Dear Sister Dead, page 10
“Not far from where we found the car. Creeks run all around here, heading west. They run from the East River to The Bronx. Right now, we’re at West Farms Creek. This one and Westchester Creek? Lots of folks call them home, living in shacks and moored barges.”
Hidden New York. Hidden New Yorkers. “How in the world did you find out about this place?"
“Every now and then, a body gets washed ashore. Every now and then, a reporter will do a story. But I know about it from back when I was covering sports.”
“And the witness?”
“I suspect he’s one of these people.”
“So it’s knocking on doors, is it? Will they talk?”
“Maybe. Maybe, not. They don’t trust cops or reporters, but they distrust the cops more. That might just give us the edge we need.”
“Why didn’t we do this when we were up here before? Instead of driving all the way back to the city?”
He smiled. “Well, don’t you sound grumpy?!”
“I’ve got reason to be.” I did a little jig and stomped my feet, trying to keep the blood moving. My toes were already turning into ice cubes. “It’s colder than a mother-in-law’s kiss out here.”
Sam hugged me and rubbed my arms. “I just didn’t want Blackie’s men dogging our heels. Now, they’re gone and we can ask around in peace.”
I still wasn't happy but I couldn't argue. “All right,” I sighed. “Let's get going.”
The first few doors we knocked on, the folks shut the doors in our faces. There were others who at least spoke to us just long enough to say they didn’t know anything. Finally, though, there was one guy who listened with sympathy. He thought for a while, then said the fish and tackle equipment sounded like it belonged to a man named Jake Bromley and told us how to find Bromley’s shack.
We followed the directions and soon found ourselves in front of a rather whimsical but practical setup. The shack wasn’t so much a shack as the deckhouse of a boat that had been dragged ashore. A chimney jutted out of the roof like a jaunty hat. The owner had cleared out the rubbish, installed what was in the summer a small garden, and used salvaged wood to build a fence that enclosed the perimeter.
The owner of this creative little homestead turned out to be a slightly-built bow-legged man. He had a wrinkled and weatherbeaten face that was the color of a well-baked brown potato. Looked to be in his sixties. He wore a moth-eaten hat, turned down on the sides, a patched wool jacket, and torn coveralls over a yellowed white shirt underneath. He took off his hat with a small bow, very old-fashioned and gentlemanly, when he let us in.
And he had a little girl with him, a child of about six or seven with big liquid brown eyes and a button nose, her hair plaited into two thick stubby braids. She was thin but otherwise looked healthy. She was dressed like a farm girl in a pinafore apron dress. It was simple and clean, if patched and faded. She clutched a homemade cloth doll, holding it tightly under one arm.
“My grandbaby,” Bromley said, introducing her with pride, one protective arm thrown around her shoulders. “We named her after her mama, Ruth. Ruthie Anne. But I call her Buttercup. ‘Cause she my little buttercup.” He bent and told the child, “Show the lady and gentleman here your manners. Show 'em like I taught you.”
The little girl smiled shyly but curtsied. I smiled at her and, gentleman that he is, Sam gave her a courtly bow in return.
Grinning, Ruthie held her doll up for us to see. “This is Miss Dollie. My mama made her for me.”
“She’s very pretty,” I said.
“Beautiful,” Sam said.
The doll was a cute homemade concoction of scraps and leftovers: brown burlap for the skin, braided black yarn for the hair, and flowered cotton remnants for a dress. Yellow thread had been used to indicate long eyelashes, eyes and a button nose, and red thread used to outline a full mouth. Made with scraps and leftovers, yes. But also with a lot of love and care and attention.
“Miss Dollie goes everywhere with her,” Bromley said. “She don’t go nowhere without it.”
“Her mother. She lives here, too?” Sam asked.
The light in Bromley’s eyes dimmed. “No, she gone. The TB took her. Last year, it was. Round ‘bout this time last year.” He looked down at Ruthie and hugged her to him. “It’s just us, me and my grandbaby.”
