Hipster Death Rattle Page 14

  She had no friends with cars to borrow. Hell, she had no friends. The ones she had stopped calling, stopped texting, stopped inviting her to things on Facebook after she broke up with Patrick. So for the moment, she had to deal with the drunks and the losers.

  A fat dude kept cursing at the Space Invaders game. If he kept that up she’d have to talk to Gunnar to toss him out, so she let it go on more than she normally would. Some couple made out across a table, half-standing up and spilling their drinks without a care. Ah, to be young and stupid and in love. And around the pool table were a group of guys, and Kirsten played “Gay or European?” in her mind with them until Black Martin plopped back himself onto his stool and then slipped off to the floor. He crawled back up the sitting position.

  “You okay there?” she said.

  He was in the bar every night. Whatever he did for a living—he had told her once or twice but she had forgotten—the boy had a lot of money to throw at hooch.

  “I had this thing today,” he slurred, ignoring her question. “Somebody asked me where I live, and I lied and said Red Hook.”

  “Red Hook? That still seems out in the boonies to me,” Kirsten said.

  “It used to be cool to say you lived in Williamsburg. Now I find it embarrassing. You know what I mean?”

  He was on his fifth or sixth PBR and third or fourth call brand tequila back. He was drinking both like water. And now he was leaning almost across the bar as he was talking to her. She didn’t like that.

  “Now—now you see I tell people I live on the other side of Brooklyn just so I can dis…dissss…disassociate myself from hipsters and the douchebags.”

  Black Martin’s eyes were glassy under his thick black-framed glasses. Once again, he slid off the stool and went to the john.

  When he came back, his zipper wasn’t closed. He said, “LemmegetanotherPBR and a shot.”

  “I think you’re done, honey,” Kirsten said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You want some water? Let’s get you some water, okay?”

  “What? Fuck no. I want another PBR.”

  She looked up at the doorway and, like some psychic connection clicking, Gunnar was looking right back. She had to give it to him—he knew when she was in trouble. He always came to the rescue.

  All six feet five inches of Gunnar marched in and came up right behind Black Martin and gripped him by the shoulders. She knew that steel grip. No way out of it. Not even if you wanted out.

  “What the hell?”

  “Time to go home,” she said.

  “Awww.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “If you can’t handle your liquor, you don’t belong in a bar, know what I mean?”

  Black Martin raised his empty can and said, “Lemme finis’.”

  Gunnar began to lead the poor bastard out. One day all of this would be behind her. One day all of this would be a funny but sad story to tell.

  But then she suddenly remembered something very important about Black Martin.

  “Wait. Wait a second. Gunnar! Stop.”

  Gunnar looked at her. He raised a WTF eyebrow at her, like he was wondering if this was going to be another fight with her today.

  Black Martin stood between them in a haze.

  “Martin! Listen to me,” she said, waving him closer. She winked at Gunnar, who stood behind Black Martin.

  “Yyyeah?” Black Martin said.

  She cracked open a PBR and set up a tequila for him. “Martin, you have a car, don’t you?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Tomasello Real Estate and Management Corp. was located in Maspeth, Queens, just northeast of Williamsburg. No subways ran there, so Tony could either walk all the way, under a sulky, blackening sky that afternoon and through curtains of humidity.

  Or he could take a bus.

  And he hated buses.

  And he had forgotten to buy a new umbrella after losing his last one.

  He waited for the Q59. It was one of those eternal waits when it seems that mass transit had retired and moved to Florida and nothing was ever going to show up ever again.

  “Ridiculous,” said Tony out loud. He was ungently being steamed to death on that sidewalk. He was grateful at least that it was a lousy day to play pétanque.

  When the Q59 bus finally showed, there were two more right behind it. When it took off, it crawled.

  It seemed to take a thousand years to get to Maspeth. Five hundred years in, a steady rain began.

