Missing Brandy (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 2)

by Susan Russo Anderson

  “I love you, only you. Can’t you see that? Not one molecule of my dick moves when I look at Zizi.”

  “Not even one?”

  “Well, maybe one or two, but that’s because I’m red-blooded, and she’s a—”

  “Don’t say it.

  We sat in the dark living room, holding each other until the kitchen towel was soaked in blood.

  “Got to get proper treatment, I insist. I’ll drive.” He didn’t answer, just reached into his back pocket with his good hand. “Who are you calling?”

  “Willoughby. He’ll stand in for me tomorrow night. He’ll love talking to Zizi.”

  I grabbed his phone. “Not on your life. You’ll keep your Zizi appointment.”

  He smiled.

  I slammed a fist into my thigh, wondering why he’d agreed so fast.

  Chapter 43

  Henry. Morning Three, The Discovery

  Early morning light was playing on the window pane when Henry rang the bell. There was no answer after he’d buzzed three or four times, so he opened the building door with the key Phillipa had given him. He ran up four flights of stairs and knocked on her apartment.

  He never should have involved Phillipa. She was like a cracked eggshell, so fragile, but what other way was there? He found he needed her more than he needed Ben. In retrospect, he could have gotten along without him, but not without Phillipa. She gave him something more than mere assistance, something unnamable. Comfort. No, something else. He thought he might be falling in love with her fine sensibility. Yes, he’d learn to love Phillipa. She was an attractive woman. Distant, forever bruised. There was a time when they’d first met that Henry wanted to heal her. That had been a folly he’d soon abandoned. But he knew he could trust her.

  He was having trouble focusing. He saw the body of his son in the casket, heard his last words—I love you, Daddy—saw the empty closet in his wife’s room. He needed to concentrate. He’d been right to take the girl. What else could he have done to set the forces right? Lawyer Liam needed to suffer. His plan had worked so far. It had stopped the voices. He would have gone mad, a slow death, had he not acted.

  He knocked again. No answer. He felt a tumbling in his stomach. After he had the money, what then? It wouldn’t bring Stuart back, but he could make a comfortable life for Phillipa. And he had purchased a ticket for Ben—he’d chosen Zimbabwe. Good riddance. Where was she now? A cold sweat started on the back of his neck, and he felt a prickle of water underneath his armpits. He rang the bell. Phillipa wouldn’t have gone to the police, would she? She wouldn’t have told the lawyer.

  He stood outside her apartment for a few more minutes, reluctant to use the key. What if she had company or was in the shower? He backed away and decided to run back down the stairs. Outside he felt light-headed as he lumbered toward the car. Where was she? Police custody? She’d talk. They all do. Can’t help themselves. Where would they take her? He had to find out, so he retraced his steps, leaning on a lamppost for a minute to stop the spinning in his head.

  The street was empty. He buzzed the building again. Nothing. Again, he used the key. Inside, the stairwell was close. He could smell dust ground into the carpet and yesterday’s cabbage in the air. On the top landing he stopped, his ear to the door, listening. Freddy’s sounds. The boy must still be in his room. It wasn’t like Phillipa to oversleep or to leave her son alone. He tried to use the key, but he just couldn’t do it.

  Then he remembered the old wooden stairs in the back of the building, leading up to her apartment. He told her many times they weren’t safe and wondered why the landlord hadn’t torn them down. “This is a friendly neighborhood,” she’d said. “We protect our own, and the back stairs are convenient.”

  He had to vault over the fence but got into the backyard, where there was a garden of sorts, mostly weeds, some broken toys lying near a sandbox, and a child’s rusted-out wheelchair against one wall. He ran up to Phillipa’s floor. From the back of the apartment, Freddy’s sounds were louder. Henry peered in the kitchen window.

  At first he could see only different shades of gray, but soon the shadows resolved. A doll lying on the linoleum? No, it couldn’t be. He wouldn’t believe it. His mind must be playing an ugly trick, but when his eyes refocused, he knew the truth. Phillipa lay on the floor, her eyes seeing nothing.

