Whiskey’s Gone (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 3) (18 page)

For a time we lived together in the garden apartment next door to a playground. In the beginning things were swell. I had a shorter commute to work, and it was great for Maddie because of all the kids and because Malcolm took to her, he really did. Perfect, until my dalliance with Star.

It was just a small fling with an upstairs tenant. All right, maybe Star was a hunk and maybe I was attracted to him and I shouldn’t have been. Maybe I should have stopped it before it began, because all along I knew Star wasn’t for me. For one, he hardly looked at Maddie, not like Malcolm, who loved Maddie with a father’s clean love. But Malcolm changed after my slip—which by the way was so not worth it. Turns out, Star was a one-man universe, deep into himself. I caught him once in his studio staring into the mirror, turning to the side and flexing his butt out like a girl.

After Star, I felt Malcolm’s idea of us slipping away, him ignoring me like I wasn’t there, even though we were sleeping in the same bed. We became misaligned planets. I finally got the message and moved. Oh, God, if I could take it back, the hurt I’ve caused. If Star could have remained just a smile.

A Monday in November

Maddie, I called her from the moment they put her in my arms. Maddie, I love to write the name. She has a saucy mouth now and then, and no hair. It fell out in one week when she was two, clumps of it. I remember seeing it on the rug, thinking it was the cat’s. But no, it was all over her crib. I thought it was because she’d just learned to read, way too early if you ask me, and her brains were giving off too much heat. But they told me, no, something about follicles and the immune system—fancy speak for they didn’t know. One woman, a well-meaning but misguided granny, told me to hide the pictures of her with hair. I did. Burned them. They said she wouldn’t feel bad until she got older, but they didn’t know the Maddie who told me one day, “Oh, well, it’s not like the sky’s falling.” That from a toddler of two. No thanks to me, Maddie is my gift, I tell you. Maddie is my everything.

* * *

I texted for an Uber, asking the driver to drop me off underneath the overpasses, and a few minutes later, I was walking down Water Street, the sounds of Dumbo pricking my ears and giving me a mini vacation. I love this area of Brooklyn with its old cobbles and smell of the river and the scent of long-ago spices. It has an energy hard to describe. My favorite history teacher told us it was an old wharf area and had buildings dating back to the eighteenth century.

But I couldn’t stand around smelling the water, I had fish to fry, so I gave Lorraine a call to see if she’d heard anything and to tell her I was following up on some leads. She hesitated before answering. I squeezed the phone because I know Lorraine and her pauses, but she resisted asking about Denny. Instead, she said Maddie and Robert were playing Scrabble. She followed with, “Have you heard from Denny?” I thought I heard fear in her voice.

“He got home early but had to leave.” I’m such a liar, but Lorraine bought it or maybe she didn’t but was too polite to say anything. I imagined her biting her lip and felt her knowledge boring through me. Right now, however, I could sense she was more worried about Whiskey than Denny—weren’t we all. She didn’t have to say it, no one had seen Whiskey. I told Lorraine I’d check in later with her and was about to hang up when she told me she’d heard about my car.

I went numb. Who was updating Lorraine? I hadn’t told her about my slashed tires, I figured she had enough to worry about.

“That blonde detective told me. You weren’t going to say anything, were you?” Lorraine’s voice seemed faraway, like she was in a tunnel, but maybe it was me.

“You have enough on your plate,” I managed.

“But I might have information that would shed some light,” she said in a low voice.

Her gentle rebuke hit me in the gut.

“It’s all my fault,” she went on, and I could feel her regret. “I should have mentioned I was getting into juicy territory with the Mitch Liam investigation. I found out who arranged for his murder, at least I think I did—some low-life thug connected to one of Brooklyn’s organized crime family. But then Whiskey went missing and … I guess I forgot to mention it.”

She told me about the visit she’d made to Joe Catania—not the actor, but the new identity of the man in witness protection whom I’d visited in conjunction with another case a couple of months ago. “How did you pull that off?”

“Long story, friend of a friend, you know how it goes. I’ve been following the Brooklyn mob since before you were born. Anyway, this Catania fellow gave me a name, or I should say his mother did. She’s an old friend from Star of the Sea’s Altar and Rosary Society, and she knows where all the bodies are buried, and I do mean buried. But now I’ve said too much.”

Leave it to Lorraine and the good old girls’ network.

