Love and Death in Brooklyn

by Glenville Lovell

  “Yeah, Blades. What’s up?”

  “Noah Peltier told me you got the fucker who did his son.”

  “Yeah, should wrap this baby soon.”

  “Do you have a motive?”

  “We’re working on that.”

  “What have you got?”

  “Listen, Blades, I shouldn’t be telling you this. We’re looking at a Russian connection. Only the Russians would have the cojones to put a hit on a councilman.”

  “Who tipped you to the gun?”

  “Some chick.”

  “A woman?”

  “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  “Did you speak to her yourself?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Did she leave a name?”

  “No name.”

  “What did she sound like?”

  “I don’t know. Young. Black.”

  “She sounded black, you say?”

  “Sure.”

  The pause brought a heavy sigh from the other end. “What? I know what a black chick sounds like, so fuck you.”

  I replied calmly. “Didn’t you wonder how she knew about the gun?”

  “Look, Blades, are you married? My wife is here wearing the sexiest piece of lingerie you’ve ever seen. Do you know what that does to a man?”

  “Enjoy yourself,” I said, and hung up.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  t o some people on the other side of the East River, Brooklyn must look like shit when they gaze from their lofty towers across the tiny stretch of water. No Empire State Building. No Chrysler Building. No shiny glass skyscrapers. Just a tangle of low nondescript buildings.

  But to Brooklynites brownstones are almost as familiar as the Empire State Building is to residents of Manhattan. In a city full of monstrous glass buildings, brownstones have a grounding influence and add an aura of community. Harlem is famous for its brownstones, but some of the most charming ones can be found in Brooklyn Heights, owned by many world-famous musicians and literary types.

  Dr. Heat’s practice in the Heights, as Brooklyn Heights is often referred to, was on the top floor of a beautifully restored brownstone on Clark Street. The bronze brick gleamed in the bowing sun and the intricate design of the heavy cornice flashed brilliant black.

  Upstairs, the receptionist, a perky clear-eyed young woman in a warm yellow dress, showed me into a waiting room with stacks of magazines on a table. On the walls were prints or drawings made up of undefined squiggly lines, endless loops, and ropes flung every which way, the kinds of drawings four-year-olds do in art class. Closer examination showed them to be Pollock prints. Therapists have a fondness for Pollock, it seemed. The one I’d seen a couple of times way back when also sported Pollock’s prints in her office.

  The room was furnished more for high living than receiving patients, the red-stained floor set off the creaminess of the walls; the windows hidden by thick red drapes. I skimmed through the magazine stack finding nothing to my taste. I leaned back in the comfortable green-cushioned antique-looking chair to wait for Dr. Heat.

  Twenty minutes later I was still waiting. To offset boredom I picked up Psychology Today and leafed through it not expecting any of the headlines to bestir my high intellectual curiosity. I began to read an article on the use of anticonvulsant drugs to control bipolar disorder when a smiling Dr. Heat popped through a door to my left in a rust brown pants suit with a cream silk scarf swaddling her throat.

  “Good evening, Mr. Overstreet.”

  I put the magazine back on top of the stack and stood up. She skated forward as if walking on oil and shook my hand. Hers was warm and comforting, a handshake well practiced to put people at ease, I’d say.

  “Let’s go into my office.” She smiled and her cheeks expanded like rising dough.

  I followed her inside the large office whose windows looked out across the East River onto lower Manhattan. This room, like the one I’d just left, boasted very high ceilings, a shiny parquet floor, and cream-colored walls with wonderfully detailed wood paneling. The dark leather furnishing and worn dark rug contrasted with the muted color of the wall, which held several black and white photographs of what looked like old European cities, giving the room natural warmth.

  “Great view,” I commented.

  “Yes, but it can be distracting sometimes.”

  “How so?”

  “Sit, please,” she said, pointing to a gray leather sofa facing the window. She sat opposite me in a brown leather chair and crossed her legs. “Sometimes patients look out the window and all they want to do is daydream. Which I will allow in some situations.”

