Brooklyn Wars Read online

  Respond to Joe’s note, confirming we had all survived the trip. No mayhem, no bodies to bury. Yes, we could talk tonight. I smiled and then made a real effort to set Joe aside. I did not have time to think about him now. And did not know what I thought anyway.

  Laundry dried so I went to Chris’ room with a full basket.

  I was astonished. There were old photos taped all over her wall. They were mostly of Aunt Philomena. She had covered her bulletin board with Post-it notes and on an old whiteboard she had listed “Things to Find Out.”

  And there was Philomena’s little trunk, brought in from my office, now messily ransacked, with photo albums stacked on Chris’ bed. What had she done? All that was supposed to be for me to use for research. Not for Chris.

  Still, I was proud of her. Before I could take it all in, a random unrelated mom thought crossed my mind. How early did she get up this morning?

  This was a family history project in spades. Would she let me be involved? Because I wanted in on this. Something about Philomena in the photos—straight back, clear gaze, tool belt—spoke to me too. Chris seemed to be focusing on her days as a worker, a young woman. Of course. Hard as it was for me to believe, she was only a few years older than Chris was now. Did it seem glamorous to Chris, the bandanna wrapped around the hair, the tools, and the bright red lipstick? The can-do attitude?

  There was something else I wanted to know. Why did she look so sad in her later photos? What happened? I admitted to myself that Phyllis had hooked me after all.

  I had to dig into that enticing trunk.

  There was a stack of photos, large originals of photos from the Brooklyn Eagle. There was a time, and within my father’s memory, when Brooklyn had its very own newspaper, back when New York had eight dailies. That time lasted for a century and change. I found it hard to imagine.

  It would be a job, sorting all this, plus whatever Chris had taken. For now I was only orienting myself, but honestly, I could not resist the clippings. I soon saw I had a complete, if highly biased, history of the Navy Yard closing. Phyllis’ father was named under a few of the photos, and a couple of guys who might be cousins. One more with Philomena.

  They were meeting with the Brooklyn congressional delegation, discussing the Defense Department’s plans for the oldest Navy Yards. Nice and bland, that caption, but clipped to it was a scathing column, also from the Eagle, ripping into the possible closing and Defense Secretary McNamara’s approach. And well, well, well. It was signed by Michael Conti.

  I had no idea what his role was in these groups, or even what the groups were, but I knew I could find out. I wanted to find out. I wrote notes onto Post-its and affixed them to the pages, rearranging the pages of interest to be on top.

  I would also have to have a stern discussion with my daughter about taking that trunk from my room and messing with the papers.

  A buzz indicated an incoming text.

  List?

  I called her, and read off the basic groceries needed to sustain our lives.

  And now, exactly what had she used from this trunk? The big envelope with clippings about the closing of the Yard was intact. That did not interest her. She was looking for her real-life Rosie the Riveter.

  I could leave her with the material she had, but the trunk was going right back to my office. On the way downstairs I met my daughter coming up.

  “Mom? What are you doing?”

  “Taking back my property.” I stopped. “My loan from your grandmother. She gave it to me for a reason, you know. I didn’t say you could ransack it. You didn’t even ask!”

  I was genuinely annoyed and also did not like having to play mom, laying down the law.

  “But I thought…I mean…you want me to do good schoolwork, don’t you?” She began with a shocked stammer but her voice got louder with each word. “You always say that I owe it to you! And myself. So I thought…it would be good for my project. It’s half our grade for this semester, for crying out loud. You think that’s not a little pressure?” She stopped on a gasp. “Oh, just…just…never mind.” She stamped upstairs. From the top she threw back, “Be mad at me! But remember I was working while you were still asleep. Now who keeps vampire hours?”

  With that, she disappeared into her room. A door was slammed. I didn’t know if I should follow her and demand an apology, or cry, or laugh. The remark about hours was funny. None of those choices seemed to go anywhere helpful, so I decided it was time to get to work at the library. I would forget about this fight and leave Chris to calm her own self down.

  I met my elderly neighbor, Mrs. Pastore, as I walked up the block. She was dragging garbage cans to the curb for Sanitation Department pickup. I lent a hand.

  “Sal hurt his back, pulled a muscle trying to change light bulbs. Silly old man! So I have to do this. Thanks, honey.” She looked up into my face. “Everything okay with you? I saw you come home with cops last week.” Of course she did. She sees everything on the block. Her twice a day sweeping the sidewalk is merely an obvious excuse.

  So I told her.

  “Conti? No! That old SOB. You were there? I did hear it on the news.”

  “You knew him?”

  She shook her head vehemently. “I did not. Don’t think I ever met him. But I know his wife.” She stopped. “His first wife, that is. Before he married that hussy. Some Catholic family they are!”

  “You knew his wife? I can hardly believe it.”

  “Oh, hon, my kids went to Bishop Loughlin, where she worked. And such a nice woman, too. Helpful, kind as the day is long. Now, him. What I heard about the time he gave her? You don’t want to know.”

  That is just a Brooklyn expression. “Of course I want to know.”

  “Well. Wouldn’t you rather forget about him altogether? It’s not so good to dwell on bad things.”

