“I could use a team,” Cookie said.
“No problem, I have one in mind.” I put Cookie on hold, pressed Trisha Liam’s number and arranged to pick up Brandy and her friends in the morning. “And Denny can go with us.”
“Clancy’s day off, he can come with, too, and he’s got a van.”
“I thought you weren’t sure about him,” I said, all innocent.
I could almost see Cookie’s blush. We’re so close, I know what she’s thinking. Matter of fact, her words are clearer when they’re not spoken.
“I guess I just can’t believe good news when he knocks on my door.”
Lorraine was standing on the stoop as we drove up. I can see her now, holding the front door ajar, one hand on her throat, the porch light slanting over her as the last of the summer’s bugs swarmed around the bulb.
Denny kissed his mom, and we all sat in the parlor. When Robert and Maddie entered, I felt the blood rush to my face.
“What’s wrong with you?” Maddie asked me.
Before I could answer, she swiveled around and looked at Lorraine.
“Something’s up. You found my mom.”
I swallowed. “Not exactly.”
“It’s bad news, isn’t it?”
I had her sit on the sofa close to Lorraine and recited what I’d heard from the FBI. I said it as cleanly as I could, that they’d found her mom’s cell phone lying next to a body that had been badly burned, the face unrecognizable.
Maddie stared at her hands firmly folded in her lap. I watched her shoulders hunch and her eyes squeeze shut. She looked up at Robert.
“That’s not my mom, I know it isn’t. Someone stole her phone. I made a bet with Robert she’d come home in one piece and she’d never leave again, and I never, ever lose my bets, do I, Robert?”
He said nothing.
“Do I?” she asked again, this time more softly.
He shook his head.
No one said anything for a minute until I began talking about needing her mom’s dental records. Lorraine sat up, startled, I suppose, that I’d mention the method of body identification to a child. Robert glared at me.
“How dumb do you think I am?” Maddie asked.
“Who is your mom’s dentist?”
“Dr. Nichols, but Mom has perfect teeth, and don't ask me to find his office. Oh, wait, it’s close to my favorite ice cream store. Robert knows where it is, don’t you, Robert?”
Robert’s face, normally florid, was the color of lumpy flour, but he nodded.
“What’s your problem—afraid of losing another bet?” Maddie asked him.
“He’s on Court Street,” Robert said. I could tell by the look on his face that he feared the worst. So did I.
A Cold Goddess
The moon is a cold goddess who makes her home outside our bedroom window. I should know, I’ve stared up at her often enough. Snagged in amongst the electric wires and shining on branches losing their leaves, the heartless bitch beams her rays down on Denny and me. Sometimes I think she’s already decided my fate—ever on the verge, never willing to embrace love. But she knows the fickleness of relationships.
As I lay next to Denny, his body breathing the slow rhythm of sleep, a shard of my father’s image smashed through my brain. I ticked off the years he’d been gone, well over ten. Mom burned the photos of him; Gran stomped on the frames. So when I try to imagine him, I can’t. I can’t even tell you if he was short or tall. Is he still living? I don’t care. I never think of him except for sometimes in the wee hours of the night, I remember one time he held me when I had a nightmare. All I really recall of him with any sort of vividness is the look of disgust he gave me through his Ray-Bans the day he left, a backward snarl that goes ever on. In his eyes, I never made the grade.
I snuggled into the warmth of Denny’s body, trying in vain for sleep, but my mind pushed its way onto Whiskey Parnell, and I wondered where she’d gone and what I was missing, for I had no doubt I’d missed some kernel of truth, had forgotten to ask the one question of whomever to reveal her whereabouts. Could she still be alive or were the charred remains the FBI found on some remote spit of land all that was left of her? And if so, had she suffered? Oh yes, I thought, because I was unable to find her. Or was she somewhere within reach, hidden, my eyes too blind to see?
