“He thinks he sees an elbow sticking out of the dirt, but knowing Johnny, it’s just his imagination,” she said.
“I see part of an arm,” Kit said. “And it’s wearing a shirt like Arthur’s.”
I felt a sharp pain in my forehead. If anything happened to Brandy or to her friends, I’d never forgive myself.
I waved and yelled some more. Finally Johnny obeyed.
“I fought a seagull for this,” he said, as he scrambled up the pit. He held up a bent card, kelly green on one side. “It was in the dirt next to the elbow.”
I rounded up Brandy and her friends and told them that crime scenes were sacred, out of bounds and never should be touched.
“Not that she follows what she says,” Cookie said.
Denny nodded. “But you could have been hurt, so don’t ever do that again.”
“Or my mom will sue,” Brandy said.
I recognized what was in Johnny’s hand, a Brooklyn Public Library card. I took it from him and read the faded and smudged signature. It was scrawled by someone who didn’t use cursive all that much, but I was able to make out the name, Arthur McGirdle. I swallowed, and Denny, who stood next to me the whole time I was talking to the kids, put a protective arm around my shoulders. Peering down, he asked, “Does this Arthur guy wear a flannel shirt?”
I looked through the binoculars, focusing on the form sticking out from beneath the pile of rubble. From the elbow, I traveled from side to side, spotting the back, the shoulders, the neck and head at right angles to the body. It was Arthur, a broken Arthur. Poor Arthur. My stomach traveled to my mouth as I pulled out my iPhone and began taking pictures.
Before I could move my eyes from the corpse, Cookie’s phone chimed.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said into the speaker. “I met you once and you’re calling me? How did you get this number? Anyway, I’m studying for a test, got to go,” she added, crossing her fingers, and hung up. She told me the call was from Zizi. “They got a tip at the Eagle to look for a body in a pit near Mermaid Avenue.”
I turned to Denny. “Why so fast? Arthur’s body’s not yet cold?”
“My guess is whoever killed him was a hired gun,” Clancy said, putting his arm around Cookie. “He wanted his boss to know about it as soon as it happened, so what better way than to call the press and have them announce it?”
“Clancy’s trying for the organized crime unit,” Cookie said, smiling up at him.
They were hugging again while Brandy’s group gaped at them. And such a romantic spot, too. I shooed a gull away and crossed my arms, squinting up into Denny’s face.
“Don’t look at me, I’ve barely seen Zizi since last week.”
I said nothing.
“She’s after me all the time, but not because of my sexy body. She thinks I’m going to give her tips. All she cares about is her job, you know that, or at least you should. And no, I don’t call Zizi Carmalucci, not now, not ever, even though she’s been begging me and my dad—”
“All I know is Zizi is well connected. God and everyone is feeding her information,” I said. My skin prickled, my head pounded. I had a group of kids who were like loose cannons, and my prime suspect lay in a pit in Brighton Beach. How was I ever going to find Whiskey? My mind flashed to Maddie. Her mother was probably lying in the morgue, a charred mess, her teeth being poked and prodded, and what little bit of father she had was lying in a Coney Island pit.
As luck would have it, my phone vibrated. It was Jane Templeton.
“So when were you going to tell me your suspect is lying in a pit?”
“I’m standing here with my mouth open, staring at what looks like an elbow in the middle of a crumbling foundation on Mermaid Avenue, my stomach churning, trying to place the limb, thinking it might even belong to Arthur McGirdle. But I can’t be sure, not without climbing down into the hole and traipsing through the crime scene, so I hesitated, but I was just about to call you.”
Suddenly I realized it must have been Jane feeding Zizi and vice versa. They had a hotline to each other, and Denny didn’t have anything to do with it. I gulped, looking at him and wondering how I could have doubted him—I’m such a loser. So I had to ask her. “Does your slippery mole have a smile like the wedge of a lemon and the biggest set you’d ever want to see?”
She hesitated. “You know I can’t reveal my source.”
I sent her the images I’d taken of the elbow.
