Death and Disappearance (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 5)

by Susan Russo Anderson

  Al’s Auto Body

  Al’s Auto occupied two lots on the corner of Sixty-Fifth Street in Bay Ridge, a few blocks from Henry’s home. The building was narrow and long, fronted by brown brick surrounding a dirty plate-glass window and a green door. A blue-and-white sign bore the words “We fix beaters.” The shop was set back from the street and surrounded by cars—all of them had that needy look. The whole property was enclosed by a wicked-looking fence with rolls of barbed wire on the top. As I opened the door, I breathed in gasoline fumes and grease, heard the reverberation of a heavy wrench hitting cement, the whoosh of air pumps, the thud of tires.

  “Can I help you, lady?” a man behind the counter asked. His brown hair was matted and he looked like he’d just crawled out from beneath a leaky truck.

  I showed him my ID, told him I was investigating the death of a former employee murdered that morning near the Brooklyn Bridge, and asked to see his boss.

  The guy’s eyes widened, but he asked me no questions, just picked up the phone. “Female gumshoe here. Needs to speak to you.” Pause. “Standing in front of me.”

  “Tell him I’m a friend of Henry Cojok.”

  “Says she knows Henry.” He nodded and replaced the handset. “He’ll be right out.” And with that, he disappeared, probably to spread the news because there was a sudden pall surrounding the shop. Not a gnat flew.

  In a few minutes, Al emerged, a tall man with a cauliflower nose and wearing striped coveralls. He wiped his hands on a rag while he introduced himself, the color draining from his face when I told him the reason for my visit. He had a two- or three-day growth, and the skin underneath was pocked from what I suspected had been a bad case of teen acne, but his eyes were kind and nonjudgmental. They narrowed when I told him about finding Stephen’s body.

  He shook his head. “Gone and done it now. Poor Henry.”

  “Done what?”

  “Got himself killed. I knew the boy was playing a dangerous game.”

  He wanted to know how Stephen had been killed, and I was about to tell him when I heard the front door open and a customer with windswept hair and wild eyes appeared, holding the remains of a rusty muffler.

  I turned to Al. “Is there someplace we can talk?”

  He led me through to the back, a shop with three or four bays where mechanics were working on cars, most of them on lifts. The sounds of hammering and air pumps had resumed.

  He showed me to his office, a cubbyhole in the rear that smelled like the inside of a carburetor. The room had no window. It held a desk and two chairs. Two filing cabinets stood on the far wall next to a small bookshelf filled with old magazines. He motioned me to sit.

  “Got to get rid of those files one of these days. Don’t need the paper anymore, now that our records are digitized, but you know how it is—time just gets away from me. Poor Henry. Lost his only child.”

  “You’re Henry’s friend?”

  “Grew up together. Went to the same school. Best mechanic I know, despite all his book learning. After I opened the shop, he worked here for years until arthritis got to him. Old bones, the enemy of us all.”

  “Too bad about his wife,” I said, trying to probe.

  “He’s better off without her, that’s what I told him, but Henry is one of a kind. I swear he’d take her back in a heartbeat.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “Only to say hello. A real beauty, but kind, like Henry. That’s why her leaving was such a shock. But you don’t know what people will do, do you?”

  I couldn’t fathom a woman leaving her child, and my curiosity got the better of me. I wondered how she’d hear about the death of her son and what the news would do to her, especially if she heard about it from a third party, a random blow dealt months or years later, the shock of it too much to bear. “I suppose you don’t have an address for her?”

  He shook his head, working his jaw back and forth.

  I waited for him to say something more. When he didn’t, I said, “Stephen worked here, too.”

  He nodded and told me what I’d already heard, that Stephen did drugs and he, Al, had had to fire him. “One day he’d show up, the next day, no Stephen. I need someone dependable.”

  I waited a good while for him to say more.

