Too Quiet In Brooklyn (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 1) Read online

  And it worked on the old woman, too. When Arrow gave him the nod, Ralph picked her up and let her kick and squirm and pound his shoulder. He carried her into the shed. Ralph squeezed, didn’t have to squeeze as hard as he did with Butternut. He heard the crack and he was done, he could let go now, that’s what Arrow said, but they hadn’t bargained on Charlie.

  See, it’s this way, Ralph is all right when he does just one thing, but he’d forgotten about Charlie. They had to chase him. Couldn’t see him for a while. He hid behind the coat next to his gran’s body, the smart little bugger, that’s what Arrow called him.

  When Arrow opened the shed and saw Charlie in there, he told Ralph to bag the old lady and lock the shed. That was the second bad thing that happened, because Ralph had to plead with Arrow. “Don’t let him stay in there. You said I could have him.” But Charlie was smart, he started wailing and screaming, and Ralph squeezed Arrow’s shoulders so Arrow changed his mind and told Ralph he’d been right. Arrow said, “Yes indeedy, you’re right, Ralphie,” and told him, “Good job.”

  Then he pulled the needle out of his pocket and that’s when Ralph almost lost it. He went rigid like he used to do late at night when his sister brought the men home. Arrow said his eyes got bugged. He told him not to hurt Charlie and then Arrow goes, “It’ll make him sleep, that’s all Ralphie, just for a little while until we get rid of the body.”

  He’d shoot Charlie up with the stuff first thing in the morning, then in the afternoon. More and more and more of the stuff and pretty soon Charlie’d be dead, Ralph knew it. So he pulled Arrow up by his collar and Arrow, he gets his clown’s face on him, like, who, me? And Ralph said to himself, No, no more, that’s it. So he had to do it to Arrow, don’t you see? He had to.

  The Smell of Cordite

  When I gave him a fresh cup of brew, Denny stretched, took the mug, mumbled thanks and went back to the screen. He was mesmerized by the stuff. I couldn’t see the desktop, but thought he must have opened Excel, Calculator, Word, Stickies and Notes, all of them working together and he was tabbing rapidly through the applications. The title of the spreadsheet made me freeze.

  “That’s Heights Federal Bank?”

  He nodded. “For an old broad, Mary Ward Simon knew her stuff. Got links and cross references in every folder, an amazingly organized mind. And all her personal stuff’s in another profile. Nothing out of place.”

  “You saw her house.”

  “Not really.”

  I told him about the condition of each room that I’d seen during my walk-around with Barbara. I thought of my study upstairs. “Unreal. I mean, how could anyone live like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Everything so organized.”

  He shrugged, shot me a rueful grin.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just thinking about your study.”

  I changed the subject. “What are you finding out?”

  “Stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Not ready to tell you yet. Got to get all my ducks in a row first. Got to make sure I’m right. It may have a bearing on the case. May explain why she was killed, but right now I think it’s a long shot.”

  “Ready to take a break?”

  My phone vibrated. It was Cookie, talking so fast she sounded like a buzz saw. I asked her to repeat and slow it way down. She told me she’d been talking to one of the neighbors on College Place. Kind of a nose, she called him. He was in the crowd gathering around the police vehicles behind Mary Ward Simon’s mews. “He said he didn’t know her too well, but spoke to her from time to time. He tends the garden in back of the building and he bent my ear forever when I had so many people to get to and now he wants to talk to you and I talked to another lady, too, who wants to—”

  “Cool your jets, Cookie.”

  Dead air in my ear.

  Fifteen minutes later, Cookie was ringing our front doorbell. Her breath smelled like cinnamon pancakes and banana, one of her favorite take aways from Teresa’s.

  “Ok, so I stopped to pick up food and ate it on the way but it took so long getting here, I was finished before I got to Tillary Street. Got any coffee?”

  She gave Denny a peck. He hugged her in return, but his eyes moved back to the computer screen.

