Brooklyn Graves

by Triss Stein

  Ah, I thought. Young Maude has discovered office politics. Someone back home must have responded, because in the next letter she wrote:

  I know, I know. Human nature is what it is. I do my best work, treat everyone respectfully, attend church every Sunday, and have faith that I will succeed. In fact, I have been invited to accompany Miss Driscoll and Mr. Tiffany (!!!) to call on a client next week. My role will be to take notes and observe and learn. Miss Driscoll said I would not say a word, except “How do you do?” when introduced. I promise I will write every detail!

  Maude sketched a new spring ensemble, with a lacy bodice and the stylish puffy leg of mutton sleeves, and joked that her own mother would not recognize her on the street, she was now so au courant. Then she added that this was French for “in fashion.” She thanked her mother for making her learn to sew.

  The design is borrowed from the pages of Harper’s Bazaar, but the creation is a Maude Original. That is the secret of couture on a budget. I wore it to an art exhibit and it was much admired by friends. And when I was unexpectedly introduced to the famous artist William Merritt Chase I was relieved to be well-dressed. It gave me the confidence to converse with him for a few moments. I told him I would be honored to be one of his students at the Art Students League. It felt very bold!

  Harper’s Bazaar? Really? Way back then? I made a mental note to take a look at one. I had no scholarly reason; I was just curious and amused. William Merritt Chase? The name sounded familiar; I must look him up.

  She wrote of her interest in learning how to use a bicycle, the current craze for both men and women. “Truly, Mama, it can be done in a perfectly lady-like fashion.”

  And then she returned to her visit to a client:

  This family has commissioned a major work. I can’t tell you a single word more than that, as the client wishes it to be confidential. He seems to want to spring it on his social world as a surprise. I know it seems foolish, as you don’t know anyone to tell—and you never would betray me!—but I must respect Miss Driscoll’s word on this. They are Society people with a capital S. Their home is large and luxurious, but not a thing I saw in it is as beautiful as Mr. Tiffany’s decorative work. (Surely I am biased, but their style is dark and heavy, only meant to impress, and entirely lacks the charm of a Tiffany design.) The wife is your age, Mama, most elegant and really rather scary. Here is a sketch of her ensemble. I know you would like to see it.

  In the margins there was a matron in rich violet dress, with elaborate pleating and ruffles.

  The husband was there as well, and he was—you must immediately forget I wrote this!—quite pompous and proud, very sure of what he wanted and not much interested in Mr. Tiffany’s suggestions. Mr. Tiffany took it well; he is accustomed to persons such as these. I myself have only seen them at the opera, dressed in evening clothes and furs, sitting in the boxes, while I proceed to the uppermost balconies.

  A younger man, a son, came in while we talked and made a few intelligent comments on the drawings that were being presented. He spoke only to Mr. Tiffany but when his father was being particularly pompous he—standing behind him—winked at me! I was so surprised I almost disgraced myself by giggling.

  So that was my excursion into the world of Society. Interesting, but I prefer the livelier and more interesting people of my own world. It was hard to breathe there.

  Her mother must have commented critically, because she wrote back in a later letter:

  But I am far more excited about bicycles than fashion or gentlemen, in any case! I intend to do this, dear Mama, and you must not worry. I have a friend who will teach me, and I will practice in safe places until I am truly confident of being on the streets. It is the most exciting thing and everyone is doing it. I will send you a picture postcard that shows the masses of riders in the park on a Sunday.

  In our records database I indicated every letter that discussed the Tiffany studio, because those details were the most important in the scholarly sense, or so Dr. Flint had insisted. To me, it was all fascinating, a vivid portrait of a vanished world and a personality I was getting to know and like—my girl Maude, a New Woman of the brand new twentieth century.

  My fascination was certainly slowing my work, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t wait to find out if she learned to bicycle, and who the friend was who taught her. Was there a resolution of the thief issue at the studio? What was this issue of the men at the factory? To me, it was better than a novel.