“A lot of good Arthur is now,” Jane said.
“If it’s Arthur’s body in that hole, then he didn’t abduct Whiskey,” I said.
“Maybe.”
She had a point. I felt empty, so I decided to goad. “And by the way, what about the corpse in the morgue and Whiskey’s dental records?”
“We can’t move that fast, and you know it.”
“If you wanted to, you could light a fire.”
Silence on the other end, so I decided to take another tack.
“And while we’re waiting for the ME, and I’m assuming you’ve called her—”
“Him,” she corrected me.
“Figures.”
Jane continued. “A detective from the precinct ought to be there any minute. Name’s O’Brien. He’s a tough piece of shoe leather, so I wouldn’t try any of your cute stuff with him.”
Swell. “If I were you, I’d check out Zizi’s sources. There just might be a connection between whoever contacted Zizi and my slashed car tires, to say nothing of Arthur, Whiskey’s abduction, and Mitch Liam’s death.”
“Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?”
I let that one go, but told her what I’d learned from reading Whiskey’s journal about Arthur’s plans to sell paint to the city. I felt a momentary surge of excitement coming through the network. But that last piece of information must have ruffled her feathers because she began lecturing me on removing items, namely Whiskey’s journals, from the scene of the crime.
When she said she was going to bring me up on charges of withholding evidence, I ended the call. I smiled, picturing her red face, but I’d slammed her for a reason: Jane needed to focus on this case, and one way to do it, I knew from experience, was to stir her up with a stick.
Clancy and Cookie rounded up Brandy’s crew and sat with them in the car. While Denny and I waited outside for the officials to arrive, I stared into the pit. If Arthur was dead, who killed him? More to the point, where was Whiskey? I should have been like an animal sensing a tsunami, but this time, I didn’t get that doom and gloom feeling the way I usually do when I know someone’s dead. No, for me, Arthur’s death felt like hope. Don’t ask me to explain myself, I’m afraid I can’t.
Ten minutes after talking with Jane, her counterpart from NYPD’s 60th Precinct pulled up, along with several patrol officers, ambulances, fire trucks, the medical examiner, and the CSU van. A neighborhood crowd, including our friend with the coat and ears, stood some distance away, unmoving, silent. Jane called me every few minutes while she and Willoughby drove to the scene.
I smoothed my face and introduced myself to Detective Inspector Patrick O’Brien, who flashed his badge when I asked to see it. I showed him my ID and told him I was investigating the disappearance of a Carroll Gardens resident. He scowled. I gave him a brief overview of what I knew about the deceased’s involvement with Whiskey Parnell, telling him we’d been searching for Arthur ever since he showed up at her apartment in a disheveled state.
“And how do you know the body lying fifty feet away and covered over with filth is the same guy?”
I showed him my binoculars. “How did he die? Broken neck? Any wounds? Blood? Was it organized crime?”
The detective glared down at me. “Do I look like the coroner?”
While I talked, he shifted from side to side, not looking at me but staring into the pit, his eyes moving back and forth surveying the scene. Like Jane, he was tall, well over six feet, and I wondered if height and attitude mattered more than brains w
hen it came to promotion. Unlike Jane, his hair was salt and pepper, cut short and spiked with product.
He chewed on a toothpick as he took a call. “Standing next to me,” he said into his phone. His lids were lowered, but I could see his eyes flicking from side to side as his toothpick rolled. From time to time he glanced over at me while he listened to the caller, cocking an eyebrow and smirking. “Thanks for the info,” he said into his phone. “I’ll be careful.”
Snapping his fingers, he called one of his minions, said something to him, and the patrolman ran to a squad car, returning with forms for us to complete. “Brief statements will do,” the uniform said. “Formality.”
O’Brien turned to me, shifting the toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “You might be investigating a missing person, but this man died in my jurisdiction. I warn you, if you so much as think about disturbing the scene, I’ll arrest you for obstruction.”
I thought of the library card Johnny found but said nothing.
