The Brooklyn Drop (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 4) Read online

  “Are you hiring me?”

  “Not yet. Forewarning you, but, yes, if it comes to it.”

  “You know guardianship is not my area of expertise, but I can defend with the best of them. What’s more, I know how to delay. How old is Kat now?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Trisha Liam batted a hand. “Three years until her majority? That’s not a delay, that’s an eye blink. It may never come to a hearing.”

  We were about to leave when I thought of one more question. “What happens if Phyllida dies?”

  “You’re asking about the contents of her will?” Trisha Liam stood. She turned to Lorraine.

  “Don’t look at me. Yes, I was a witness, but I don’t know the contents.”

  The lawyer walked to the door, a sign our meeting was over. “And I’m bound by ethics not to reveal the contents while Phyllida Oxley lives. But I will say this much, provisions have been made for Kat. She should have no financial worries. Six months before her eighteenth birthday, tell Phyllida to get Kat in here, and we’ll start drawing up her granddaughter’s will.”

  Cookie in Bensonhurst

  The ride to Bensonhurst on the N train had given Cookie time to scribble a few pages of a paper she was writing for one of the three graduate courses she was taking that semester, the one on nineteenth-century British women authors. The working title of her paper was “The Effect of Jane Austen on Ernest Hemingway.” When she’d read it to him, Clancy hadn’t seemed too interested except to say that whatever Cookie wrote was brilliant. Although he’d attended her talk on Emma and had clapped enthusiastically even before she finished speaking, she doubted he’d read anything she’d written from start to finish, but then, who did? All those words rattling around in her head, dying to find paper, and what good did it do? When she’d presented her synopsis of the Austen-Hemingway paper to the professor, he’d said the project sounded “hopeful.” Hopeful, it could be the word for all of Cookie’s life. Matter of fact, someone could put it on her tombstone.

  As she passed the Early Bird Supermarket, she stuck two pieces of gum in her mouth and stowed her copy of Painting and Reality. She rested a bit on the side of a building before dipping into an alley and donning her disguise, thick dark glasses and a special covering for her head, a shower cap she’d rigged up made of stretchy material in camouflage green and brown print with a few of those old-fashioned curlers sticking out of the sides. She wore her father’s black wool overcoat and a gray pair of Uggs. Fina said she’d blend in just about anywhere in Brooklyn except for maybe the Heights north of Montague.

  Cookie found the massage parlor in an unassuming mixed neighborhood a few blocks from the station. The brick storefront was a basic one with a blue awning over a large plate-glass window with all kinds of ads and pictures of women, probably masseuses. It had “La Belle Hélène” in large white letters. The place looked closed with one of those metal grates covering the façade. Not a soul on the street. Cars parked bumper to bumper. It even smelled like Bensonhurst, she thought, the scent of Chinese cuisine wafting over the graves of pizza parlors. She steadied herself as she unfolded a metal stool and sat behind a garbage can with an unobstructed view of the parlor. Pulling out her phone, she studied the pictures Fina had sent her of the three lowlives she was supposed to be tracking and wondered if she should trail them should they show up. Might as well, nothing better to do.

  A few cars passed, but hours went by before there was any movement on the block, except for one woman carrying a laundry bag and two kids on boards skating down the middle of the street. These surveillance jobs were the pits. Not for nothing, she could be home doing solid research. Instead, here she was plunked on a nondescript block in Bensonhurst, doing work she loathed. Then she thought of the money. God knew she and Clancy could use it. Fina said to spend as much time as she needed to write up a thorough report, reminding her that she needed it yesterday. A snoop’s life was boring, but there were worse jobs, and she and Clancy were saving for a home. Big enough for lots of kids, Clancy had stipulated, something close to where Fina and Denny lived. She wondered if they’d ever make enough to buy a three-flat, maybe even a fixer-upper. Clancy was so handy. Hopeful, be hopeful, she told herself. If she had a job like this every week, say, even two days a week, they’d have the down payment in no time.