  The stairs seemed to give way, so he hung onto the railing for support. He couldn’t breathe. He hurled himself back down to the street and vomited.

  Chapter 44

  Fina. Morning Three, A Conversation With Lorraine

  “As far as Mitch’s death is concerned, I have serious doubts it was due to natural causes, although from what I understand, he was under a heart specialist’s care. Maybe that’s why the autopsy was routine, no testing other than a determination of coronary activity. According to the report, his heart just stopped working. It wasn’t a heart attack; it was an electrical event, they said.”

  “How did you find this out?” I asked Lorraine. She’d called my cell while Denny and I were eating breakfast. I figured she must have been burning the phone lines late last night or early this morning.

  “The Brooklyn legal community is a small one, my dear, and I was part of it for twenty-five years until Robbie made me retire. My roots are deep, and my sources are many and reliable.”

  My head got stuck around the words “made me retire.” I raised an eyebrow but kept my mouth shut, glancing at Denny as he buttered his toast. What would happen if his parents suddenly split after forty-eight years of marital bliss? Anyway, my mind was racing in the wrong direction, and I wanted to hear what Lorraine had discovered about Trisha Liam’s late husband.

  “When he died, Mitch was about to defend Joe Catania against racketeering charges.”

  “The actor?”

  “No, and not related either. This Joe Catania is a small-time Brooklyn thug with connections to the Gambino family.”

  “He’s still around?”

  “In witness protection, serving the tail-end of a small sentence, or maybe he’s free by now, I’m not sure. Anyway, way back when, a consortium of business owners in Carroll Gardens had been lobbying the federal prosecutor’s office, pestering them about Catania and his strong-arm tactics.”

  “Sick of paying protection?”

  Lorraine replied in the affirmative. “And Mitch was a colorful defense attorney with a clean reputation, which is why Catania hired him. No one will know for sure why, but at the last minute Mitch decided not to defend him. Maybe he uncovered some rather unsavory information about his client, or was worried about his good name. Defense attorneys, all trial attorneys, really, keep track of their wins and losses. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, and who knows, perhaps he didn’t like his current batting average. But less than twenty-four hours after he’d recused himself, Mitch died suddenly.”

  “This was when, two years ago? It could have some connection with Brandy’s abduction, but it’s a stretch. Whoever kidnapped her is a Swiss national. It doesn’t exactly sound like the Brooklyn mafia to me.”

  “We don’t know that. The mafia is everywhere. They have sinister ties, convoluted methods of laundering money.”

  Lorraine knew how to get my attention. I felt a chill ride up and down my spine. “At any rate, I want to meet with Joe Catania.”

  “You’d have to cozy up to someone in the U.S. Marshals’ office.” Lorraine’s voice was muffled. She must have cupped the receiver before talking to whoever was in the room with her, doubtless Denny’s father. I listened as her voice grew slower, more insistent, as if she were talking to a child. The stifled conversation went on at the other end, and I felt almost like a voyeur.

  “Sorry, Fina. Robbie needed some coaching.”

  I smothered a laugh. “I’ll ask my FBI contact where I might find Catania. On another note, are you going to Lucy’s this morning?”

  “I was on my way. I still have a lot of reading to do, and I haven’t even touched Trisha Liam’s files.” />
  “But you’ve told me about the briefs.”

  “The briefs, not the actual cases. That’s where we’ll hit pay dirt. Involves lots of reading, slogging through a lot of—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  Chapter 45

  Brandy. In Chains

  I never told you about the field day we had last year in Mrs. Olive’s class. She was my sixth grade teacher, remember? I forgot—you weren’t around then either, were you? Anyway, Mrs. Olive was okay, but she had a lisp and a long neck and white hair with a black fringe in the front. Weird. Some of the kids called her The Egret. Not me or my friends, of course. Anyway, on this field trip we went to a school for the blind in Manhattan. You heard about it, I’m sure. Mom wasn’t so keen on it. She kept talking about all the accidents and the legal ramifications, whatever those are—boring and barf on them—but you would have liked the idea.