  “Denny’s in the midst of going through the victim’s computer.”

  “Why?”

  “Combing for clues. Her daughter told me she was a CPA. Retired, but still did the odd job.”

  I poured us each a mug. “Let’s go upstairs to my study. And I don’t want to hear squat about my housekeeping. I thought you had a date tonight.”

  “Pushed it to next week.”

  When we were settled in the futon chairs and I’d turned the lights up, Cookie told me her story, how she’d talked to people who were outside Mary Ward Simon’s house and knocked on doors while I sipped coffee and took notes. Most of them weren’t home or didn’t respond to the knock, so she’d have to return.

  “Sources at the Eagle say folks are beginning to call in, most of them wanting to get information. They’ll call me if they get something legit, but I got some leads from a couple of neighbors.”

  “Great,” I said, scribbling. “One at a time, okay?”

  “This one guy kept yakking on about the vic’s shadows. He didn’t know what to call them. They looked just like bums to him, but they seemed like they did odd jobs for her. He talked about their dumping grass and leaves, weeds, branches, that kind of thing. Said they used to hang out on College Place all the time, in and out of the garbage bins two, three times a day, but he got the distinct impression that they were up to no good.”

  “Did he say anything to Mrs. Simon?”

  “He said Mary told him they were all right, a little on the down and out side, but they were recommended by a good friend, they’d done some yard work for her.”

  “Hold on, Cook, let me get this stuff down.”

  While she waited for me to catch up, she reached into her bag for the mirror, spread the lipstick thick, pursed her lips, and took a look at her teeth. She held the cup to her nose smelling the steam and taking a swallow, gunking up the rim with lipstick.

  “His name?”

  “Hector Pool, and he lives on College Place. He’s an older guy with a beak for a nose. Got to be sixty if he’s a day, but he seemed legit to me. He told me he heard unusual noises this morning, a loud bang coming from somewhere on the street close to his house, but he wasn’t dressed yet, and by the time he got down there, no one was around, just something smoldering in one of those large bins or whatever they are—not the kind we put our garbage in, more like an old rusty oil drum. Hector showed it to me. It’s the kind they have around the abandoned buildings in Dumbo. He said it appeared one day on College Place near the far side of the fence. He doesn’t know how it got there.”

  I thought of the cordite I’d smelled earlier and the torched van. “Text me his phone number,” I said.

  “And I also found a neighbor who knows the Simon woman from committees and stuff. She was shocked to hear of her death. She wants to talk to you. She said Mary Ward Simon and the daughter never got along, especially after Barbara’s divorce.”

  Cookie handed me the woman’s name and phone number. I called both neighbors and told them I was investigating Mrs. Simon’s death and wanted to see them as soon as possible tomorrow morning, preferably before eight-thirty. I couldn’t commit to an exact time because something might break in the case that would demand my immediate attention. They understood and said they’d be ready to talk to me anytime after seven.

  La Piazza

  La Piazza was Arrow’s favorite restaurant. It was in New Jersey where Arrow grew up and where he met the boss. Every once in a while, when he was off the beer, Arrow would get this funny look on his face. He’d say there ain’t nothing like the country and he needed it now. Then they’d drive to Allentown just for the pizza and a ride on a country road with the windows down and the grass s
melling good and Arrow saying as how he could hear the corn growing.

  Ralph remembered how to get there. He was good with directions, his sister used to say. He remembered to go east on 195 toward the shore, exit and drive down a country road until you couldn’t drive no more.

  In the dusk, Ralph could see the lit-up sign and smell the food, hot tomato and cheese and spices. The parking lot was crowded and he had to inch into a small place, too small for Charlie to get out and anyway, Ralph didn’t think the little guy could manage it on his own, so he had to haul Charlie up and over to the front, holding him underneath his little arms. He didn’t mean to do it, Ralph would never hurt Charlie, but he banged him on the cheek with his chin.