That evening when we got home, Denny sat me down. True to form, Mr. Baggins was there, winding his way around my legs. Denny took my hands in his and apologized, telling me about the sliver of self-knowledge he’d gleaned over the past few days, admitting that he was too afraid of his father. I nodded as if I understood. He asked me to help him get over his obsession to please Robert, and my soul teared up, not really comprehending the words spilling from my mouth when I said I needed to get over my father, too.
Day 2
On the Way
Last night when I told Denny about Brandy’s friends helping us in the search for Arthur McGirdle, I could tell he didn’t like the idea, but he smiled. I explained that as yet we didn’t have Arthur’s current address, that NYPD had been looking for a while without success, so our best bet was to find someone who knew him. To do that, we needed to comb the streets around Brighton Beach and Coney Island. “The more the merrier for that kind of canvass.”
Clancy picked us up in his van early the next day. Denny sat next to him, Cookie and I in the seats behind the driver, Brandy and her friends in the back. We didn’t say much on the way out. Having six teenagers in the car made us all a little tongue-tied, and I felt the weight of silence between generations.
“Are you really a cop?” the one called Johnny asked.
Without turning around, Clancy and Denny both nodded. Clancy kept driving. By now we were on the BQE headed for the southern tip of Brooklyn, and Whiskey’s journals were burning a hole in my pocket.
A Saturday in March
The Boardwalk
I saw Arthur today. He had a twinkle in his eyes and bourbon on his breath. I’d gone to Brighton Beach to refresh my roots, and turned around when I heard a familiar whistle in back of me on the boardwalk. He’d been following me for how long, I don’t know. Arthur, the same Arthur with the deft fingers and that way about him with skirts.
“Come back to the house with me,” he said, staring at me. I choked on his boozy smell.
As we stood on his stoop, he said, “I want you to meet the wife.”
You could have scraped me off the walk, but there was no graceful way to get out of it, his key was in the lock. So I tried the clumsy way and ran. But Arthur followed me, telling me how he didn’t want me to get a fancy impression of him and Flossie, how they’d been sweethearts since grade school.
“You mean all the time your hand was up my drawers you were married?”
He swayed a little and I had to help him sit down. Not too many public places to sit in Brighton Beach, but we found a bench at the end of a dilapidated block.
Soon my heart stopped its stammering.
Arthur looked over at me and leaned in. “Want a whirl on the Wonder Wheel?” And he kissed me hard right then and there, and I could feel his desire growing.
“I’ve missed you so much, Whiskey,” he whispered.
And I was a goner.
What is it about me? I’m a sucker for my own demise. But why? I puzzle over this a lot. Instead of telling lots of friends, I shun them and keep stuff inside my head. That’s a bad thing, my brother tells me. He knows me, Tommy does.
A Rainy Tuesday in April
It’s Arthur I’ll always remember.
I hadn’t seen him in five, six years when all of a sudden I get a call from someone muffling his mouth and asking for two dogs and a cream. I’d recognize the voice anywhere, throaty and mysterious, like a feather tickling my spine. That was Arthur.
We decided to meet at a small café I knew on the corner of Court Street and Warren. I recognized him more by sound than sight. I did a double-take, I tell you. First off, he looked like a pregnant butcher. Except it w
as the same Arthur, all right, I could tell by looking at his eyes, probing and hungry.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said.
Which was true.
“It’s been a long time, and I’ve missed you. Let’s take the subway to Coney Island tomorrow, no, tonight, right now.”
I’ll tell you, in my youth, I’d have gone anywhere with that man. But now I realized Arthur had changed, and not for the better. I felt it in my deepest bones and also read Flossie’s letter.
The biggest change was not in his belly, but occurred somewhere in his face. And when I saw Arthur guzzle the beer he’d ordered us and take a sip of mine while he waited for a refill, that’s when I knew.
“We can go to the pictures,” Arthur said. “What do you want to see, something classic or one of the new ones?”
