Too Quiet in Brooklyn (23 page)

“370Z is faster yet.”

Jane was right. I took my satchel from the back seat and we lurched out of the car and into hers, still warm.

She jumped off the curb and careened down the street at an impossible speed while the world blurred and I looked for the white of his shirt.

“Where’d he go?” Jane yelled.

No sign of him. The guy just disappeared like the white rabbit down a hole.

We were deep into Dumbo and speeding down a street with bumpy cobbles against traffic, the 370Z smooth as shit and quiet as a cat.

“What’s the color of this leather called?”

“Persimmon,” she answered as she barely missed sideswiping a car going the right way. The driver gave us the Brooklyn salute.

“Bastard! Prick!” she yelled.

She accelerated and the roar of the engine echoed off the buildings. After a couple of turns with our guy not in sight and my bad eye pounding, I shook my head. I looked over at her. “I don’t know about you, but I could use some coffee.”

Breakfast In Brooklyn

It was barely six in the morning and Brooklyn was still asleep as Denny pulled into a place across the street from his parent’s home. He had to squeeze the squad car in. He could have parked in the fire hydrant across from his folks, but he’d never done that, it wasn’t worth it, not in this neighborhood. There’d be calls to the precinct, they’d take down his number, and he’d never hear the end of it. No, it wasn’t worth it.

His parents owned a four flat on Third Place where Denny grew up, just off of Court Street in Carroll Gardens, down the block from Mary, Star of the Sea parish where Denny spent many a Sunday morning, “Or fry in hell, in hell, I say.” He could still hear the priest’s weekly warning.

The sun was getting that pink glow of spring, bouncing off the rows of cars parked ass-to-tits block after block. This was South Brooklyn, the home of “Can I ax yah somethin” and “fuggedaboudit” and backward baseball caps. The old timers fought in World War II or the Korean War and came back and worked on the wharf or got a job in one of the grocery stores or funeral parlors and never left the neighborhood again. Didn’t lift one toe out of it. No, it wasn’t worth disrespecting the neighborhood by crowding the hydrant. After all, it was the safe haven of their ancestors who came from Ireland or Southern Italy starving and full of dreams. Their hope crumbled a little with time and they soon learned if they let their fists fall, disaster would somehow swallow them. They passed the lesson on to their their children who knew exactly how to prevail: they brooked no sign of contempt however slight.

He ran up the stoop and rang the bell, looking away from the medal of St. Joseph nailed to the frame. Below it was a plain white plaque with the name, Robert McDuffy Family, written in humorless black serif.

“You don’t have a key?” his father asked.

Denny shrugged. “Not on me.” He smiled and shook his father’s hand.

“Should keep it on your key ring. This is your place, too, you know, son. Will be when we’re gone. Won’t be long, you know. You’ll be rattling around here, with a bunch of kids and a bee-uti-ful barefoot pregnant woman in the kitchen making your breakfast. Plenty of room for a large family. And we’ll be looking down from above. Don’t think you can get rid of us.”

Denny kissed his mother and walked behind his father who was tall and shuffling along, his slippers slapping the floorboards, his robe loose and swaying from side to side and shaped like a bowl underneath his flabby ass. They walked through the parlor, down the long hall past the dining room with its ornate brass chandelier and polished dining set and into the kitchen, high-ceilinged and in need of a new paint job. A plastic virgin stood on her pedestal in the corner, one of her feet on the head of a snake. The smell of his mother’s cooking made his stomach growl.

“You look wan, Dennis. Not getting enough to eat,” his mother said. “She’s not cooking for you yet?” She turned a quizzical face up to him, her gray hair stringy this morning, her watery eyes magnified through encrusted lenses.

He didn’t answer. He helped his mother dish out the eggs and carry them to the porch where the table was set with the same oil cloth they used each time he came over, the white one with the cherry pattern stamped all over it. It was piled with toast and cinnamon rolls, butter, jam, and bacon. He took a deep breath.

“Nothing like your cooking, Mom,” he said, swallowing his orange juice.

“She made that fresh for you,” his father said, smacking his lips. “Yup, she’s a great cook and a good look, too, wouldn’t you say? And you’re a chip off the old block. Proud of you, son.”

