Red Hook
Authors: Reggie Nadelson
Also available by Reggie Nadelson
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781409008811
Published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books, 2006
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Copyright © Reggie Nadelson 2005
Reggie Nadelson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
First published in the United Kingdom by William Heinemann, 2005
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To Richard David Story
RED HOOK
A journalist and documentary film maker, Reggie Nadelson is a New Yorker who also makes her home in London. She is the author of seven novels featuring the detective Artie Cohen (âthe detective every woman would like to find in her bed'
Guardian),
most recently
Red Hook.
Her non-fiction book
Comrade Rockstar,
the story of the American who became the biggest rock star in the history of the Soviet Union, is to be made into a film starring Tom Hanks.
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Also available by Reggie Nadelson
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FICTION
Bloody London
Skin Trade
Red Mercury Blues
Hot Poppies
Somebody Else
Disturbed Earth
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NON-FICTION
Comrade Rockstar
1
“Blue skies, smiling at me, nothing but blue skies do I see.”
I was still half asleep early Sunday morning when I heard someone down in the street whistling “Blue Skies” and it was the kind of tune that ran through your head all day. I had heard it on and off for months now, most of the summer, the guy whistling so clear and pure.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and got up and, still naked, picked up some cigarettes, went to the window and pushed it open wider, then leaned out.
The light was just coming up in the sky, smudgy, pink, metallic. Below me, on the sidewalk, I saw him. He had on a neon orange work vest, blue pants and shirt and a baseball cap. Head down, he was shoveling garbage, pushing it along the curb with a broom into a gray plastic garbage can on wheels. He went on whistling “Blue Skies” and I watched him and listened, lit a cigarette and sat on the window sill of my place on Walker Street. It was late summer and hot out. I was happy.
I was getting married and I was as content as I'd ever been since I got to New York more than twenty-five years ago. The music was a good omen, so piercing and sweet, especially coming from the garbage guy; he probably worked for one of the community groups that hired the homeless to clean up what the city didn't.
That was it: the sun coming up over the East River to my left; a hot bright day; the pavement swept clean, and the guy in the orange vest, whistling. I love the Stan Getz recording of “Blue Skies” but this sound, the whistling so pure it was more like singing, somewhere between Mel Tormé and a hymn.
My cellphone went off. I listened to the message. Sid McKay had called me again. He had called the night before, had asked me to come out to Red Hook, said he was worried about something. I didn't go, was caught up in my own plans, then felt bad. Now there was the urgent message. I looked at my watch. It was only seven. I could make it out to Brooklyn and back in plenty of time for the wedding. Sid had helped me out on a case that mattered to me a lot. He took a big risk to help me and he never asked for anything back. Sid was a friend, and I owed him.
I took a shower, put on some jeans and a T-shirt, went out to my car and headed for Brooklyn. The city was quiet so I took the Brooklyn Bridge instead of the Battery Tunnel, which was faster but cost eight bucks coming and going.
From the bridge, I cut across to the Expressway and down to Red Hook on the river. It took me fifteen minutes. Van Brunt, the main street, was deserted. Along
with the squat two-story houses were a bagel store, a few delis, a barbershop, a liquor store, a place that did metalwork, a church and not much else. I drove down to the water.
The old docklands were silent Sunday morning, ancient as the city, full of its romance with the water, beautiful, serene in the early light glinting off the river.
The dead man in the inlet a few feet away from me, what I could see of him, was trapped under the rotting dock. Spreadeagled, legs drifting in the water, I heard someone say he looked like a Christ figure.
The old receiving dock in Red Hook ran alongside an inlet that fed out into the river. On one side of the inlet was an abandoned plant where sugar had been stored. On the other side was a long brick warehouse.
People stood in a row at the edge of the water, muttering to each other, staring in the same direction like people on the street looking at fancy TV sets in a store window. A pair of detectives were there along with a guy in uniform, a diver, his wetsuit glistening and black, and a department photographer. A bearded man in overalls and work boots with a dog on a leash stood a little apart from the others, probably just a passerby out walking his mutt.
I looked at the corpse again. I had been on my way to the brick warehouse where Sid had an office when I saw the flashing lights on a car near the inlet.
“How long has he been in the water?” I said to one of the detectives, her hands jammed in the pockets of a red cotton jacket.
She wore jeans and sneakers and she was chewing gum. I let her know I was a detective in the city, but not much more. I didn't want to spell it out, or say where I worked. I'd been doing a lot of stuff on child crime, lousy stuff, people who abused kids and I didn't talk about it if I didn't have to.
“A while,” she said. “They're saying maybe since last night some time, maybe, hard to tell until they get him out of there.”
While I was out drinking, I thought, while Sid was calling me and leaving messages.
“Any idea who he is?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. They been down in the water for an hour, trying to get him loose without chopping anything off.” She took off the thin red jacket and tied the sleeves around her waist. “Jesus, sometimes I hate this fucking job, you know? I hope they're not going to cut him,” she added, gesturing to two men in yellow slickers who appeared from behind a truck holding bolt cutters and a saw, and a bag of other tools. They headed for the dock where they crouched down and examined the body, what they could see of it.
The detective removed the gum from her mouth. “Fucking nicotine gum, tastes like crap,” she added. “You don't happen to have any cigarettes, do you?”
I handed her my pack; she took one and gave it back.
“Thanks,” she said. “I don't know what the hell I quit for anyhow. Thanks a lot.” She smiled and she was a pretty woman, not more than thirty-five, great smile, good figure.
“Sure,” I said. “You'll be here for a while?”
“For you, anything.” She laughed, flirting, then walked towards the dock.
I didn't want to stick around much while they chopped the guy free. I started over to the warehouse on the other side of the inlet, a couple of hundred yards from the dead body.
The building was divided up into studios and workshops, and I went through the main entrance, up a couple of flights and found Sid's place. I banged on the door. There was no answer. I went back down.
A new cement pier, maybe half a mile long, ran along the front of the warehouse out into the basin. Phone in my hand I walked out on to the pier. I was uneasy now; I was edgy; where the hell was Sid at this hour? I looked at my watch. Eight a.m. Where did he go this early on Sunday morning? He had said he was here, at the office he kept in Red Hook.
I looked out at the water; the Statue of Liberty in front of me, lit up by the morning light, was a greenish color, maybe from the old copper facing.
