Whiskey’s Gone (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 3) (14 page)

The guy on the other end cleared his throat.

I motioned to Cookie. She pressed her head close to the speaker so we could both listen.

“Who is this?” I asked.

The voice was a deep growl. “Leave Mitch Liam’s death alone. Now.”

“Bugger off, you creepy little turd!” Cookie said.

“Shut up and listen!”

“Who is this?” I asked again.

“If you don’t care what happens to you or your friend Lorraine, at least you should care about the kid.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Check your wheels. Worse stuff’s gonna happen if you don’t lay off.”

“Where is Whiskey Parnell?” I asked.

But the caller didn’t reply. He hung up.

Cookie and I stood still. I heard her rapid breathing, watched as she bowed her head and crossed her arms over her chest, like a nun praying. My heart was pounding, the street was lopsided, and I fought to catch my breath.

“Your car,” she said. “We’ve got to see what he’s talking about.”

I called and told Whiskey’s old neighbor we’d be a few minutes late. We retraced our steps, walking quickly toward Court Street where I’d parked. A million thoughts shot through my head, like who was this lowlife and how did he get my number. How was he connected to Mitch Liam’s death? Did Mitch’s death have anything to do with Whiskey’s disappearance? Was Maddie next? Lorraine? Earlier today she told me she’d uncovered dirt about some seedy types connected to the lawyer’s death.

I remembered what my gran told me, about coming to this country and being cold and lost and feeling so foreign; about meeting up with thugs in dark alleys, shadowy types who did what the don told them to do. They ruled with guns and threats. They demanded protection money. “Above all,” she said, “you must remain strong in the face of their evil and pray and never, ever give in. Fight them with everything you’ve got.”

“Is that your car?” Cookie asked, pointing. “With the rear end sticking up? And there’s a crowd around it.”

Slashed Tires

The back end of my car was sticking up because someone had removed the front tires. But the back tires weren’t in great shape either—they’d been slashed and bulged out on the street like rubber pancakes. I asked the guys crowding around it what they’d seen. They stood there murmuring to one another and shuffling their feet. Wouldn’t you know, “Nobody knew nothin’, nobody seen nothin’” on a major Brooklyn thoroughfare in the early evening. I looked long and hard at my BMW, cursing it. Mom’s Chevy Beretta would never have let me down.

Come to that, where were the cops when I needed them? Where was Denny when I needed him? My stomach did its elevator thing, depositing an undigested piece of nasty something in the back of my throat.

You might say I was a fool, but what these creeps did to my car made me more determined than ever to find out who killed Mitch Liam. I knew why he died, or at least I thought I did—Mitch Liam had recused himself from defending a thug, and that made the mob mad. I also thought I knew who killed him, an assassin I’d encountered on another case. But I didn’t know who had hired him.

And forget evidence: I doubted we’d ever get anything hard and fast, just hearsay and circumstance. But that would be enough for Trisha Liam. “Convince me my husband’s death was murder—that’s all I ask—and I’ll squash the bastards like bugs on a wall.” A crack lawyer, she’d figure out a way, of that I had no doubt. And after what they did to my car, I looked forward to watching her ream the mob and wring them out to dry. Or at least put a small dent in their operation.

While Cookie and I waited for NYPD’s finest, I thought of Mitch Liam’s death, pictured his head landing in the cottage cheese while he ate lunch at his desk two years ago. Mitch Liam—Trisha’s husband, Brandy’s beloved dad. I’d had Lorraine working on the case because of her legal expertise after many years at Smith, Jarvis & O’Leary and her knowledge of the Brooklyn mob. She’d been gathering evidence, and I’m guessing here, she probably asked too many questions. This latest trick convinced me that we were onto something; that Mitch hadn’t died of a sudden electric short to his heart or whatever it is the ME claimed at the time. I vowed to get on the case just as soon as I’d found Whiskey, or what was left of her. I shuddered. And something else was gnawing at me: I became more and more convinced that Whiskey’s disappearance was somehow connected, however tenuously, to Mitch Liam’s death.

We were in Cobble Hill, one of Brooklyn’s leafier sections. Who would think my tires would be slashed in this neighborhood? I looked around, lifting my eyes and willing myself to hold still until the tears dried up. Down a side street was one of those pocket parks. I saw shadows moving, maybe the usual huddle—men mostly and an older woman sitting by herself with a buggy I knew didn’t hold a child. It was getting dark, but I thought I saw a group of people talking and pointing my way. As I stared at them, they dispersed.