“And her father?” Sam asked.
“Went over there to that white man’s war. Didn’t come back. I told him not to go. But he wouldn’t listen. Said that by helping the fight over there, he was helping the one over here. That the white folk would see us just as brave and willing to fight as anybody.” Bromley shook his head. “That was nonsense. I could’ve told him that. But he believed it. Wanted to believe it. Said he had to believe it. Had to have hope. He was a good man. But naive. My daughter sure missed him. And now, Ruthie Anne and me, we gets to miss 'em both. But we good. We all right, doing fine, ain’t we, Ruthie Anne? We doing fine.”
He smiled down at her and she beamed back up at him. For a split second, I suspect they forgot Sam and I were even there. The old man and his granddaughter were bound by a love and loss that could shut out the world, at least for a few precious moments, and let them briefly forget its ugliness.
Bromley bent and kissed the child on the top of her head. “Go on and play now. Let me talk to the gentleman and the lady. And when they gone, I’ll read you a good-night story from the Bible.”
“Or maybe I’ll read you one,” she said.
“Yup, that’d be even better.”
“OK, grandpa,” she said, waved to me and Sam, and then scampered off.
“She reads already?” I asked.
“She’s right smart,” Bromley said. “Her mama started teaching her. After my daughter died, Ruthie Anne just kept going, taught herself.”
“Amazing,” Sam said.
“Yes sir. That she is.”
Ruthie Anne had climbed up to the top of the bunk bed, where she sat, legs swinging and holding a silent conversation with Miss Dollie. My gaze moved from her to roam over the rest of his place.
It consisted of one room. It resembled a hunter’s cabin. He’d managed to make it airtight, so it was actually warm in there. He’d rigged a curtain to separate the space into sleeping and living room areas. Just then, the curtain was pushed back so the entire room was visible. It held the bare necessities: the narrow bunk bed where Ruthie Anne sat. The beds were fitted with gray sheets and thin blankets, precisely made, on even thinner mattresses on a sturdy wood frame. As for the rest, there was a side table bearing an oil lamp and a worn bible; a medium-sized wood table with two chairs; a pot-bellied cast-iron stove; two sturdy-looking wall shelves bearing tools, tin plates, and canned goods. The place was spartan but still somehow cozy. It felt like a home.
“You have a nice place,” I said.
Bromley smiled. “Yeah, we lucky we found it.”
Chalk and charcoal portraits, as well as drawings of wildlife and plants, dotted the walls. They were incredibly good. Startling even. The whimsy, the pain, the courage of his neighbors: it was all there, captured with vivid detail. Portrait after portrait of grizzled men and ravaged women, all of them with lined faces, faces worn by age and disappointment, all of them smiling, all of them with the light of life and wit in their eyes. All except one.
“You did these?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am.” He gave a little self-deprecating chuckle. “You know how it is. You come up here when you’re young and you got all kinds of dreams. Why, you just sure you gonna set the world on fire. Then life happens.”
You’re so right, I thought.
Sam said, “I want to thank you for agreeing to talk to us.”
“Well, I don’t like reporters or cops, but you two seem all right.”
Sam brought the conversation around to the reason we were there. Bromley was obviously scared by what he’d seen that day, but he was willing to talk.
“I’m down there fishing, when I hear a shot. I look up and hear this woman scream. Then there’s another shot. And then there’s this man—no, this woman. She come first. She come stumbling to the side of the bridge. I can see she’s bleeding. Blood coming down her front, her chest. And then this man, he come up behind her, and she just like, falls down, and he picks her up. He picks her up and throws her over. Picked her up like she ain’t weigh nothing. Just puts her over the side of that bridge and into the water.”
