Brooklyn Bones Read online

  “Mrs. Donato? Come right in! What a treat to have a young visitor. I am Nettie Rogow. Come in, come in, don’t stand on ceremony.”

  I hoped my startled double take was invisible. Coming from the mouth of this expensively dressed woman was the famous Brooklyn accent mocked throughout the English-speaking world. On the phone, she had used a phony, oh-so-genteel “telephone answering voice,” learned from secretaries in old movies, I guessed, but here was the real Nettie Rogow. I knew who she was from the moment she opened her mouth—a stranger in a strange land, an immigrant all the way from the tenements of Brownsville to the land of five-acre zoning. And she had never had elocution lessons to hide it, either.

  “I’ve set up lunch in the sun room, so lovely this time of year.”

  She led us through some heavily knick-knacked rooms to a glassed-in porch overlooking a perfect garden.

  “Do you see?” She pointed to the bird feeders. “We might get a visitor or two. Look out for cardinals—they’re the bright red ones. I love to sit out here and watch them flit around. And we have deer! Such a nuisance. My daughter rages about how much they cost us, when they eat the shrubbery, but I kind of like them. We didn’t have too many deer, or cardinals either, when I was growing up.

  “Now young lady, you take that chair. It has the best view.” She waved her hand over the table. “It’s only a light meal.”

  Her idea of a light meal seemed to be going to the nearest delicacy emporium—what we New Yorkers call an “appetizing store”—and ordering half a pound of everything. The table was covered.

  I couldn’t resist smoked salmon and whitefish, flavored cream cheeses, blintzes. Fresh bagels and fragrant soft onion rolls. Fancy cookies and two kinds of coffee cake. Why even try? Mrs. Rogow kept adding more to my plate, refilling my coffee cup and generally urging me not to hold back.

  “You’re young yet,” she said. “Dieting is for old people. The food is here to enjoy. Would you like some more cookies?”

  Finally I paused for breath. She beamed at me and said, “What can I do for you?”

  I offered up a well rehearsed, heavily edited version of my museum project and assured her we would ask her permission if we wanted to quote her directly.

  She patted my hand and said, “I have waited a long time for this, a chance tell our true story. Those lousy newspaper reporters always got it wrong.”

  She jumped up and cleared a space on the table. “I pulled out my albums to show you.” She came back with an enormous stack and said, “Now don’t be frightened. We don’t have to look at all of them. I thought it would help my memory, which is definitely not what it used to be.”

  She proceeded to prove just the opposite. As she opened album after album, she walked and talked me through her life: the girlhood, as I had guessed, in the Brooklyn of cold water walk-up flats and phone messages taken at the candy store on the corner, because no one could afford a phone at home. Going to work in a neighborhood store at sixteen because her family needed what little she earned.

  “But I did graduate first,” she said, displaying the page with her diploma. With honors, I noted. “And we sewed our own graduation dresses in home economics, too,” she added, turning to the photo of her class, all in ruffled white.

  “And your husband?” I prompted. I was actually charmed by her stories, but they were not unique. I needed to get us back on track.

  “Well, there he is. And wasn’t he handsome?” she said, pointing to a stiffly posed, sepia-colored wedding picture. “Of course it was a modest little wedding, in my parents’ apartment. I was only eighteen. No one had money for a big party, but there was a real wedding cake, and schnapps, and the relatives brought food. I wore my cousin’s gown, but my Harry bought me lovely flowers.”

  “You have to understand,” she said earnestly. “He wasn’t any neighborhood boy, not one of the no-goodniks from the streets, even though he started with nothing, just like me. But he was one with plans. I could see that even then, and that’s how he swept me off my feet.” She made a gesture that encompassed the whole house. Her whole life, I thought. “Was I smart?”

  “And how did he get started?”

  “The local bank foreclosed on a crummy little building with a store and a few apartments. He saw his chance and he took it, my smart Harry.

  “It wasn’t easy at first, I can tell you. I went without a new dress two years to pay off that first building. But bit-by-bit, he added to his holdings. After the children came, we moved out of that Brownsville walk-up to a nice new apartment building on Ocean Parkway—with elevators!—and then, in time, we came out here. Look at what he was able to do for us—lovely home, the best schools, a country club. He gave me the life of a queen.”

  “It sounds like he was a good husband.”

  “The best. I was a lucky woman. He was a doting father too.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Weren’t there some tenant organization issues right around that time, too? Were you—I mean—your company—ever affected by that?’

  She looked away, and when she looked back there were tears in her eyes. “My Harry, may he rest in peace, he was a wonderful man. He worked so hard to make something of himself. He did not deserve what they did to him, those crooked politicians and those lousy, lying reporters.”

  She struggled to regain her composure, and then said abruptly, “Have you had enough? Another slice of lox? Or more coffee cake?

  “So, you’re interested in Park Slope, where you live? Hand me that book over there—not the green one, that’s the family pictures—that black one—these are our buildings. We started picking up cheap buildings there in the early sixties, I suppose. Maybe even late fifties. People who used to live there were dying to sell and move out to the suburbs then.”

