Too Quiet in Brooklyn (13 page)

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.

“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.”

“Do we have to talk about this tonight?” I was hugging my stomach and rocking only because it made me feel better. “I mean, what does Mom have to do with Mary Ward Simon? I’m sick of you both trying to think up ways to get me to talk about my mother. Sick of it. I thought something was going on between you two. This afternoon I noticed it. Just now I watched you exchanging looks. How dumb do you think I am? You aren’t shrinks, you know, and you don’t know what the hell you’re doing or how it feels to be me. You don’t have a clue.”

I could feel it building and there was nothing I could do. My voice was getting higher, louder, out of control.

“I’m just a god-damned orphan, ok? In the end everybody leaves me—my parents, my gran, but it wasn’t her fault, no. She got cancer and had to die. And what did I do? Sell her piano, that’s what. I’m such a god-damned slut. All alone, and I don’t need to be reminded of it or how my mother died on the street and left me and her mother alone and me to take care of my grandmother, ok? Mom went through hell, but I know she’d never, ever kill herself.” I was screaming now, I knew it, the veins in my neck sticking out like entrails. “She’d never do that to me or to Gran. Now just leave me alone. Get out. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten involved in this, Never, Never, NEVER! Just let Jane handle it.”

Who was this woman inside of me, screaming and balling like a spoiled brat? I sat alone in my study, breathing hard, a heap of wasted human while Denny and Cookie opened the door and without glancing back, walked out on me.

Suddenly I stopped crying. No audience, I guess. I’m such a fake. I got up and wiped the snot off my chin and swallowed the last of my coffee. I turned out the light. My temples throbbed. I sat in front of the window, seeing the black buildings wobbling like jello and the lights on the bridge winking back at me like they got the joke. My mother lying in the casket flashed back at me, then I pictured me in the casket with everyone crying. What a glutton for sleaze sorrow I am. No wonder everybody leaves me. I’ll say one thing, though, I felt better. Which was real good because my phone was having an orgasm.

The Fight

Jane’s name flashed across my screen.

“Yes?”

“What happened to you—swallow the wrong way?”

“Very funny.”

“Listen, I’ve got news. That torched van we found off the Belt? We found the VIN on a piece of the frame. And I’ve got some other news, too. Are you available? Willoughby and I are headed your way now.”

Was this the good fairy doing a poor imitation of Jane? “How do you know where I live?”

“How could I forget?”

“But I don’t live there. That’s my cleaning service.” I gave her our Vinegar Hill address.

That was the easy part. Now I needed to do something about the broken mess between me and Denny. I stood in the dark, not really thinking, more like a ten-year-old delinquent holding my eye, which by now was a pulsating bongo drum.

“Denny?”

Nada.

The dining room was empty, the kitchen, too. I paced from room to room, stood in the hallway, the circle of fear closing in on me, forming knots in my stomach until I swallowed them away. I looked in the mirror and scared myself until I realized it was me. I was a disaster. In the dining room, the TV was on and the deceased’s laptop had a red blob in the battery indicator. I looked out the living room window. Denny’s squad car was taking up two spaces and his jeep was gone. A lump formed in my throat. He’d left me, just like everyone else had, and Jane and Willoughby were on their way. I walked back into the dining room, or the fairies carried me there, I can’t tell you which, and shut down the TV and closed the laptop lid. I was about to turn on the hall light when I heard footsteps, a key in the lock, and the door opened.

“Where have you been?”

“Driving Cookie home, where do you think? Some friend you are. She’s been busting her chops and she’s hurting because her current boyfriend cancelled a date tonight, and you all but ignore her. You didn’t even thank her for all the work she’s done. You shoved her out the door with your stupid hissy fit. When are you going to grow up? When are you going to start treating your friends with respect? When are you going to get off your Poor Sad Me throne, and realize that other people have lost, too?”

“Spare me the sermon.”

“Fine. My father was right. He said I deserved much better than you.”

“What are you, some kind of papa’s boy?”

He stopped and looked at me. I’d never seen him so angry. I felt the monster rise up and punch me in the stomach. We’d never gotten this far.

He calmed down, his voice soft. “I’m outa here. You can take your life and shove it where the sun—”

The doorbell rang.

Needy

“That’ll be our next tier of guests. A hundred bucks says you’ll never guess who.”

I thought Denny was going to cry, staring at me like he’d lost everything.

I went to answer the door.

“Sorry to barge in on you like this, but as you know the first twenty-four are critical.”

Jane needed something, I could smell it. I looked at Denny who was trying to get my attention. I knew he felt awful about what he’d just said. And I felt my normal miserable self—ripped apart—but I smiled and led them into the living room where Denny stood in the middle, a goofy grin on him, the saddest clown I’d ever seen. I’m a shithead.

“You knew we lived together, right?”

“Of course,” Jane lied, looking down to hide the surprise screaming all over her face. She slid into our best chair, an overstuffed, deep-seated affair we’d bought at an estate auction in the Hamptons for five times what it was worth.

Willoughby looked around as if he was enthralled with the decor. “Nice place you got here, Denny. Close to work, too.”

“Have a seat. What can I get you?” Denny asked. “Coffee? Soda? I guess alcohol’s out?”

Jane smiled and looked at me. “We won’t be here long. I just wanted to give you this. You might want to do something with it. I can’t, other than pass it on.”

I looked at the sheet she handed me. They’d done a search and gotten the complete history of the VIN. Last known owner of the van was a James S. Arrowsmith with an address on High Street in Allentown, New Jersey.

New Jersey. I didn’t say anything for a moment, trying to sort stuff out until, bingo, it hit me like shit bricks and I punched myself in the thigh for being so slow on the uptake. Jane was worried about the help she’d get across the river and she’d seen my New Jersey license hanging on Lucy’s wall. She needed me. Needed me bad. That’s why she was being so nice. She wanted me to hunt this guy Arrowsmith down. I knew I could, too. The guy could be important. And she needed something important, needed it bad. But not just for the press or for her boss. For Charlie. The first forty-eight are critical and time was streaming through our fingers like tiny grains of sand.