  It turned out okay, not that the blind kids wanted any part of us or anything. But you’d be surprised—they’re just kids like us. The boys clumped together in the hallway not talking. They had that look on their faces just like we do—well, some of us. Poor suckers, Granny called them. We all sat in the cafeteria, and some of them talked to us about their typical day, and Heather was appointed to tell them about our typical day. Canned, you’d have called it. They gave us chocolate milk, and this blind girl joined us at our table. She told us we could never know what it’s like to be blind.

  See, before we went, Mrs. Egret gave us an exercise. That’s what she called it. It was Johnny Fulcrum’s idea to get those eye thingys that grown-ups wear when they try to sleep on planes. We had to wear them for one whole class. Only they don’t work, not really. One of the kids made the mistake of telling the blind girl about the eye patches. She sat up straight like someone stuck a needle up her rear, as Granny would say, and the girl said, “You always know that it’s pretend. You always know you can take the blindfold off.” So that’s why we can never know what being blind is like.

  Except now I think I know what it’s like to be blind because I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to rip off this tape. I know, you’re saying I did it before, I can do it again. But it hurt too much, and anyway, what difference would it make? Ever since you died, I’m like this make-believe kid, always trying to fool myself that everything will be all right. But you know what? It’s getting worse, not better.

  Chapter 46

  Fina. Morning Three, A Meeting

  “Did I tell you Lorraine is now freelancing for me?”

  Denny stopped shaving.

  “She’s reading briefs, getting into Trisha’s and Mitch’s old cases, searching for suspects.”

  “Does Dad know?”

  I shrugged, then started to laugh. “Not my problem, now, is it?”

  His smile was a little lopsided. “Thanks for warning me.”

  After promising I’d keep in touch because he worries about me on his days off, I kissed him goodbye and walked to the car, punching in Tig’s number. “Got anything yet?”

  “Nada.”

  There was a long pause, which I tried to heighten by wafting as much fear and angst over the ether as I could muster. But Tig and I had worked together for too long, and he was wise to my ways.

  “What do you want?”

  I told him about Joe Catania, his probable connection to Mitch Liam’s death, and his just-maybe relationship with Brandy Liam’s disappearance, and—

  “And you want to talk to him?”

  “But I can’t because you won’t tell me where he is?”

  “Even if I knew his location—which I don’t—I couldn’t reveal it to you. The guy’s gone into witness protection. No one’s supposed to know where he is, only one or two folks, and any addition to that number would be a breach of security.”

  I said nothing.

  “Tell me you understand.”

  I let the silence linger before I answered. “Of course I do, but you owe me big time. Don’t forget that huge surveillance job I did for you two months ago—three days in a cold room overlooking Prospect Park, tits frozen, no latrine, and the guy who was supposed to relieve me was a no-show. I just thought you might want to seize the opportunity.”

  “I still owe you? What have I been feeding you for the past month?”

  “You’ve got to admit you’ve been giving me pretty thin gruel on the Brandy Liam disappearance, and you’ve not been exactly forthcoming, either.”

  I know my Tig. I knew I’d gotten a toehold into him, but I had to sling it to him fast. “Okay, so maybe this isn’t such a small request, but you know I wouldn’t be asking if a child’s life didn’t depend on my finding out who took her, and finding it out fast. And so far, I have nothing except a vague description of a runner who may or may not have anything to do with her nab, and a wiggling tarpaulin and a van with no tags that’s just disappeared from sight. It has to be somewhere, but we’re not sophisticated enough to find it.”

  That last one about the van was a low blow, I’ll admit it.

  There was a long, bitter sigh from Tig’s end. “All right, give me ten or fifteen. I’ll make some calls, see what I can find out, and take you to see him. But I know your mouth—no talking unless I give the signal. And you’d better put a scarf around those red curls. Shades on those baby blues wouldn’t hurt either. I’ll text when I’m out in front.”