I shook my head. I was sick of his craziness. Still, there was something about him that drew me. Arthur was so exciting, so mysterious, so full of energy. On the way to the show, he talked to me, his mouth going a mile a minute about this, that. Schemes, really. Arthur always had a scheme.
By the third beer, the foam drooling down his chin, he was talking in paragraphs. He told me about a deal he had for selling paint to the city, him and a guy he called Berringer. He wanted to show me the warehouse, someplace underneath the two bridges.
“Berringer’s a real friend. Known him for years. Went AWOL together. He knows some guys, roped me in. In a month’s time, we’ll be rich; they need so much paint, the city. Did you know that bridges are being painted all the time? Me neither. Come to think on it, walking across them, you know, on the walkways, you see these guys?”
I slipped in a nod.
“On those ropey paths, you always bump into guys with brushes hanging over the sides. Berringer told me he’d just bought a bakery on Court Street.”
“Don’t you ever sleep?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. At least I don’t remember it. Arthur’s words were wearing me out, so I gave him a peck on the cheek and told him how sorry I was but I just remembered I had a meeting. I backed away, watching him stare at me, in a few minutes stumbling away, muttering.
Wedged into one of Whiskey’s journals was a folded piece of notepaper. It smelled like Yardley soap. As I flattened out the creases with my fingers, I noticed the signature, “Yours ever, Flossie.” It was dated two years ago, addressed to Whiskey, and read in part:
I shoulda listened to my sister. Instead, I got knocked up by a Brighton Beach blowhard, Arthur, that beer-guzzling lout who couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Not for nothing, sis warned me, I’ll give her that. “Don’t trust the sweet talkers,” she said with her dying breath. The day after the wedding, I realized she was right. Two punches to my face and a swollen lip convinced me. A week later, I lost the seed Arthur planted.
I was going to leave, I swear, because he hadn’t yet beaten all the stuff out of me. But when it came down to it, I couldn’t go. “No Backbone Flossie,” that’s what they’ll carve on my headstone, and it couldn’t come soon enough.
The other day he had the nerve to bring his latest home, right under my nose—me standing there trying to warn the poor thing. At first she didn’t get the picture, but when she saw my beaten face, she gave Arthur a few bats of her eyelashes, and turning on her heels like a tractor churning up fallow ground, she stormed out.
When Ma died, I inherited her 1986 Dodge Caravan, rusted out but it ran, a maroon eyesore. Every other day I had to move it. So when Arthur and I started going out for serious, he decided we should drive the Dodge and see the world. We got as far as St. Louis when the caravan went kaput. We took the bus home.
But the trip turned out good because staring out the window at the speed blur of America, I decided that Arthur was a broken dream, like the St. Louis we never got to see. I remember all the hot cars whizzing by like we were toys and all those cars filled with people who were somebodies, looking down their long noses at us nobodies. And you know what, Whiskey? I realized then and there that Arthur was like Ma’s rusted-out Dodge, busted long before he knocked on my door.
Do you understand, Whiskey? How I wish I’d never met him. He’s made my life a misery when he’s sober, made my life into a tragedy when he’s had a few. Like the other night, I could hear him coming home, his unsteady tread in the hall. I don’t know where I got the strength, but I got behind the dresser and pushed and shoved until it was wedged underneath the knob, and all the while he’s whistling at the front door and singing one of those bawdy tunes.
Even now I hear the key in the lock, and I’m sweating and he’s pounding on the wood outside, “Open up, goddammit, Flossie,” and I’m praying to the holy lady and he’s slamming on the jamb and finally the dresser tips and he tumbles inside.
I crouched in the corner, no lights in the apartment. My heart was beating like a banshee, and he grabbed me and shook me and beat me good. I could have died. I wish I had.
I’m a goner, don’t you see, Whiskey? My life’s over, but you, you still got a lot of fight in you. If you know what’s good for you and your little girl, don’t go running to him when he calls you, no matter what he says. Because Arthur’s touch is a rattler’s bite.