  But I would have to wait for now, because the phone was ringing. It was Natalya’s number. I took a deep breath and reluctantly, purposefully, shifted my mind from Manhattan, 1904, to Brooklyn, here and now. Another deep breath before I answered.

  Chapter Five

  “Erica, I hate to impose, but please? If you could? Cops will be here soon to ask many questions. I do not know if I can…so soon…maybe my English quits…my poor Alex is not here…could you maybe come?”

  Yes, I could. I could hop on the subway and be a block from the beach in half an hour. Yes, she should not lean on Alex. No, I did not want to do this right now, or ever, really, but I would. There was nothing wrong with Natalya’s English normally, but what would happen under stress? I noticed the other night that her accent was stronger.

  The thing is, I know cops. My dad’s bum knee kept him out of the force but I had relatives, neighbors, some of dad’s best friends. My late godfather was a retired detective. I would be a good person to hold her hand today. I needed to work, but maybe I could catch up tonight, Chris and me doing our homework together around the kitchen table.

  We used to do that when she was younger. Now we’d be in separate rooms.

  I hustled along the neighborhood main drag to Natalya’s, walking under the elevated subway tracks, past the grocery stores, cafes, and nightclubs with signs in the Cyrillic alphabet, looking for Natalya’s corner.

  They call it Little Odessa now. It used to be a community of tiny summer bungalows for sweaty city dwellers hoping to catch an ocean breeze or two. Air conditioning ended that. The bungalows have long since been winterized and turned into homes, but the beach is still there, boardwalk and all, and the community had become home to many thousands of Russian Jewish immigrants when the Soviet Union started letting them leave in the 1990s. To them it felt a little like home, like the famous seaside city back in the USSR. Little Odessa.

  There was a car in front of Natalya’s home, an anonymous American-made vehicle, unmistakably a detective car to anyone who knew. Natalya looked pale and exhausted. Introductions were made, my presence was explained. There was a man and a woman, dressed in business casual, anonymous-looking clothes; I knew the jackets they wore with their tailored slacks covered their guns. Officer Henderson was a medium-sized guy with a firm yet kind voice and nice clothes, and Officer Rooney was a chunky, fortyish woman with an air of suppressed energy and a great haircut.

  We sat in the small front room, which was dominated by a wall-size modern entertainment center, as in many Russian homes, and many family photos.

  Natalya chose a seat with her back to the photos, but I looked at them from the other side of the room. Alex’s birthdays. I remembered some of those. Natalya and Dima’s wedding, in Leningrad way back when, looking absurdly young. A family trip with Niagara Falls in the background. I wanted to get up and look more closely. Chris was probably in some of the birthday pictures.

  I had missed the beginning of the interview. Rooney was saying, “…so he checked in for his night job but then, very late at night, around two a.m., the card-reader shows he used his access card to open the gate and go out again. Was that normal?”

  “No, no, I don’t think so. Perhaps—I don’t know—he left to get coffee? But I fixed him a thermos when he worked at night.”

  “They told us the rules are that the watchmen remain on-site for the whole shift. Was your husband someone who would just ignore that? Was he a rule-breake
r kind of person?”

  Her look was pure hostility. “He was the most responsible man alive. Never would he have walked away from his job.”

  “Could he have been meeting someone?”

  “At two a.m.? Who? Who would he be meeting then? Up to no good at that hour? I should throw you out of my house.”

  “Mrs. Ostrov, please…” The nice man spoke softly. “We must ask these kinds of questions to do our job. We all have the same goal, right? To find the killer. We truly do not intend to upset you.” He saw her angry glare and added quickly, “Or insult your husband’s memory.”

  I moved over to sit next to her and poured her a glass of tea from the pot on the table.

  “I am…not myself…” She sipped. “I will try to answer more questions better.”

  “You won’t like this one either, but we must know.” The detective smiled apologetically. “Did he have any enemies? Was he in a dispute with anyone? Fight with a neighbor? Any kind of deal gone wrong?”

