Whiskey’s Gone (A Fina Fitzgibbons Brooklyn Mystery Book 3) (27 page)

I shivered and looked at Cookie.

Lorraine continued. “He must have earned respect, I shudder to think how. Twenty years ago Sharkey’s was in almost every Brooklyn neighborhood, run by him and his sons, but he kept away from the press, except for something innocent, like a banquet appearance. Two years ago Harold Berringer was found dead in his office, a bullet to the head—what was left of it—and shortly after that, Stuart’s body was found inside the one remaining car wash, one arm around his severed head. They never found the assassin.”

I felt a shot of fear travel to my forehead as I thought of the charred body found near Whiskey’s smartphone.

“Probably messed with the Gambino family,” Clancy said. “And the Gambino family has formed a recent alliance with the ’Ndrangheta.”

“The what?” Cookie asked.

“Calabrian-based mafia,” Denny and Clancy said in unison.

“Deadly,” Denny said.

“In Italy they feed their victims to swine. They say a pig can eat a man in two hours, bones and all,” Clancy said.

There was silence after that one, punctuated by Maddie’s triumphant shouts coming from somewhere inside.

“They’re the purse,” Lorraine said.

“They? The purse?” I asked.

“Berringer and his sons. They had respectability, logistics, and money.”

“Logistics?”

“Channels,” Lorraine said. “The Calabrian ’Ndrangheta has its fingers in most of the cocaine pies, and now they’re worming their way into heroin from their strongholds in South America. They brew a deadly version of the drug. Theirs is laced with other compounds, and they make alliances with anyone. We know they’re in with the Berringers, or were when the old man was alive.”

“They’re ingenious in getting the stuff here, smuggling it in the bellies of frozen fish,” Clancy said.

Frozen fish. Pigs. This was getting out of hand.

Lorraine nodded, fastening a gray lock behind one ear. “But they never could pin anything on the Berringers. Harold had a spotless record.”

“A slew of good lawyers, you mean,” Denny said.

“Mitch Liam?” I asked.

“Until he recused himself.”

“Getting back to the Berringers,” I said.

Lorraine shrugged. “A week after they found Stuart’s body, the last Sharkey’s car wash burned down. Rumor was he had it coming.”

“What about the other sons, Keegan and Hubert?” I asked.

Lorraine shook her head and excused herself. Robert must have needed something.

I phoned Tig and asked him if they’d identified the charred body found near Whiskey’s phone, and told him about my hunch that it could be Keegan Berringer. He told me I was whistling in the dark. I reminded him he owed me big time, and I talked about the slim connection between Whiskey and the Berringers through Arthur McGirdle. He’d heard about Arthur’s dead elbow. When he still demurred, I told him I’d send him a bill for my recent surveilling gigs. Begrudgingly he agreed to do more investigating of the Gravesend body, as they were calling it.

Poking at one of Whiskey’s black books, which she’d been glancing at from time to time, Cookie said, “We should be looking for Arthur’s warehouse.”

“I thought we said Arthur was a dead end,” Denny said.

“Not quite.” And she read from Whiskey’s journal:

By the third beer, the foam drooling down his chin, Arthur was talking in paragraphs. He told me about a deal he had for selling paint to the city, him and a guy he called Berringer. He wanted to show me the warehouse, someplace underneath the two bridges.

“‘Underneath the two bridges’—that’s got to be in Dumbo, not Brighton Beach. Couldn’t be any other place,” Denny said.

“Aren’t there bridges near Brighton Beach? It’s near the water.”

Denny shook his head.

Two minutes ago I thought Arthur was over and done with. Maybe and maybe not. Why would he have taken Whiskey? Or maybe he didn’t, but there was the evidence in the CCTV footage: someone who looked an awful lot like Whiskey had a gun aimed at her head, and there was a withdrawal of funds from her account in Sovereign Bank. I just couldn’t put it together, but I was beginning to get my mojo back. At least I had a hunch, something I could begin to act on.

There was electricity in the air, and Maddie must have picked up on it because she and Robert came into the room to announce she’d beaten him in chess. Why wasn’t I surprised. I looked up and caught Robert in the overhead, his hair slicked down, still black except for some graying around the temples. He wore it parted in the middle, the sides short and gently sloping toward the back. The haircut went with his sleeveless undershirt; he looked like a 1950s black-and-white movie. But in the lamplight, I could see the furrows made by his comb and the sad look in his eyes.