Denny had joined the force, but not because his father had. His old man retired five years ago from the 76th Precinct. They’d given him a commendation and a watch. Denny remembered going to the dinner. It was the night after he’d met Fina, and he couldn’t wait to see her again. Denny smiled at the memory and shoved a load of scrambled into his mouth, swallowed it down with coffee. His mom’s coffee. Perfect every time. Whatever she was or wasn’t, she was a cook.

“What kind of coffee do you use?”

She told him, how she had it ground fresh each week and put an egg shell into the grounds and how the secret was a clean pot and don’t let it perk too long. “I spend my life scouring that pot,” she’d told him.

She had, too, scoured and cleaned, kept a house that was uninspired but spotless. Free of sin and safe from all disturbances.

He liked these Saturday mornings with his folks. It was a painless way to keep in touch. They sat in their glass-enclosed porch, the old fashioned wooden kind with storm windows still on, the floor sloping a bit toward the back where his mom kept a vegetable garden. “Built that way,” his father told him a million times. “Watch it, now, don’t lean back like you did that one time, remember, son, when your chair fell backwards and we had to rush you to the hospital? How old was he, Mother?”

“Two months after his eleventh birthday.”

“Ten stitches in your head and a window replaced, your mother on her third rosary.”

“I said all the mysteries while the doctor worked on you.”

His mother pointed out the tomato plants just starting up, the rows planted straight, neatly tilled. Why, his dad had told him, they’d eat like kings and queens, kings and queens all summer long.

Plenty of space, the old man told him for the umpteenth time. They could have had renters, he told him but they didn’t need the trouble. Denny’s room had been on the top floor and he could see the bridge from his window. When his father bought it in the fifties, they expected to have a big family, fill the place up. But Denny was an only child. Only and lonely. He took a bite of toast.

“C’mon, eat up. Get some jam on that toast. Your mother bought your favorite yesterday because she knew you were coming over. Highlight of our week, your visits. And take my advice, don’t ever retire. All I do is watch the old timers playing bocce in Carroll Park. I’m too old to be sitting around. Going to get me a job on the wharf. They’ve been advertising.”

He nodded, smiling, shoveling. It was getting tough to listen to all the lectures. His father didn’t like Fina. He made it plain. And they didn’t like him living together with a woman. It wasn’t what Catholic men did, his father told him. “And besides, you can do much better,” his father added. His mother looked down at the tablecloth while the old man was talking. She might add something sweet like, “Remember what the nuns said about grace.” She’d tighten the belt of her pink terry cloth robe and shove grey strands of hair out of her face, and he felt such pity for her.

Last month she’d told him a story, made up, he was certain, about a friend of hers who prayed to the Virgin because her son was seeing this girl she didn’t like and lo and behold—one of his mother’s favorite expression—lo and behold, the girl dropped dead, dropped in her tracks.

“Now wasn’t that a message?” his father added. “The Lord doesn’t like you breaking the commandments.”

Denny knew he should have told them why he loved Fina and how much she meant to him, but they’d just look at him like he was speaking in code. Instead, he’d asked which commandment he was breaking.

“What does it matter which one?” his father said. “You trying to be smart with me? You might be old enough to be on your own with a badge and everything, but don’t come here trying to be a wise acre.”

Denny hadn’t gone to his parents for a month after that until his father called him and said they were wondering why he never came around anymore. If they said something that offended him, they were sorry. “But we love you, and only want what’s best for you, and believe me, we got plenty of years between the two of us, me and your mother, and we know what’s best. We miss you something terrible, son.”

He’d heard the catch in his father’s voice. Whenever he thought of it, how his father’s voice had cracked—didn’t cry or anything, his father would never cry—but when Denny thought of it, the hair on the back of his head stood straight.

“Yup, that’s my Lorraine,” his father said, breaking off a chunk of toast and wiping the last of the egg from his plate. “You got to meet someone just like your mother. Yup, a looker and a cooker, that’s what you need.”

Waiting For Results
 

Jane dropped the gun off at the precinct and directed one of her team members to drive it to the lab in Queens. “I asked them to make it quick,” she told me, getting back in the car. “Who knows, maybe they can get something. I told them about our prints being all over it, but they thought they’d be able to work with it. They said they might have something ‘soon.’ Anyway, I’ll be on it. I give great pressure.”