In a few minutes, Jane called. She was out of breath and not too happy with what she’d heard about my car. She asked her usual battery of questions ending up with who I thought was behind the tire slashing.

I said I had no idea, but she wasn’t buying it.

“Could this be related to Whiskey Parnell’s disappearance?” she asked.

“Do you believe in coincidence?” I wasn’t going to tell her about Trisha Liam hiring me to investigate her husband’s death. Jane was the type of person who needed simplicity and right now I needed to focus on finding Whiskey. So I told her about the phone call I’d gotten from the thug. She was silent for a time before she told me she wanted the lab to take a look at my car.

That was like sending my BMW into a black hole—just what I needed. It’s a good thing I kept Mom’s ’92 Chevy Beretta, the one with the big rust spot in the floor near the brake. It smokes a ton of oil and the engine has close to 198,000 miles, but once in a while I still get a whiff of her perfume and I feel her by my side.

After I filled out the report and watched my car being towed away, Cookie and I walked back to Baltic Street. Too much was happening, so I’d wait until later to tell Lorraine about the thug’s phone call and my car.

“Are you going to tell Denny?” Cookie asked.

Denny. Right now he was a sore spot. Although … was I going to take Jane’s word for it that he’d called her? I shrugged. “Let’s interview this woman, and then I’ll leave you to Clancy.”

Interviewing Rina

“Bad time?” I asked, after Rina Rosanova, a petite woman with a dreadlock updo, answered the buzzer and welcomed us into her fourth-floor apartment. I noticed that the hallway was lined with artwork as she asked us to make ourselves comfortable in the living room.

“There’s no good time,” she said. “But Cookie here told me about Whiskey’s disappearance, and I want to help.”

As I sat on the couch, I heard a loud squeal. I’d landed on a child’s stuffed pig. Cookie’s eyebrows shot up.

Toys and books were scattered around, and I could smell something warm and inviting coming from the kitchen. The windows were steamed, and kids were running around like it was Coney Island. I could hear their laughter and shouts coming from someplace in the back of the apartment, which is probably why Rina looked like a woman straddling a fence.

A yowl from the back brought her to her feet. She asked us to make ourselves comfortable, she’d just be a minute. I watched her run toward the kitchen, then out a few minutes later holding a toddler and wiping his face with a washcloth as she shuttled him down the hall toward the bedrooms in the back. She disappeared into one of them, and I heard her talking in low tones. A hush settled over the place.

When she returned, I asked, “So how do you know Whiskey?”

She told us they’d met in the park. They’d go there after school and on Saturdays, and they hit it off from the start. “She has this wonderful voice with a sort of burr in it.” She said there were a bunch of them who got together. “I guess we think alike or have the same stuff going on.”

Last time Rina had seen her, Whiskey was having a rough time of it, she told us, and not just because of Maddie’s alopecia. “She was going through a thing, I know that. All alone, with no husband, not that she didn’t have her pick.” She stopped talking for a second and moved her eyes from side to side. “That was part of her problem. Too many men. She must be explosive in bed.”

“That’s what I’m interested in—the men in her life.”

Rina stood up, her dreads listing to one side. “Sorry, I’m not much of a hostess.” She looked at her watch. “Can’t I get you something to drink—a soda, coffee, water?”

We shook our heads. “We can come back. I know you’re rushed.”

“No, Jerry won’t be home for at least an hour, and the kids are already fed. Really, it doesn’t get better than this.”

I peered through the front windows at a blurred view of Baltic Street. Early evening traffic was building, and I could almost smell the exhaust from the cars idling while their drivers tried to find parking.

You see, Rina and her life—that’s what scares me. I mean, all the kids running around and swallowing you whole. I looked at this poor woman, spots of food all over her. At least they were colorful—bright green blobs, red and yellow. I must admit I was staring at her, the rich color of her skin like a cup of java light, her unusual outfit, leotards with colorful spots and a leopard-skin top and the biggest pink loopy earrings I’d ever seen.

She must have picked up on my scrutiny because she said, “Don’t mind me. I’m a painter.”

