Whiskey’s Gone (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 3)

by Susan Russo Anderson

  Poor woman. Probably had a degree or two and left a job she loved and now she was stuck at home with the kids and a mousehole for a studio in some broken-down building. Isn’t that what usually happened when you marry and have kids? So I swallowed and shot Cookie a look. Rina was an active mom, I could tell. She looked like she worked out every day—well, I guess you would with five kids.

  “When do you have time to paint?” Cookie asked.

  “I make time. We all need to squeeze it out like paint from a tube. I can do most of the planning at night after my three youngest have gone to bed, and Jerry helps out with the laundry and the homework. If I hadn’t met him and had kids, I’d be painting and alone, maybe in an uptown gallery by now. But I’ll get there. I’m in a show in Chelsea next year.”

  Right. I told her about Cookie’s talent and how she could create the likeness of a person in seconds. I pulled out the drawing she’d made of Arthur and showed it to Rina, who studied it for a while before slowly shaking her head. “Looks kind of familiar, but I couldn’t swear. Whiskey had a lot of friends.”

  I heard screaming coming from the back bedroom and I jumped from the chair, but the cries were followed by laughter and running feet.

  A young girl came into the room, her arms loaded down with a toddler. “Mom, Evie and Henry are jumping on the bed again. Where’s Kit, anyhow?”

  “Evie, Henry—you stop it. NOW!”

  Rina’s last word thundered through the apartment.

  Silence.

  “And Kit’s with her friends. Put Benny in his playpen. Did you start your homework?”

  The girl turned, her back a little slumped, and disappeared.

  Rina looked at us and shrugged.

  “Don’t they take every ounce of energy? Don’t they take the you from you?” I asked.

  Rina laughed again. “In the end, you do what you have to do. And my kids teach me a lot, too. Now that Kit is thirteen, she’s able to help out. When she’s home, that is.”

  I wondered if this Kit was the same Kit I’d met with Brandy, but cries and laughter interrupted my thoughts. I looked at my watch.

  “Kit’s my oldest. She’s with her friends now. Practically lives with them. She’ll be back soon. She’s doing so much better since transferring to Packard, and now that I’ve gotten into a gallery in Chelsea, we can afford it. I can’t believe they love my work. I don’t know why, but they do.”

  “I’m glad you wanted to talk to us,” I said, trying to get us back on track.

  Rina frowned into the room. “I’m worried about Whiskey. We got to be friends. She hasn’t returned?”

  Cookie shook her head.

  I pointed to the sketch of Arthur. “So you didn’t see her with this man?”

  After she studied it again for a few seconds, Rina shook her head. “No, he doesn’t look familiar. Whiskey lived across the hall, so I couldn’t help hearing what was going on if it involved raised voices or laughter.”

  She stopped for a moment to weigh her words, I guessed.

  “A couple of times I heard her arguing with someone. I assumed it was one of her male friends.”

  Cookie, who’d been checking her hair, plunked her mirror back in her purse, snapped it shut, and sat up.

  “Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t like it was part of her work, if you know what I mean. She didn’t date a lot. She’s a paralegal, I believe, and very much into her career. She knows she’s it as far as Maddie is concerned. But a couple of times I saw her with male friends. One of them, a guy she dated for a while, or at least I saw them together on the street and once going into her apartment, well, I didn’t like the look of him.”

  She stopped talking and I looked at Cookie. “And it wasn’t this guy?” I held up Arthur.

  “No. This was an older guy. And once I heard them arguing on the landing right outside my apartment. I know it was the old guy I’d seen on the street because I watched through the peephole. They were struggling and Whiskey said, ‘Get the hell away from me’—or something like that. I was just about to help her when I saw him swivel around and run down the stairs.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Tall. Bit of a paunch. White hair. Red face.” She thought for a few seconds. “And he had a purple handkerchief hanging out of his coat pocket. I remember, because as he thundered down the stairs, he reached for it and wiped his face. What an image, I thought. That face. Those colors. You see, I’m good with colors, always have been.”

  I nodded, looking around at her paintings, the hair on the back of my neck beginning to prickle.