  She nibbled on the cheese sandwich she’d made for herself. No movement in or out of La Belle Hélène. No matter, she had plenty of time to read and to make notes. Again she thought of the money. She rolled up her empty lunch bag and tossed it into the can, remembering the first time she’d met Clancy. Funny, it was near a garbage can like this one, but on the Promenade, where she’d been doing snoop work for Fina and searching for a discarded painter’s cap. Goes to show you, you never knew. Her arm had been stuck down deep in the debris when out of the blue she looked up into Clancy’s gorgeous face, and the rest was, as they say, history.

  The memory gave her an idea and she began plowing through the debris in this can to see if she’d come up with anything unusual. As she rooted through the stuff, she saw Clancy in her mind’s eye, tall, his abs and pecs perfect. And he hadn’t changed, either. Although she could dream about Clancy all day, she’d better focus on the job in hand. She took off her dark glasses and peered inside the can. Parts of the Sunday paper, a dog poo bag, a crushed beer can. Other than that, nothing. Sanitation must have emptied it that morning.

  She sat down again. Reaching in her purse, she pulled out her mirror and checked herself. Were those bags underneath her eyes? She hoped not, but her face looked a little puffy. She reapplied lip gloss, and feeling a tad hungry even after the huge breakfast and the sandwich she’d eaten, she crossed the street and dipped into the corner deli to buy a bag of chips and a pickle, a big one, all the while keeping her eyes on the massage parlor door.

  That’s when she saw him, not the men in the photos Fina had sent her. She hadn’t seen any of those types, but that wouldn’t matter after who she’d seen. Amazing. Wait until she called Fina, but she had to make sure he was who she thought he was. She needed proof. Taking out her phone, she snapped some images of him entering the store, then brought out her notebook and scribbled a description of the clothes he wore, the time of day, the direction from which he’d entered her field of vision. She watched as he unlocked the grate, lifted it, fumbled in his pocket for another key, and entered the storefront.

  Cookie sat for over an hour waiting for him to emerge. Still no other traffic on the block, which had quieted again, when out of the corner of her eye, she saw two young women in spikes and short skirts walking arm in arm toward the parlor. They stopped in front of the building, conversing with each other, gesturing, laughing, before opening the front door and disappearing inside.

  She looked at the time. Already after three. Suddenly the block seemed to come alive. Horns honked, traffic flowed on the street, cars, pickup trucks, a line of them. Two men walked in, probably customers. They were partially obscured by a school bus letting kids off at the corner, but they looked like thugs, the types she was supposed to be watching for. She waited twenty minutes or so until one of the lowlives left, followed by the other one, and she got a picture of them getting into a Mercedes parked down the block. Their car sped away, but not before she caught the tags on her phone’s camera. She’d wait to see if the interesting guy would emerge. She needed another picture of him. No, she needed to follow him, she thought, adding up the money she’d make today alone, and pressed Fina’s number.

  Watching

  Denny made us dinner from scratch—chicken breasts lightly floured and spiced before throwing them into the oven with baked potatoes, and on the side, a tossed salad with his special dressing. Wholesome food, basic, just the way we liked it. We laughed and smooched and sipped our Merlot while we waited for the meal to cook. Denny didn’t want to talk about his work. He never does, I figured because he works with Jane a lot, and he knows how I feel about her. But he asked about Phyllida, and I said there
was nothing new. I told him about our visit to the Goncourts, painted great images of them, the housekeeper and her bird and their spooky house; I mentioned the woman’s disregard of her older son and the gas leak Garth had probably caused. I told him about the commotion Liese Goncourt created a few years ago at the Phyllida Oxley lecture.

  “Must have been before I met you. I can’t picture you attending a lecture at a museum.”

  I set him straight. “Cookie went to the lecture. She’s the one who remembered Liese disrupting it.”

  “Cookie,” he said, and stared at the oven clock.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No. What?”

  “I think Cookie’s great, but Cookie sees what she wants to see.”

  I pressed my lips together.