  “Doesn’t surprise me, his death. Must have owed someone big time. Started pushing after high school, or so the rumor went. Using, that’s for sure. He had a hard time beating it, if he ever did. I guess I should have kept him on, but he began no-showing. Couldn’t have that. When we promise something to a customer, the customer expects it, and if we don’t deliver on time, it’s bad for business.”

  It seemed to me the man was trying to justify sacking Stephen years later. I felt for them both—for Stephen and for Al. “I’m interested in hearing about the brake realignment job you did on his van a while ago.”

  “Henry told you about that?”

  I nodded. “And I’m especially interested in whatever you can tell me about the man with the suit who gave you five hundred dollars for a hurry-up job.”

  Al sucked in air. “I pegged him as the end of the chain.”

  “What do you mean, exactly?”

  “The top of the line. The drug lord. He needed Stephen to do something for him, and it was a top priority, something he couldn’t trust to his underlings. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten involved. Stephen, of course, was the runner, and the boss man was out of time. I don’t know why he couldn’t get someone else to do the job, but he couldn’t or didn’t want to. So when he showed us the dough, we stopped work on our other jobs and fixed Stephen’s van. Pocketed a nice bit of change without hurting our other customers, and that was that.”

  “The man you called a drug lord, can you describe him?”

  “Cruel eyes and a slit for a mouth. Tall and thin. Condescending. Expensive haircut. Savile Row suit. Wore a diamond pinkie ring.”

  “Do you have a contact?”

  He shook his head. “It was a cash deal.”

  “Any distinguishing features, like a scar on his cheek? Did he have someone with him?”

  He thought for a moment before picking up the phone. “Red in today?” He looked at the ceiling and told whoever was on the other end to send him in. “Not much I can tell you. One of my mechanics dealt with him. I was there for a second or two to give the go-ahead.”

  In a few minutes another mechanic appeared. This one was tall, thin, wearing a red jumpsuit, his dreads tied back in a ponytail. He stared at me, sucking in his lips while Al introduced us.

  “You remember the five-hundred-dollar brake job we did on Stephen’s van?”

  “Course.”

  “Describe Stephen’s friend, the impatient suit.”

  “Not his friend. More like his boss. Guy with slicked-back hair, one of those fancy cuts, curls in the back, like that. Mr. High and Mighty. Insisted I fix the brakes like now. Didn’t know what the guy was talking about. He reached into his wallet and took out five bills. That’s when I called you.”

  There was silence for a minute while I looked from Red to Al and back again. “So you called Al and then what?”

  “Al here gets another guy, and me and him fixed it.”

  “Did the suit say anything, like, nice work or thanks or anything?”

  “That guy? You kidding? No, he just said something about they’d better make Rhinebeck in three hours with good brakes or we were going to hear from him.”

  I was famished, so before entering the subway for the ride home, I stopped at a deli, ordered a pastrami with cheese on rye, chips, and a slice of chocolate cheesecake, the whole washed down with a large ginger ale. I found a small table in the rear and texted Cookie, asking her to call me. When she did, it was typical Cookie, whispering because she was sitting in the research room in the main library, her head in a gazillion art publications, trying to fathom the gallery scene in the greater New York area.

  “Stop right there. Forget a Dutchess County connection. Focus on Rhine
beck.”

  “Rhinebeck is in Dutchess County.”

  “Whatever.” I told her about my conversations with Henry and Al and what the mechanic told me about the suit who’d accompanied Stephen.

  “How long ago was this?”

  I stopped mid bite. I knew she’d ask a question I didn’t know the answer to, so I put her on hold, called Al, and listened to white noise while I crunched my way through the chips and my stomach tossed.

  Finally he came back on the line. “About six months ago.”

  Then I called Jane and told her what I’d learned about the probable location of Stephen’s employer. To my amazement, she actually muttered something about good job and asked me to keep her updated.

  “Not so fast. Denny told me the victim had been stopped several times on suspicion of selling. Any prior arrests?”