Denny showed him his badge and began shooting the breeze with O’Brien, afterward retreating from the edge, I figured to show deference to the man in charge of the investigation.
“He’ll be no help, I’m afraid,” Denny said. His face was red, his eyes defeated.
Cameras flashed and a videographer shot the scene, lights smoking, their heat adding a disgusting tang to the garbage smell. As we watched, uniforms taped the area, and lab techs in white suits, some with orange glasses, did what they could to lift prints and other evidence.
The sun was gone, chased by a roiling blanket of clouds, and the air was kinking my curls. Seagulls circled, and a few were fighting over something. They began pecking at Arthur’s body. So much for tampering with the evidence.
“Sam, blow your horn. Got to get rid of these birds. Destroy a crime scene in two minutes.”
“Who’s to say they haven’t destroyed it already?” I asked the detective.
“Get away from the edge.”
I pointed to the corpse, by now picked clean of debris and unmistakably Arthur. “I need to find out where this guy lived.” I could tell my words rolled off of O’Brien, but I showed him the sketch Cookie made of Arthur. He gazed at it, shrugging, while I talked more about Whiskey. “She’s a single mom and who knows what’s going to happen to her eight-year-old child if I don’t find her. This man holds the key to her whereabouts. I need to find his apartment.”
The detective shifted his gaze to the left, to the right.
“Can’t you please search him for ID?” I told him about Maddie.
He climbed into the hole, walked over to the lead tech, and had a conversation with him, which I couldn’t hear because of the wind and the birds, but I saw the white suit shake his head.
I glanced around and saw Clancy, Cookie, Brandy and her friends. They’d gotten out of the van and were standing beside it. I motioned to them when the police waved us over.
We walked to the edge of the pit. The corpse, now in a body bag, rested on a gurney a few feet from where Detective O’Brien stood. I thought of the end that waits for all of us. When a policeman unzipped the bag, revealing Arthur’s distorted form but unmistakable features, Cookie signed herself and nodded. I identified him as the man we’d seen in Whiskey’s apartment.
An unmarked car pulled up and double-parked. Jane and Willoughby emerged, nodded to O’Brien, and walked over to Denny and Clancy while two patrol officers collected our written statements.
Brandy and her crew talked over one another, anxious to tell the detective what they knew.
“He’s the one who spotted the elbow,” Brandy said, gesturing toward Johnny.
“And we saw Arthur on Court Street yesterday,” Heather said, excited.
O’Brien, his devil spikes drooping, shot them a look, rolled his toothpick, and strode away.
As we piled into the van, I railed at all police everywhere, present company excepted, but I was interrupted by a call from Tig. He told me they’d gone through the CCTV footage at Sovereign Bank. He said he’d just messaged me some stills.
I stared at scratched images in faded color on my phone’s screen, barely able to make out the three-quarter-length view of a woman, her head bent as she examined something in her hands. From what I could gather, her face resembled the only photo of Whiskey I’d seen. At least she had a similarly shaped forehead, and she had Whiskey’s curls. She was flanked by a man. His face was turned away from the camera, his body blurred as if caught in a twirling action, but he had Arthur’s build, and he wore a flannel shirt. In one hand he held what looked like a gun. It was sticking into the woman’s neck. There was another figure in the background, merely the shape of a man, too dark to identify.
A jolt of something went through me, hard to decipher, but an equal mixture of fear and determination. If it was the last thing I did, I was going to find Whiskey Parnell.
After driving around, we finally found what we hoped was Arthur’s branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. It was situated on an unassuming block of Mermaid Avenue.
We pounded up the library steps and open the door. Inside the light was dim and the air smelled like old books. Some of Brandy’s group disappeared into the stacks while Brandy and Kit started talking to a young man who was checking in books.
A middle-aged woman wearing half glasses stood at the counter, doing something in the computer and stuffing cards into the back of books. I flashed her my ID, which she looked at all of five seconds.
“I haven’t got all day.”
