“That’s what this is,” Denny said. “The life of a child’s at stake.”
“You’re right. But you gotta ask yourself, whatever happened to ‘A man’s home is his castle’?”
“About time we do something for kids. This is a four-year-old we’re talking about.”
We hung up and I turned onto 195 heading east at a respectable clip, took the 16B exit, and checked the total time. Less than fifty minutes from Vinegar Hill to wherever I was in New Jersey. Maybe there was something good about this BMW.
The sun was hitting my eyes in the wrong place, so I decided it was time for a fill-up with some New Jersey gas. After all, the price was right. I got out and stretched and was hit with the smell of fumes and hay. I remembered they don’t let you pour your own here. Fine by me. A tall guy with no teeth and a turban smiled at me, hose and nozzle in one hand.
“Fill it,” I said. With the gas still guzzling into my tank, my phone started buzzing. It was Jane.
“Got news. The blocked number belongs to Winston Connors but it’s linked to an address in Brooklyn Heights.”
“His old address,” I said.
“Right, an apartment now owned by his wife.” She segued into the Brooklyn operation. “Denny’s working with us on the Dumbo search and we got heavy lift from the FBI on this one. Nothing solid yet, but I’ll let you know the minute we get him. By the way, the press is calling him the Brooklyn Strangler. But the chief thinks he’s an assassin hired by Connors who’s driving this whole thing, responsible for fraud, embezzlement, whatever you want to call it, to say nothing of murder and kidnap. He might own a horse farm in New Jersey, but Connors is the bridge to Brooklyn, make no mistake, responsible for ordering the death of at least three people and the abduction of Charlie. You’re in his sights so be careful and keep in touch. Text if I don’t pick up.” The phone clicked in my ear.
I smiled, paid for my gas, and pulled back onto the road. Things were good between me and Jane. Best way, this working together stuff. But she made it clear it was a two-way street. I called Tig Able, my Fed contact, and left a message. Before I could put away my phone, he called me back, so I pulled over to the shoulder of whatever road I was on and killed the motor.
“You didn’t hear this from me, but we got surveillance on the farm.”
I swallowed. Did Tig mean satellite surveillance? If the Feds can peek inside a farm, they can peek inside my house.
“Someone with a small frame, probably a woman and someone smaller with her on the second level of the main house. We’ve been watching a while. The two stay together, sometimes on the upper level, sometimes in the pool, most of the time in the kitchen and what could be the family room. Connors’ kids are grown, no grandkids, so we think it might be the abducted child. There are three men in the horse barn. Two others on the main floor of the house—we think that’s Connors and his body guard—another two or three on the track and a bunch in the paddocks strewn around the place. The farm is big. Miles of fence.”
“Cars?” I asked.
“Three black Mercedes are parked on the drive leading to the main house. There’s a work area with separate entrance, and it’s got a Plymouth Neon with New Jersey plates.” He read the tags to me.
“You sure it’s a Plymouth Neon?” I asked, flipping to the last page of my notebook and double-checking my memory. “Those are the plates from the torched van.”
“You got it.”
I breathed out slowly and my eye throbbed.
“Do you have tags for the cars in the Connors’ drive?”
“We do. Hold on a sec, got to find them.” I heard the rustle of paper and a click. Dead. In a few seconds I got another call.
“Gotta go. I’ll email you the tags when I have more time, but you ought to be able to get them if you’ve got binocs. We’ve got probable cause and just as soon as the court order comes through, we’re going to pay Connors visit. Probably this afternoon after three.”
I called Jane. “Better call your FBI guy,” I said, but she couldn’t talk, so I said I’d text her everything I’d just heard.
I sat there, absorbing what I’d learned.
Everything looked different during the day, and I had no idea where I was, so I fired up my laptop. When I typed in the address of Blue Eagle Farm, I realized I was practically sitting on top of it. I switched to the satellite image and zoomed in a bit. The entrance drive forked into two separate roads after running straight for the first fifty yards, one road going to the main house, swimming pool, and what looked like a few guest houses and a tennis court. The other fork led to the horse barn and track, but farther down the road was the separate work entrance where the Plymouth must be. I turned on the GPS and started the car. After about ten minutes, I spotted the Blue Eagle sign on my left. I slowed, snapped a photo. Even more impressive in the flesh. I smelled money, hay, and horse manure. A four-rail fence ran around the property and separated the paddocks.