  She flipped through the pages as she talked. “Well, of course they were. Drugs, gangs, oh, Brooklyn got bad then. And they wanted green grass, too. Ah, here they are, see what you recognize.”

  I was having trouble stemming her flood of talk so I could learn more about her husband and his questionable business practices, but I could get back to it. I could not pass up a chance to learn more about my own personal information quest. And Chris would never forgive me if I did.

  “I know that one. There’s a dance school now, and Slope Books.”

  “Bookstore? Dance school? Well! They do tell me the neighborhood has changed a lot. This was a locksmith, I believe, and that was a bar. And I’m not talking about a nice club, either, where nice young people go to meet and hear music. I’m talking about the kind of place where there were fights every Saturday night. My Harry wouldn’t let me go near the place. Still and all, those bars paid good rent, like any other business.”

  I kept turning the pages and then stopped. “That’s our block. Did you own all these houses?”

  “No, dear, of course not, but we did own several. Which one is yours? Can you tell?”

  “The first of the row of little houses. Right there.” I put my finger on a photo of the familiar block, with very unfamiliar cars in the street.

  “Why, yes, I believe that one was ours. The whole row was.”

  “Mrs. Rogow, when was this? And what was it like on our block then? That’s what I really want to know.” It wasn’t close to being all I wanted to know, but it was a start.

  “Let me see.” She slipped the large photo out of its plastic sleeve and looked at the back. “This is from around 1970. What was it like? A lot of the buildings were chopped up into tiny apartments before we ever bought them. Low rents and very unreliable, low-class tenants. And sometimes we tried renting out the whole house to groups of young people. We figured they couldn’t be worse. And we were in business, after all—a large group could pay more than one family. Were we ever wrong about them!”

  “They couldn’t pay more?” That didn’t
sound right to me.

  “No, dear, of course they could. My Harry was never wrong about something like that. But they were terrible tenants, even the ones from nice families. They always said they were students. Dropouts, that’s what they were, lazy hippies and draft-dodgers. Filthy habits, skipped out on the rent, had all kinds of friends staying there with them. And who knew what they were doing? Wild parties, we heard, and selling dope, no doubt. The other people on the block hated them and the police—don’t ask. They were there again and again.

  “Sometimes they just disappeared in the middle of the night.” She paused. “Goodness, it’s been years since I thought about this, but it is coming back to me.

  “Of course they owed us money when they did that, and if that wasn’t bad enough, one time at least, they left garbage piled up in all the rooms. We didn’t find out for weeks. Why did they have to do a thing like that? And what a mess it was! Smart aleck little spoiled…well, I don’t use the kind of language they deserve. And then they called Harry names. Those s.o.b.’s.”

  Was the genteel mask cracking? I saw my chance to get back to the hard questions. “The tenants? Or is that the reporters again? Or the courts? Forgive me, but there is evidence that it was not all lies.”

  “To call him such names! A man who worked so hard all his life! There was no reason, no reason at all.” She was turning pink. “Aren’t you listening to what I have been telling you? He was a good man, and those momzers, you should excuse the language, in Yiddish it means someone whose parents weren’t married, the lawyers and the reporters, even worse—they tormented him.”

  I was very quiet. I nibbled a bit of cake, took a sip from my cup, and waited.

  She looked away, not meeting my eyes, and finally said, “Ah, well, I suppose you know all about it already.” She sighed. “All right, Harry was, I must admit, a stubborn man. So maybe there were a few violations. Heat that didn’t always come on. Cranky old plumbing. So maybe he should have cleaned them up. But his tenants, those low lifes, demanding changes? Demanding? Taking him to court?” She shook her head. “He couldn’t stand it, and then he couldn’t give in. It was so long ago now, but I remember the day they took him off to jail. Contempt of court, they said it was. It was such a public humiliation, and of course there was plenty of talk.” Her eyes filled with tears. “My poor Harry. And it was hard here too, to hold my head up high at PTA and the club.”

  “Mother?” A thin blonde in a black pants suit stood in the doorway. I had a quick impression of diamond pin, lacquered hair, red mouth, spike heels. “What is going on here? Is this a reporter?”

  Mrs. Rogow said with a tight smile, “Please allow me to introduce my daughter, Brenda Rogow Petry. Brenda, this is Erika Donato, a historian.” She emphasized the last word.

  “Your mother is kindly sharing stories with me about Brooklyn in the 1970s for a museum project. Would you like to join us?”

  “Oh, Brooklyn. All those old nickel-and-dime holdings.” She waved a dismissive hand, her bright red nails glistening. “There’s nothing to tell.” She gave me a bright, confiding smile and sat down. “Now the real story is the way we have grown from my dad’s day to being true players in real estate development. We have even had a cover story in New York magazine. Why don’t you write about that?”

  “I’m a historian, so it was your dad’s day that is relevant to my work. Maybe you could fill in some details?”

  “Dad’s day? I never paid any attention to his older business, barely even knew where it was. I had a bigger vision and I unloaded those low-end properties as soon as I went into the company.”

  By then she was looking over my shoulder at the notes on my laptop screen. Some of the color seemed to leave her brightly made-up face as she looked at her mother.