I summarized our attempts to find Whiskey Parnell, our search for a person of interest leading to the discovery of a body in a nearby pit. I told her he had a Brooklyn Library Card in his hand when he died. Of all things. I showed her the library card.
She shrugged.
“We need to notify next of kin.”
“Couldn’t possibly divulge information.”
“But—”
“What part of that would you like me to repeat?”
She was a woman born to spout rules, and I knew I’d get nowhere with her. But out of the corner of my eye, I watched Brandy and Kit chatting up the book checker, who, I noticed, had a badge hanging from his neck. They were laughing at something he said. Couldn’t hurt to linger.
“You don’t understand,” I began with the boss again and cut across whatever she was going to say. I repeated my request, this time stalling as long as I could in order to give Brandy and Kit time. I saw Brandy’s library guy scratch his head and nod slowly. He left his cart and disappeared, at which point Brandy and Kit began texting. The rest of the group quickly huddled around her, and they all walked toward me.
“We have it,” Kit’s message said. “Need to leave NOW.”
Outside we piled into Clancy’s van and were about to pull away from the curb when Brandy’s guy appeared. Kit rolled down her window, and he stuck his face inside.
“I could get into a lot of trouble for this.”
“Just text it, like I told you.”
“No, you don’t understand. I … don’t have a phone.”
Kit looked at Brandy. “Sorry.”
He palmed her a wadded-up piece of paper and left.
Kit took her time opening it and handed it to me.
I gave Clancy the address on Neptune Avenue.
We’d just pulled away from the curb when I got the call from Jane. She sounded excited, conciliatory almost, telling me the body the FBI found wasn’t Whiskey Parnell.
“But I thought identification was going to take forever.”
“The pelvis is male,” she said.
I called Lorraine and told her the news. She started laughing and crying. I could hear whooping in the background.
“Robert, you owe me big time,” Maddie said in between shouts of joy.
“Easy, honey,” I heard Robert say. “One down, still a long way to go.”
After the call ended, I said lines from my favorite poem, the one Mom used to recite, about hope being the thing with fea
thers that perches in the soul. Brandy’s group groaned, but I couldn’t help the feeling of lightness. I was sure Whiskey was alive and we would find her. How, I had no idea. And the questions remained: how had Whiskey’s cell phone gotten close to the charred body, and why wasn’t it burnt beyond recognition like the rest of the scene?
The Landlady
I smelled boiled meat as we crowded into the entryway of a two-flat on Neptune Avenue, the address given to us by Brandy’s librarian friend. The woman who opened the door and invited us inside introduced herself as Ivanna Eisenstadt, the owner. She was crammed into a black and white polka-dotted dress with scalloped sleeves, her head wrapped in a babushka. She looked like someone who swallowed her secrets.
While I showed her my ID and explained the reason for our visit, Brandy and her surveillance team leaned against the wall. Brandy was looking at her nails, Kit was texting, Heather and Johnny looked bored.
When we asked if Arthur McGirdle lived here, Ivanna Eisenstadt shook her head, her gold earrings refracting dim hallway light. “The police have already been here looking for him. I watch them go up and down the block, knocking on all the doors before they come to mine. And when they rang my bell, I told them I don’t know no Arthur.” She crossed herself, and I saw orthodox priests in her elaborate gesture. As an afterthought she folded her arms, resting them on her large belly as if balancing two sledgehammers.
“You’re hiding something,” I said.
Brandy snapped to attention. Kit put away her phone. Johnny and Heather looked at each other.
“We know he lived here,” Cookie said.
Clancy flashed his badge. “Arthur’s dead.”
Ivanna Eisenstadt swayed slightly and blinked.
Clancy continued. “They found his body in a pit on Mermaid Avenue. We’re here unofficially. You don’t have to let us in, but if you don’t cooperate, we’ll have to call in the undercover unit, and I don’t think you want us to do that, Mrs. Eisenstadt. Believe me, you’d much rather deal with us.”
Undercover unit, what was that? I didn’t think Clancy had it in him to be so … forceful.
Whiskey’s Gone (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 3) Page 20