  “I don’t blame them,” I said, and sat down.

  “But you’re not here to daydream, are you, Mr. Overstreet?”

  “Blades, please. Was Ronan a daydreamer?”

  She blinked her eyes and smiled. “Now what do you think? You knew him.”

  “Actually, not that well. You now, you knew him quite intimately, didn’t you?”

  “It’s my job to get to know my patients intimately.”

  “And just how intimately did you get to know Ronan?”

  “As his therapist I got to know him quite well, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Weren’t you also his lover?”

  My bluntness smacked her hard in the face and she shifted her glasses farther up on her nose, squinting as if something was in her eyes. “You don’t waste much time drop-kicking people you don’t like, do you?”

  I shifted in my seat. “Is that what you think? That I dislike you?”

  “People relay more information in their intonation than you’d think, Mr. Overstreet.”

  She wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know. Years of questioning lying, drug-addled scum taught me to listen closely to the way people said what they said. In this instance I noted the emphasis on the way she said Mr. Overstreet, as if she thought it might annoy me that she was refusing my offer to be familiar. “Why would I dislike you?”

  She smiled again, this time it seemed forced. “I have no more patients for the day. Can I offer you a drink? Some sherry, perhaps?”

  “No thanks. When did it start?”

  She stood up, her body rigid. “Do you understand what you’re asking me?”

  “I think so.”

  “Your attitude is rather crude, but your crudeness aside, you’re asking if I was violating one of the most sacred tenets of my profession.”

  “You’re assuming I believe there’s anything sacred about your profession.”

  “I’m disappointed in you, Mr. Overstreet.”

  “Did you have him killed because he ended the affair?”

  “Why do you dislike me so much? You don’t know me so it can’t be personal. Did you have a bad experience with a therapist or something?”

  “This is not about me.”

  “I think it is. Why’re you so hostile? Aren’t you comfortable in that mixed skin? I’m sure it must be a burden sometimes.”

  I could feel my skin crawling. “You take yourself way too seriously.”

  “I volunteered information that I thought would help you catch Ronan’s killer. If I knew you were such a bastard I wouldn’t have bothered.”

  “You pointed a finger at another woman who’s now dead. What you left out was that Ronan had dumped you as his lover and his therapist. And that you had been investigated once for stalking a former patient.”

  Her eyebrows arched in surprise. “I don’t appreciate you digging into my past.”

  “Did you offer Marjorie Madden money to leave New York?”

  She smirked. “I bet she also told you that Ronan was the father of her child.”

  I sensed that she had more to say and waited.

  “Ronan never had sexual relations with that woman. Can’t you see? It’s a classic case of transference. Ronan mentored her. Took her under his wing and dragged her out of the projects where she was destined to become nothing more than another welfare case. He got her into NYU. And then
he gave her a job.”

  I had a strange desire to laugh but breathed deeply. “Were you in love with him?”

  “I have nothing more to say to you.” She marched to the door, her high heels clicking out hostility on the hard surface. She swung the door open with a vigorous tug. “Good day, Mr. Overstreet.”

  I got up and spoke to her across the breadth of the room. “You did some community work counseling inmates at Rikers, didn’t you?” I didn’t wait for her answer. “Was Malcolm Nails-Diggs one of your patients at Rikers?”

  “Get out.”

  I walked to the door. When I got there I reached out and held the frame near the top. “You didn’t seem surprised when I told you Marjorie Madden was dead.”

  “I read the newspaper, Mr. Overstreet.”

  “The police think she was the victim of a push-in robbery. I think you had her killed. I also think you hired Malcolm Nails-Diggs to kill Ronan. And when I get the proof I’ll be back.”

  She stared into my eyes without answering. I went out past the receptionist’s station and heard the door close behind me. The woman in the yellow dress was gone. It was after six o’clock and she might’ve gone home for the day. The hallway was hot with the artificial fragrance of pine.