  In order to get the full story for whatever the hell he was going to write about Rosa Irizarry, he had to interview Frank Tomasello, head of Tomasello Real Estate and Management Corp. and co-owner of Rosa’s building. Tony tried calling and got nowhere. He didn’t know why he was bothering. He was moving on momentum now, but he had to admit the story had been nagging at him. Something to do with Patrick’s death—Tony hadn’t helped him that night, and, not that he thought Patrick’s death was his fault—hell, if he had gone with him, they might both be dead. But he hadn’t done anything to help Patrick or the police. But with Rosa, there was something he could do. It might not add up to anything. In fact, it wouldn’t be more than a round-up of facts, with some new quotes, but it would keep the case alive. Which was enough, wasn’t it? He was in motion now, and it felt better to be in motion than to be doing nothing.

  He got off the bus on Grand Avenue. Rain came down in steady, hot sheets. Without an umbrella, Tony was forced to run past the small businesses and staid brick and siding-covered homes that lined the street.

  The Tomasello office was a block down from the bus stop. The office was a storefront in a single-floor building, its display window covered in so many real estate placements that Tony could barely see inside.

  In front of the door was an awning, but it was narrow, and when Tony ducked under it, rain continued to fall down his back.

  As he went to turn the knob, the door opened. He was about to step in, but a living statue blocked the entrance.

  She stood over six feet tall, although some of that must have been heels. Her skin was tanned just shy of jerky and she wore enough makeup to embarrass a clown, so it was hard to figure her age. She could be anywhere from her thirties to her fifties. In any case, she kept in shape. The thin blouse she wore emphasized well-developed shoulders and arms, and around each wrist were bangles the size of basketball hoops. She smelled of thick layers of coconut lotion.

  “Can I help you?” she said.

  “My name is Tony Moran. I work for the Williamsburg Sentinel.”

  “Tony?” she said. She gave him that strange look he got just about every time he said his name.

  “Tony, yes.”

  “The reporter. You left a million messages. Jesus.”

  “Fourteen, actually. That’s me. I’m here to see Mr. Toma—”

  “You didn’t make an appointment,” she said.

  “Yeah. That was the whole point of the calling. But that didn’t seem to work, so I’m here.”

  “You didn’t make an appointment.”

  “Like I said, I did make the effort. Fourteen times. But no one got back to me, so…”

  “So, you don’t have an appointment.”

  “No, I do not have an appointment,” Tony said. “But if I could have five minutes with Mr. Tomasello, I’ll be out of here and back out in the rain forever. How does that sound?”

  She looked up at the sky as if there would be an answer there. Then she stood aside. It was like a vault door opening.

  Tony took off his glasses, which had fogged, and wiped them with his T-shirt. The office was one large room, lit by a few desk lamps. There were several small, empty desks and one large and old wooden desk in the back. Standing behind the desk was a short man with a high head of hair and an angry look on his face. Both seemed set in concrete. He had 360-degree muffin-top paunch emphasized by his pink polo shirt tucked into gray slacks. He wore a gold watch that could be seen from space.

  The big woman walked past him and took
the seat at the big desk. “Sit down already,” she said. She pulled a cigarette out of a vinyl-covered case and lit up.

  Tony sat on a metal chair in front of the desk. “Are you Mr. Tomasello, the owner?”

  The man in the pink shirt was about to speak, but the woman said, “This is Mr. Tomasello, but he’s Junior. He’s not the one you’re looking for. He’s my husband, Frankie. I’m Jackie Tomasello, Mr. Tomasello’s daughter-in-law. We represent Frank Senior in all business dealings.”

  “So, he’s not around?”

  On the wall behind her was a framed reproduction of a painting featuring barely recognizable likenesses of Frank Sinatra, Rocky Balboa, Dean Martin, Marlon Brando (from The Godfather), and Joe Dimaggio, all hanging together in front of a pizza shop.

  “If you must know, my father is ill and has been hospitalized since May first, hooked up to more tubes and wires than I can count,” she said. “But he’ll be fine. They don’t make them any tougher than my father.”