Coney Island
I shut the book and listened to the conversation coming from the backseats.
“So why aren’t you wearing your uniforms?” someone asked Clancy and Denny.
“Because today they’re snoops,” someone said.
“Zip it, Johnny,” Kit said.
I gave them a mini lecture on surveillance, on the need for blending in by wearing ordinary clothes, concealing gear that might look unusual. To illustrate, I pulled binoculars out of my bag to show them. For the first time I looked at their clothes and decided they wouldn’t need a cover, at least I didn’t think so. But I could tell no one was listening to me. Heather began rooting through her backpack while the others whispered or squirmed or texted.
Teenagers have a way of talking to one another that excludes adults. They speak a language that makes no sense except to themselves. I know, because Cookie and I used to do the same thing. Measured in years, it wasn’t so long ago, but right now it felt as far away as the stars.
“What do you think you’re doing?” someone asked Heather.
Suppressed sniggers in the back. More rustling.
“Getting out her notebook,” Kit said. I could tell she was Rina Rosanova’s daughter—a younger version without paint spots on her clothes.
“Just use your phone, stupid.”
“You’re mouth is steaming up the windows!”
“Is not!”
“Is too!”
“You’re fierce!”
Cookie shot me an eye roll.
“What are we doing again?” Johnny asked.
“You’ve got the picture of Arthur?” Cookie asked.
They nodded. Johnny said something under his breath. Elbowing and mumbling followed, but the mood was changing, I could tell, into something I’d call almost expectant, and I knew I had to give Brandy and her friends some more direction if this was going to work.
“You’re asking store owners and others if they’ve seen Arthur recently. If so, ask them where. Get as much detail as you can—date, time of day, address.” I explained again about not giving away information. “For instance, don’t use his name, just show his picture to whomever you’re asking.”
“You talk like a teacher.”
Denny turned and smiled at me.
“Tell them he’s a friend of your uncle and you’re trying to find him,” Cookie said.
I heard them muttering about who was going to do the talking. Brandy appointed herself.
“Can we go on the rides? I want to go on the Cyclone again. My dad took me right before he died,” Brandy said.
Silence for a few seconds.
“I don’t see why not.”
“Because this is a weekday,” Cookie said. “No rides will be open.”
“You’re wrong th
ere,” Brandy said. “My mom read it. The rides will be open today, I don’t know why.”
“Because they want our money, stupid,” someone said.
“But we’re not here to go on the rides,” Brandy said.
Silence for a minute.
“Remember, you’re supposed to be kids having fun at Coney Island, so you’ve got to act the part,” Denny said. “Go on the Wonder Wheel and the Cyclone. Who knows, you might look down and see Arthur staring up at you.” He looked at me and winked. I got the impression he and Clancy thought this whole surveillance thing with kids was a dumb idea. Maybe so, but Brandy’s group had already fed me with information. They were the ones who spotted Arthur going into Cody’s; they were the ones who found Malcolm’s van for me. Maybe they’d get lucky in Luna Park.
“We can take pictures like we’re tourists or something.”
“Right. But remember, you need to be focused on your target. Look until your eyeballs drop. It’s a lot of work. You may come away with nothing.”
I could feel Brandy shaking her head. “We’re going to find Whiskey.”
“That’s not going to happen today, but you may uncover a small chunk of information, just like you did last night when you found Malcolm.” I told them about my meeting with him. Someone said it was a waste of time because I didn’t find Whiskey.
“Not at all,” I said. “Because in talking to Malcolm, I got a better picture of Whiskey’s past. And the more I understand her past, the better chance we have of finding her. That’s why we’re looking for Arthur.”
They chewed on that. I didn’t say it, but I wondered what would happen when we found Arthur. Would we also discover Whiskey’s body tied up in some dark corner of his apartment? A jolt of fear zinged up my spine.
Whiskey’s Gone (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 3) Page 18