Whiskey’s Gone (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 3)

by Susan Russo Anderson

  “There’s always that magic moment when you find a tiny piece of information. You think it’s nothing at the time, a throwaway, but it turns out to be the key to unraveling the mystery. We’ll find Whiskey, but only with persistence and hard work.”

  Someone spotted the Cyclone. I cracked open my window and smelled the sea.

  “Check out Nathan’s Famous and guys hovering around cotton candy booths,” Clancy said.

  “Don’t forget men sweeping up or maybe selling cotton candy or working the rides,” Denny said. “But watch out for the seagulls. They can be mean. And more important, if you spot this guy, Arthur, text us at once. Don’t get too close to him. He might be dangerous.”

  “He might have a gun,” Clancy said.

  Suddenly the kids were silent.

  We found parking on a side street near the boardwalk, and I watched Brandy and her friends, mute, heads turning this way and that, as they walked in front of us. I guessed they were sober from the weight of what they were doing. I told them we’d split, adults and kids, and to meet us in front of the Wonder Wheel in an hour.

  “Can we split up into two or three smaller groups?” Brandy asked.

  The first word out of my mouth was going to be no, but I bit my tongue, remembering how I felt when I was Brandy’s age, and worse, what I did when an adult told me not to do something.

  “That gets complicated. I mean, think about it. What if you see Arthur? You’re going to text me and then have to find the others while you tail him? I don’t think so.”

  They huddled into a group, discussing, but I heard Heather or Brandy hiss something to the others.

  “Above all, have fun, otherwise you’ll blow your cover,” Denny said, and their mood changed from anxious to solemn. It figured—say one thing and they feel the opposite of what you’d expect. But I felt the same somberness. Getting closer to the rides usually gave me an exhilarated feeling—I love Luna Park and Coney Island—but today I felt the weight of Whiskey’s absence and the daunting task of finding Arthur. If NYPD detectives couldn’t find him, how would we?

  We separated then, Brandy and her group drifting toward the rides while we made for the boardwalk.

  It was crowded for a weekday, but we walked up and down, listening to the gulls and feeling the spray of the sea and looking for Arthur. At one point, Cookie thought she spotted him, but the man turned out to be a father looking vaguely like the dipsomaniac, at least having dark red hair and wearing a similar flannel shirt, but surrounded by his six kids.

  An hour later, we were standing in front of Nathan’s Famous, shooing off the seagulls and waiting for Clancy and Denny to finish their third hot dog when my phone began vibrating. It was Brandy.

  She spoke in hushed tones. “He’s here. I know he is. I can feel him close by. Heather and I swore we saw him. The others said no, but they were busy talking to this guy, a mechanic who works on the rides. He said he’s a friend of Arthur.”

  “Do you see him now?”

  She didn’t reply.

  I heard the crashing of the waves, voices in the background, and felt something sour travel up to my throat. I looked at Denny, who understood and gave me a hug.

  “They’ve seen him,” I said.

  “So soon?” Clancy asked through a bite of hot dog.

  Cookie sipped her coffee. “What was he wearing? Did they take a picture?”

  Brandy must have heard through my speaker. “He had on the same shirt as last night. I was talking and turned around. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, no time to take a pic. We’re near the Wonder Wheel. Better get here fast before this friend of his disappears. I told him that you’d want to talk to him.”

  “This better be good,” Denny said. The wind off the sea was hitting me, and the birds were crying, practically plucking the last of Denny’s hot dog out of his hands. It took us a few minutes to walk from Surf Avenue to the Wonder Wheel.

  “He’s over there,” Brandy said, pointing to a squat man standing near a small refreshment stand.

  “We’re going to walk around,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “To find Arthur.” The rest of her gang nodded. I noticed they held their smartphones in their hands but, amazingly, weren’t texting.

  Clancy shook his head. “Too dangerous. Wait for us over there.”

  “We’ll find him, but we’re going to work together,” Denny said.