I didn’t drive up to the main house, I’m not that stupid. But I did want to get a picture of the van’s plates slammed onto the Plymouth, so I slowed down again and made the first left-hand turn I could, stopping short to avoid running into the flatbed hidden by a clump of trees. Sweet Baby J, there was the Plymouth Tig mentioned, sporting the burnt-out van’s plates.
Before I could snap a photo, there was a tap on my window, the story of my life.
“I think I’m lost,” I said to the guy through my window. This time I wasn’t taking chances. He didn’t look friendly. When he stepped back a couple of feet, I shot my window down a few inches and got accosted with the fierce smell of body odor. At least that’s what I hoped it was. Maybe I looked weird to him, but he sure did to me. He wore a straw hat stained in places on the brim and around the headband where it wasn’t frayed. Sweat poured off him, down his grizzled mug and pointed ears, down into his sleeveless gray sweatshirt although the day was cool and the sky, yellowed and splotchy like his skin. Tall, muscled, I didn’t want to mess with him.
“Less you’re looking for the Connors farm, you’d best be outa here. Don’t want to mess with them, they’re the mean kind.”
I smiled. “Doesn’t look like a farm to me, looks like a rusted out heap of junk, but I’m a city girl.” I stared up at him, hitching up one side of my mouth.
He hiked his hat up above his hairline so I could see parts of a splotchy yellowish-gray pate. Or maybe that was caked with dirt, too, like the ring around his neck. He shook his head a couple of times.
“Like I say, lady, you’re on the Connors farm, the back end of it. Now, l suggest you … where is it you want to go?”
“Ever heard of Allentown?”
“Sure, should have said so. My shop’s on the outskirts. Just go that way, you’ll hit 195, go west, one exit.”
“So you don’t work here?” I asked.
“Do I look that stupid?” He grinned and I saw an almost perfect set of teeth except for the two that were missing on the side.
I held up my phone. “Been trying to get this GPS thing to work,” I lied. “My husband gave it to me but it’s got me all twisted around.”
“Beats me. Just a toy if you ask me. Gotta get yourself a map, old fashioned kind.”
“All the same, do you mind if I plug in a couple of coordinates? Then I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Make it quick, I gotta get this heap outa here,” he said, pointing to the Plymouth.
“It doesn’t look like junk to me.”
“Me neither, could get it cleaned up a bit and give it to my grandson, maybe.” He took off his hat and scratched his head and I saw a cue ball. “But I can sell the parts, too, so I told the old man I’d take it off his land for free.”
“Connors, you’re talking about?”
“The same. Now get what you need and get out of my hair, Missy, I got work to do.” He turned and opened the door to the car and I took my photos, took a couple of him and his flatbed. On the side it read, “Alf’s Car & Truck Towing” and the
number.
I tore out of there in the direction Alf pointed, opening the windows so I could get a bit of country and turning on the radio to my favorite station, letting it blast. I had to stop and think. Tig told me he thought they’d be paying a visit soon. Did I want to stay for that? Somehow I had to get a closer look, so I stopped the car at a roadside stand and took a moment to update Denny, Jane, and Tig with what I’d learned, not much but the FBI would want to go over that Plymouth before Alf dismantled it.
A Roadside Stand
So close to Brooklyn and look at the produce. The sky had turned completely gray, but a stand by the side of the road in front of a majestic red barn with white trim made up for it. I gawped at the bright colors and the neatly placed vegetables, the rows of spring flowers, the bushels of apples.
“Is this your first time in New Jersey?” a woman asked. She was about my age but taller, long brown hair, guileless eyes surrounded by smart lines when she crinkled her nose. “It’s quiet now, but in a couple of months we’ll have all the fruit and vegetables you can imagine. Corn and tomatoes are the big draw. This place’ll be hopping. On weekends we get sold out before noon. People come from all over, and we sell in the farmer’s market on Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. Jams and breads, too. You ever been there?”
“Sure,” I lied. I’m not much of a homemaker, as you might have noticed. I barely know how to boil water and my oven shines like a cathedral dome.