  Rina continued. “If you must know, I remember people as examples of this or that art movement. I type them into categories—classical, impressionist, like that. I’d call him a painting by one of the European Romantics, a portrait in cobalt violet against the cadmium scarlet of his cheeks. Oh, and I saw a splotch of yellow vest, that was it, a bright blob of yellow, like cadmium yellow deep. Ultramarine work shirt. The guy belonged hanging in the Met, I tell you. I’d have posed him leaning against a tree with his arms crossed and one foot on a rock, the better to show the bulge of his crotch.”

  Cookie smiled a little wistfully. We’d been friends for so long, I knew what she was going to ask. “Don’t you dare,” I said.

  Rina slammed right into our wavelength, like she’d been part of our group forever. Her smile had an engaging slant to it. “Both of you belong in the MoMA, I’d say. I’ll remember you as pastel impressions, or maybe as a collage made with bottle caps. Emblematic of the nouveau coloristic shabby school?”

  Cookie took out her mirror again. “You made that up.”

  “Sometimes I have to make up schools, but Whiskey’s friend, he was definitely a motley figure. Camille Corot could have painted him into his landscapes, some rustic right out of the French countryside. What Whiskey was doing with him, I don’t know. I’d have gotten rid of him before he took a second look at me.”

  Whiskey in Chains

  Whiskey in Chains

  “Help! You lousy bugger, what are you doing to me? I promise not to leave you again. No need to tie me up and stick me in here.”

  Maybe if I kick hard enough, the door will break. Cement walls. This place is so small. No light. “Let me out, I’ve got to go! I’ll come back. I’ll do anything. Just let me pee!” Too late. I feel it spread around my legs. Hot, wet. Like Alice in the rabbit hole. Alice, one of Maddie’s favorites, next to Wonder. What did Alice do when she had to pee? I’m going to be sick.

  Light scorches my eyes.

  “Quiet in there! They’ll be here any minute. If they find you, we’ll both be in trouble. They’ll take you away, and you don’t want that to happen.”

  “I’ll go with anyone who’ll get me out of here, you lousy bastard. Ow, you’re hurting me. What are you doing?”

  “Shhh. Hear those footsteps?”

  “I’ll do what you want, I promise. I’ll be quiet. Just let me leave for a few hours. I’ll come back, I swear I will. I’ve got to tell them at work I need some time off. If I don’t show up, they’ll fire me—you don’t know my boss. So untie me now.”

  “Got to tape your mouth since you won’t shut up.”

  “Hey! Did you hear me? Untie me, now!”

  So dark in here, I could lose myself. The tape is pulling my hair. Oh, my God, sweet Jesus, poor Maddie. Why did I go with him? I could have run when I had the chance. I should have known. He’s a madman. Why didn’t I know? When Maddie wakes up … I can’t breathe in this dump. My heart’s beating like a banshee son of a bitch. This is it, I know it. Calm, I’ve got to remain calm or I’ll never get out alive.

  A Visit with Seymour

  Out on the street again, I called Trisha Liam and asked if Seymour Wolsey was still in the office. When she replied in the negative, I asked for his address, remembering that he said he lived in Cobble Hill. Luck be a lady, we were probably close by and would have time to pay him a visit.

  Knee deep in crime scene techs, sh
e groaned on about the police for a while. I didn’t tell her about the struggle Rina Rosanova had seen between Whiskey and a man whose description bore a strong resemblance to Trisha’s snaggletoothed partner. There’s such a thing as telling a lawyer too much—and Trisha Liam was nothing if not a lawyer—so I said I needed to ask Seymour more questions. I added that if he didn’t know anything about Whiskey’s disappearance, maybe he could provide information about Arthur.

  The address she gave me turned out to be nearby—on Pacific Street, a block or so away from where we stood, so Cookie and I doubled back and rang the bell of an impressive-looking carriage house.

  “Did the drapes just twitch, or am I seeing things?” I asked.

  Cookie crossed her arms. “This place gives me the creeps.