  The kids slouched against a ride a few feet from us while we talked to the man they’d found who knew Arthur. He introduced himself as Zeno, but he didn’t need to tell us—his name was sewn in gold letters on the breast pocket of his blue jumpsuit. One look at his greased-up fingers told me he was a mechanic. To prove it, he held a half-eaten donut in one thick mitt and an oil gun in the other.

  “Park’s supposed to be closed. We’d gotten the rides all buttoned down, ready to move south, me and the missus. Got the RV already packed and look what happens, the schmucks decide to keep it open extra days.”

  He paused to finish the donut, licking the last of it from his fingers. “Whoever did this to us must be having a brain fart, meaning the regulars now need extra help. Most of the guys have already gone south, but I’m a sucker, I tell you. So now I got the old lady sore as hell at me because she wants to hook up with her friends in Delray Beach, meaning nag, nag, nag in my ear and twice the work to boot. But they’re paying me good, so why do I complain? Beats the shit out of me, just not used to sticking around.”

  “You know this guy?” I asked, holding up Arthur’s picture.

  “Sure I know Arthur. Everyone knows Arthur. Regular fixture around here, what do you think? Him and me, we go way back from the time of Desert Storm and before.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  He jerked his thumb, pointing in back of his shoulder. “He was just here.”

  “When, exactly?”

  His forehead furrowed. “Couple minutes ago. Me and him got caught up on a lot of crap. He owes me money, the bastard. Says he’ll pay it soon, too. Then he takes off.”

  “Do you have an address? A cell phone?”

  “You kidding? Like I say, I know Arthur from way back. But I know Arthur to see him around and that’s it. Think I’d be friends with that kind of guy? You got another think. I wouldn’t be caught dead in his house.”

  “Why?” Denny asked.

  “You trying to be a cop or something? Meaning he’s not my friend, far from it.” The mechanic swiped at his nose with his sleeve.

  “But he lives around here?”

  Zeno took out a large handkerchief, immaculate. It looked like a sail in his hands. He shook it open and blew. “Got a place somewhere on Neptune Avenue. Must be close by. Say, what’s he done this time?”

  Zeno was about to leave but Cookie stopped him. “Have you ever seen Arthur with anyone else, a woman?”

  He laughed. “You got to be kidding. Plenty of times. Got plenty of buddies and plenty of broads. Hangs out in the bars. Can’t help but love the guy, even though he owes me big time. Something about him, though. For one, he’s a drinker. The old lady saw him loaded once. That was it. Said to steer clear of him, and I do what she says or forget about it.”

  He stopped talking, and I thought that was all we were going to get from Zeno, but I was wrong, I realized as I stared at him while he interrupted himself for a blow into his handkerchief.

  “Long time ago Arthur was friends with a guy, an old army buddy, he said. Used to see them around, meaning if you saw Arthur, Berringer wouldn’t be far away. You see one, you see the other. Joined the army together, came back together. The wife didn’t like them, told me they were trouble, told me to steer clear.”

  He stopped, stroked his name tag, staring into the distance as if calling back the years. “Berringer’s old man owned a car wash called Sharkey’s someplace around here, near Ocean Parkway, I think. Arthur worked there for a time, but Arthur was a drifter. In and out, now you see him, now you don’t. Anyways, Berringe
r owned a lot more than that, though. Met with an untimely end.”

  “Who met with an untimely end?”

  “The both of them. Two, three years ago. Father and son, within a month of each other. Old man found at his desk, bullet down his gullet, a real mess. His wife maintained it wasn’t suicide, but you know women. My wife read me their obit, ‘What did I tell you, Zeno, they were trouble, the both of them, I was right from the beginning.’ That’s what she said, so you see when I tell you, I pay attention when she talks. Son’s body found three or four weeks later in the car wash, his dead ass peeking out from between two of the brushes.”

  I looked over at Cookie, remembering something I’d read in Whiskey’s journal about a guy named Berringer.

  “You need to sit down,” she said.