  I got on the empty elevator trying to shrug off the elephant’s foot that seemed to be trying to plant itself in my chest. I needed a drink. There’s nothing more depressing than finding out that someone you idolized was all too human. How was I going to explain the soap opera of Ronan’s life to Noah?

  I don’t know that I believed the psychologist killed Ronan or Marjorie. It was possible but I had no proof. Malcolm Nails-Diggs did body work for the Russians, but that didn’t mean he didn’t contract himself for local fare. Worms like him ate whatever shit they found. The police had a murder weapon and a dead trigger man. Who the hell was Malcolm Nails-Diggs?

  TWENTY-NINE

  t hat evening the phone rang as Anais was putting the finishing touches on a dish she claimed was part Caribbean, part Cajun. Before my wife left Atlanta to study dance in New York she was quite proud of the fact that she’d lived her life without having to learn the nuances of food preparation other than Pass the salt, please, or Can we have some more butter, please? Over the years she’d come to accept that acquiring culinary skills did not make one a social misfit. In fact, from time to time, she would go on a creative cooking spurt, buying books and trying recipes with as many exotic-sounding names as could be found in the New York telephone book. For this meal she’d seasoned black bass with Caribbean jerk sauce bought from one of the Korean greengrocers on Church and had blackened it on the indoor grill. I could tell she was quite pleased with the outcome.

  I picked up the phone in the bedroom.

  “That girl’s got an angel on her shoulder, Blades.”

  “Excuse me?” I said into the phone to Agent Kraw.

  “The people around her don’t seem to be so lucky however. Who’s going to be next?”

  “I’m about to have dinner with my family.”

  “You and I need to talk.”

  “I’m sure it can wait.”

  “It’s about Ronan Peltier.”

  Pause.

  Kraw twanged in her flat Midwestern voice. “Remember that stolen shipment of Saizen?”

  “What about it?”

  “Was heisted from a pharmacy co-owned by Ronan Peltier.”

  I waited to see where she was going with this thread. But she was stringing me along.

  “Meet me on the Promenade in half an hour,” she said. I could hear the edge trickle off her voice. Now it was cool, playful.

  I hung up.

  Anais was adding a layer of style to the dinner table with Indian-designed place mats when I came downstairs dressed in black corduroys, leather jacket, and boots. We met at the foot of the stairs.

  “You can’t be serious,” she said icily.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Where’re you going?” Anais asked.

  “It’s business.”

  “Something to do with the club?”

  “You can say that.”

  “I want you to say, Blades.” Her voice was clipped and full of rancor.

  “I have to meet someone. I’d rather not go into details right now. I’ll explain later. But it’s important.”

  “What are we supposed to do now? Wait until you return?”

  “Go ahead without me.”

  “Aren’t you picking up your father later?”

  “Midnight.”

  I TRIED NOT to let my mind meander as I weaved through the streets of Brooklyn. But how do you parse information that might implicate someone you hoped was clean through a cynical mind without leaning close to the edge of doubt. Could Ronan have been involved in this Saizen scam?

  If he was killed because of it, then Dr. Heat was innocent. The unpleasant realization came that I wanted her to be the killer simply because of her profession.

  Ten minutes later I parked on Pineapple Street and walked along the narrow quiet block to the Promenade. Spotted Agent Kraw in a yellow windbreaker and black baseball cap, her back leaned against the waist-high iron rail. As I got close she trawled around in her jacket pocket and came out with a large box of M&M’s. She peeled the plastic wrapper away and tilted the box to her mouth leaning her head back. Without a word said she offered me the box. I accepted and dropped two red pills in the palm of my hand, knocking them together like dice.

  She smiled halfheartedly. “How’s the family?”

  “My wife’s a little upset with me.”

  “I can’t imagine anybody staying upset with you for too long.”

  I tossed the M&M’s into my mouth. “Why is that?”

  “You got that charm, Blades.”

  “Charm? Your antennae must be clogged.”