  “I shouldn’t have said that about Cookie. Sounds like that Goncourt woman is a loose cannon, and her son is worse if he allowed a gas leak like that. The whole house could have blown up.”

  I held my breath a second, then told him Cookie had seen him later entering the massage parlor.

  Denny did a thing with his eyes, not exactly an eye roll, more of a narrowing.

  I explained, “She’s doing the massage parlor surveillance in Bensonhurst.”

  Denny knew all about the job. “Jane thinks you haven’t started it.”

  “She knows now we’ve started it, because I called her this afternoon and told her who Cookie had seen, two of the three wiseguys Jane hoped we’d see, both of them entering the building.”

  “And that Garth guy was with them?” He crossed his arms and faced me. “Cookie’s sure about that?”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. He’s just the type of person who’d own a massage parlor.”

  “You don’t know that he owns it. You don’t know it was the same guy you met this morning in Victorian Flatbush. Cookie might be mistaken.”

  I showed him the images she’d sent me.

  “Blurred? Taken of a man’s back?”

  “Wearing the same jacket he had on this morning. We’ll see what Jane has to say.”

  Denny opened the oven door to check the chicken, and I walked into the living room so I wouldn’t open my mouth. Most of the time, we were on the same wavelength about stuff. Not tonight. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was reading too much into the photos Cookie sent me of Garth Goncourt—or his look-alike—but my gut was telling me he was up to his eyeballs in whatever was going on at La Belle Hélène. And I didn’t trust any of the Goncourts, especially Liese Goncourt. I was so ready to convict her of shady business. What’s more, at least one of the Goncourts had something to do with Phyllida’s drugging and fall. I knew it; I just couldn’t prove any of it. Not yet. For whatever reason, I peered through the slats of our living room window.

  “There’s a strange car at the end of the block.”

  “Describe it.”

  “You know me and cars.”

  “Unless it’s a Beretta, and then you know make, model, year, odometer reading.”

  Denny was referring to my mother’s car, which I’d kept for years after her death. Rusty and battered, it took up a parking place on our block until its recent unfortunate demise.

  “I think it might be a Ford. Or maybe a Chevrolet. Black or dark green. Sitting at the end of John Street and idling, or it was a few seconds ago. I’ve seen it here before, sometimes at the end of our block, other times, double-parked.”

  Without a word, Denny patted the Glock he wore strapped to his ankle and zipped his jacket. I felt the rush of cold air as he opened the front door and disappeared into the dark. What if the car held a crazy guy, and I’d just let my fiancé walk into a trap? I listened, but all I heard was the pounding of my heart. In a few minutes he returned.

  “Car’s not there now.”

  “Well, it was there a few minutes ago.”

  He brought in the platter of chicken, delicious and crispy, and we started to eat. One thing about Denny, he really respects me. Most guys would say, “You’re seeing things,” or “So?” or, “What do you expect me to do about it?” But not Denny. Maybe it’s the cop in him, but he takes me seriously. Anyway, far be it from me to understand it, but I do test him every once in a while. He’s got a thing for his father, you see, and sometimes it scares me. Even with all that, we’re committed to each other. It makes me feel, I don’t know, lucky. I could stare into his eyes for eternity, but thinking about it, the forever part I mean, makes my toes curl.

  He squeezed open a potato and slathered it with butter. “You didn’t get the tags or you would have told me.”

  “No, but I remember they were odd. All numbers.”

  “Might be dealer plates. When was the first time you saw the car?”

  I told him it was the night Lorraine had called about Phyllida. There was a car idling a block away. The driver seemed to wait while we parked. “Remember when the icicle crashed?” I wiped chicken drizzle from my mouth.

  He shook his head, crunched salad, and shot me that half-smile I love. I knew what he was thinking, something about my being too dramatic. And I knew he was right, but he stuffed whatever it was he was going to say because Denny believes in me, even though it’s hard for me to imagine why.

  “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but now I’m beginning to be concerned.”

  His eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. I looked for traces of male mock in his face, but there were none.