Bromley stopped, his face taut. He gazed down at his hat, fingering the worn brim, but I had a feeling he wasn’t seeing it. “I couldn’t save her,” he said after a while. “I looked to see if I could save her but she weren’t moving, just floating face down in the water. I must’ve made some kind of noise, 'cause then—then I looked up and I seen him looking down. He was looking down right at me.”
“You saw his face?” Sam asked.
“I saw his and he saw mine. He raised that gun and pointed it at me and started shooting. I skedaddled out of there. I heard him shooting behind me. Sounded like the shots hit the rocks and my pot.” His hands shook. “I been here ever since. Been here, laying low, scared to stay in and scared to go out, scared he’s gonna find me. Find us,” he added, with a glance at Ruthie.
I pulled out a newspaper photo and showed it to Bromley. “Is this the man?”
Bromley peered at it, then shook his head. “No, ma’am. I’m sorry but that’s not him.”
I knew it was a long shot, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed at Bromley’s response. “Are you sure?” I held the clipping up again for him to see.
This time he took it in hand and brought it close to his face. I had the impression that he was near-sighted.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Sam said, “but how are your eyes?”
I could’ve kicked him for being so direct but Bromley actually smiled.
“That’s a good question and I don’t mind you asking. There’s a lot wrong with me, but the one thing I got that’s right—better than all right—is my sight.” His gaze returned to the photo, but after several seconds of studying it, he shook his head again and returned the picture to me. “No, ma’am. I’m sorry but that definitely ain’t him. That ain’t the man that killed that lady and took to shooting at me. That just ain’t him.”
Sam said, “Look here, suppose we get the police over here with a sketch artist? They could—“
Bromley raised his hand. “No, sir. I don’t want nothin’ to do with no police.”
My face must’ve shown my disappointment because Bromley apologized.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I won’t talk to the police for you. But I can tell you what he looked like. Heck, I can even do you one better. I can show you.”
“Show us? How?”
He pointed to one of the drawings he had tacked on the walls. It was the only one without joy in its face, the only one with death in its eyes.
CHAPTER 15
The portrait was of a man in his mid-thirties. A thick keloid scar roped down his face from the outer corner of his left eye to his throat. It was a detailed drawing, right down to the depiction of the intricate web of crows’ feet around the man’s eyes and a hint that his left eye was slightly smaller than his right. It was certainly as good as anything a police sketch artist would’ve come up with.
Bromley insisted upon giving it to us. We insisted on paying for it. We also tried our best to convince him to come with us. He wouldn’t have to speak to the police unless he wanted to, we said. The newspaper would pay to put him up in a hotel where no one would find him. But his answer was always the same: a flat no.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said.
“Of course, I’m going to worry,” I said.
“We’re safe here.”
“No. You’re not.”
“Do you have food?” Sam said. “And a gun?”
“I got both.”
I didn’t like it.
“Go on, you two,” Bromley said. “I’ll be fine. Just as long you don’t tell nobody where you found me.”
Sam and I hesitated, then gave him our word. Sam handed Bromley one of his calling cards. I took out one of mine and did the same. Bromley accepted the cards with a grateful smile, fingering them.
“If you need anything, or change your mind, then call us—either one of us,” Sam said, then caught himself. Bromley obviously didn’t have a phone. “I mean—”
“It’s okay,” Bromley said. “I ain’t got no phone here, but I know where to find one, and I know how to use it.” He slid the cards into his left shirt pocket, gave the pocket a little pat, then reached past us and unlocked the door.
I went out, feeling we’d made a terrible mistake. At the last minute, I turned and waved at him. That last image of him standing in the doorway would stay with me for years to come.
Sam and I agreed that Bromley’s account rated a special edition and headed straight back to the newsroom that night. Sam went to this office to call the publisher to give him an update and then rang up the print room boys to tell them to come in.