  At least I think that’s what she said. The words from Whiskey’s journals were flying around my brain. I was beginning to put it all together and Cookie knows me, she knows how I get sometimes. Anyway, all I knew at this point was I needed to think. The words, Ocean Parkway and Arthur figured prominently in my thoughts, along with Berringer’s name.

  Sharkey's Car Wash

  “Let’s find a coffee shop, somewhere she can sit for a while,” Denny said.

  So we rounded up Brandy’s group and together we walked along Surf Avenue until we found a diner. Before we sat down, I asked the hostess if she knew where we could find a car wash called Sharkey’s.

  She looked at me like I’d gone round the moon.

  “Al, you ever heard of a Sharkey’s car wash?” she yelled into the restaurant.

  “Near the elevated on Brighton Beach Avenue, but I think it’s closed.”

  “Moved to Mermaid Avenue a long time ago,” someone else shouted. “Made too much noise for the neighbors or something.”

  That started a heated discussion in the kitchen, and a man wearing a chef’s hat emerged. “Not on Mermaid, Sharkey’s moved to one of those side streets near Ocean Parkway, but whatever, it was torn down a while ago. Fire or something.”

  “Do you know who owned it?”

  They shook their heads.

  My stomach started its churning. Denny’s good at sensing my mood, so he threw an arm around my shoulder. I thanked the man. “Got to go.”

  “But we haven’t eaten!” Clancy protested.

  “You’ve had three dogs and enough Coke to drown a rat,” Cookie said. “You can wait.”

  Clancy grinned and kissed her. So much for Cookie’s fears.

  “I got to take a leak,” Johnny said.

  More delay, but it gave me time to think. I turned to Denny. “Do you know anything about selling paint to the city? Whiskey mentioned it in her diary. It was one of Arthur’s schemes.” I got out the journal and showed him the page.

  He shook his head. “Hard to sell to the city. Got to be bonded and insured. Besides, there’s not much money in it. Or there shouldn’t be, unless there’s some kind of scam going on.”

  “Got to know somebody,” Clancy said. “Oldest trick in the books. Goes back to Boss Tweed.”

  “You mean, phony invoicing and keeping two sets of books?” I asked.

  Denny shrugged. “We don’t want to go there.”

  I crossed my arms. “Unless it takes us to Whiskey.” A cold wind swept through my heart remembering Heights Federal and the scam Mom was caught up in before she died.

  “Gotta pee,” another one of Brandy’s friends said.

  After more delay, we got in the van and headed into the usual traffic.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “A car wash,” Brandy said. “Dumb, if you ask me.”

  Cookie turned around and faced Brandy’s kids. “When Fina’s like this, it’s best to follow her lead.”

  There was a hush in the back as I explained what I’d discovered from reading Whiskey’s journal.

  “Mom was right,” Heather said. “She told me to keep a journal.”

  “What for?” someone asked.

  “Be quiet.”

  I told them about Brighton Beach, where Whiskey had grown up, pointing out Abraham Lincoln on Ocean Parkway, where she went to high school. I told them about Arthur’s friend Berringer, probably the same guy whose father owned a car wash in Brighton Beach, both of them now dead, according to Zeno. While I talked, we rode up and down the side streets surrounding the Q line’s Ocean Parkway stop, looking for whatever remained of Sharkey’s.

  “In one journal, Whiskey wrote about one of Arthur’s schemes. Seems Arthur and his friend Berringer—the one whose father owned a car wash—had a warehouse together.”

  “What does Sharkey’s look like?” Heather asked.

  “Boring, if you ask me. It’s almost noon, and we’ve wasted the whole day and I haven’t started my homework.” That from one of Brandy’s friends.

  “We spotted Arthur again, didn’t we?” Brandy asked.

  “But then he disappeared.”

  “So what’s new?” Heather asked.

  Lots of elbowing and moving going on in the back. Whispering I didn’t get.

  “Shut up, Kit.”

  She was twirling a braid around a finger, her head cocked to one side.

  “Your last name Rosanova?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Met your mom last night. She’s worried about Whiskey and her child, so I’m glad you’re here.”

  Silence.