“Pays to come out here, though. Fresher stuff than what we truck to Manhattan. Those strawberries were picked this morning, and the prices are right, too.” She scooped a few into a cup and hosed them off. “Bite into one and you’ll think you’re in heaven.” She held them out.
“How much you want for a quart?” I asked. I put my nose closer and took a whiff. I had to get the smell of Blue Eagle’s junkyard off of me.
I bit into the fruit, wiping the juice off my face with my hand. “I’ll take two quarts,” I said and watched as she bagged them. I gave her the money and as she gave me change, I looked around. There were jars of blueberry and raspberry jam, orange marmalade.
“You do the canning, too?”
She nodded. “Me and my mom. She taught me when I was six.”
“You lived here all your life?”
She nodded. “Pretty soon, though, I’ll be leaving. I passed my bar exam last month. Got a job lined up and everything.”
She handed me a small loaf of bread. “Baked this morning.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “I mean about the bar exam.” I tore off a hunk of bread and popped it into my mouth, chewing as slow as I could.
I swallowed. “I just passed a huge farm, the Blue Eagle. Do you know it?”
“Down the road.” Something about the way she said it, the flatness in her voice, maybe, put my mind on amber alert. I stared at her, waiting for more, praying for more, not expecting it though. After all, she just passed the bar.
“They’re new here.”
I nodded. “Somebody else told me that, too. Reason I ask is that I have a friend, well, she’s not so much a friend as an acquaintance. We take this writing class together.” What a liar I am, and on the fly, too. “And she wrote a story about horses that we critiqued in the class last week—a haunting story, beautiful, really, about the love between a horse and a girl and how the horse would neigh every time the girl came into the barn but they had to shoot the mare.” O-M-G, where was this stuff coming from? “Anyway we were talking to her after class and she said it was based on fact.”
“Fascinating. So city people have horses, too?”
“Not too many, but we care about animals. Afterward the woman started telling me about her mare, Molly. She said the mare is fine now, but a couple of months ago when they went to Florida and needed to board the horse, they had a bad experience. That’s why she wrote the story. They have a farm around here, too, I forget the name, but someone asked where they’d boarded the horse and she said Blue Eagle and don’t ever board there.”
“Weird, my name is Molly, too.”
I realized that I still wore the Stetson and had my shades on. I must have looked like Miss Peculiar. So I took off my hat and shook out my curls and stuck out my hand. We introduced ourselves. The start, maybe, of a friendship and it was based on a lie. Geez-a-loo, I’m so rotten. But at least I don’t lie to Denny, not like this, anyway.
I kept it up. “So I’m visiting a friend in Allentown and wouldn’t you know, I passed by the Blue Eagle just now, and it’s huge but it does look kind of … kind of new and phony, I’d say. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I think it looks phony because of the story. I was wondering if you knew anything about it.”
“I keep away from places like that.”
“Like what?”
“It’s like a gentleman’s farm. The people are new here, but they’re no more farmers than …”
“Than I am?” I asked.
She smiled. “I didn’t mean it like that. But there’s stories.”
She was silent and so was I. She was on the brink of telling me something, so I gave her as much time as I could without seeming to be nosey. Which I was.
“Some say he’s a big shot in New York, but I’ve heard he’s a gangster. He’s tall with broad shoulders and a stomach. Walks around like he’s cock of the walk. We saw him at a horse show last year. He struts around and his wife walks behind him. My mom knows his wife from bridge club. Marie’s her name. Mom’s been inside her house, too, said it’s really glitzy. But Marie is quiet. Real quiet and nice. She and my mom met at church, I guess.”
“That’s where they play bridge?”
“No. That’s where they met. Saturday afternoon mass at St. John’s.”
“She’s good at bridge?”
“Sort of. She’d be good if she believed in herself, that’s what Mom said. Great dresser, according to Mom. She pointed her out in the mall once and she’s well preserved, believe me. For someone as old as that? You better believe it. Tan, jewels, thin, expensive clothes.”
“At the mall? There’s a shopping mall around here?”
“You’ve never been? You’re like me, you don’t like those places, either. But Mom says they’ve got everything there. Freehold.”
