Brooklyn Bones Page 14

  She darted a glance out the window. “But if it was those guys—if!— I don’t want to be around. Listen, honey, you must know someone is real mad at him. I want to be as far away as possible.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “What, do I look dumb? You think I’m telling anyone, even a cupcake like you?”

  “You changed the plates on your car.” It wasn’t a question

  She shrugged again. “Hang out with a cop for awhile, you pick up a few tricks. Now step out of my way, and go get your damn car out of my driveway. You could lend a hand with these bags, too, having held me up like you did.”

  She opened the door, and said, “Ah, shit.” No one was going anywhere. There was another car parked across the end of her driveway and two burly men were getting out. My quick glance took in one oldish, one youngish. Windbreakers, sneakers. They looked ordinary enough, except for the guns at their waists.

  Chapter Fourteen

  We ducked back inside but they were at her door before we had time to lock it, go out the back, call 911 or any of the other possibilities that occurred to me.

  Instead, Wanda abruptly screamed, “Peter! Down here right now!” Thundering footsteps sounded on the floor upstairs and then pounded down the stairs, followed by the appearance of a very young, tousled looking man in a sweat suit. A very large young man.

  He eyed the two men who had forced their way in past Wanda and they eyed him. Wanda and I, terrified, eyed each other, and backed a few steps into the hallway.

  “What the fuck are you doing in my house?” the young man said, ignoring the guns and moving right into the other men’s space, chest to chest.

  “We came to discuss something with her. None of your business.”

  “She’s my sister, and you’re in MY house with weapons and your car is in MY driveway and you think it’s not MY business?” He stepped in close.

  “My sister needs to leave for a trip.” He said it very slowly, as if talking to the mentally impaired. “You car happens to be in the way. You need to move it so she can leave as planned. She has no interest in talking to you. Understood?”

  “We’re cops, you idiot. Step back and I’ll get my shield.”

  “Wanda,” he said without moving. “Get over here and see if there’s a shield.”

  There was, and he let them go.

  “Uh, no hard feelings? You should have said.”

  “Yeah, yeah. We could have but Ms. Beauvoir here hasn’t been exactly making herself available to talk to us.”

  I was trying to disappear into the background as quickly and quietly as I could. I hoped they would forget I was there. I wanted to see and hear everything. This had to be about Rick.

  Wanda and Peter mirrored each other now, arms crossed, faces grim.

  “I got a plane to catch!”

  “You noticed our car is in your driveway. You’re not going anywhere right now.”

  “Sis,” Peter said, “want me to call a cab?”

  The detective shook his head. “Don’t bother. No driver is going to pick her up if we say no with a shield in hand. So come on, why don’t we talk?”

  “I don’t have to say one freakin’ word to you,” she said, belligerent words in a shaky voice.

  “Yes, she doesn’t,” Peter echoed.

  “Actually,” one of the detectives said politely, “she does. You know perfectly well we are investigating the murder of a cop. She talks here, or she can talk at the station.”

  The other added, “We could arrest her.”

  “Arrest me? You’re crazy. I had nothing to do with…you have absolutely no reason…”

  “Think we couldn’t find one? Don’t underestimate us.”

  The first cop added, “Wouldn’t you rather talk here, in the comfort of your own home, than in an interrogation room?”

  She turned pale.

  “But my plane…”

  “Well now, lady, if you hadn’t been giving us the runaround we could have been done with this days ago.” That was the second cop. I could see there was a tag team going on here. “We’ve been surveilling this house and your job, calling all your numbers. Where have you been?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “Seems to me you’d want to help us. Someone killed Rick Malone. Don’t you care?”

  Peter turned red and stepped forward as if he was ready to argue up close and personal, but Wanda just looked ten years older. “Yeah, I’ve been making myself scarce. Not just to you, to everyone. I had my reasons. Let’s get this over.” She dropped abruptly onto the bottom step of the hall stairway. “What do you want to know? And nothing about me—I know my rights.”

  One of them glanced around at Peter and me. “Would you prefer to have some privacy?”

  I tried to appear harmless and dumb, even as both cops and Peter looked me up and down.

  Wanda looked alarmed, “No way. I want Peter right here with me. Her, too. The more witnesses the better, just in case you try something.”

  The older cop sighed. “Lady, we just we want to talk. And shouldn’t we move someplace where we can be more comfortable?”

  “This isn’t a social visit. I’m fine here on the step. You can stand.”

  While they asked questions I listened hard, making mental notes and hoping to finally have some answers, but she hardly told them anything she had not told me. She acknowledged Rick liked to live on the wild side from time to time, that maybe he knew questionable persons. She parted, under pressure, with a couple of names that had the detectives raising their eyebrows and looking at each other.

  A voice said, “I don’t believe any of this.” It was my own voice. I could not play the silent, invisible mouse any more. “I’ve known him my whole life. He was a great cop all those years. I saw citations, for God’s sake! And he never really got hurt and then he got involved in whatever it is you think got him killed? Not Rick.” I glared at Wanda. “How come you don’t know better?”

