Too Quiet in Brooklyn (4 page)

“After the time we asked her to join our group and she declined. I saw her again in Teresa’s, I think, but I was busy at the take away counter and she was sitting in a booth with a little boy and someone else.”

“We’ve got to find out who she is. We owe it to her.” Cookie said.

I knew it. Cookie was hooked into the case, the diet and karate and the boyfriend du jour forgotten.

“How much time have you got?” I asked.

“Whatever it takes. Want me to canvas the neighborhood, see if anyone saw anything?”

“Great idea. Just a few of the brownstones across the street from Lucy’s—anyone who had the right sight lines this morning. I mean, somebody’s bound to have seen something.”

She nodded and started to go.

“Something else I really need you to do. I tried showing Minnie my pictures of the dead woman and she freaked.”

“You can’t go showing those around, Fina, people will think you’re weird.”

“Minnie had a great idea, though. She suggested you draw the dead woman’s likeness from the photos.”

“Give me a pencil, I’ll do it right now.”

Twenty minutes later, she gave me a small graphite drawing and damned if it didn’t look just like the woman I remembered from the flower shop.

“Why didn’t you keep up with your art?”

With one hand Cookie whipped out her lipstick, eased off the cover, and flicked color onto her lips, returning it to her purse in one arcing movement. “Too complicated, but the quick answer is my dad didn’t want me to cut off my ear.”

“Huh?” I tried to shake the cobwebs from my brain. “I’m going up to Caputo’s. Meet me when you’re done. I’ll either be at Teresa’s or the Clark Street Station. How much time you got?”

“Lots.”

Which is more time than I had, remembering my dinner obligation tonight.

Something or someone was goading me. I felt compelled, pushed by an unseen force. I was going to find this woman’s strangler, I knew it.

Ralphie

Earlier

Ralphie watches from the tree, the one with a nice Y. He loves trees with Y’s that are high. He can hang out all day and no one finds him. He sees Buster waiting for him in the park at the end of the street. Buster’s so small he can lift him in one hand. Ralphie shimmies down the tree and goes over and sits on the curb next to him, and Buster leans into him. His tail wags up dirt because it hasn’t rained in a long time and Ralphie coughs and Buster barks and makes whining noises. Ralphie wonders how Buster will survive outside all alone, but his sister says winter’s a long way off, so don’t think about it.

He runs inside, fills a dixie cup with water, and brings it out to Buster who slurps it up and begins gnawing at the paper. Only food he’s got are chips and peanut butter between two slabs of stale bread his mom brought home last week before she went away, and some M&M’s he took from his sister’s dresser. Buster looks at him with eyes like the holy lady in the picture. Once he tried to bring Buster inside, but his sister stopped him. Ralphie slaps at a flying bug. The park is full of them—bugs and dog shit and men who sleep on broken benches. Ralphie pees behind a tree the way his brother taught him.

His sister’s calling him. She won’t see him climb inside, she’s leaning out the front window. He runs at the wall on the side of the house, just like his brother taught him, running, bending his knee, and sticking his leg out and hitting the bricks keeping his foot flat, hitting it fast and going with the flow, up and around, up and around. Parkour, that’s what his brother calls it.

He remembers practicing parkour. Day in and day out he runs at the low brick walls in front of the scrawny shrubs. Bounce off one to the other and bounce off that. Higher, higher. Go with the flow and follow your own path, he can hear his brother yell. But Ralphie can’t do it, not the way his brother can. His brother makes it look easy. He cheats with ice picks and with grippers. “Run at the wall,” his brother tells him, “and land with a foot flat on the wall and go up and around to the window.”

“Think of the wall as lying flat on the ground. Hit it fast, reach up and over. Up and over. Ain’t nothing you can’t do if you get in good with parkour.”

“If you want to go into a window, don’t start under the window, think of a circle,” his brother says. “Run at the wall way to the left of the window and hit the wall flying with the flat of your foot and grab with the flat of your hand and the grippers, and keep going up.”

At first, Ralphie gets his lefts and rights mixed up, but his brother is fine with him. He teaches him left. He squeezes his arm and says, “Left.” He shows him how to get left of the window.

“Fast, hit it fast and flat and hard. That’s parkour,” his brother says.