  “Clean. I’ve got to—”

  “One more little item. Last I looked, Rhinebeck’s a big town with several galleries.”

  “So? Better get on it.”

  I asked for her help, saying we’d researched but the gallery scene was vast, and as yet we hadn’t found a link between Rhinebeck and any of the Manhattan galleries. After a long pause, she said she’d see what she could do.

  Molder of Dreams

  I had more questions for Ina O’Neill, so I walked the short distance from the Borough Hall subway station to her store, although I doubted she’d be in after learning only that morning of her son-in-law’s murder.

  Located in a deserted section near the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge, Blue Door Ceramics seemed to be the only place doing business on an otherwise quiet street. To my surprise, Ina herself was behind the counter, talking to someone on the phone while several customers roamed the aisles. A man and woman sat at a small table in the back of the store next to shelves filled with sample rolls of wallpaper.

  She was neither happy nor surprised to see me but stared at me, her painted nails fiddling with a silver and turquoise chain dangling from her neck. Taking an opportunity, I told her how much I admired her taste in clothes and jewels. She scowled, but after telling the customers to ring if they had a question, she led me past the counter and into the back.

  “Thought of a way to bug me already?” she asked.

  “I wanted to talk to you alone,” I ad-libbed. Lied, really. “About Stephen.”

  “I don’t know what I can tell you about my late son-in-law that you haven’t already figured out. God, how long I’ve waited to say ‘late’!”

  We were seated at a round table in the middle of her office, an airy space. A place for working and storing, the room was quite large and high-ceilinged, with countertops running around three sides and a sink and small refrigerator directly in back of us. It smelled of soap and wallpaper glue. Recessed lighting added to the sun pouring in from patio doors facing a small garden, and a late afternoon beam hit some wrought-iron furniture adjacent to a maple just beginning to leaf. A high wooden fence separated Ina O’Neill’s property from the alley, and a shed stood in the back corner. An unusual oasis for downtown Brooklyn, and I told her so.

  “Merchants have been selling here for over three centuries, they told me when I purchased it from my former employer. It’s been a haven for me; I sold my apartment and moved in to the five room above the store.”

  I’d forgotten her story, of how she’d turned a simple clerking job in a remote corner of Brooklyn into a goldmine. “I remember now: Lake and I were in school and your husband had just died. I admire you for the way you’ve built your business.” And it wasn’t all flattery—I really meant it.

  But she made no reply—too much of a businesswoman, or maybe she hadn’t been listening. I noticed her fingers were always moving, her eyes darting from one cabinet to the next. She was not happy in her skin, or maybe this was the way grief affected some people, or maybe she couldn’t wait to get rid of me. Call me a skeptic.

  She looked at her watch just as the counter bell rang. “You’ll have to excuse me.”

  When Ina O’Neill left the room, I got up and roamed, half-listening to the low murmurs coming from the store, the sounds of traffic from the street while I opened cabinet doors and peered inside. They were filled with office supplies, rolls of wallpaper, tile and paint samples, manilla folders stuffed with papers I wouldn’t have time to read. Nothing interesting except for one shelf where I saw some cat food. Funny, I didn’t peg Ina O’Neill for a pet lover. I was about to graduate to the desk and computer when I heard approaching footsteps, and Ina O’Neill opened the door.

  “I suppose I’m a suspect?” she asked, flowing back into the room, her painted nails clawing at her curls. “Stephen Cojok was a loser, really, end of story, and I’m not unhappy he’s dead.”

  “How did Lake meet him?”

  She sat, stood, sat again, twisting in her chair.

  “Some school function or other.” Her fingers danced in the air. “Sophomore year, so long ago. If I could have stopped it, but …” Her voice trailed off and tears filled the corners of her eyes.

  “What happened?”

  “But Lake was so happy, and about that time Gerald and I were having our problems, so Stephen filled her life instead of our shouting.”