  On the second or third time around, we found a plywood fence surrounding what looked like the remains of a fairly large building.

  Clancy said we’d never find parking, so he squeezed into the hydrant space near a boarded-up corner on Brighton Beach Avenue, sticking a Police Official Business sign on his windshield.

  I swiveled to the backseats and said, “We follow leads, no matter how far out they seem. Sometimes it’s a blind alley. Other times we reach out and grab and come away with nothing. But it’s not a waste. We’re going to find Whiskey, hold onto that thought. And I’ve got a hunch.”

  “That boarded-up hole in the street is a hunch?” someone asked.

  We left our jackets in the car, stumbled out, and walked across the street to a place partially boarded up with plywood. The sun glinted off shards of glass as we peered down a large hole filled with debris and a slew of seagulls, too many to count, squawking and nipping at all kinds of paper, flying away, circling overhead.

  “There’s part of a sign or something,” Brandy said. “I see an A, a K, and an E. Could be “Sharkey’s.”

  “Or not.”

  I let them talk. This was what remained of Sharkey’s all right. I felt it in my bones, and the surrounding smell along with some of the charred remains told me there’d been a fire. Just then, there was a voice behind me.

  “Told my wife this place was interesting. So much life here, I told her, but she didn’t believe me. Said I was wasting my time staring into a pit.”

  You could tell the guy had shrunk two sizes by the way his coat fit—it was dragging on the ground. And he wore a ski cap hitched on top of two red ears. He looked up at me, squinting with rheumy eyes through thick glasses. “Yessir, come here every day.”

  “Do you know the owner?” I asked, pointing to what was left of the car wash.

  “Berringer. Heavy into real estate, anything that makes the green stuff.”

  “And where can I find Berringer?”

  He shook his head. “Around here somewhere. Look in the phone book.”

  I texted Lorraine and asked her to get background on the Berringer family, including an address. But as I looked at the man, a warm feeling went through me—we’d discovered the neighborhood mouth.

  When Clancy asked what had happened, the neighbor guy told us there’d been a big fire. “Middle of the night I woke up, smelled something burning, and watched shadows dancing on the walls. Our bedroom looks out onto the street, you see, and there were fire engines and water and flames. I thought it was the bad one himself come to fetch us both. Get dressed, Greta, I says
, but my wife, she’s smarter than me. She doesn’t visit an abandoned hole for amusement. Instead, she stays inside and reads all day long and tells me what I’ve missed. Says I should read something about water and elephants. She says I’d relate.”

  The way he went on, his mouth going up and down with a slight drool to it and hardly stopping at the end of sentences, you’d think he was related to Zeno.

  “How long ago was the fire?” Denny asked.

  He shrugged and I watched as the hem of his coat lifted off the cement. “Last year sometime. Or maybe it was the year before. We didn’t mind, because we’d sold the car. Let’s see, that was a while ago, wasn’t it? It was before Sandy.”

  The man was having a time problem, but I concentrated on what he was saying. You never know what crumbs you might pick up. From the edge of my vision, I glimpsed Brandy’s group getting restless. Brandy had hoisted herself onto the sides of her shoes straining to see into the pit. Next to her, Johnny was pointing to something.

  “Sharkey’s was convenient, you know, but the neighbors without cars had been trying to get rid of the place for a long time. Don’t blame them. Shouldn’t have been in a residential area. To get a permit, they must have paid someone off.”

  While he was going on about what he’d had for breakfast and what we should be eating and the location of the best restaurants—that in response to one of Clancy’s questions—I turned my attention to Brandy’s group. They were staring into the hole, but something was wrong, I could tell, because Brandy was bending deeper into the pit and waving.

  After we said goodbye to the neighbor, we walked over to an opening in the plywood, where Heather stood pointing to something in the pit about fifty feet from where we stood. I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Brandy, asking to borrow my binoculars. She said Johnny found something weird inside the hole and climbed down for a better look.

  Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

  As I handed Brandy the binoculars, I yelled for Johnny to get back up and fast.