So that explained all the spots on her outfit and the paintings in the living room and hallway. Abstracts, I guess you’d call them. But the color and the lines, the angle, the movement, their story drew me in. Great expression.

“Your work?”

She nodded.

I was surprised her husband let her paint. “You have a studio?”

“I belong to a cooperative. We rent a floor in a building on Atlantic, and I have the corner room. At least I have the window. It’s not like my last studio in Dumbo, where I had a large space with north light and a view of the bridges—well, I could see a slice of them, at least. But when we moved here, the commute got to be too much.” She looked down at herself, brushing at some of the spots with paint-splattered hands. Then she thought better of it because she reared up, passing fingers through some of her dreads. “And, sorry, what you see is what you get.”

Poor woman. Probably had a degree or two and left a job she loved and now she was stuck at home with the kids and a mousehole for a studio in some broken-down building. Isn’t that what usually happened when you marry and have kids? So I swallowed and shot Cookie a look. Rina was an active mom, I could tell. She looked like she worked out every day—well, I guess you would with five kids.

“When do you have time to paint?” Cookie asked.

“I make time. We all need to squeeze it out like paint from a tube. I can do most of the planning at night after my three youngest have gone to bed, and Jerry helps out with the laundry and the homework. If I hadn’t met him and had kids, I’d be painting and alone, maybe in an uptown gallery by now. But I’ll get there. I’m in a show in Chelsea next year.”

Right. I told her about Cookie’s talent and how she could create the likeness of a person in seconds. I pulled out the drawing she’d made of Arthur and showed it to Rina, who studied it for a while before slowly shaking her head. “Looks kind of familiar, but I couldn’t swear. Whiskey had a lot of friends.”

I heard screaming coming from the back bedroom and I jumped from the chair, but the cries were followed by laughter and running feet.

A young girl came into the room, her arms loaded down with a toddler. “Mom, Evie and Henry are jumping on the bed again. Where’s Kit, anyhow?”

“Evie, Henry—you stop it. NOW!”

Rina’s last word thundered through the apartment.

Silence.

“And Kit’s with her friends. Put Benny in his playpen. Did you start your homework?”

The girl turned, her back a little slumped, and disappeared.

Rina looked at us and shrugged.

“Don’t they take every ounce of energy? Don’t they take the you from you?” I asked.

Rina laughed again. “In the end, you do what you have to do. And my kids teach me a lot, too. Now that Kit is thirteen, she’s able to help out. When she’s home, that is.”

I wondered if this Kit was the same Kit I’d met with Brandy, but cries and laughter interrupted my thoughts. I looked at my watch.

“Kit’s my oldest. She’s with her friends now. Practically lives with them. She’ll be back soon. She’s doing so much better since transferring to Packard, and now that I’ve gotten into a gallery in Chelsea, we can afford it. I can’t believe they love my work. I don’t know why, but they do.”

“I’m glad you wanted to talk to us,” I said, trying to get us back on track.

Rina frowned into the room. “I’m worried about Whiskey. We got to be friends. She hasn’t returned?”

Cookie shook her head.

I pointed to the sketch of Arthur. “So you didn’t see her with this man?”

After she studied it again for a few seconds, Rina shook her head. “No, he doesn’t look familiar. Whiskey lived across the hall, so I couldn’t help hearing what was going on if it involved raised voices or laughter.”

She stopped for a moment to weigh her words, I guessed.

“A couple of times I heard her arguing with someone. I assumed it was one of her male friends.”

Cookie, who’d been checking her hair, plunked her mirror back in her purse, snapped it shut, and sat up.

“Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t like it was part of her work, if you know what I mean. She didn’t date a lot. She’s a paralegal, I believe, and very much into her career. She knows she’s it as far as Maddie is concerned. But a couple of times I saw her with male friends. One of them, a guy she dated for a while, or at least I saw them together on the street and once going into her apartment, well, I didn’t like the look of him.”

She stopped talking and I looked at Cookie. “And it wasn’t this guy?” I held up Arthur.

“No. This was an older guy. And once I heard them arguing on the landing right outside my apartment. I know it was the old guy I’d seen on the street because I watched through the peephole. They were struggling and Whiskey said, ‘Get the hell away from me’—or something like that. I was just about to help her when I saw him swivel around and run down the stairs.”