“Time?”
“Time, what?”
My fault, I’d forgotten to tell them to make detailed notes.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Muffled voices and Brandy came back. “Five thirty-seven he emerged from the store.”
“How long was he inside? Was anyone with him when he emerged onto the street?”
Again, low voices. Rustling of paper.
“Billy said he was in about fifteen or twenty minutes. He came out with something in his hand. But we took photos.”
Why didn’t they say so in the first place? The metadata would have the time. She messaged me the pics. I looked at the data—the photo was taken shortly before I’d paid Ina O’Neill and Lake a visit. One showed Jake Thompson crossing the street, moving toward Ina’s store, another of him coming back out. He’d been inside twenty-two minutes. I did the butterfly thing with my fingers and studied the object in his hand. It took me a while. I’m a cat person, so I should have spotted what was in Jake Thompson’s hand right away: it was a cat carrier.
“Keep on him,” I said, and ended the call.
Hilda Natchon
The next morning I decided to sleep in, since we’d gotten home late from Lorraine’s and Denny was working an afternoon shift. Besides, I now had four assistants—Lorraine, Frank, Cookie, and Clancy—visiting two galleries while Brandy and her crew, assisted by Lucy’s office manager, were helping out with surveillance. I’d never had so many assigned to one job before. I closed my eyes and drifted.
When I finally made it downstairs, I found Denny in the kitchen, staring at his empty plate.
My temples pounded. I grabbed his egg-encrusted dish and held it under the tap while I counted to twenty.
“More coffee?”
No answer.
Despite my best intentions, my mouth began its destruction. “When is your self-flagellation going to end?”
When that got no response, I asked him what had happened to his joy yesterday, to the fun we’d had at dinner the other night. What about the tickets he’d gotten to the Brahms concert? No recognition. I asked him when he was going to grow up and get over his father’s death. No response. It was as if the husband I knew had died along with his father. Where was his energy, his take-charge ability? His strength? Slipping through his fingers. Nothing seemed to rouse him from his depression. He sat at the table, unmoving, finally looking at me with haunted eyes, barely registering my presence, the skin beneath his lids waxen and blue. I’d take his anger over whatever that mood was any day. Clearing his throat, he pushed himself away from the table and left the room.
Stumped and near tears, I made myself some coffee and sat, trying to reconcile the change in Denny since last night, forcing myself to think of the case, trying to get my mind off his reaction to Lorraine and Frank’s relationship and the mystery of what was happening to him and to us. Normally I was good at stuffing emotional detritus, but my head was in a swirl. I asked myself what I’d done, how I’d failed, what I could do, wondering whom I could talk to. All I knew was that sitting around was doing me no good—I needed to walk.
The midmorning sun blinded me as I set out for the Promenade. Robins were chirping; the air was almost sweet smelling as I sidestepped a few runners.
Pressing my bulge against the railing with tears running down my cheeks, I stared at the Statue of Liberty and thought of the many times I’d stood there with Mom talking to the green lady. Good times and bad. Flush and thin. Well, mostly thin, especially at the end. I felt Mom beside me and wished she were here. I couldn’t really talk about Denny with Cookie or Lorraine. I remembered Mom’s depression after she’d lost her job, her hours of sitting and staring morphing into a frenetic search for work. I thought of how she and I would come here and she would close her eyes and lift her chin. “There, that’s better,” she’d say. “Now we can go on.” A soft voice whispered on the breeze, reminding me that I’d been through much worse; I’d get through this.
Now it was time for me to do my thing, and I realized although I’d talked with the parlor tenant, no one had canvassed the neighborhood to see if anyone saw unusual activity the night Lake’s apartment was ransacked. Now that the CSU was finished, at the very least, I needed to interview the other tenants in Lake’s building.
Hoofing the twelve or so blocks to Cobble Hill would do me good. Although I didn’t have a key, that wasn’t going to stop me. I missed Denny’s ability to credit card his way through locks, but as luck would have it, the front door was ajar, the lack of security giving me a momentary pause.