  “Yes.” She said it firmly. “I told other cops. One enemy only, his brother, Vladimir Ostrov. Look, just go look in your police records. You will find him there, I think. He is no good, and he fought Dima all the time. You think someone did this? Who else could it be? Look at him.” Her voice rose with every word; then, when she stopped, she seemed to shrink back into her chair, exhausted.

  “I promise you were are doing that. We will know everything about him, large and small, that can be known. But we can’t rule out the idea that this is a message from an experienced criminal, like a gang. It does look like that.”

  “Like I said,” she muttered, “Volodya—no honest bones in his head.”

  “Volodya?”

  “Vladimir. Volodya is the family name, like I am Natalya but Natasha at home. I forget American word.” She covered her eyes with her hand.

  “Nickname? Mrs. Ostrov, please try to stay with us. We know this is hard, but everything you say will help us find the guilty person.”

  “I know. I know.” She shook her head as if to wake herself up. “Go on.”

  “So, given that this looks very deliberate, again we ask, what was he involved in?”

  “My Dima? Just what he was supposed to be—family, work, home.” Her eyes suddenly opened wider. “You think because we are Russian, he must be ‘involved’ in something?” Her voice added the quotation marks. “All Russian are gangsters? Ex-KGB scum? Like Italians and godfather?” She made an angry gesture. “Oh, please! What…what…Erica, I am so upset, I forget my English. I need a word.”

  “I think you’re doing just fine with your English. Do you mean stereotype?”

  “Yes, that is the one. Dima only tried to do right, and make a good life here. Like most of Russians. Like most people. Give me broken leg.”

  I patted her hand. “I think you mean ‘Give me a break.’”

  “Yes, that one.”

  “All right. We’ll accept your word on that.” In my mind, I heard that the unspoken end of his sentence was “…for now.” I wondered if Natalya heard it too.

  “Was he okay with your neighbors? Any disagreements, quarrels, bad blood?”

  “No! I tell you, again, he was friends with everyone. Shoveled snow, loaned tools. Planted flowers, all neighbors together. Everyone will tell you.”

  He smiled. “They did tell us. We have people canvassing the street, asking if they saw anything, and asking a few other questions.”

  She leaned forward, alert.

  “Did they? Did someone see something? I never heard anything at all, I sleep like log, my Alex, too, but someone, someone must have. Someone knows.”

  He almost looked pitying.

  “One person said he heard a car, speeding, about three o’clock, but did not get up to look. He said kids speed on this block many nights.”

  “Are you at dead end? Please tell me no. I need to know why this happened. Even if I know who, I believe that, but not why.”

  Henderson said, “We can easily tell you it’s not a dead end, because it isn’t. Not even close. Yes, in a more perfect world, we’d have a plate number, too, but it doesn’t end there.”

  “Mrs. Ostrov,” the woman detective smiled at her, “we appreciate your time this afternoon. We will just make sure we have everything we need about the morning when you found him, and then we’ll go. We know you were asked before, but one more time?”

  “I got up. I went to door to get paper. He was there on lawn. That is all.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “What do you think? I ran to him. I rolled him over to see his face, and there was blood and wound in head. And I screamed. I knew already, as soon as I touched him.”

  “And then?”

  “Neighbors came, and Alex came out. They called 911, but I knew.” Her voice shook. “I knew. They took him away, the EMS, and we went into house, Alex and me and some neighbors.”

  ‘So did you hear or see anything at all in the night? Think hard. A sound of any kind? Did you have a minute of waking up?”

  “Not one thing. I slept all night. Alex, too. I heard him tell other officers.”

  I thought that the neighbors and the EMS team had probably destroyed any evidence that might have been left on the lawns. Footprints, tire tracks. They looked at each other and nodded. “Can we talk to your son? And then we can go.”

  “Alex? No, no, no. He is not here now.”