  “Mother, may I speak to you in the kitchen?”

  “Of course, dear.” Mrs. Rogow turned to me, said, “Please give us a moment for family business,” and walked away.

  I heard a door close, but perhaps not all the way. As their voices rose, I could hear them clearly. And I admit it, I was listening.

  “What are you doing? You promised not to talk about dad’s convictions. Not now of all times, now, when I am about to make our name mean something completely different.”

  “But, dear, it was all such a long time ago. Who cares?”

  “I have to make sure nobody does. I cannot have negative publicity fouling thing up. Do you think I’ve been playing around all these years, making sure his reputation is buried?”

  “I remember.” Mrs. Rogow ground out the words. “You wanted to take his name right off the company he built. A second death, that’s what it would have been. He was a wonderful man, your father—hard-working, devoted to us, ambitious. Look how well he provided for us.”

  “Yes, mother, he was a very successful slumlord. Have you forgotten the police at our door, where everyone could see them?”

  “I know, dear. At the club…”

  “The club! Spare me. I had to go to school every single day and listen to them whisper, ‘Jailbird.’ You don’t get it. You never did.”

  “Don’t I get it? That slumlord provided you with a very nice life. And whose money got you into your first Manhattan project, the one that put you on that map? And I might remind you, whose money still controls a large chunk of that company you refer to so carelessly as yours? Mine, last time I checked. Let’s have a little respect, please.”

  There was silence, and then the sound of high heels clicking away in the opposite direction.

  Mrs. Rogow emerged again with only a slight flush to give away there had been an emotional conversation.

  “Well! Well.” She smiled, shakily. “I suppose you and your daughter have the occasional heated words?”

  Shaking her head, Mrs. Rogow passed the cookies again and said, “So you’ve found the skeleton my dear daughter wishes to put back in the closet, but really, it’s never been a secret. You found it yourself in the old papers.” She sighed. “No one cares any more, no matter what my daughter says. Only she cares.”

  She looked directly into my eyes, unsmiling and intense. “So, young lady, when you write your report, I hope you will be kind to my Harry.” She had tears in her eyes when she added, “A man’s whole life doesn’t boil down to one bad period, or one bad decision either.”

  Then she smiled suddenly. “And don’t forget to say that his loving widow puts out one fabulous lunch! In fact,” she added, “why don’t I wrap some of this for you to take home? I’ll whisk a few of these platters to the kitchen and be right back.”

  She rode right over my protests with a firm, “It’s a shame for it to go to waste. You’ll take some of the cookies, of course, and the cake. I certainly don’t need it. And some fish too?”

  Mrs. Rogow returned with her eye liner repaired and cheeks all rosy, carrying two large shopping bags. She walked me to the door. “So you’ll have what to eat when you come home from work or school. My pleasure! Now, young lady.” She patted my shoulder. “You keep in touch. I’d like to know what you do with all this.”

  I walked to my car thinking about my house in those days. My take was a little different from Mrs. Rogow’s. In my imagination I was seeing a house full of life, full of young people, trying on new selves and new ideas. They wore hippie clothes, big striped bell-bottoms and those wild flowery shirts. And long print dresses. And music playing all the time. Jefferson Airplane and the Rolling Stones? Smoke and incense.

  Just as I reached the car I was accosted by Ms. Petry, walking the only unfriendly Labrador I’ve ever seen. It snarled, she pulled it to a hard stop and said, “Don’t come back. Don’t call. And don’t write about my father.”

  I slammed the car door and peeled out of the driveway, not stopping or slowing down until I was almost at the expressway entrance. Then I pulled over and sat in the car until I c
ould stop shaking. When I did, I started laughing. Ms. Petry might be scary, but she also reminded me of a soap opera villainess. Any soap opera villainess. I couldn’t tell them apart but Chris sometimes watched. I wondered if Ms. Petry did too, and then I started laughing.

  I needed to tell this story to someone who would both appreciate the absurdity and help me sort out the drama from the facts. I was on my way to Rick’s house to look for a photo, having done my duty to both my professional research and my personal mystery.

  Now I was back to thinking about my lost friend. I so wanted him to be there at his house. We could have laughed about the absurdity and who better than a retired detective to sort things out?

  Chapter Twelve

  There were no cops in sight. The yellow police tape was gone. It had never really been a crime scene anyway. They had told me it—that event, Rick’s death—did not happen here. I could pull right into his driveway. Nothing was stopping me except my own second thoughts. Rick’s house without Rick.

  I sat in the car wishing I had a partner in this, but I had insisted to my dad I could handle things, so now it was time to prove it. I gathered my purse, slammed the car door, squared my shoulders and marched right up to the house. I had a perfect right to be here.

  I let myself into the kitchen and hit all the light switches at once. It didn’t add any cheer, it only made it easier to see how old-fashioned, shabby, and sad it was. I suspected Rick never used it for anything but a place to mix drinks.

  I went on to the small dining room, crowded with a massive, darkly varnished dining room set, including a sideboard filled with rose-patterned china. The drawers below held ecru lace doilies and tablecloths. Surely none of this was Rick’s? Perhaps his mother’s?