Ralphie’s brother tells him, “Don’t be afraid of hitting the wall. Run at the wall and find your rhythm.”

Once he ran at the wall and couldn’t get up. He saw white dots in his eyes and lay there on the ground for a long time until his sister found him. That’s when the headaches started.

“Climb to that window up there,” his brother said. “Remember to start way left of it.”

He runs at the wall just like his brother taught him, using the special grippers his brother made for him. At first he can only make it halfway up the wall and falls back until finally, something clicks. He gets his rhythm. He finds his path.

Day in, day out, parkour, parkour. He forgets about the Y’s of trees. Up, up, almost to his window, grabs the sill and hangs but cannot lift. He remembers his brother telling him to get snap-on rubber cleats, like for snow, but Ralphie can’t find them in the shops. His neck hurts and his legs too, and feet.

Then Ralphie starts to grow. He’s taller than his brother, but his fingers are raw and his head hurts from the pounding. One day he runs at the wall, up and over, up and over. Grabbing the window ledge, he grits his teeth and pulls himself up and over as if it was the Y on a tall tree. He sits on the ledge and waves to his brother and his brother waves back and whistles. Ralph remembers his brother whistling. The whistle echoes in his head. Inside, he brushes brick off of himself and creeps down the stairs.

“Ralphieeeee!” his sister yells sticking way out the window.

“Boo!” he says, surprising her from behind.

“Should have told me you been in your room. Been looking for you.”

She slams the window shut, just like the baker used to do after he was done with him. Ralphie doesn’t like the baker. He’s got rubbery teeth and moist hands and he comes up from behind and squeezes Ralphie in the balls, and Ralphie can feel the old man’s hard cock grinding against him and smell the bread crumbs in his beard.

It’s time for school, so he kisses the dog, just a peck on his nose, and walks all the way down Tremont Avenue trying out different names for the dog and looking at trees. Some are scrawny things he wouldn’t want to climb, but some are tall and straight before the first branch. He tries some of these. Doesn’t tell his brother about the dog because his brother says he, Ralphie, is part girl. Snoopy maybe. No, there’s already a snoopy. Buster, that’s better. Buster. He remembers how its tail stirs the ground and the look in its eyes. That afternoon, when he’s rounding the corner for home, he sees Buster sleeping by the tree. He walks over and without opening its eyes, Buster’s tail wags. He remembers Buster and smiles.

Ralphie cleans the fish tanks in Mr. Jensen’s pet store on Arthur Avenue. Mr. Jensen says Ralphie has strong hands for a kid. He says it when Ralphie picks up an empty tank with one hand by squeezing it and lifting. The job’s a secret because he’s not old enough to have a job. Mr. Jensen pays him in dollars at the end of the month, and Ralphie hasn’t lost a fish yet, unless you count the floaters that one time, but he told Mr. Jensen sorry and Mr. Jensen says that’s what counts. Maybe he’ll teach him how to clean the hamster cages this summer if the store stays open. Mr. Jensen says not too many people buy pets anymore. He says he might open the store in another neighborhood this fall. Ralphie says he’d work for him there, he could take the subway, but Mr. Jensen just smiles and tells him it’s time he gets a proper job, but that was before Mr. Jensen’s wake.

He tried taking Buster with him to school once. Snuck past the guards all right because all they do is sit around, but the ogre caught him. Made him take Buster outside. If he leaves him here, the dog will be gone. He strokes Buster’s fur. “I’ll be back. I promise.” He slaps two M&M’s on the ground. Buster sniffs them and looks up at him, his tongue hanging out and panting, so Ralphie takes the M&M’s himself, holding them on his tongue so he can feel the slow spin of the street without losing his balance too much. After the M&M’s he looks for Y’s at the tops of trees and high windows in brick walls and watches them swirl.

* * *

That’s what Ralph tried to hold onto, the way trees swirl and parkour and Buster in the morning. He stomped on the other pictures in his head before Arrow caught him dreaming again—the flattened fur in the street, the way his sister’s eyes stared up at him that one time. He wished he had more of her M&M’s.

“Doin’?” Arrow asked. “Should’a weeded this whole patch by now. Look, if I catch you buzzed again, you’ll be sleepin’ with the fishes, hear me?”

Only ten in the morning and Ralph smelled beer on Arrow’s breath. He asked Arrow for a beer.