  I kept my mouth shut, waiting for Ina to continue. In time, she did, telling me the story of her own rocky marriage, Gerald’s mood swings; a warning sign, as it turned out. “He was a hypo, you see, or so I thought. A civil engineer with a good job who wouldn’t hear about my working. No, at that time I was a stay-at-homer.” And I nodded while she told me the story of one doctor visit after another. “Sore foot, rash, pains coursing down his arms, stiff neck, you name it. The cancer was in his brain, you see, a tumor, and we never knew it. No seizures, no real symptoms, no reason for CAT scans or whatever they’re called, so it was too late when they realized. But the tumor grew; it changed his personality. When he was finally diagnosed, it was too late—the cancer had spread. He lingered. One morning I went for a walk and he was gone.” She bent her head then. Her store of words having been depleted, she sat still for the first time since I’d met her, and I let the woman have a little peace.

  But Ina O’Neill was a doer, a molder of dreams. She shot me a quick smile before continuing. “Right now Lake is devastated, but in a few months after she’s over him, the fog will lift and she’ll get on with her life. And I’ll be there every step of the way.”

  I bet.

  “Trust me, the same thing happened to me after Gerald died.” She was busy refolding dish towels as she spoke, stacking them into piles and gently placing each back on a shelf, patting the top towel for emphasis.

  “Where were you last night and this morning?”

  She gave me a throaty laugh and said I needn’t worry, she was tucked safely away in her bed.

  “So there’s no one to corroborate your story?”

  Just then the front door chimes sounded, and Ina O’Neill excused herself, gesturing me out the door. It was her not-so-subtle way of telling me to leave. I asked her to call me if she had anything more to tell me about Stephen, and knowing she wouldn’t but that I’d keep on her, I left.

  Dinner with Denny

  Henry’s End, a restaurant that had been at the northern tip of the Heights since forever and one of Denny’s favorites, was filled when I got there. I made my way through the crowd around the bar to the back where, according to Denny’s text, he’d reserved a table. When I spotted him all suited up and holding a beer in one hand, some barbecue ribs in the other, and a grin spreading across his face, I waved.

  Earlier, I’d sat in my study with Mr. Baggins in my lap and thought over the day so far, what I knew, what I didn’t know. I came up with two plans—one for the investigation into Stephen Cojok’s death and the other for a conversation between Denny and me that would last at least through dinner and on the way home.

  As he held my chair, I realized we hadn’t had a date, just the two of us, in over a year. We kissed and I brushed his cheek wit
h my hand. Probably because he worked out four times a week at Gold’s—and of course because being a cop took physical strength—he hadn’t changed, really, since the first time we’d met over five years ago near the entrance to the F Train on York Street. His hair, maybe a little longer and wavier, was the same light brown, no gray in sight. And his eyes, the same golden brown, led me down into the depths of the man.

  While I stared at him, the memory of our first meeting took over. I was driving Mom’s old Beretta, flying as usual, speeding toward the address of a new client when he pulled me over. I started in on him—how dare he stop me when I had a life-and-death situation on my hands, and for all I knew a woman and her child were on the brink of extinction. He let me go on; I could tell he wasn’t buying anything. He continued to stare at me, one side of his mouth quirked up in that way I’ve grown to love. He removed his hat, running a hand through his hair while I talked myself out of a ticket. At the end of my spiel, he asked me out, and we began dating. It took a few hours before we were rolling in the hay, but years to wade through my issues of love and marriage and kids. The upshot? We’d celebrated our sixth-month wedding anniversary two weeks ago, the first child on the way.

  Now we faced each other in a candlelit room, and I felt the same surge of emotional juices course through my swollen body as I had on the day we met. But the problem between us was not in the bedding but in the talking. For, you see, we had as yet to latch onto our conversation, the one that would stitch the days together into years and, hopefully, half a century and more. As I stared into his deepness, I groped for a subject, even though I’d rehearsed. “Just say ‘onions’ if you can’t think of anything else,” his mother once told me.