Too Quiet in Brooklyn (29 page)

Ralph chose the black ones and gave the man a bill and said he’d wear them out of the store. “Got any snap-on rubber cleats, like for snow?”

“I might.” The man returned in a few minutes. “Here you go.”

“And a T-shirt. White, if you have it.”

Ralph tried to give the man another bill, but he said, no, the first bill covered everything and he gave Ralph more bills and some coins. He was a nice man and Ralph thought he’d buy all his shoes at his store from now on.

He put on the T-shirt and threw away the fancy one. Then he found a bench in a park near the bridge and a man selling hot dogs. He bought two dogs and sat on the bench and ate them and got three more. He looked at the cleats. They came in a box with pictures. He followed the pictures and put on the cleats like the pictures showed and walked around, but took them off and had to scrape off the grass and mud. They weren’t for walking, but they’d be good for gripping. He remembered his brother telling him to hit the building flat. He felt the sensation in his knee and the flat of his foot.

When he got back to Brooklyn, he walked around near the water and found one side of an empty building. He put the cleats on and tried them out. He hadn’t climbed walls in a long time, so the first times he missed. “Out of practice,” his brother said. “I told you, do parkour three, four times a day, jump between walls, find your own way.”

But the cleats were fine and they helped, and his brother stayed with him the whole time he practiced. After a while, he found his way and made it up the side, almost to the top. “Like lightning,” his brother’s voice said, “but remember find your own way, hit it from the left.” The brick was old and had a lot of grippers, including some steel grippers in the form of stars. Finally he reached the top and hoisted himself over the lip and sat on the ledge. He felt the wind in his ears. His brother was always right. He was a good brother, but he couldn’t remember what he looked like. His sister told him he died in the war, but that was when she’d had too many M&M’s and talked funny.

Ralph turned and could see most of the buildings all around, even across the water. He felt the breeze in his hair and thought of the Y’s of trees. He liked being on the highest edge of a building and looking out. He could see how the road rose and dipped toward the building he was sitting on and how a few blocks away, it rose again. He was afraid to look down at first, but when he forced himself to look, it was okay.

But he couldn’t remember how to get down, so he closed his eyes to think, but that made him dizzy. He looked out and could see the building where he knew the woman lived and thought of the boss and how he’d told Ralph that he wanted her out of the way and then Ralph could come back and get Charlie. He thought of Charlie and his softness, but that made him dizzy, too. “One job at a time, Ralph,” his brother told him.

At first, Ralph didn’t want to look at the building where she lived because it was close to the place where the woman and her friend had tricked him, but he remembered his brother saying he was a good boy and one day he’d grow into a man. He thought hard about yesterday morning and wondered what had gone wrong. His brother whispered, “If you’re going to do something, go ahead and do it, don’t mess around.” That was it, he’d taken too much time being nice. Next time he’d just squeeze until he heard the crack.

It was still early and he thought now would be a good time to get down. He needed a closer look at the woman’s building so he swung his leg over and used his abs like his brother showed him and flexed. He looked down. The ground wasn’t so far away, and it was soft dirt. “Fall and roll,” his brother said. “Hit the building going down, like you were walking. Then fly, be a ball and roll.”

So Ralph aimed and stepped and scrunched and rolled. After he stood up, he took the cleats off and looked around. There were no cars. He stayed as close as he could to the walls and moved down the block. Still no traffic and he got to the woman’s neighborhood in a few minutes.

He stayed across the street and hid in the shrubbery and watched her house. She must be inside because he saw lights on in the third floor. Then the lights went off. The walls of her building were good ones for climbing, brick with some metal grippers on it and not too tall. He was glad, because the one next to it was made of boards and much taller. “Boards are no good for climbing,” his brother whispered, “but brick is always good, especially old brick.” Ralph could almost see the grips from here. A light went on in the front room, and he could see a man moving near the window. He crouched lower in the bushes. The time wasn’t right, so Ralph would wait. He knew how to be still. He knew how to be patient. His brother taught him that.

The sun was high in the sky when the door opened and the woman and man came out and got into a jeep and drove away. Ralph took a quick pee, crouching down in the bushes. Now was the time to move, he knew.