Meanwhile, I hurried to my desk and started banging out a story. Typing rapidly, I described the stunning discovery of Slocum’s body and his ties to Sharkey. I didn’t mention any possibility of Vera having had an affair with Slocum. I didn’t mention the notes and the indications of blackmail. And I didn’t mention that a scarf thought to belong to her was found in Slocum’s car. But I did note that it was believed that her body had entered the water close to where Slocum’s car was found. The edition ran with the headline Portrait of a Killer! plastered across the top and the drawing prominently displayed beneath it. Next to it was a picture of Slocum. It hit the stands at midnight.
In the heat of the moment, putting out the special edition seemed like the wise thing to do. But within hours, I’d begun to wonder. If the gunman had had any doubts about Bromley’s ability to identify him, that drawing must’ve dispelled them. I tried to tell myself that the gunman didn’t know who Bromley was or where he lived, but then I’d think, If Sam and I found him, then the killer could, too.
When I returned to the newsroom the next day, my phone was ringing off the hook.
“You done dunnit again,” one of the operators said. Her name was Gladys and she was in love with a married man who lived in Park Slope.
“You know what they say,” I’d once told her, “that if he cheats on her, he’ll cheat on you.”
“Sure, he will,” she’d said. “But guess what? I’m already cheating, too!” And then she’d given a raucous laugh.
Now, she sighed into the line. “You want me to stop putting calls through?”
“Nope, I’ve got to take them all.”
“All right, fine. But next time, give a girl a bit of warning, won’t cha?”
“Will do.”
Most of the calls didn’t amount to much. Most were to ask about a possible reward. The minute I said there wasn’t one, at least not yet, the caller hung up. Others gave me their contact information and told me to call them back when there was a reward. After an hour and a half of taking calls and scribbling down notes, I was increasingly irritated. The calls so far had been useless.
My desk phone rang again and I simply stared at it. Should I answer? Or just give up?
I grabbed up the handset. “Lanie Price.”
“Lanie.”
That’s all it took, him saying my name, for me to know who was calling and what mood he was in.
“Hello, detective.”
“So you thought you’d pull a fast one over on me,” Blackie said.
“Not at all.”
“Get over here. Now. And bring it with you.”
“Bring what?”
“And make sure it’s the original,” he said and hung up.
I’d barely put the receiver down when the phone rang again. This time the caller didn’t even give me a chance to speak, not even to say my name.
“You say you were her friend. You sure don’t act like it. You’re supposed to protect her name, not smear it.”
“I—”
“You linked her name to that—that man. You—”
“I wrote the facts, Levy. I simply wrote the facts.”
“But why those facts? Why those?”
“Levy,” I took a deep breath. “What we’re trying to do is find the truth, and the only way—I repeat, the only way—to do that is to face facts, to not play fast and loose with them. Now, I don’t know what Vera was doing in that car, but I—”
“Let me stop you right there. That’s just it. You don’t know for a fact that she was even in the car. You’re making assumptions, and you’re spreading them like lies. People will think—”
“We both know that Vera wouldn’t have cared what people ‘think,’ not in a situation like this. She would’ve wanted us to find her killer. That’s what I’m helping the police to do.”
“Are you? Or are you just trying to sell papers?”
He hung up before I could respond. I replaced the receiver, then rubbed my eyebrows, and took a moment. His reaction, though unpleasant, had not been entirely unexpected.
Somewhat like the coming conversation with Blackie would be.
I got up with a sigh and shouldered into my coat, then grabbed my bag and Bromley’s drawing and headed out.
I was across the street, about to enter the police station, when I heard my name being called out.
“Miss Lanie!”
I turned to see Martin Del Ray hurrying toward me. He was gripping a copy of the special edition.
“This photo,” he began, pointing to Slocum's picture.
“You recognize it?”
“This was the man I saw her with. He's the one. And now he’s dead, too? Do you think she was killed because she was with him? That Levy found out and—”
“No,” I raised a hand to quiet him. “I mean, there are plenty of theories, but we don’t know anything yet. Nothing, for sure. But we will. And hopefully soon.”