“Stupid, you’re just stupid! Gotta finish your work first. The old lady’ll be out here any minute and she wants to see beds with no weeds, hear me?”

Arrow’s phone rang.

Ralph could tell it was the big boss.

“Today?” He heard Arrow say the word soft, like when he didn’t want Ralph to hear. “But she’s got the kid with her today.” Arrow didn’t say anything for a while, just listened, nodding his head and pushing his cap around on his head like he did when he was thinking or didn’t want to be disturbed. “Dump it where?”

Arrow snapped his phone shut and put it in his pocket. “Remember what we practiced?”

Ralph looked at him. “Not today.”

“Yes, today.”

“Charlie too? I can’t do Charlie. Don’t ask me to do Charlie.”

Caputo’s Bakery

By this time the crime scene folks had disappeared and the block had reverted to its usual leafy stillness, almost as if earth was a peaceful planet. Except for the tape and a small knot of onlookers now chatting with one another, you’d never guess that some of the world’s horror had been dumped near Lucy’s doorway.

I narrowed my eyes, watching Cookie walk across the street, telling myself I was thinking, not vegging. At this time of day it was better to hoof it to Caputo’s than to lose my parking place just to inch my way through congestion, so I locked up and headed down Henry. I must have been dreaming, a no-no for a detective, because the last thing I remember was a cab honking at me as I cut across Atlantic. Without realizing it, I’d gone over to Court, passed my favorite bookstore and hundreds of restaurants, funeral parlors, and real estate agencies. I continued down the street, traveling at light speed compared to the clog of cars tied up in traffic. I made it into the heart of Carroll Gardens. All of a sudden, I saw the bakery’s sign. I waved to my realtor who happened to be walking toward her office down the block, clients in tow. She’d be working late as usual and although I needed to talk to her, I didn’t think I could spare the time. Wiping my brow, I looked at my watch and calculated that I’d made it in less than ten minutes, a record.

The smell of warm bread and almonds accosted me. When my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw Mrs. Caputo behind the counter. Slight, but a bundle of energy with an accent, she wore a starched cotton dress and greeted me with open arms. Literally. I kissed her on both cheeks and she brought out a plate of biscotti, said I should be eating more, and told me to wait. She limped into the back. I called out a thank you and took a bite, spewing crumbs and seeds all over me and the floor.

By now my jacket was tied around my waist, dangling over my rear. My hair was a mass of frizz, and my sweat glands had been working overtime. Breathing hard, I swiped a hand across my forehead and stuffed another cookie into my mouth. I wondered how I’d ever make it to Vinegar Hill to change then back down to Carroll Gardens for dinner in forty-five minutes. I wiped my hands on my jeans and devoured the last cookie as Mr. Caputo emerge from the back room.

I swallowed, thanked him for the drop-off of cannoli earlier and told him what had happened and why I’d come. “Your delivery guy still here?”

He turned to the back and called out. Smiling, he faced me. “Always. The grandson.”

In a second, a much younger copy of Mr. Caputo emerged. About eighteen, I’d say. I introduced myself and repeated my story. “When you delivered the cannoli, did you happen to notice any vans or trucks outside?”

His eyes took on that faraway look. “Just the usual.”

“Can you be a little more specific? Where did you chain your bike?”

He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “On the No Parking sign. Best place.”

He waited for me to react.

“You remember the time?”

He held up his watch. “Not good with time. Before lunch.”

“So tell me what you did. Take it step by step. You locked your bike, took the cannoli out of your bike bin, unlatched the gate, stepped down to ring Lucy’s bell, rang it … Like that, tell me.”

He did and I’ll spare you the boring part, but there was an interesting bit at the end.

“…When I go to unlock my bike, there’s two guys in my way.”

“Doing what, these two guys?”

“Dunno, carrying something. Mean sort. Told me to scram. I unlocked my bike and got out of there.”

“How did they get there?”

He shrugged. “I remember hearing a van door slam. Must have been. Wait. Yeah they were double parked because I remember the two of them hauling something heavy, walking in between two parked cars. That’s all. Happened so fast.”

“Did you see their van?”

He shook his head.

“Close your eyes. Try to picture it. What did they look like?”

“Average guys.”

“Wearing hats? Chinos?”

He shook his head and squirmed.

“What color was the van?”