  They did not respond but exchanged glances. I was pretty sure if they wanted to talk to Alex, they would talk to him.

  “Thank you, and again, please accept our condolences.”

  Natalya seemed lost in her thoughts. I walked them to the door. They turned to me.

  “Let’s make sure we have your name and information correct, in case we want to follow up. And how long have you known the family?”

  “Mmm, at least ten years. Our children were in kindergarten together and they’ve been friends ever since.”

  “What do you really know about the victim? Seriously. Is there anything you know his wife doesn’t, or won’t say to us? Gossip, questionable friends, anything at all?”

  I shook my head. “He was a good man. I mean, that’s not just the grieving widow speaking.”

  Detective Rooney gave me a skeptical look. “Everyone has secrets, you know.”

  “Well, I don’t know Dima’s.”

  “What do you know about this Vladimir, the brother?”

  “Nothing at all. I met him for the first time the other day. He seemed very, um, hostile, but then Natalya was hostile to him, too.”

  “What? You’ve been friends for ten years but you never met the brother?”

  “Well, we were friends first because of our children, and we grew to like each other, but we…we had different lives also.” I felt defensive, even though I had nothing to defend. “I always thought that for Alex’s sake, they made his school life with his friends, and then a separate other life, with the family and the community. I heard about relatives, I mean, I knew they had some, but Natalya mostly didn’t combine us. Oh, and also, when the kids were younger, he was still in Russia. I had no idea there was so much bad blood.”

  Rooney shook her head. “Family feuds. They’re the worst, aren’t they? I hate getting in the middle of them, but we’ll take a hard look into this one. If you think of anything later, contact us.”

  They both gave me cards and his name registered for the first time.

  “Detective?” I spoke to the man. “Your name is familiar. I wonder if I went to school with your younger brother? I knew he had an older brother at the police academy. He used to say…” I smiled, remembering, and went on, “Uh, forget that. Kenny Henderson?”

  He broke into a broad smile, the first I had seen. “You know Kenny? My baby brother? You went to Lincoln?”

  “I did. Kenny was…”


  “Yeah, I know. Kind of a knucklehead in those days. He was a real pain to me about having a brother who was a cop. Believe me, I can sympathize with the victim’s younger brother problem. Hard to believe, but he’s an accountant now, married, kids, big house in Bethpage. How ’bout yourself?”

  “I hate to break up this reunion, but we…” Rooney tapped her wristwatch.

  “Very true. So maybe I’ll call you sometime and we can catch up? Man, Kenny is gonna laugh. Who were you then?”

  “Erica Shapiro. Ask him if he remembers junior year chorus?”

  He grinned. “One more crazy Kenny story? I’ll ask. I don’t know how any of us survived his teens.”

  I went back in to find Natalya and met Alex coming downstairs. So he was home, and Natalya was lying to the cops. Protecting him, I thought.

  Mom-like, I hugged him. “How are you doing, honey? Are you sleeping at all? You look like you’ve been up for days.”

  He seemed surprised but he didn’t quite step away. “I could sleep, I think, if my mother could, but she is the one who is not sleeping at all. All night, it seems, she is up pacing.” His Russian accent broke through under stress. Normally he talked American teen-speak, like every one of his friends. “I hear her feet. Doors open and close. Lights go on and off.”

  “Does she wake you up on purpose?”

  “My mother? No, no, never. She says, ‘You are growing boy, you must sleep. I am fine.’ But she is not fine and…” He shrugged. “Then she sleeps on sofa during day.”

  “I get it.” I did. I knew. I remembered. “Is she talking to you?”

  “No. She is protecting me, I think, but she talks on phone. I hear.” He smiled, sadly. “I think maybe she is forgetting I still know Russian. She talks to people, late at night, and she wants…she wants…”

  “What does she want? If you tell me, maybe I can help somehow?”

  “A lot of it is old times, old stories I know, familiar things. But I know she is not just sad, you know? She is very, very angry. She wants to know what happened.”