In the small lobby, I rang the parlor tenant’s bell. Although he said he’d be home when I’d last spoken with him after we’d discovered Lake’s apartment had been ransacked, no one answered my ring, so I pressed another button. No answer. What did I expect—at that time of the morning, most of the tenants would be at work. I kept trying until a frail voice answered. I told her I was investigating Stephen Cojok’s death and asked if I could have a word.
She buzzed me in, and I climbed the three flights to her apartment. The woman, not as frail looking as her voice had sounded over the intercom, stood on the landing in front of her apartment, arms folded around her considerable waist. Her white hair was tightly curled and wet, like she’d just come out of the shower, and she had on a ribbed mauve robe and matching bedroom slippers. I could see a bit of her pjs poking out of her sleeves, slinky black and chartreuse affairs.
She relaxed when she saw my face. I showed her my ID, and she introduced herself as Hilda Natchon. “Been here since forever. Stayed on after my Walter passed. Sweet landlord. Don’t come any better. Hardly ever see him. Keeps my rent low because I’m a senior, and look at this place. He had it gutted two years ago. Fancy counters in the kitchen. Quiet block, don’t you know. Come in, come in. Sit yourself down, child.” She glanced at my stomach and her eyes rounded. “You should have said.” She showed me to a comfortable chair in the living room. “Can I get you something? Water? Tea? Hold on while I find my teeth. Don’t worry, they’re here somewheres. I’ll just be a minute.”
I heard her shuffling down the hall and took the opportunity to look around. The place smelled of bacon and toast, and my stomach did a roll, but I waved a hand in front of my nose and concentrated on the living room. It was crammed with furniture, occasional chairs, standing lamps, a matching couch and love seat, pillows strewn on the floor and furniture, stacks of magazines on several tables, most of them Life and Time, a few worn copies of Architectural Digest. No TV. An old-fashioned phone sat on a table. I riffled through one of the magazines while I waited for Hilda to return. When she padded back, she had a tea tray and cookies in her hand, and her mouth held a full set of teeth.
“In the kitchen next to the coffee,” she said, not bothering to explain what she meant, but I knew. We were on the same wavelength.
“The woman downstairs, a real busybody but she knows what’s what, she’s the one who told me about Stephen Cojok. Poor Lake. The girl was devoted to him, I know, but she’s better off without him. Although …”
Hilda Natchon stopped mid-sentence, I supposed groping for a thought. I let her simmer while I poured cream and sugar into the tea and munched on a chocolate chip, wondering if I should tell her about the missing goods upstairs or if I should just check out her security and leave it at that. I wouldn’t want to spook her.
“So you knew Stephen?”
Her brow furrowed. “Not well. I used to see him sitting by himself in the park. No friends, except for the one, that older man. Or maybe he wasn’t older, just my imagination.”
“His father, maybe? Lanky? Shaved head?”
She shook her head. “Lordy, no, full head of red hair, about your color but straight and beginning to gray at the temples. Seen the two of them together all the time. Short, fat, toothy grin. Listen to me. Lost my teeth years ago, and now my eyes head straight for the mouth. That’s how I judge others. Feeling sorry for myself, I guess. Anyway, I felt sorry for Stephen. A r
eal loner, except as I say for his friend. I’d seen them together many times.”
“When was the last time you saw him with this friend?”
She shrugged, leaning over and helping herself to a cookie. After taking a bite, she said, “New recipe. You like them?”
I nodded and repeated my question.
She stared at the wall for a while and I heard her munching. “Maybe last week? Yes, Last Tuesday. It was a nice day and I took a huge stroll around the neighborhood. The both of them were sitting in the park. I’m a walker, you see, and I’d shambled over, getting my exercise, you wouldn’t think of it to see me, but nothing happens in this neighborhood but what I don’t know it.”