  “I want my gran!” Charlie said. He was crying because of the bang to his cheek but Ralph held him and said, “There, there,” like his sister used to say. Ralph could feel his heart beating fast. Charlie smelled like talcum powder and vomit from when he got sick in the shed. Ralph held him tight to his chest and they squeezed out the door into the cool New Jersey evening. The country, Arrow called it, nothing like the smell, he’d say, and he’d take a deep breath.

  Ralph held onto Charlie’s hand, small and soft, and opened the door to the restaurant. There was a line and he heard glass and metal trays clanging together and people talking and waiters calling to one another in the kitchen. The pizza smell made him hungry and made him miss Arrow. The line didn’t move. There was a metal newsstand inside the door and Charlie pointed to it and said, “Boy,” and Ralph told him it was a newsstand.

  “Will my gran be inside?”

  Ralph didn’t know what to say but he squeezed Charlie’s hand. “Think so. Let’s eat first and after, we’ll try to find her. You hungry?”

  He nodded.

  They sat at a small table in the middle of the room. “Middles are better than sides or fronts,” Arrow’s voice whispered. “Too many people can see you in a booth or at a table by the window. Never know who might be passing by, might even be the boss.” It happened to Arrow once, but he wouldn’t tell Ralph what the boss did to him after that, not really. Arrow just waved it away and said the boss didn’t like to see them sitting on the job and eating at his expense, that’s not what he paid him for, and Ralph remembered that. It was crowded and he hoped the boss wasn’t in the restaurant with his wife and the guards. He didn’t think so, but just in case, he kept his baseball cap on low and tight.

  A waitress with a pony tail and a smile brought Ralph the menu and a booster chair and crayons for Charlie. Ralph ordered two soft drinks and a large cheese, thinking about how Arrow would have ordered a beer and the meat lover’s pizza and the beer would come to the table all sweaty, beads of water running down the sides, and the waitress would put the pizza on a fancy tray, steaming and piled with cheese and tomato sauce oozing over the crusty sides and covered with all kinds of ham and sausage and burger. And Arrow would take two pieces and slap them together, rolling them tight. He’d stuff them into his mouth while he guzzled the beer and a strand of cheese would drizzle down his chin. He’d order another two beers while Ralph sipped soda from a straw and ate his slice.

  That’s why Ralph was always the designated, Arrow told him, and besides, you’re a good driver, got a good sense of direction, yessir. Sitting in the middle of La Piazza, Ralph missed Arrow and the way he always said yessir, and tried not to think of his face all puffed and his eyes bulging with blood and his tongue sticking out like he was angry with Ralph. But he shouldn’t be angry with him. Nobody should. Ralph didn’t mean any harm, no harm to anybody. Only Arrow shouldn’t have gone on about Charlie and stuck him with the needle so much. Shouldn’t have done it.

  Heights Federal

  “I hope I’m not interrupting.” Denny stood, poised at the entrance to my study, laptop in one hand and coffee in the other. Seeing his coffee, I remembered my cup and took a sip, by now cold and bitter. He asked Cookie if she’d like a refill, but she declined and I watched him looking around the disaster of my housecleaning, turning to the window, mesmerized as he always was by the view of Manhattan. I knew Dumbo so well I could see it with my eyes closed, its gutted factories now being refurbished and the lights of the Brooklyn Bridge sparkling like fake diamonds in the distance.

  “You should hire Lucy’s to clean this place up,” Denny said.

  Some wayward piece of shit in me stubbornly refused to straighten my study, so I continued to look up at him while smiling and cocking my head to stare into his guileless blue eyes.

  My study was on the top floor of the Vinegar Hill brownstone Denny and I bought together last year. Don’t ask me why, maybe because we saw a good deal, and thought we’d been happy here, and we were, Denny agreeing to the stipulation that this room, my world, would be my study. The only light allowed was either daylight or 40-watt incandescent bulbs, the old kind, energy expense and eye strain be damned.