I watched Maddie as she passed around her little book with the scores. I remembered her notebook from the first time I’d met her. When it was my turn, I held it up to the light. Something, maybe the force I was born with, made me turn through the pages.

I stopped on a page near the beginning, staring at a pencil drawing of three stick figures, a man, a woman, and a child. Behind them was a door.

“Explain,” I said.

Maddie told me she drew it one day when Arthur took her to her favorite playground. “Mom came, too. He wanted to show her a secret place.” I asked her where it was. “Near the water and the bridge.”

As I punched in Jane’s number, I heard Lorraine telling Maddie the truth, that we hadn’t found her mother yet, but we had another lead and needed to brainstorm.

Maddie wrinkled her nose and crossed her arms. “That’s adult for ‘we don’t have a clue.’”

Jane picked up on the second ring. I listened while she told me what they’d found in Arthur’s apartment, not a lot, except for an old-fashioned key with a tag scrawled with the word Goods printed in block letters, the hand unschooled, squirrelly, really. My eyes flicked to Denny. I told her what I knew about Arthur’s scheme to sell paint to the city. I was convinced the key unlocked his warehouse. We needed to find it. She said she was going to have Brighton Beach look for the lock.

“It’s not in Brighton Beach or Coney Island. Scour the Dumbo area. Now.”

“You don’t give me orders.”

I paused. I had to convince Jane to look in Dumbo instead. I knew that’s where they’d find the lock. I’d search myself, but I didn’t have the key or the manpower.

I needed to pick out the right words. I couldn’t mention Whiskey’s journals and didn’t want to say anything about Maddie’s drawing, so I said the only words I could think of: I told her to trust me.

“All right, but you’ve been traipsing through the evidence again,” she said.

I pictured opening the door and finding Whiskey gasping for her last breath of air. “You’re right,” I said, “so shoot me now.” I ended the call.

“NYPD’s going to look for Arthur’s stash of paint.”

“Needle in a haystack,” Robert said.

“We’re all needles in a haystack,” Maddie said. “I know Mom’s alive. She’s got to be alive.” She ran a finger over her upper lip. “C’mon, Robert, let’s get out of here.”

Before they left the porch, Maddie pointed to me. “Put her in a dark closet and let her think.”

The Knowns

We looked at one another. My heart raced and my hands felt clammy. Whiskey had been gone almost forty-eight hours, and I had lost all hope, except for a small glimmer of something I couldn’t name. Denny, who sensed my mood, suggested we list all the suspects, all the knowns, all the unknowns.

“Too much information at once,” Lorraine said. “List the suspects.”

So I named them, “I still think Arthur started the whole thing. We’ve got a record of him and Whiskey together, the last known image of her.”

“Get off of Arthur for a minute, and start at the top,” Cookie said. “What about her brother?”

I looked at Cookie and Lorraine. “You both met him. What do you think?”

“You asked me about his law firm, Weinberg, Kalamazoo & Marsh,” Lorraine said. “So far the only thing I’ve come up with is what the website indicates—they specialize in defending clients against Medicare fraud.”

“How can you argue against the government?”

“Happens all the time. Medicare fraud is a complex area and law firms specialize in it. There are enough gray areas and enough subtleties in the law and enough creative lawyers with effective defense—”

“We get it, Mom.”

“In other words, Tommy Marsh isn’t a suspect,” Clancy said, “unless his firm is defending a doctor or clinic that has Mafia ties.”

“Is the Mafia involved in Medicare fraud?”

“Are you kidding? The Feds are always on their tail anyway; they wouldn’t touch Medicare fraud.”

“Not enough money for them,” Denny said, “not compared to their take from trafficking and drugs. But that’s not to say Tommy Marsh doesn’t have a remote connection to whoever took Whiskey.”

“My gut tells me he’s Whiskey’s brother and he loves her. He wouldn’t kidnap her. Besides, I sense he’s broken up.”

Lorraine agreed with the broken-up part. “I think it’s his dyed hair and his nervous demeanor that alarms me, but I agree, he’s in agony over his sister’s disappearance.”

“He covered his tracks about the phone call he got in the middle of the night,” Cookie said, “and he’ll live with the guilt of that for the rest of his life, especially if we don’t find Whiskey, but—”

“We’re going to find her,” I said. “Believe me, we’re going to find her. It might seem like we’re on a slippery rock with nothing to hang onto, but we’ll find her.”