I bit my tongue.
“I often passed by the two of them. They’d be sitting on the very same bench, deep in conversation. Close together. Laughing. But always on the very same bench. My, aren’t we creatures of habit. The both of them stopped talking when they spotted me, but that didn’t prevent me talking to them, did it? ‘Hey, Benny,’ I says. ‘Haven’t seen you in a while.’ Because I knew his name, you see—made it my business a while ago to introduce myself.”
“Do you know where Benny lives?”
“Not exactly.” She helped herself to more tea, gulping and making a gurgling noise and wiping her chin. “Somewheres on Livingston. I make it my business, you see, to know what’s what.”
I wasn’t about to tell her about the ransack on the fifth floor, so I let her talk after nudging her back to her original subject—Stephen’s friend.
“That’s right. He told me he’d gotten a nice parlor on Livingston Street. Said it was the fourth brownstone from the corner, the one with the high stoop and white trim. He had nothing to hide, don’t you see. I like Benny. Stephen seemed like a different person when he was with him.”
I asked her to give me a for instance.
“He’d passed me by a million times on the street when I was loaded down with groceries. Wouldn’t think to help me. Eyes on his walking-past-me feet. But when he was with Benny, the sun was shining and I was Mrs. Natchon.”
“Did you ever see Benny without Stephen?”
“Once in Key Food. He walked right past me like I was a cipher. Which I guess I am. That’s what’ll happen to you when you get old, child. You’ll disappear.”
“Maybe he just didn’t recognize you in a different context.”
“You might be right. Come to think of it, he looked different to me, too. More tea?”
I shook my head and thanked her for the information and headed for Livingston Street.
Benny Stanhope
It wasn’t hard to find Benny’s building.
He answered the door on the first buzz. “You just caught me. I was headed for the store.”
He was short and squat with a long shock of red hair spilling over his ears and crinkly lines around cornflower blue eyes. He wore jeans and a too-short jersey so that a large roll of white stomach hung over his belt. His gait reminded me of a barnyard bird. My ginger-haired Buddha of Brooklyn. Tie a bandana on his head, and he could have passed for Captain Hook’s bosun, Mr. Smee.
I showed him my card and told him I was investigating a murder. Not my usual bold stroke, but according to Hilda Natchon, he was Stephen’s friend, and I thought he might not have heard the news. Turned out, my hunch was right.
He invited me in, and we sat in his parlor as sunbeams played through the lead-glass panes of his bay window. The room was a classic example of English Regency at its finest, complete with fancy molding, painted wood furniture, and master craftsman plasterwork which, thanks to Lorraine, I was beginning to appreciate. On the ceiling, clay roses and acanthus scrolls surrounded a fresco of dancing cupids. He showed me to a group of chairs around a fireplace and, after making sure I was comfortable, sat opposite, a short lump of a man in a delicate bamboo chair.
When I told him Stephen Cojok’s body was found in the park two mornings ago, the news was like a cannon shot. He reared back in his chair, one hand on his chest, the other covering his mouth. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes, and I gave him a moment to catch his breath.
“I can come back.”
He shook his head, still clutching his chest. “I just …”
“A tenant told me she’d seen you and Stephen together a number of times on her walks.”
“Hilda?”
I nodded. I kept my mouth still, trying to give him space and feeling the ancient, everlasting pain of the world.
“I can’t tell you how our friendship began. We’re so different. I told him about me soon after we met, of course, I guess after the second time we ran into each other and seemed to hit it off. Not sexually, of course, he didn’t go my way, and he’s not my type. But we were instant friends.”
He looked past me for a long time, and then he needed to talk, first about himself, and I let him. He told me his mother raised him on her own, that he’d never met his father.
“Late at night sometimes she’d get a call and I’d hear her talking low at first, then shouting, slamming down the phone. Told me it was my father; he needed money.”
“And you never asked to meet him? Sounds like your mother wouldn’t have objected.”