  In half an hour we were cruising down Fourth Avenue in Tig’s big black SUV, red strobes bleeping cars out of our way when we neared stoplights. When the building came into view, ugly and unmistakable, I said, “The Metropolitan Detention Center? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “He’s hidden in plain sight, but in a special wing. I don’t think any of the regular guards know where it is. Got his own bodyguards twenty-four seven.”

  “Can he have visitors?”

  Tig shrugged. “Family types, you mean? I don’t think so. He’s got watchers, of course.”

  “Watchers?”

  “You know. Good watchers, bad watchers, watchers up the old highway—surveillance types, electronic watchers. He can’t scratch his balls, can’t click on a mouse but what he doesn’t have a watcher on his tail. Might as well have electrodes growing out of every single hair follicle. The guy’s paranoid and has every right to be crazed.”

  “You mean he’s afraid of the Feds?”

  “No, I mean he’s afraid of the mob. They’re after him.”

  As we walked from the parking lot, Tig went on. “He’s in Brooklyn this month, as luck would have it. They keep moving him to different safe havens around the country. Part of the deal. No schedule, they move him where he says, when he says. And when he’s in the New York area, he wants to be in prison, his choice. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes. He could meet his nemesis anywhere. Anytime. And don’t think it hasn’t happened to other guys in the program.”

  “In Italy, I guess, they find prisoners poisoned from a laced cappuccino, but not here.”

  “Not unusual to find prisoners swinging from the ceiling here. Have you ever wondered why? No, I wouldn’t want to be Joe Catania, not on your life. I’d be jumping off the nearest bridge.”

  Tig and I showed IDs and signed in. We had to wait for clearance, which took a good twenty minutes, but finally we were ushered through a maze of doors, heavy bars clanking behind us as we trudged to a room on the lower level. Nothing special, it had a long table, some chairs, two steel doors leading to who knew where.

  As we waited for Catania to appear, Tig reminded me to button up while he did the talking, at least at first.

  “You mean our usual routine?”

  He nodded. “Don’t say anything unless you have to. Let’s see, we want to hear what Catania can tell us about Mitch Liam’s death, since in some obscure way it may have something to do with his daughter’s abduction. That about it?”

  “You got it.”

  In a while, Joe Catania came into the room, flanked by two bodyguards. As he sat, I heard a whoosh of stale air. It sme
lled like distilled body odor from a thousand small towns at midnight.

  Catania rubbed the cleft of his chin. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  The man still had a little smirk left in him, but I could tell he was a beaten soul, a guy running from himself, not sure where he’d been, unsure of his destination except that it was away from wherever he was. In short, he was a fugitive soul. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he knew little else and cared less about it, although he’d probably been hiding out in at least twenty states in the last six months. Tig told me his wife and children had been moved to a city in Northern California to be closer to the wife’s sister. He had about as much chance of seeing them ever again as walking down Court Street during the day.

  I recognized him from pictures I’d seen in the Times and Eagle, but he’d lost a lot of weight. He was dressed in jeans, gray sweater, a striped shirt grimy at the cuffs. He hadn’t shaved in a while.

  “When was the last time you saw your wife and children?” Tig asked.

  The man swiped a palm across his eyes but said nothing.

  “The reason I ask is, you could be dead, really dead in about five minutes if you weren’t in protection.”

  Catania shrugged. “So?” The word came out of his mouth like it was pushed up from some cavern in hell.

  “So … nothing really,” Tig said. “But when we have a question or two, like we do now, we want you to give it your special consideration.”

  I admired Tig’s technique but couldn’t imitate it. I learned at Brown’s that we must develop our own interrogation style, that it comes from someplace deep inside and is unique, and if we try to mimic others, we’ll fail. Tig was Tig, a combination of Mr. Tough and Mr. Clean.

  “What’s your question?” Catania asked.