“Of course I’ve heard of it.” Another lie. “I didn’t know we were that close, though.”
Molly got a wistful look. “Sometimes you just want to shake some women.”
“I know what you mean. Rescue them,” I said.
“Exactly. And believe me, she’s no spring chicken. She had a bunch of boys, Mom said. Been married forty-five years to that ogre.”
“I’d better go. Just let me buy some of this raspberry jam for my boy friend. He loves it.” I gave her the money, and thanked her.
“You’re a PI, aren’t you? Neat story and all, about the horse, I mean.” She grinned and pressed a card into my hand. “If you ever need a good lawyer—and with that mouth someday you will—just give me a call.”
I gave her a wry smile and felt my cheeks swell with blush. “Too smart for me, Molly.” I gave her my card as two other cars pulled up. I could see that she was going to get busy so I said goodbye.
No More M&M’s
Ralph should have got her. He had her and somehow he’d let her go. Ralph did like Arrow told him in the dream. He smiled, asking the same question over and over. He had her. She didn’t know what to expect. He had her, except for the woman who came up sudden. He didn’t like to think about the other woman. When there were two of them, it was the same as thinking about Charlie and driving, he got into trouble. He could hear Arrow now, “What did I tell you about doing two things at once, Ralphie?” So he’d grabbed the gun out of the big one’s hands. He thought of her face and smiled. She was surprised and her eyes were big.
But then he remembered the boss. “No blood,” that’s what the boss always said. “No guns, no blood,” Ralph should have remembered before he grabbed the gun. He knew that. He wouldn’t disappoint the boss. So he
threw the gun and ran for his life like the time they almost caught him at his sister’s, but he’d jumped out the window and climbed to the roof and hid and waited. Peed in the gutter. When it was dark, he shimmied down. But something started pounding inside him when he remembered that day and his sister. “Don’t think, Ralphie, you think too much.” That’s what Arrow would say.
“Run for your life, Ralphie,” he heard Arrow whisper in his ear. Something bad happened to his leg. It was okay if he squeezed it. Run and duck and hide. If he could get to the boss’s apartment, he’d be fine, slip inside and they’d never find him, not inside the boss’s apartment. Too many apartments in that building. Just stay inside, Ralph, it’ll be over soon. And he knew the neighborhood. He felt okay in the neighborhood, not like the Bronx, but still okay. He thought of his house and Arthur Avenue and Buster. His sister should have let him keep Buster. He wished he was home. He wished his sister hadn’t said what she did, he wouldn’t have to squeeze her. From the boss’s apartment he and Arrow could see the bridge and the city. As soon as he caught his breath, he’d go to the boss’s apartment.
But he couldn’t stay in the alley, too much noise from the bridge above him. He looked up and saw the shadows of the cars and heard their noise. He could climb the stone easy, even with his bad leg because there were so many grippers, and they’d never see him, but the noise, he didn’t like the noise. So he stayed on the ground. Flattened against the stones like that, he could feel the cars shaking the bridge and the stones, the cars going over his head all the time. His ears started to hurt. His leg, too. Something wrong with his leg. Ralph hated the cars going over the bridge.
He peeked out and saw the two women in the black car, whoosh, driving right past him. He had to hide. He looked around and he saw it, perfect, a big iron dumpster in the edge of the alley, paint cans and jagged chunks of plaster and wire sticking out of the top. He waited until he couldn’t stand the noise any more. When there were no cars, he ran for it, skipped, ran, tried to haul himself up and he could have, too, but he couldn’t work the bad leg and there were no grippers and the sides were sloped the wrong way. He’d hurt the leg somehow, landed too hard on his foot. It was okay if he held the bad part with his hand, squeezing it, then it was okay. He sat against the dirt on the far side of the dumpster and rested his leg for a while, but his head hurt like his leg did, and he knew he’d have to try and run for the apartment. He looked at the alley in back of him and the legs of the bridge. He looked up and saw the cars. That’s when he saw the cans and boxes. So he piled them high and stepped up and into the dumpster and threw out some stuff to make more room and shimmied down into the mess until he was almost covered. It was okay until he slipped too deep and got his one shoe all wet from whatever it was at the bottom of the tank.
Too Quiet In Brooklyn (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 1) Page 20