There was silence for a while. In the far reaches of my vision I saw Clancy and Denny exchange glances, but no one said a word while I felt my cheeks burn and my blood clamor in my ears.

“We need a break,” Clancy said.

“I’m hungry,” Denny said.

Lorraine looked at her watch. “And Robbie will be screaming for food any minute.”

“No time to cook a big meal, Mom. “How about I help you make some sandwiches. You’ve got meatloaf in the fridge. I know because I took a slice when I came home.”

Home? I let that one slide without comment, but Lorraine’s eyes caught mine and her look was somewhere between apology and sadness and humor.

After she and Denny left for the kitchen, Cookie took out her mirror and lip gloss. As she applied a liberal dose, she said, “You were convinced at one point that Seymour Wolsey had something to do with Whiskey’s disappearance.”

I told her about the blankness of Seymour’s address book and named all my suspects in order of my interviewing them—Seymour Wolsey, Rhoda the receptionist, Finn Trueblood, Malcolm Giro, and Star Newcomb.

“All that rooting through his drawers for nothing,” Cookie said.

“This Seymour guy,” Clancy said. “Tell us about him and why he’s a suspect.”

“Give us means, motive, opportunity,” Cookie said, snapping the clasp on her purse. “My opinion, he’s a soggy sleaze but harmless. Has a thing for Whiskey, but he wouldn’t hurt her.”

“What made me suspect Seymour Wolsey at first was his obsession with Whiskey, and he lied about knowing her other than as an employee. But in retrospect, Seymour Wolsey is almost sad, really. In my mind, he’s not a suspect, not anymore, and I feel the same way about Malcolm Giro.”

“Opportunity?” Denny asked.

“I suppose they all had opportunity.” I began flipping through my notes. “I asked Seymour Wolsey where he was the night Whiskey disappeared. He said he was home alone most of the evening, not much of an alibi.”

“But where’s the motive, I mean if you’re gaga over a woman, you don’t kidnap her, do you?” Cookie asked.

“You might if you’re crazy enough,” Clancy said.

“What about the other people who worked with Whiskey?” Cookie asked.

I thought about Finn Trueblood and read over my notes. “He’s my least favorite. I asked him if he killed Whiskey, and he gave me a smart-alecky reply about stuffing her strangled body into his conference room. But my gut tells me whoever took Whiskey had a thing for her, and Finn Trueblood doesn’t have a thing for anybody but himself.”

“Wait for us,” Denny called as he and Lorraine came back carrying a platter of hard rolls sandwiching huge slabs of meatloaf and lettuce, mayo oozing out of them. In his other hand he held a bowl of homemade chips. He put it on the center of the table. Despite the fact that I hadn’t been interested in food a minute ago, my stomach started gurgling. I grabbed a roll and bit into it. Lorraine’s cooking was a surprise every time.

“This meatloaf is fabulous,” Cookie said. “How did you heat it without making it dry?”

“My secret, I’m afraid,” Lorraine said.

Cookie did a sharp intake.

“I’m only teasing. I don’t know, really.”

Clancy licked his fingers. “I’ll second that, great food, Mrs. McDuffy.” He gulped some beer and grabbed another sandwich.

“Anyone else a suspect?” Cookie asked.

I shrugged. “The only one who gave me bad vibes was Trisha Liam’s receptionist.”

“You mean Rhoda?” Lorraine asked, sitting down. “I remember her from the last case we worked on, and I don’t think she moves fast enough to kidnap anyone. What about her guy?”

“What guy?” Denny asked.

I dug deep in my pockets and found Huey’s card stuck in my notebook. I handed it to Denny, who read it and started laughing.

“What?” I asked.

“‘Huey’s Waste Management—We Specialize In Our Work’?”

“Waste management?” Clancy asked. “Let me see.”

Then my phone started vibrating. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was my lucky call.

It was Trisha Liam, telling us the CSU was back in the conference room where we’d found Whiskey’s purse.

“Do they know where she is? Does anyone? Does anyone know what they’re doing?”

I had to calm her down despite the rocks in my stomach making their way to the back of my throat. I learned in a previous case that the only way to handle her was to be honest, so I gave her an account of where we were, sifting through suspects, but that seemed to make her more nervous. I could feel her static electricity through the phone, so I remembered what Mom told me once about handling lawyers—answer their questions by asking them questions.

“What do you know about Rhoda’s boyfriend, anything?”