  “Who the hell are you anyway?” Peter said.

  “Peter, she’s a friend of Rick’s. She came to talk to me, that’s all.”

  “Rick’s friend, huh? He was a good enough guy but seems like he got sis here involved in some trouble. I don’t want her involved, and that includes involved with you.”

  “But I don’t understand anything about this!”

  “Big deal. I don’t. Wanda doesn’t, either, but we don’t like it and no offense, but that means we don’t like you.”

  Wanda put a gentle hand on his arm, turned to me, her eyes full of tears and said, “Because I got a phone call. That’s why.”

  Three voices said “What?” Loudly. Peter silently moved in to hold her hand.

  “Someone called,” she whispered. “A few nights ago. They said Rick’s body would be found, soon, at the park near his house. And they suggested I get out of town, like yesterday, cause they didn’t want me to ask questions, or answer any, or whatever. Like, they said I shouldn’t be a loose end. I’m not stupid. Ya know? I drew my own conclusions and started packing.”

  The detectives were asking a torrent of questions. Did she know the voices? No. Had she used her phone to identify the caller? She said, “Do I look like an idiot? I know how to work a modern phone. Or you think the guy was stupid enough to make it that easy? It was an unknown cell number. You wanna bet he didn’t toss it right after?”

  They didn’t say anything, but their faces told me they agreed.

  A few more unanswerable questions and they stood up saying, “This is useful, Ms. Beauvoir. Thank you. Tell us how to reach you later, and you can go.”

  She jumped up. “If I wanted to be reachable, do you think I’d be leaving now? And don’t talk to me about confidential! There are people who love to run their mouths, including plenty in the high and mighty NYPD. Not to menti
on the ones who can be bought with this or that. Peter, get my bags, would you? While I hit the toilet?”

  “Have you forgotten our car is in the way?”

  Peter, trapped, said, “She’s going to Montréal. Outside, up in the country. We got family there.” He stood up. “That’s all you get. You’re getting the car out of the way right now, right?”

  They left to move their car while Wanda came out clutching a coat in one hand and purse in the other, and Peter picked up her bags. I was still numb.

  “You, whatever your name is,” Peter snapped. “You got to move your car too.”

  I obeyed, and watched them tear down the street. One of the cops stayed in the car, now at the curb, writing madly in a notebook, but the other got out and knocked on my window.

  “If you were such an old friend, we need to talk to you too. Who are you?”

  “Erica Donato. And I’ve been interviewed already. Detective, um, Simms, I think. I have her card somewhere.” I scrambled through my purse.

  “Wait right here.” He made a brief call. “Good. Simms is the boss. We don’t need to do it again. But be careful yourself,” he added. “Doesn’t look like this has anything to do with you, but call us if anything at all happens. Simms, me, my partner, whoever. Got it?”

  I got it.

  I drove home with my hands glued to the steering wheel, my eyes glued to my rearview mirror, my mind in a whirlwind of emotions mixed with a jumble of questions.

  My kitchen was reassuringly full of large men at work but I only waved and retreated upstairs to my room, so I could try think things through in private.

  I wanted to tell someone what I had learned, talk it over, try to get a handle on it all. I could call that detective, Simms, but she must know all about it if these men worked for her. And probably she would not be inclined to talk it over with me.

  I could call dad. Did he know Wanda? I bet he did. That didn’t mean I actually wanted to talk to him. And what if I did, and told him everything? Middle-aged and out of shape as he was, he still thought of himself as a tough product of Brooklyn’s tough streets. He might get on a plane, cast and all, and come home to protect me. I shuddered at the thought.

  And yet, at this point in my life, I could understand why he would. There is no such thing as being an overprotective parent. Well, of course there is. I stopped walking my daughter to school a long time ago, only about a year after she begged me to, but yes, my overriding thought right now was that I was glad she was away, distant and protected from all of this.

  I called Detective Simms, as I had known all along I would have to.

  I tried to convince her that I had a right to know more.

  “And why is that?” Her voice dripped icicles.

  “Because. Because he has no family to speak of, and I am the closest to that he had. He left me everything. I owe it to him to…”

  “To what? Supervise us? I’m sorry, but it does not work like that.” She didn’t sound at all sorry. “We are busy investigating a murder. That’s our job. We are good at it. Even if you were his daughter or his wife we would not discuss our progress with you.”

  “But I….”

  “See that you don’t get in the way.” She hung up.

  I had learned precisely nothing from her. I felt as if I were standing in front of a large wall, high and thick, with no gates. Whatever strange turns Rick’s life might have taken, I would not be able to untangle them on my own. They had become far too strange for my abilities. And far too scary.

  My reason for even trying—at least the one I could use as a reason—was that I needed to know who he really was to write that eulogy. The truth is that I needed to keep in my memory the Rick I knew. I could not lose him a second time.

  I might not have official answers for many months. Maybe I would never have the answers. That was a bleak prospect. Maybe the NYPD would never tell me everything. Maybe they would never know themselves. I had grown up around cops in my neighborhood, Rick, some of dad’s old friends. I knew that always solving cases was television, not real life.