  “True enough, but I am not dwelling on the murder. I am writing a chapter on the Navy Yard and so I got curious about him. It seems like he was a big deal there.”

  “Ha. Big deal in his own mind, anyway. But Annabelle and I became friendly over the years. Of course it helped that she lived so close.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Yeah. She lives a couple of blocks up the street.” She winked at me. “Right where the houses go from bricks to stone, and three stories to four.” She waved at our modest block. “One of these would not do for the great man. But, yeah, she’s still there.”

  Mrs. Pastore saw the excitement in my face and chuckled.

  “You want to meet her? We often meet for a cup of coffee in the morning. Eleven-ish.”

  “Are you kidding? I’d love to.”

  “Tomorrow, then, meet me here. Got to get in now. My hands are freezing and have to check up on that silly old fool of a man.”

  I thanked her again and she left. She adored her old husband and seemed worried.

  And I would have a lot of questions for the ex-Mrs. Conti. I wondered if she would be a bitter woman who didn’t want to talk about her ex-husband. The guy who went on to a more glamorous life, with a glamorous younger wife, and left her behind. Or she could be so angry that nothing she said would be usable for serious purposes. It would probably be entertaining as gossip, though, I admitted to myself.

  On the long walk to the central library, I made a work plan and also stopped for a few chores. I could not evade the homeless men who manned their regular busy corners of this gentrified neighborhood. The man in front of the supermarket who always reminded passing children to read a book. The man in front of a bank, with a paper cup, whose words were so slurred and eyes so glazed I wondered how he managed to get himself dressed and out. The elderly man in a knitted watch cap who occasionally stood near the coffee shop. His outstretched hand was cracked and scarred, and he would not look up to meet anyone’s eyes.

  I shared my loose change with each of them and gave a smile w
hen the strangely cheerful man near the supermarket said, “God bless.”

  The library had many files on the Navy Yard, as I knew it would. Newspaper clippings, a few official reports, and—OMG, as the kids would say—an entire dissertation on the topic, a case study in local politics. It was written a lifetime ago, literally. The date was before I was born. But still.

  I hit the files, page after page, set aside the items to copy, kept alert for familiar names. It was complex story and I would have to simplify it for my chapter. It was only one chapter, and it had to be less about the maneuvering, which I could already see was prolonged, than about how it affected the community.

  Then I got sidetracked by a clipping about a committee meeting because there were two Palma ancestors in the photo. One was Philomena’s father, Jeff’s grandfather, Chris’ great-grandfather, shaking hands with a Brooklyn congressman. They were at a meeting about the fate of the Yard.

  It was a connection to the past for Chris. And Phyllis too.

  I put my head down on the library table. I was well and truly distracted and I needed to get a grip. I imagined discussing all this with Dr. Adams, shuddered, and that was enough to scare me into focusing. One pile for personal interest. One pile for deep background. One pile for community impact. See, Dr. Adams? I thought. I do know what I am doing.

  I resolved to ignore the voice in my head that asked what my long game was. If I finish in time to graduate, a mighty big if, what then? The voice sounded a lot like Dr. Adams and I told it to shut up. First things first. I had a chore right in front of me.

  Community impact was the smallest pile of clippings, as most of the material focused on the big story, the process of the closing itself. It would be useful to understanding what happened, while it was actually happening. And then use my distance, now, to see the whole story with some perspective about how the Yard eventually came back to life.

  The Secretary of Defense at the time of the closing was a man named McNamara. He came from the corporate world, and—yes, here in the dissertation was a chapter about him and the Yard workers. McNamara thought in numbers. He put his faith in numbers. If the old yards were too expensive to run and not as productive as, say, a Ford assembly line, shut them down. Let private industry do it cheaper and better. I imagined him giving the order and decisively moving on to the next decision without a qualm about the impact on the community.

  There was a photo of him. Conservative suit, fussy glasses, perfectly knotted tie, precision part in his gleaming hair.

  The Brooklyn workers spoke a different language entirely, not about numbers, but about loyalty and influence and political pressure. They put their faith in politicians who had the president’s ear. Who would never let the bureaucrats do this to Brooklyn. Who would save their jobs. And they would never have to deal with the real productivity issues.

  I sat back and caught my breath. There it was, the whole story in a few sentences. A gigantic conflict of cultures. I typed furiously, getting this down. It was not exactly my topic but I knew in my bones it was an important point. Conflict of cultures is about the new wave of immigrants affecting the children of the previous wave and the fight for available jobs and paychecks—as I had written about in a few chapters—and about the never-ending conflict over whose neighborhood, city, country this was. Only the details changed from generation to generation.

  This clash belonged in there, too—the old Brooklyn ways of doing business being outmoded, outflanked, outdated by the MBAs. That change was still going on today as gentrification spread from old but quaint neighborhoods to former slums. Some people believed the old Brooklyn of the working man was already gone for good.

  I triple underlined the sentence that described the Navy workers group approaching the DC authorities—the men who held the fate of the Yard in their hands—with demands instead of requests.