  “So, can I ask you two some questions then?”

  “That’s what you’re here to do, then do it.”

  Tony took out his recorder, shaking the rain off his hands, and put it on the desk in front of the woman with a splash. “You mind if I record you?”

  “No,” she said, using her claws to indicate the recorder with disgust. “That is not happening.”

  “This is for both of us, to make sure I quote you correctly.”

  “I’ll know what I said. Put that away.”

  Tony left the recorder on the desk and took out his notebook. “So, you recall Rosa Irizarry, the woman who went missing from one of the apartments you manage in a building you co-own with Elias Litvinchouk?”

  “Of course. It was very sad what happened.”

  “Sad,” her husband echoed.

  “There have been accusations that your father—that this management company—was harassing Rosa Irizarry to get her to leave her rent-controlled apartment?”

  “All lies and gossip,” she said. “People don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  “The accusation is basically that you wanted Rosa Irizarry out, so you could refurbish her apartment in the building that you co-own with Elias Litvinchouk and rent it for a market rate?”

  “You asked that already.”

  “Okay. So you’re saying your company did not go out of its way to make her leave?”

  “It’s the same thing with you, over and over. Okay, let me ask you: How do they say we did that?”

  “You—or you had someone—harass her, put bugs in her apartment, for example.”

  “You mean like the CIA?” she said, laughing. Her husband echoed the laughter.

  “Good, but no,” Tony said. “Bugs as in roaches. Plus, mice. How about the fire? Did you cause the fire that made her leave?”

  “That makes no sense. Why on god’s green fuck would we do that?”

  “As I said, to get her to move out, so you could raise the rent.”

  “That’s retarded. Why would we want to destroy our property?”

  “So you’re saying you didn’t harass her or get someone to harass her?”

  “I think I’m going to sue you and your rinky-dink paper for libel. Or slander, whatever the fuck it is.”

  “You’re talking defamation of character, something I’d have to convey to someone besides you and your husband. Which will happen when this gets printed, but at the moment—”

  “Screw this.” The living statue rose from the desk.

  “Take it easy, sweetheart,” the husband said.

  “Take it easy? Fuck,” she said. “This guy’s got nothing, and he works for a nothing.”

  Tony sat back and sighed. “Talk about me all you want, but be kind to the poor defenseless newspaper.”

  “Get out,” Jackie said.

  “Before I go: Do you know if Rosa Irizarry is dead or alive?”

  Jackie looked again to the heavens for support. “The nerve. Have a nice fucking day.”

  “Time to go, chief.” The old man’s son was behind him now. He put a meaty hand on Tony’s shoulder.

  Tony stood, shrugging off the hand, and walked to where Jackie held the door open. The rain had gotten worse.

  She gave him a sour smirk. “Be careful out there. You never know what will happen,” she said.

  “That sounds like a threat,” Tony said.

  “I was talking about the rain. But you take it any way you want.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “Room 3, Petro,” Hadid said. He had to pick up his pace to keep behind Petrosino in the station. The guy liked to take big steps. “I mean, Room 3.”

  “If this is another friggin’ nutcase, I’m stuffing him up your ass.”

  “That’s harsh,” Hadid said. “Hey, I wouldn’t hire this guy to be my lawyer, but he seems on the ball. Kinda.”

  “‘Kinda,’” Petrosino said, stopping in place. Hadid thought maybe Petrosino was doing a ten-count.

  “Patrol officer says this guy is a ‘crusty.’ I don’t know what that is. He looks like a hipster, but he smells like a vagrant.”

  “A crusty? Oh crap.” Petrosino turned. “Just for your information, crusties are what they call ‘voluntary homeless,’ young idiots who travel in packs from all over the states, even Europe. They freeload off the city during the good weather months. And they’re usually heroin addicts, so not the most reliable witnesses.”

  “There are whole groups of these guys?” Hadid said. “Anyway, just wait till you hear what he has to say.”

