief was never found. Whenever I talked to Sergeant Torres she always added, “Yet. We haven’t found her yet.” But I wonder.
We did find Jonathan Doe, though. Or he found us. It was after my book was published.
Yes, I wrote it, and yes, it was published. With Brooklyn always in the news, there was even some buzz. It was very exciting for a very short time, and we even made a little money. Fitz wants to hear my new ideas for the next one. I’m trying to think of some. I was surprised to learn that I loved working for myself. Much as I hated to admit it, Joe and my dad were right. I wasn’t meant for a nine-to-five job, after all. And then the book brought me another opportunity.
It seems there are people in Brooklyn who want to know all about their old houses, and would pay for someone to find out for them. We’ll see how that develops.
And someone in Ohio wrote a letter to the publisher the old-fashioned way, on flowery notepaper in an envelope with a stamp. It traveled from mail room to Public Relations and eventually to Fitz, who eventually sent it to me.
She said that the Jonathan Doe I wrote about might possibly, maybe, be a relative. Her mother had been raised in Brooklyn, in the Bethel community, though the family was no longer associated with the Witnesses. In her frail old age, with time running out, she had been talking a lot about the lost little brother, the sweet young man whose behavior had become increasingly troubled, and then bizarre, and who then disappeared altogether. She hoped she might find something that would ease her mother’s mind. She included a phone number, so I called.
She was dismayed to realize that he was buried on Hart Island, New York’s vast potter’s field, a lonely resting place for the unidentified and indigent dead. Their records would have no name for him but the anonymous “John Doe,” and there was no way to match my Jonathon Doe to her family history short of exhumation to do DNA sampling. She exclaimed in horror at the very idea.
We talked about genealogists who could do
searching on his name for a fee. I told her how to find the Hart Island records, too. And then, just when our initial excitement about connecting had faded away, and we were winding toward saying a disappointed goodbye, she mentioned a photo.
“My mother and him, before he disappeared. There is a Watchtower sign behind them, and tall buildings.”
And the light went back on.
“Please, can you send it to me? I’ll give you my address.”
“I can do better. There is something called scanning. I don’t know how to do that, but my grandson does. You could have it tonight.”
And there he was, Jonathan Doe, much younger, but it was him. Right there in Brooklyn Heights. And now he had a name. Ben Jackson. And a family. A sister who remembered him with love and believed she would see him soon.
I had something to send her, too, a copy of that old video recording.
Weeks later, I had a letter:
I cannot thank you enough. I showed Mom the tape. She doesn’t know much these days, but she knew him. She said, “Why, that’s Benjamin. Look how old he got.” I explained to her that he had passed on, and she cried, but then said, “I know he is at peace now, and he’s waiting for me.”
We are looking into having him reburied here, with other family, and if not possible, we will put up a stone in his memory. The lost lamb is found.
That was all later, the end of my story, after the book was published. But a lot happened before that.
Joe came home one day and said “We are taking a vacation.” He laughed at my surprise. “Don’t look so shocked. When was your last vacation?” When I couldn’t even come up with an answer, he said, “That’s my point,” and poured out a packet of brochures and airline information. Flights to Nantucket.
“I thought this would appeal to you. Only an hour by plane. Overflowing with history, cute old inns and houses, bikes, beaches. Maybe see a whale.”
“But I’m too busy. I’m editing the book And Chris.”
“Your dad will come stay with Chris. She’s fine with it. And you can take work if you must. Honest, your laptop will work there.”
It did, but I mostly ignored it for one whole, lovely week. We stayed at a prewar inn—the Revolutionary War—with sloping floors, staircases that didn’t make sense, a sitting room with ancient books, scones in the afternoon, and a fireplace in the cool evening. Fabulous breakfasts and a picture-perfect garden. Joe enjoyed trying to puzzle out the history of the very old building, and I enjoyed, well, everything. Charming streets and a whole day at the superb history museum and sunsets on the beach, margarita in hand. Maria Mitchell’s home and the fantastic sand dunes. The men in red pants and women in hot pink sundresses with matching sandals came to seem another form of local color.
Soon after we made our reservations, Joe had interrupted my reading one night. “I have something special for you to wear on our trip.”
I thought it would be a glamorous set of underwear to replace my ancient mom gear. I was hoping for lace and silk, in purple or fuchsia. I looked up ready to be excited about whatever it was.
His expression was odd. There was no shopping bag. He opened his clenched hand to show me a tiny velvet box. There was a ring in it.
“How about Nantucket for a honeymoon?’
What could I say but yes?
Can you plan a wedding in only a few weeks? Yes. Yes, you can. My socially savvy friend Darcy took over as wedding planner and called in a few favors to get us a wedding in the park. I still don’t know how she provided the perfect weather. Chris, my only attendant, dragged me into a marathon of online dress shopping, and found me the perfect one. She invited Jared. Louisa Gibbs came, escorted by Leary. Fitz came with a silver pitcher as a gift, and a reminder that the revised book was still due soon.
And Nantucket made the perfect honeymoon.
Much later, after I was working on the next book, and was completely accustomed to wearing a wedding ring again, and Chris was applying to college, a colleague from the Brooklyn Museum called me. Did she remember it correctly, that I had been working with the Museum’s architectural sculpture collection? Yes. Oh, good. She was forwarding a letter that they hoped would make sense to me.
It was a note scrawled on notebook paper, not businesslike, not even grammatical, barely legible.
“I head a wrecking crew team. Takin’ apart an old building, in the basement, guy says to me, ‘Hey, boss, this looks like something that ain’t junk.’ I agree. Any idea what it is? PS We are fans of that show American Pickers, so we keep our eyes open for junk that ain’t junk. Thanx.”
I looked at the bad photo and gasped. Then I got right on the phone to my museum contact and told her not to let this get away. I sent her all the research I had done. It was time for the Walt Whitman plaque to come home to Brooklyn.
Afterword
Since all of my books combine history with fiction, I like to include an explanation of which is which.
The characters in Brooklyn Legacies are entirely fictional but the setting is a real and well known neighborhood. Most of what I have written about its history and politics is as factual as I could make it. The Jehovah’s Witnesses (the Watchtower Society) world headquarters was located there until recently, including the tunnels and the building with the Watchtower sign on its roof. Robert Moses was, of course, a real person. Truman Capote did live there and wrote about it.
Nancy Long’s support group is entirely made up, but loosely inspired by other groups of young people from other strict societies.
There was a witchcraft store there in the 1970s, and I have wanted to write about it for many decades, but it was entirely different from the one in Brooklyn Legacies.
The lost Walt Whitman plaque is a real bit of history. Since I am writing fiction, I felt free to give it the satisfying ending that does not exist in real life. Yet.
About the Author
Photo by Roberto Falck
Triss Stein is a small-town girl who has spent most of her adult life living and working in New York City. This gives her the useful double vision of a stranger and a resident which she uses to write mysteries about Brooklyn, her ever-fascinating, ever-changing, ever-challenging adopted home. Brooklyn Legacies is the fifth Erica Donato mystery, following Brooklyn Bones, Brooklyn Graves, Brooklyn Secrets, and Brooklyn Wars. trissstein.com