He shook his head. “Why should I look for him when I had one perfect parent. Next day she’d walk me to school. She’d be holding an envelope. We’d stop at the corner mailbox and she’d drop it in. She didn’t have to tell me, but I knew.”
“Money for your father?”
He nodded. “She worked hard. Gave me a good life. Each Thanksgiving we’d go to the soup kitchen down the block; midnight, and we’d be serving the men and women who needed a meal.”
I didn’t say anything, but let him talk.
“In high school, when I realized I wasn’t like the others—most of the others—I told her I thought I was gay. She smiled and said she’d known for some time. She kissed me on the forehead.” He paused for a beat. “We don’t see each other that often, but she’s still my best friend.”
Listening was a new job skill for me, I mean, really listening. Maybe I was beginning to deal with people on a deeper level. Was I growing up? If so, it couldn’t come soon enough—I was about to become a mother. I began to sweat and brought myself back to the suffering man before me. As he talked, I realized I was amassing a collection of witnesses to catastrophic change. Some people when they heard about the death of a loved one went into themselves; others, like Benny, ranged over important events in their lives, as if taking stock, picturing significant moments like a fleeting kaleidoscope. As I experienced Benny’s initial reaction to death, I realized how each grief was different. Unpredictable, each one, a preparation for our own passing.
“We met in the park down the block from Stephen’s house. I was returning from a job. I remember it like yesterday. Stephen was sitting on a bench, watching a mother swing her child, and I pegged him for the father. Wrong, as it turned out. We began talking, like there’d been a spark between us from the very beginning. I’m sorry, can I get you something?”
“A glass of water with one cube of ice?” My usual.
He cocked his head but said nothing and disappeared, and I took the opportunity to case the room, drawn to black-and-white photographs on one wall, three in particular, of Benny with a tall man, taken in the park, the span of the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance, smiling at whomever had snapped the pictures. I heard the clink of cubes, the rush of running water, and I sat back down.
When he returned, I sucked the ice and sipped the drink as he continued.
“Stephen needed help; I knew that from the start.”
“How so?”
“I’m an interior designer. My mother, who has an artistic bent, taught me everything I know. And she knew when people, like rooms, are a jumble. Stephen needed a designer.”
“You mean a shrink?”
He began to tear up again, and I realized how much the man cared about Stephen, even though he told me once again that he and
Stephen were never lovers, just friends. And not even friends in the usual sense: they were friends inside a small space, nowhere else, he’d insisted, friends on the seat of one particular park bench. Matter of fact, if they’d encounter each other in, say, Rangier or Mozambique, they’d have passed by without stopping. Strangers but for one bench. My mind did a slow wide angle pulling away from the scene, the imagined backs of Stephen and Benny bent toward one another, smiling in the near past; pulling back, back to a fisheye of the world, the park bench a small speck, before returning to the present.
“Did he ever talk about his work? I’m trying to trace his employer.”
His mouth did a quick tremble. “He told me everything except the details you’re looking for, I’m afraid.”
“So you have no names or addresses?”
He hesitated and finally shook his head. “I know he didn’t like his work. He used his van to deliver goods.” He stopped and his eyes roved the room. “What kind of goods, I don’t know, just that he didn’t like his boss.” Stopped again. “You know about the drugs?”
I nodded.
“When I met him, he’d just gotten clean, but he had debts. He needed money. Any kind of work would do. His old man gave him a van, and he began delivering goods. I didn’t know what kind of goods, ours was not that kind of friendship, but I had my suspicions.”
“What did you suspect?”
“I thought he must be delivering contraband. One day he’d be broke and wondering where he’d get the money for the rent, the next day he’d be smiling and flush. To tell you the truth, I didn’t want to know about his work. Stephen was the kind of guy caught in a downward spiral, and while I didn’t think I could do anything about that, I tried my best to listen.”
Death and Disappearance (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 5) Page 11