  The sun had totally set and there was a crispness in the air as I tapped the knocker. Nothing. I rang the bell. No one answered. We were about to leave when a short plump woman in a gray cotton dress with a white collar swung the door wide open. She introduced herself as the maid. “Mr. Seymour, God bless him, won’t be home for dinner this evening.”

  I shook my head. “I think he’s here now.”

  The woman canted her eyes to the left.

  “Don’t worry. I know you have to say what you have to say, but you’re not a good liar,” I said, showing her my ID. “Seymour and I met earlier today. I’m investigating something for his office, and I need to ask him some more questions.”

  Her cheeks looked like crab apples, and her eyes slid from me to Cookie and back. “You’d better come in, then. He’ll just have to deal with you.”

  She sat us down in the living room and told us we’d have to wait. While Cookie punched through the emails on her phone, I thumbed through Whiskey’s journal, my fingers flipping, my eyes spellbound by the words.

  A Thursday in July

  Liam’s not a bad sort, but ever since Brandy’s misadventure, she’s been dropping deadlines, throwing herself at the kid. And Rhoda the receptionist is a piece, treating the partners like they were gods, gaping at the rest of us with a loathing she doesn’t try to hide.

  But the worst is that Wolsey character. You’d think it’d be Trueblood I’d not trust—him and his mustache—but, hey, can I help what’s in my insides? No, Wolsey is the one in the gutter. Him and his broad shoulders and thick white hair, his wet mouth chomping on the butt of a cigar. I saw him once in Coney Island, going into the fat lady’s tent like the white rabbit disappearing down a hole. Like he’d been following me and got sidetracked by a sure thing. Something devilish in his gait. The slump in his shoulders. Something suspect about his eyes, like black smoke in the distance.

  At first he reminded me of Arthur, the times I’d see Arthur sidling out of Frieda’s tent all satisfied. But Arthur is different: Arthur is full of surprises. That’s what redeems him, makes him an innocent, sparkly and enticing. Whereas Wolsey is just a dirty old man, paunchy and wrinkled and liver-lipped. And when he surprised me that one time in Coney Island, I could see dirt underneath his fingernails. Creep. That’s when I decided to leave Ma’s apartment for good. Besides, I deserved better, to borrow one of Ma’s phrases, a sentence she’d say when she was deep in the drink.

  So I found an apartment in Cobble Hill. All right for a start, but the next year I took a better one in Carroll Gardens with a bay window. Maddie and I were moving up. My life was all upmarket Court Street stores and restaurants.

  To prove my point about Wolsey: Late one day after work, I stopped at the butcher for a breast of chicken. As I was counting out the exact change, I saw him. Wolsey. Well, not him exactly, but the flap of his coat disappearing down the street. Herman the butcher’s boy asked if I knew the old guy with a stomach. “He’s been staring at you the whole time you been in here.” Creep. I froze. I remember thinking, I should have stayed in Brighton Beach. I could have made a charmed life for Maddie. I could have been someone.

  I looked up from my reading. Still no sign of Seymour Wolsey, and we’d been waiting at least thirty minutes.

  “Your cheeks are red. Let me see that book,” Cookie said, reaching for Whiskey’s journal.

  “I’m not sure I can find the passage again. I’m just being aimless here, skimming this, reading that, trying to get a sense of Whiskey. She doesn’t have good things to say about Seymour Wolsey. Seems he’s got a thing for her, and he’s not above stalking.”

  Cookie shuddered. “She’s not coming back, is she? Whiskey’s gone, isn’t she?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I flipped through more pages and started to read again.

  “Hog,” Cookie murmured.

  A Tuesday in February

  Tommy knew the score as soon as he entered the house. He craned his long neck like an egret sensing a nasty breeze and gave me a toothy grin.

  “Don’t be bothering your sister,” Ma said. She straightened to her full sitting height, which was none too tall, and bellowed, “She’s got work. Nathan’s Famous took her, although why, I don’t know. Look at her sitting there, all blowzy, like a snake got up her pants.”

  “It’s windy today,” I said. I smiled my secret smile and made it quick to my room and shut the door.

  But my brother knew different. When Tommy walked into my room, I was having myself a time staring at the wall and thinking about the Wonder Wheel.