  “No. I’m pretty good at this.”

  “Pardon my saying this, but I didn’t get the impression you knew a whole lot about men.”

  She snatched the M&M’s box back. “Charmers come in all races, sizes, and sexes. It’s not a male thing. But even if it was a male thing, I grew up among men. Charismatic men. My mom died when I was young. My father raised me. And he had lots of brothers. My grandfather came from Russia and lived on the Lower East Side. He moved west when my father was fifteen. My father got married when he was twenty-two. Divorced at twenty-three. Married again at twenty-four. To his first wife’s sister. You need a lot of balls and charisma to pull that off.”

  “You speak Russian?”

  She tossed M&M’s into her mouth. “A few curse words.”

  “What’s the skinny on Ronan’s pharmacy?”

  “A week before the shipment was stolen he and his partner took out additional insurance to the tune of three point five mil,” she said. “We believe the robbery was timed to follow the insurance upgrade.”

  “An inside job?”

  “His partner was Rupert Chernin.”

  I extended my hand for more M&M’s. “Where do I know that name from?”

  She dropped a few of the colored capsules into my palm. “Perhaps you cruise the obituaries.”

  I gave her a hard look and swallowed what I was thinking. “Dead?”

  “Executed in his hotel room in Miami two days ago.”

  “Wasn’t he implicated in the big junk bond scandal several years ago?”

  “Never charged with anything. Seven years ago when pharmaceuticals were hot Ronan bought into a small chain of drugstores owned by Chernin. A chance came to cash out a few years later when a larger chain wanted to buy them out. But Chernin got greedy. Stocks were still climbing. He bought a few more independent stores intending to take the small chain public himself later. But before he could light his fuse the bottom fell out of the business. They started scrambling for additional investors. Nobody bit. Business kept dying. I think someone approached them with the Saizen offer and they couldn’t refuse it.”

  “Somebody being the Russians?”


  “We can’t prove this yet. But after our agent was killed the gang might’ve seen Ronan and Chernin as weak links and decided to shut them down.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything, Blades. You should be happy that I even bother to talk to you.”

  “It’s not going to help you get into my wife’s pants, you know.”

  She grimaced. “Is it your objective to be so crude that everyone you meet will hate you?”

  “I don’t care who hates me.”

  “Everybody wants to be loved. Even you.”

  I looked at her with curiosity, then I turned to walk away. Kraw grabbed my arm.

  “Where’s the girl? You’re right. I’m not giving you this information because I think you’re cute. It’s called I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”

  “I’m not into that kinky stuff.”

  “You can go to hell, Blades.”

  Agent Kraw drew her face in under her baseball cap and walked away. I watched her descend the stairs leading to the street, then I turned around and cast my gaze on the East River. Its flat face, varnished by the brilliant lights of lower Manhattan, seemed to be beckoning me. I was in no mood for water sports.

  I HOLLERED at Noah as I crossed Atlantic Avenue. The sky’s dark ceiling opened up and rain dripped out. I flicked on my wipers and waited for Noah to pick up. Voice groggy, as if gurgling salt water in his mouth. I felt a heavy agony as I relayed the information from Special Agent Kraw. He listened until I’d finished, not interrupting once. When I stopped he sighed as if in pain, and spoke in a knotted voice.

  “This don’t mean shit to me, Blades. Do you believe this Nails-Diggs killed my son for the Russians?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then call me when you do. Just tell me who killed my son so I can rip the muthafucker’s brain out and feed it back to him through a straw.”

  “I appreciate your honesty, big man.”

  “Anytime.”

  I heard the phone slam and cursed myself for calling him. Through the vacuum of his bluster I could hear the fragility in his voice, I could hear him preparing himself for tomorrow. Each time I spoke with him I wished I knew what to say to make the path he was walking easier, but each time my failure to construct any meaningful or profound sentiments made me realize that the English language was not gifted with words to explain nature gone out of balance. This was why music was created.