He walked across the road and snuck around the woman’s building, like his brother taught him. “No running, Ralphie. Move slow and they won’t notice you. Move quick, and you catch their eye.” So he moved slow and looked up, hoping there’d be an open window, but he heard noise coming from next door or maybe from down the block, he wasn’t sure. A man and woman arguing. He stilled, looking for a place to hide, and found an overturned wheelbarrow, small and cramped, but he managed to squeeze inside. He waited until the shouting stopped, got out, and kept looking for a way to get inside the house.

Finally he found an open window in the back on the top floor. It didn’t take him long to walk up the bricks as soon as he remembered his brother’s talk about rounding from the left and got into his stride. He missed three or four times because he was out of practice and should have gotten cleats a long time ago. His brother was always right. “Like greased lightning,” his brother whispered when he grabbed the ledge of the open window. He hung on, pushed the window up a ways, and using his abs, hauled himself inside—waiting for his breathing to still, crouching, in case someone heard him. He wiped sweat off his face.

Something creaked. He thought there was movement, someone coming up the stairs and his heart beat fast. He stayed near the open window, scrunched while he listened to a whirring noise from somewhere in the house, downstairs, maybe. His ears pounded and he began to sweat, but no one came. The house was empty. Except for Ralph.

He looked around. It was the woman’s room, he knew, because the clothes on the floor were like his sister’s. But the room was a mess. Ralph hated a mess. He saw ash trays with papers balled up in them, a box filled with candy bars, an old pizza, seven half empty cans of soda, two folded in half, and a couple glasses of wine and three coffee mugs.

When he looked at the mess, Ralph felt itchy, as if bugs were crawling all over him. He picked up a white container with a lid and smelled inside it but it didn’t smell good, so he placed it on the floor near the window. Underneath the desk, he found a basket filled with trash, some of it spilling over the side. He flattened everything so there’d be more room to place the fallen papers back into the basket. He drank the coffee and the soda from the cans and the wine, and ate a candy bar and the leftover pizza. He was still hungry, but he decided to save the rest of the candy bars in case the woman didn’t come into the room until tomorrow. He threw the candy bar wrapper into the trash, squashed the pizza box into a tiny square and threw that into the trash, too. Then he sorted all the other empty boxes and cans together in a neat row starting with the tallest can, and straightened the room up as best he could, dusting with an old rag he found in the corner. On the desk there were two small movie screens, just like in the boss’s office, but they were smeared so he wiped them off. “Bright and shiny,” his sister said. “Ma would be proud of you, Ralphie.”

When he looked around, he didn’t like the way the cans took up too much space on the table, so he straightened the bent ones and squeezed all of them down until they were silver circles and placed them in the trash. He folded the blankets and the clothes he saw lying over chairs and on the floor, and put them on two of the chairs in the room. He straightened the messy pile of books on the shelves, working as silently as he could. When he looked around again, he liked the room.

He looked at the door and saw that it was hinged to open inside the room. He was afraid to go out, so he squinted into the keyhole, but couldn’t see anything except a hallway and some stairs. He shouldn’t have drunk all the liquid because he had to pee again, so he used the white container that already had a bad smell in it. He was glad it had a lid. He looked out the window and saw the bridges. Ralph liked bridges. He squinted up at the sky and saw an early evening star. He wondered if Arrow had become a star the way his sister and brother had. He sat on a chair in the corner in the dark and waited for the woman.

Feeling Jumpy

The phone rang. It was Jane.

“Mind if we come over? Willoughby wants to get the spreadsheets from Denny and any other information you might have from Mary Ward Simon’s computer pertaining to Heights Federal.”

“We’ll give you the computer, how’s that?” I asked.

I wasn’t looking forward to their visit so I had to psych myself up for it. Only trouble was, I felt a little antsy—I didn’t know why. I looked out the window. It was the ending of a spring day and clouds near the setting sun were a shade of pukey green I wasn’t familiar with, not in the sky at any rate. One good thing, the case was winding down. It wasn’t over, not by a long shot, but I felt good about playing a part in getting Charlie back where he belonged. And the events of the last few days, even with all their horror, seemed to have brought Denny and me closer. Maybe the black cloud over my head was beginning to lift. Only trouble was, tomorrow was the postponed dinner with his folks, and I dreaded it. Maybe that’s why I was feeling jumpy.