  On one wall was every book I ever owned, packed into floor-to-ceiling bookcases nailed to the wall and lopsided. I built them, not knowing anything about carpentry, but burning to show the world that I, a mere woman, could create on the cheap and operate a drill besides. My books were not in any order. The good ones stood next to the bad, my complete and precious Nancy Drew series scattered all over, small books with big, decrepit with shrink wrapped, books from grade school, notebooks from my great-great grandmother barely intelligible and smelling of dusty olives. Mom’s typewriter sat on one corner of the desk, a light green affair with cream buttons.

  The only seats in the house were a ladder-back chair from Atlantic Avenue Antiques and the two faux leather futon chairs I’d gotten for high school graduation from a great aunt. They were worn in spots with stuffing growing in a few places, but they were comfortable and Cookie and I currently sat in them, all cozy and welcoming Denny’s presence.

  Denny sat in the desk chair and hiked his feet up on the rungs. He slid the laptop and mug on top of a stack of papers I’d meant to sort three months ago and hugged his knees, leaned over, and cracked open a window. “Did Jane get back to you? I texted her asking for information.”

  “So did I,” I said. “Hours ago. I guess I can feed her information, but the deal’s not reciprocal.”

  Cookie yawned. “Time for me to get going.”

  “No wait a sec,” Denny said. “You and Fina are working this case together, right? So stay, because I’ve got information and I don’t want to repeat it. I’m just about grasping it myself, the full import of it, but I think it may have a bearing on Mary Ward Simon’s death.”

  Cookie nodded. They exchanged glances and I just about caught something in the undertone of Denny’s look that stuck in my mind like a hard piece of bacon partially swallowed.

  “There’s a guy I know, actually he’s Jane’s partner, Willoughby. He knows finances a lot better than me, so I want to ask him about what I’ve found. I’ve texted him to call me.”

  “Can you give us a simple preview?” I asked.

  “Right. And quick, because it’s after eleven,” Cookie said.

  “It has to do with mortgages and ARMs. Mary Ward Simon was knee deep in an audit of certain mortgages approved by Heights Federal from 2002 to 2007.”

  “So?”

  “They shouldn’t have been approved.”

  I froze.

  “Cookie, say something,” Denny said.

  “Don’t look at me. I’m a writer,” Cookie said. “This was before our time anyway. We were in grade school in 2002, remember?”

  “Your mom worked there in 2002,” Denny said, looking at me, his eyes soft and pleading. He was taking it slow, I knew, feeling his way, judging if the ice was thick enough before taking the next step.

  I think I was thrumming fingers on one of my knees, or maybe twirling a mass of curls on one side of my head, trying for a nonchalant look. “Until she was fired,” I said, or I think I did. I was finding it hard to breathe and the room took on a yellow glow, like we were inside a balloon and the air was running out.r />
  “Not a happy time,” I said. My voice sounded high-pitched. “Money from Lucy’s was haphazard at best, and there were days when we damn near starved. Mom was out of a job and she worried like crazy. Gran alternated between holding her daughter and playing the piano, and there were all those crashing chords. Mom paced or cried.” The pain behind my good eye was unreal, the other one had quit working about two hours ago.

  “Why was she fired?” Denny asked.

  I balled one hand into a fist. “I’m not sure. I mean, I know what she told me, but I didn’t understand it. She said when the shit hit the fan, which she thought it would in a couple of years, she’d be the scapegoat. It was a setup, she said. I watched my mother disappear, like there was some kind of sink hole in her head.”

  Denny stopped, his foot feeling the ice and hearing it crack. But he had to say it. “I’m not sure who it was, but someone commissioned Mary Ward Simon to do an audit of the bank’s records. Not all of it, just the mortgage division.”

  “But the bank folded a few years ago,” Cookie said. She flicked her eyes at me. “You know how I loved your mom, Fina, but all this talk of money, I don’t understand it. I know two things, though—she’d never hurt anyone, not ever, and she didn’t kill herself, I know she didn’t.”