“So you know who ordered Mitch Liam’s death?” I asked.

“I’m getting very close.”

The stone in my throat grew, and I found it hard to breathe. In the distance I could hear Maddie and Robert arguing, their voices getting louder.

“Got to go,” she said. “We’ll talk another time, but be careful.”

“Have you told Jane?” I asked.

“No specifics, just that we’re investigating a death for a client and it’s getting interesting. I don’t know enough yet to divulge names, and giving her details would jeopardize my source, and anyway we need to tell Trisha Liam first. Jane seemed interested, though.”

I’ll bet. I made a note to call Trisha Liam with the information. She’d be happy to learn her retainer was beginning to pay off. I could hear Robert whining in the background about something Lorraine wasn’t doing, like fixing him dessert or getting him coffee, one of those. How Lorraine stood him was beyond me.

“Sorry, got to go, Robbie needs me.”

“Robert can’t spoon ice cream into a bowl?”

Lorraine laughed. “I think Jane’s going to arrange for surveillance.”

Right. This was a win-win for Jane. Have me followed, and maybe the endowed detective would hit two birds with the same stone—pay lip service to my protection while picking up information on Whiskey’s case because of my heavy lifting.

I pocketed my phone, ignoring something flashing on the screen, while trying to turn off the image in my head of shadowy figures in dark doorways. I made a mental note to check our locks at home. Shouts from some kids in the park and the cars rolling over the bridges beat a rhythm in my blood.

The Piano Man

The address Malcolm gave me on Jay Street turned out to be a light industrial building not unlike its Dumbo neighbors. It took up one square block, a squat hulk obstructing the water view. The door was locked. Ringing the bell did nothing, so I had to wait until a couple came along. Offering a smile, I followed them inside.

The lobby smelled of wood, linseed oil, and plaster dust. According to the roster, Star Newcomb occupied space on the top floor. Soon I was juddering up the freight elevator, wondering if the contraption would make it all the way. At this hour I didn’t expect to find the artist in his studio, but I thought I’d be busy tomorrow, so I needed to try. And you never know, I might surprise him and find Whiskey tied to a chair while a madman painted her likeness. Besides, if I kept moving, I wouldn’t have to think about Denny. “Denny,” I said aloud, as I stepped off onto Star Newcomb’s floor and watched the doors slide shut. My heart did its lurching thing again, this time getting stuck in my throat.

As I walked down the hall, looking at the numbers over the doors, I found it hard to breathe and had to stop next to two large windows. Reaching up for the sill, I felt like Alice in the shrinking scene. I stood on tiptoe to catch the view of Manhattan across the East River with the lady in the distance. It was calming, magnificent, the sky behind her, black with only a few pinpricks of light, the horizon over New Jersey shimmering red and gold with the last rays of the sun.

I turned into another passage, my footfalls echoing around me. It was long and smelled of plaster and some sort of fixing agent. Anyway, if I were a junky I could get high on its whiffs. After all, I reminded myself, I was inside a commercial building. It had different sounds and smells, high ceilings, painted concrete walls and ungiving tile over cement floors, steel-reinforced glass for window panes. I stopped and listened. Of all things, I heard piano music coming from a studio a few feet away. The door was ajar, so I peeked inside.

At my intrusion, a small man sporting a goatee and wearing a beret looked up but didn’t stop his playing. I listened, the music soft, elegiac, matching my mood at the end of a fruitless day. I was miles from figuring out what had happened to Whiskey, and with Denny storming out of my life, my world at the moment was bleak.

I stepped inside. Scattered between two massive skylights, a few incandescents were suspended from the ceiling, one slightly to the left of the man’s head, illuminating him like a baby spot. Floor-to-ceiling windows took up one wall, and the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges arched their spans into the night sky. Pianos were all over the place, uprights and grands, stained wood, mostly, but a few painted; some falling apart, others listing to one side or leaning into each other. Benches and stools and chairs were scattered around. Soundboards braced themselves against the far wall. And dust covered everything, even the cobwebs. He met my nod with a smile and a wink, so I stepped inside.

“My gran used to play the piano.”

His fingers hesitated for a second before resuming their soft playing.

“You’re a pianist?” I asked.

“I stumble through.” He introduced himself as Shlomo Morgenthau, the piano man. “Like a tailor mends an old suit, I’ll fix your grandmother’s piano, no matter the shape, the size, the degradation. It will make beautiful music again.”