  I knew what Darcy would say to me, if she were not off on vacation. Stick to the everyday. Go have a brownie. Take a bubble bath. Go for a run.

  Deep down, I knew I needed to let the pros look for the answers for now. Detective Simms was right, I admitted to myself with great resentment. It was their job, and they knew how to do it better than I did. The same voice said that forcing my attention back to everyday life for a while was not abandoning Rick. It was sanity. It did not mean I was done asking questions.

  I would anchor myself by diving into the everyday. Trying to focus on the most everyday thing I could think of, I went downstairs to look at the work in the kitchen. Today there were plumbers connecting my new appliances. They were two strapping young men who spoke pure Brooklyn, in contrast to the Mexican carpenters, the Polish electrician, and Joe’s secretary, whose English had a Dublin lilt. They told me I’d have an icemaker by evening and the stove could be used for dinner. My one good piece of news for the day. Of course I had no counter tops to use for workspace yet and no cabinets to store groceries.

  I reminded myself that I had things to do, productive things. I had a project to work on or risk losing course credit. I had a stack of files from Brendan Leary. He had surprised me by mailing a fat envelope of photocopies with no notes or explanation. And I had not done anything with the Pastores’ pictures, which might be useful and fun as part of my exhibit. I had not even put my notes from library research into anything like a plan. I wrote on my list: memo for my boss with progress by end of today.

  It would be a note, outlining what I was doing and what I had found. Oh, yes, and maybe some ideas about what we could do with it all, to let him know I was actually thinking about what I was discovering.

  When Leary’s package had come I had called him to ask about it. In fact I had called him twice, but he’d never returned the calls and I had barely noticed. I was too busy and distracted then. Now I began working my way through the files.

  He was a good writer and a good reporter too. He covered landlord/tenant issues, as I already knew, and here were his detailed notes, all the additional information that didn’t make it into a story. There was a whole folder on the Rogow scandal, with a take on it quite different from old Mrs. Rogow’s, of course. There were stories on the changing demographics of the neighborhood, the first conversion of a brownstone from a rooming house back to a private home, the hopeful energy of newcomers and the discomfort and fear of old-timers. He had an uncanny ability to tap into major shifts just as they were beginning. All this in a neighborhood weekly. No wonder he soon moved on to a major paper.

  I selected article after article that we could use to illustrate points we might want to make, tabbed them with bright Post-Its for later copying, and began a computer document outlining what I had and how we could use it. I was moving in the right direction.

  At last I had worked my way down to the bottom, a mystery folder with none of his usual careful labeling. On top there was a barely legible note saying, “Here’s one more file. Who knows why I kept this—I keep everything—but I think you’ll find it interesting.”

  It was filled with blurry, yellowing photocopies. There were dates stamped on top. When the copies were made? When they were added to Leary’s files? All of them were about thirty years ago, give or take.

  No notes. No explanations. That certainly seemed like Leary. He knew what it all meant and he didn’t feel obligated to tell me. I would have to figure out what they were and why they mattered, so I started reading.

  I stopped when I found myself completely confused. They were a jumble of dates and different handwritings. I tried to group the same handwritings together, and then sorted again by date wherever I could. I began again.

  Dear Mom and Dad

  I’m sorry b
ut I’ll die if I stay in this town one more minute. I know there’s real life somewhere else. I guess you’ll be upset but please don’t worry. This is so you know I left on my own and haven’t been kidnapped or anything. Please feed Fluffy for me and pet her sometimes. She will miss me.” Written in a round, careful teenager’s penmanship, with XXX’s for kisses and OOO’s for hugs.

  The next page, in a hasty-looking, pencil scrawl, said simply, “I’m outta this hick nowheresville forever. Don’t look for me.” One in purple ink, said, “Kids are mean here. I’m with Jason. They’re mean to him too. We’re looking for someplace nicer. We’ll watch out for each other.” The next, printed in block letters, said only. “Done with being smacked around. Go to hell.”

  How had Leary ever come to have these? And why were they in such a mess, unlike his usual meticulous filing?

  I worked my way through a few more. My eyes began to sting and my heartbeat seemed to speed up as I read the ones with headings that said, “mom and dad” or “mommy” or “Grandma” or “sis.” What if I came down one morning and found a note like this on my kitchen table?

  I took a deep, shaky breath and kept reading. Some seemed to be diary pages, all telling similar stories of hometown unhappiness and the compulsion to be anywhere but here. I had a pretty good idea of what they must have found elsewhere. I hoped some of them found their way home.

  This file was all about lost children. Who were they? Why did Leary have these notes? And what was he trying to tell me? He had a whole lot of explaining to do. It was time to try again, but I only got his grumpy message on his answering machine. This time I left a grumpy message back.

  After awhile I saw that there were a few with the same rounded handwriting and hearts dotting the i’s. Not runaway notes but a runaway’s correspondence? Blocky messages, photocopied from post cards?

  Dear mommy

  Please don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m not where I mailed this, you’d come looking I know it, but it’s a good place. People are really friendly.

  Love, me

  Dear mommy