We circled back into Dumbo, rode up and down deserted streets a couple of times looking for our guy. It was quiet, even for a Saturday morning, so we stopped at Almondine Bakery on Water Street. I jumped out and got two black coffees.

“You don’t carry?” she asked as we sipped.

“Nope. Insurance is sky high for someone like me, so I do without,” I said.

We were silent for a while, trying to eat up the time, both of us staring ahead. There was something on Jane’s mind, I could tell. The Civil War warehouses on the block took on a silvery glow and I could see a span of the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance. The excitement of the chase was gone.

“I shouldn’t have drawn my gun,” Jane said.

I told myself to keep my mouth shut.

“Shouldn’t have drawn it unless I was ready to shoot the guy.”

I let the silence stretch. I was having a hard time, too, figuring out what to say until I remembered Mom’s mantra, “Say what you feel.”

“I admire you for saying that. I wouldn’t have had the guts to admit it.”

More silence.

“The truth is, I don’t carry, not because of the cost of insurance but because I … don’t know anything about guns, and I should, I know I should. I’ve always felt safer not being around them.” I took a swig of coffee, savoring it. Less said, I figured. I was beginning to like Jane.

“How much time we got?” I asked.

“Fifteen minutes or so.”

“I’d like to check in on my client if you don’t mind.”

She shrugged. “Whatever. Anyway, I want to wait for lab results before we go to New Jersey. If we go.”

“I’m with you. If the prints don’t match, it was just some schmuck trying to get his rocks off,” I said.

“If they match, we know we’ve seen the killer.”

“One of them,” I reminded her.

“The only one left standing,” she reminded me.

“But not the one calling the shots,” I said. “I don’t know about this guy. If he’s one of them, he’s not the only one. His smile was too gentle, his eyes too vacant.”

Jane said nothing. As the car whispered down Henry Street heading for Barbara’s neighborhood, I saw a white car about fifty yards ahead, barreling down the block, running a red light, just clearing a group of pedestrians crossing Montague.

Jane made a call to the precinct asking if they could intercept, but she didn’t have much of a description to give them. “It’s a newer car, probably an Audi, I didn’t get the plates, but they weren’t New York tags. The driver ran a light and definitely was breaking the speed limit.”

Jane held her phone out and I could hear them laughing.

“Shitheads. I get a lot of that,” she said.

“I’m sure you do.”

“They think I was promoted because I’m a woman.” She stared straight ahead and I saw her press her palms into the steering wheel. “Kooks out today.”

“It’s more than that, I think.” I told Jane about Cookie seeing someone following us at the service area yesterday morning and later in Allentown. “I didn’t see him myself, but I’d say he fits the description Cookie gave me.”

Jane didn’t say anything, but furrowed her brow.

We turned on Amity and again on Clinton. She parked on Barbara’s side of the street and I asked her to sit in the car while I ran up the stairs and rang the bell. No answer. I stepped back and looked up. Not a light on. I went around to the back but the gate was locked. Damn, where was Barbara? Craning my neck, I could barely see a swing set and sandbox and got a feeling in the pit of my stomach. Hope was fading and it was my fault. I hadn’t found Charlie within the critical time, the first forty-eight hours.

As I turned to go back to the car, I noticed someone sitting across the street wearing pink sunglasses and reading a book, a few of those old fashioned curlers peeking out of a bandana. I looked again. Cookie. Walking back to the 370Z, I punched in Cookie’s number and watched as the woman across the street reached into her pocket without looking away from her book and flipped open her phone. Some cover.

“I don’t believe you. What’s up?” I asked, getting into the car and putting my phone on speaker.

“I saw your client leave at 6:30. She was dressed like a high-powered attorney.”

“She can’t be going to work, she’s on a leave.”

“Maybe she’s freelancing?”

“On a Saturday?”

“Maybe. You told me she’s in corporate law or something, right? Well, they work when they have to work especially if she’s freelancing. And a few minutes after she left, Lover Boy ran down the steps, got into his car, a black Mercedes with New Jersey plates.”