  As they got to the interrogation room, Hadid said, “Hey, need a toothpick before we go in? I got gum.”

  Petrosino gave him the granite face he had become very familiar with. “I’ll live.”

  James Marton Cook was in his late twenties, nose ring, checkered shirt, baseball cap. He had matted hair, a matted beard, and scratch marks on his face, arms, and legs. The skin of his face appeared tight, and his eyes were glassy and unfocused. On the floor next to him was a pit bull wearing a scarf and panting loudly.

  Cook said, “Like I told your beefy little buddy—”

  “Beefy?” Hadid said.

  “—I saw this young guy—I’d say 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, something like that, with red, curly hair—and he had a skateboard, and he was all by his lonesome waiting at that corner.”

  Hadid said, “Kent and South 3rd, you said.”

  “That’s the spot. And he was just waiting there, checking his phone and all.”

  “Right-o,” Petrosino said. “What were you doing there?”

  “Doing my thing. Camping out. It was hella hot that night. And I was hella high.” Cook smiled shyly, showing green teeth. “So I just decided to lay down right where I was. It wasn’t my usual spot, but it was just as good as any.”

  “Which was where, specifically?”

  “Up against a wall, tucked right into the corner between the wall and the concrete pavement.”

  “On South 3rd?”

  “No, on Kent. By that old factory. I’ve been staying there since I kind of broke up with the group I usually hang with. We had a falling out and—”

  “Okay, okay, so tell me all about what happened next,” Petrosino said, leaning forward.

  “Well, a truly horrible thing. A man comes along on a bike, and snick, snick, snick, cuts that poor young guy all over. There was blood everywhere. It was awful.”

  “Mr. Cook, can you repeat what you told me about what the man on the bike looked like.”

  “Well, that’s just it. The guy wore a hoodie, but tied up. He must have been hella hot in that thing. I guess that’s why he took it off at the end.”

  “He took it off!” Petrosino said. “Did you see what he looked like?”

  “Nope. He was in the shadows too. But those other people must have, that couple.”

  “Other people?” Petrosino said.

  “Wait’ll you hear this,” Hadid said.

  “Yeah, they passed right by me, you
know, didn’t even see me. So they got closer, you know, to the man with the machete.”

  “So the killer must have seen them, too,” Petrosino said.

  Hadid couldn’t help himself. “Exactly!”

  “I’m sure he did. He did like this.” Cook did a dramatic double-take in his chair. “He did like that when he saw them.”

  “Can you describe them?” Petrosino snapped at Hadid and made a motion for him to write it down.

  “Yes, yes, I can. The man was Chinese, well, Asian, not sure what kind, you know, don’t want to offend anybody.”

  “That’s pretty good for…what were you, a block away?”

  “I was high but I wasn’t blind,” said Cook, then he laughed at his own joke for a full thirty seconds. During this time, Hadid smiled at Petrosino, and Petrosino gave him a reluctant nod.

  When Cook finished laughing to himself, he said, “And they were in the streetlamp light. Plus, I’ve got great vision. My doctor told me I had 10-10 vision when I was in college. I didn’t finish though.”

  “And this person with the Asian guy?” Petrosino said. “What did they look like?”

  “Oh, the woman was white, pretty, blonde. Oh, and I can tell you this: She was totally pregnant. Very pregnant.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Detective Petrosino was flabbergasted at the amount of pregnant women living in Williamsburg, particularly along the waterfront, where he and his partner had spent the last two days ringing bells and knocking on doors.

  “Maybe there’s something in the water,” Hadid said.

  “Nothing good ever came from the East River.”

  “Then it must be all those lattes.”

  The heat wave had returned with a vengeance, and so they happily entered the frigidly air-conditioned lobby of the Verge, the tower condominium complex on Kent Avenue. Parking available, rivers views, closet space.

  “Sure, sure,” Angel Flores, the doorman told them. “I know that couple. The Chinese guy and the pregnant lady. They live upstairs. Apartment 607.”