I gulped down a lump, listened as a train rumbled its way across the Manhattan Bridge. “I sold it.”

He lifted his shoulders. “You’re young.”

I pushed down a new wave of sadness, mesmerized by the notes.

“I was born to the piano, you know, like my father and his father before him. But the war changed all that.”

He didn’t stop his playing, but kept up the banter. I watched the reflection of his hands on the piano’s fall board. That’s when I noticed a tattoo of some sort on his right forearm. “Yes, I repair pianos, and I play for my own amusement.”

“What’s it called?”

“My amusement?”

“No, the music you’re playing.”

“I play the same piece every night for my wife. Chopin, one of his nocturnes, Number 1 in B-Flat Minor, Opus 9. Gentler than most composers. For instance, Brahms.”

“I know. Gran used to play him when she felt like crashing the chords.”

“I only play Brahms when I want to understand the chaos of the world.”

I looked around expecting to see an old woman seated on a rickety stool listening to the music.

He smiled. “You won’t see her, but my Elsa’s here.”

I knew better than to make a remark, so I asked him to excuse my interruption, but I wondered if he knew the artist Star Newcomb.

His eyes shot downward and he rested his hands on his knees. Leaning toward the keys as if he could protect them, he said, “I don’t know him, not really. Who can know such a man as that? But turn right at the end of this hall and walk all the way down. His studio’s the last one. I don’t expect you’ll find him. Most evenings, he’s not there.”

I flashed him my ID, told him I was investigating the disappearance of a woman and Star Newcomb might know something about her. “Her name is Whiskey Parnell.”

He tried to hide the look on his face. “Star Newcomb has many women friends.”

I described her and turned on my iPhone screen, which kept flickering while I showed him the picture of Whiskey. He stared at it a few minutes. “I might have seen her, but I couldn’t be certain. My memory, you know.”

I didn’t think so.

“At my age, all the young begin to look alike. Except for the music, that I remember, and the last look Elsa gave me, turning back to me the night they dragged her away.”

He shut his eyes for a while and I had the decency to remain motionless.

In a few moments, he shrugged and reached for the image on my phone. “If I’d seen this woman recently, I hope I could tell you. Something about her hair is familiar. If she were standing before me, perhaps …” But he squeezed his eyes shut and moved his head back and forth rapidly, as if he could shake off the memory—which one, I wasn’t sure.

I showed him the sketch of Arthur. This time he shook his head right away.

I thanked him, gave him my card, and asked him to call me if he remembered seeing the woman or thought of anything else he should tell me. “Her family is frightened.”

After turning the corner, I found the door to a studio at the end of a long hall. Star Newcomb was printed in big letters on a metal door, a large gold star centered above, like the ones you see over prima donnas’ dressing rooms. For some reason, my heart started racing. Was it the implacableness of the steel door, the place, the hopelessness of my search? I rang the bell and waited.

No answer. I knocked. Pounded. I kicked the door, jamming my toes. I wished Denny were here. I tried to slow my breathing and felt Whiskey’s journal in my pocket. I still had a lot of words to read, so leaning against the wall, I opened the book, skimming for Star’s name, and began.

A Tuesday in July

Some looks are impossible to unravel.

The first day I saw Star Newcomb I knew I was in trouble. I shouldn’t have listened to my heart. The look on his face, though, that’s what got me. His eyes were like Ma’s eyes, his gaze so engulfing it made me a goner. I’d do anything for him. At that moment I didn’t care a snit for anyone else or the mess I’d be getting myself into. At that moment, I abandoned everyone—Malcolm, my own sanity, even Maddie.

We met frequently in the hallway of Malcolm’s building, never taking our eyes off each other. That was it for a while, but no matter, I felt his presence on the back of my neck, in the air I breathed. A tingle started low down that first day and made its way upwards into my heart. I’m such a sucker. I swear he knew it too. When I’d return from work, he must have been watching the subway stop, which wasn’t far away. I’d walk down Court and turn into Pacific, and he’d be waiting outside, sitting on the stoop, cigarette smoke curling around his head like he’d just emerged from a pit in middle earth. His eyes reminded me of Ma’s hunger. I pictured her waiting for the bus, seconds before the truck hit her. It was like Star Newcomb’s eyes bore into me but didn’t know what he was seeing—his own demise, I figured. Never mine, I never thought it would come to that.