* * *

“Now I see why you moved here—no problem getting a parking spot,” Willoughby said as he and Jane walked in the door, loaded I hoped, with news. They each carried computers.

“Scenery’s not great, but we like the neighborhood,” I said. “And from my study, you can see a sliver of two bridges and Manhattan across the river.”

“Maybe we ought to go up to your study instead of messing up your dining room,” Jane said.

Denny tried to hide his grin. “I don’t think so.” He looked at me and we laughed, one of our sparkling moments together. He tried to explain about the state of the room.

 
“The day I clean my study is the day I lose my mojo,” I said.

“So you haven’t cleaned it in, what, a couple of months? No big deal. It’ll remind me of home.”

“No, I haven’t cleaned it ever.”

There was a silence.

“Besides, it’s a special place. It’s where I go to figure out the deep bones of truth, and I don’t want to wear it out.”

No one said a word for a while.

“Where are we?” I asked after we got settled in the dining room with chips and dips and drinks.

“Ralph’s disappeared,” Jane said. “Crawled into some god-forsaken hole and hasn’t come out. We’ve got uniforms and detectives and Feds looking all over for him and we’ve turned up squat. We’ve put surveillance back on your house. We don’t think he knows about Winston Connors’ arrest.”

“So why doesn’t Connors tell you where he is? Or get him to stop?”

“Because he doesn’t know where Ralph is or how to reach him.”

There was a long pause while I watched Willoughby lunge at the chips. He stuffed a huge amount into his mouth.

“The Feds told us this guy doesn’t do phones. He doesn’t do newspapers or radio or TV. He might as well live on the moon. Or in the Middle Ages.”

“Why a surveillance on our house?” I asked. “Ralph doesn’t scare me.”

“That’s a problem,” Denny said and took a drink of his beer.

“A big problem,” Jane said, and Willoughby nodded. “Because Connors admitted hiring him to kill you. He tried once, and he’ll try again.”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re just like your mother. You’re both like dogs with a bone.” Jane took a sip of iced tea and looked at her notes. “Connors’ exact words—‘two dogs with a bone.’ First he had your mother fired, and when that didn’t stop her, he had her killed. And when he heard Barbara hired you to investigate her mother’s death, he knew he had to get rid of you or else you’d discover the truth.”

“Thanks a lot.” But I couldn’t help smiling. I could see my mother, bright determination in her jade eyes. She fought to get her job back. I was too busy with school and pretending she was still working at the bank to pay attention to what she was doing, but I’ll bet she was uncovering every rock she could find for dirt on Heights Federal. She wouldn’t have killed herself. And I had to bite my lip, too, so I wouldn’t cry. “So that’s why Ralph attacked me yesterday morning, not because he was so passionate for me, sexy looker that I am. And you saved my life,” I said to Jane.

She shook her head. Crimson flushed up her neck and into her face.

“How much was he paid?” Denny asked.

“Nothing.”

Denny looked at me and we started laughing.

“You mean I’m not worth anything?” I stirred my tea.

“No. Money doesn’t mean anything to Ralph. The way the Feds explained it, Connors knew the Feds would find Charlie if he remained with Ralph—he’d already been spotted in a restaurant in Allentown. So he kept Charlie at the compound, telling Ralph he could have Charlie after he killed you. Because Ralph doesn’t pay attention to news, he doesn’t know about Connors’ arrest and thinks that when he returns, he’ll get Charlie back.”

“How could he not know?” I asked. Then I remembered. “Sorry, stupid question. The guy’s like a hermit.”

“Worse. The guy flies under the radar.”

“Like the Unabomber, and you know how long it took to find him,” Denny said.

“You mean there’s no radar invented that will spot him,” Willoughby said. “Got more beer?”

He and Denny went into the kitchen and we all took a break.

When we got back to the dining room all cozy next to our computers, I started in. “No, she means we have to tweak the radar to spot him,” I said. “We can do this, I know we can.”