  “I know what’s what,” he said. “You got the wind up your sails. You’re too young. Don’t know what’s good for you. Come with me tomorrow, and Mortie will teach you law office stuff.”

  “You’re hurting my arm!”

  “No one’s going to defile my sis. I’m trying to save you from the thugs.”

  I thought of Coney Island and Arthur and all the rides near the boardwalk. I’d have to give notice at Nathan’s Famous. I knew that afternoon my life had changed.

  A Monday in March

  Ma knew when I walked in the door.

  “You’re in the family way,” she said. She had a brogue, Ma did, and the drunker she got, the thicker the brogue became. But Ma was wily.

  “How ya gonna work with a kid stuck to you? And don’t look at me. Just because I managed doesn’t mean you can. Kids are work, real work. They suck the life out of you. Take you and Tommy, for instance. Better do something about it.”

  She pinned a hat to her head. “I got houses to clean. See these hands? In water all day and you wonder why I take a drink. Before I go, get me my bottle of gin. No lime in the house, oh, bugger. Back home we had the most delicious limes, big as melons, they were.”

  Up to no good, Ma was, telling me about how she can’t keep up with the cleaning gigs anymore, hinting that I’ll have to take over the reins.

  She opened the door and turned back to look at me, her hat lopsided, hiding the gray in her curls. It was the last time I’d see her alive. “Better be nothing in that belly of yours when I return.”

  A Blue Day in March

  My brother says I’m the quean of leaving. He never forgave me, you see, for leaving his law firm. His law firm, you got it?

  Like that one time when I wouldn’t come home and he grew furious. I mean bonkers. What’s with him? So I took my savings and left. Paris drew me, and I lost myself on the banks of the Seine. When I returned, it must have been a month later—a month wiser, I tell you—I left the house, I left the firm, I left him.

  Finally Seymour Wolsey’s maid returned. She led us through the living room past a grand piano to a door on the left. After a rap with her knuckles, she stuck her head inside and said something I couldn’t quite get, but Seymour’s bulk appeared slouching against the jamb, his hands in his pockets. His tie reminded me of a noose. His whole face looked blurred, and I smelled booze.

  He stood there a moment, his calculating eyes sliding right and left as they added and subtracted, then motioned us inside. “Have a seat,” he said, his voice all slicked up.

  Cookie sat, crossing her legs, and rummaged in her bag for a notebook. I remained standing.

  �
��I suppose you don’t want a drink.” He smiled and reached for the bottle on his desk.

  Cookie shook her head.

  “As a matter of fact, I’d love one,” I said, smiling back. “A glass of water with one cube of ice.”

  His eyes narrowed and he muttered an epithet that sounded like creeping Christ, but I couldn’t be certain. I watched as he pulled a yellowed handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow as he heaved his bulk out of the chair and sauntered to the door. “Yellah, get over here,” he bellowed.

  When she arrived, he asked her why she was wearing her coat.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s past my time.”

  “Get this … woman here a glass of water and be quick.”

  “Sorry, your majesty, but I’ll miss my bus.” She shut the door.

  Good girl.

  “Sour old puss,” he said as he rose up and lumbered out of the room.

  I figured I had two minutes, tops, so I looked around for the best place to search—not the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on one side, or the low filing cabinet underneath the bay window; and I knew I couldn’t risk opening the door on the far wall, probably leading to a closet with a secret stash of something or other—so I chose his desk.

  “What the hell?” Cookie asked, snapping her bag shut. “Let me help.”

  She took one side of the desk and began opening drawers. “What are we looking for?”

  “An address book.”

  “In his computer,” she said.

  I heard the distant clink of ice falling into a glass.

  I shook my head. “The guy’s a techno-idiot,” I said as I heard running water. My hand slithered into the middle drawer. I stubbed my fingers on something cold and hard. I peered inside and saw a gun, a Glock if I wasn’t mistaken, but I’m not that good with weapons. Not for the first time today I wished Denny were here. I opened the drawer wider and heard the sound of Seymour Wolsey’s heavy steps in the hall.