  So I went on. “I saw the car when I came home last night. This morning, too—on the way to visit Liese Goncourt, we almost got sideswiped on Flatbush Avenue. It looked like the same car.”

  “Sounds like you have a following. Clancy owes me one, and it’s his day off tomorrow. I’ll get a couple other buddies and we’ll take a good look.”

  We were interrupted by a call from Lorraine telling us Phyllida’s condition hadn’t changed. She said Kat had refused to leave the hospital. Before and after school, she’d wedged herself into a chair, not saying much, sitting by her grandmother’s bedside, holding her hand and talking to her. “She’s got to wake up. For the sake of that girl, she’s just got to wake up.”

  No Smilers

  Kat’s Monologue

  Granny says just because someone’s dead doesn’t mean they stop talking to you. She talks to Terris, that’s her husband, and to my dad every day. I tried the talking bit, but it didn’t work for me, so I thought maybe if I had more pictures of my parents, the three of us could have those head chats or whatever they’re called, plus it would help me to see them when we went to the mausoleum and I traced their names carved into the marble. Granny got out some old photos and framed a couple of them, one of Mom squinting into the sun and standing next to Dad. They looked like strangers, and I said so. That’s when Granny suggested paying a visit to my other grandmother, that’s what she calls her, because she has lots of pictures of Mom, old ones from way back when she was growing up.

  My mind froze remembering what happened the last time I visited Old Liese, all the stuff I hadn’t told Granny about. The fire and ice visit, that’s what Charlotte calls it.

  “She’s beyond creep,” was all Charlotte would say after I showed her the scars, by then only faint marks, but, still.

  I told Charlotte Old Liese had the nerve to tell me I was going to work for her after I finished school, and Charlotte goes, “None of her business what you do with your life. Besides, there’s college. You’re going, aren’t you?”

  “When I said I never wanted to work for her, she blew up. Kirsten was there and didn’t say a word, only watched Old Liese go totally weird, slapping me on the shoulders and arms and shaking a finger in my face. I was spooked.”

  “You should have left or taken out your cell and called someone, your granny or me.”

  I should have, I know I should have, but Charlotte made me feel worse, so I didn’t say anything.

  “Then what happened?” she asked.

  “She’s a witch. She grabs this lighter sitting on her
desk and holds the flame too close to my bare arm. ‘You’re just like your mother,’ she says and I scream and shove her away, but her fingers are like claws and she holds me. I tell her I’m leaving, but just like that she slumps into a chair and begins crying and saying she didn’t mean it and please, please forgive her, like that, and all the while Kirsten is standing there not doing a thing.”

  Charlotte’s fist was in her mouth. I made her promise not to tell her mom or anyone, but I shouldn’t have asked her to promise, because afterward Charlotte got all weird and wouldn’t talk to me for a few days. The silence between us was worse than Old Liese and her stupid flames. Two days later I couldn’t stand it, so I called Charlotte. “I know we’re not talking, but I met this new guy in our Social Geography class, really cute, perfect for you,” and we were back.

  Anyway, I made a face when Granny said I should ask Old Liese for pictures, and Granny turned away quick so I wouldn’t see her smile. I hated going alone, I told her, but didn’t get into the why. Then Granny goes, “Take Charlotte with you and spend a Saturday night. It would make your grandmother happy.”

  Granny drove us in her Plymouth and Charlotte and I sat in the back. After I pounded down too hard on the seat, I grinned and so did Charlotte and dust flew up around us. We arrived a little too early because Old Liese wasn’t receiving yet, according to Ameline, who gave us both a scratchy kiss on the cheek before showing us into the music room.

  Most of the time Old Liese sat at her desk and talked on the phone and shuffled papers. Business that had to be attended to, she said, because “your uncle Abe has made such a mess of things. Good for window dressing, I suppose, but he buys and then forgets. You have to watch and cultivate the work. There’s never an end when it comes to people.” She screwed up her face and looked from me to Charlotte and slammed her hand flat and hard on the top of the desk, then flapped an arm at us and told us to find something to do until lunchtime.