  I could see it all, looking like a Frank Capra movie. The plain-speaking Brooklyn working men with big chips on their shoulders. William Bendix is in that scene. The suave, well-dressed Cabinet members with Harvard accents, probably played by Ralph Bellamy.

  Except that, unlike a Capra film, the big men won in this one.

  When I start dreaming movies in my own mind, it means I’ve had enough library time and I need to return to the world. I partly blamed Phyllis because while her stories might be helping Chris, they were a real distraction to me. She had made it personal, not actually such a good thing in this academic process—as proven by the movie I was running in my mind.

  It was time to meet my mystery caller. I found an empty bench on the edge of Grand Army Plaza and resigned myself to a chilly wait.

  A woman in a fur coat with a matching hat came across the plaza, walking slowly, using a gold-painted cane. The fur tipped me off immediately. In this neighborhood, mixed between families who couldn’t possibly afford fur coats and liberal activists who wouldn’t dream of wearing them, she had to be my mystery visitor.

  She stood in front of me, small and chunky, with bright red dyed hair and a face crisscrossed with wrinkles under her heavy makeup.

  “You are Erica?”

  I nodded and patted the bench next to me.

  “I was so nervous, I had the driver leave me over there so he would not see what I was doing.” She took a few deep breaths. “It’s true then, you saw Mike before…before…”

  “Yes, I did.” What did this woman want?

  “Mike.” She started to cry. “He’s gone. Seeing you, hearing that, it finally seems real.”

  She pulled herself up straight and patted her wet face with an embroidered handkerchief she pulled from her coat sleeve. “Tell me whatever you saw, please. If you would be so kind.”

  “First tell me…who the heck are you? How did you find me?”

  “Why would you need to know that?” Her gaze was level and hard. “It’s such a simple, such an easy request and it would mean so much to me.” When I didn’t immediately respond, she sighed. “Call me Mary. In those days I went by my middle name to tell me from all my Catholic friends who were Mary too. Mary Pat. Okay? Mary Pat O’Neill.” She saw my skeptical look. “All right. Here! Here.” It was her driver’s license waved under my eyes for just a minute. “Satisfied? So now we are introduced and you can tell me.” Her firm voice started to shake. “I need to know. I need that. I need it for my peace of mind.”

  I doubted it would bring her peace but I told her anyway. She smiled fondly when I described his behavior at the meeting. “That was Mike, all right. Big opinions and a short fuse.”

  She turned pale under the rouge when I described the shooting. She asked me if he said anything. She asked me if I did. She asked if I got a good look at the shooter.

  The answer to all her urgent questions was no. I finally said, “It was a scary experience, and honestly, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. And it’s a murder investigation. I’m telling you almost nothing, but probably I shouldn’t be telling you anything at all.”

  “I know about investigations.” Her face became much less friendly. “How do you suppose I found you? I have friends.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She shrugged. “I have friends who found you for me. I went to some trouble, but this is very disappointing. You really don’t know anything more, do you?”

  “Nope. Not a thing. And you still haven’t even told me why you want to know.”

  “Why, my dear, I am—I was—the other woman. The other, other woman, I guess you could say. He did have a few, the old rogue. Maybe even a new one now.” Her voice shook. “But I was the one who he always came back to somehow, again and again.”

  “You were…you were romantically involved?”

  She gave me a sharp look over the hankie. “We were lovers. Are you having trouble saying that? Or is it having trouble believing it? You do know we used to be young, right? And if I wasn’t ever the p
rettiest, still we connected like magnets.” She smacked her two fists together to illustrate her point.

  She scrabbled around in her purse, finally pulling out a wallet and then pulling out a cracked and faded photo. It was two teenagers at the beach. The girl was in a modest one-piece suit with a dainty skirt. Chunky body but plump in the right places. Lipstick and eyeliner, and hair rolled into complicated puffs. An impish face and small eyes. Cigarette in her hand. Not a pretty face but with an expression that hinted at something. It was probably sex appeal.

  And he was a handsome kid with muscles and Brylcreem-slicked hair. A Brooklyn Romeo.

  They stood with their arms around each other, big grins, his hand possessively on her hip. “Coney Island?” I could see the tower of the parachute ride in the background.

  “Our place. Quick hop on the subway.” She smiled at the photo, with tears sparkling in her eyes. “You’d be surprised what you can get up to under a couple of big beach towels. They used to call it Sodom by the Sea.” She surprised me with a wink. “Or maybe not surprised, if you are a Brooklyn girl who ever had a boyfriend.”

  I shook my head. “He had a car, an old one.”

  “A different world, then.”

  “So why didn’t you stick together?” I thought of myself and Jeff. “I don’t understand.”

  “He didn’t want to get married until we could live nice. No living with the parents for him! Besides, he wasn’t done chasing the beauty queens, either. I got tired of waiting, with all my friends walking down the aisle. So I showed him. I married someone else. As it turned out, a couple of someone elses over the years.”

  She stopped and looked away. “And Annabelle scooped him up. She always had eyes for him.” She saw my surprise. “Yes, I knew her back then, too. She was always a little goody-two-shoes.” She smiled sadly. “Mike and me, we ran into each other again one day. At the butcher, if you can believe that. Not too romantic, buying hot Italian sausages.”