“Just fucking cut it out,” a crew member yelled. “Everybody, just back off,” he said, and then it stopped. On our side it was only make-believe, and there was the chain-link fence.
“Can we talk, please?” I said to Sonny again. “And not about make-believe, okay? Now?”
“Don’t get your hair in a braid, man,” he said and walked me across the cement courtyard, away from the crowd.
We sat on a cement block and he asked what was eating me, what I’d been up to.
I told him what I knew about the dead woman – or maybe she was a girl – on the swing, and about Dina, the kid who found her.
“You went there how? How come?”
“I was taking some books to an old lady in Brooklyn, that part doesn’t fucking matter, and I saw Dina running around in the street. I want you to tell me about duct tape, and about who does this kind of murder, does it ring any bells with you, anything you ever heard of? Sonny?”
“I heard about some, Albanian, maybe even Russkis, they get these girls, they prostitute them, the girls refuse, they try to run away, the creeps who own them do this kind of stuff. The duct tape, killing them this way, it’s a warning, keep still, don’t do anything, keep your mouth shut. It could be Mexicans, but I don’t think so, not around here.” He looked at his watch. “I can get out of here for an hour, if you want, I can take a look at the scene,” he said. “You have your car? I’ll follow you.”
I didn’t want Sonny at the scene, it wasn’t my case, it would complicate things, but he was already on his way to the parking lot. I saw he was eager, glad somebody had asked him about the real world.
“Murder Inc.,” were the first words out of Sonny Lippert’s mouth when he climbed out of his dark green Jag near Fountain Avenue.
I walked him over to the playground where I’d seen the body. It had been taken away, but forensic crews were still picking over the site. Lippert followed my gaze.
“She was there,” I said. “On the swing. Tied to it. Posed.”
“Go on.”
“Somebody was making a point,” I said. “Right?”
“Anybody look good for it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Weird, man, this is exactly where the mob used to dump the bodies times I was a kid,” said Sonny. “Murder Inc., Jesus Christ, it was famous, man, I mean we used to come over here and look for them. The bodies. You remember a song called ‘When My Bobby Gets Home’? We kids used to sing ‘When the Body Gets Cold’. All of us kids, all we wanted was to play ball for the Dodgers or join up with Murder Inc., maybe get to kill someone. Sometimes we did a cat, you know, strung it up from a light bulb, dumped the body out here. You don’t think it’s funny? Come on, Artie, man.”
“Listen to me, Sonny, try to think.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay, there were real Jewish gangsters then, big time. Jews and Italians got along, man, you know why?”
“Yeah, what’s that, Sonny?” I said.
“We were all short,” he laughed. “You know, we called this part of Brooklyn the Land of the Lost,” he added.
When Sonny Lippert set out on one of his riffs, when he rambled, you had to wait. Tangled in his past, he had to climb out of the web. It took him longer and longer these days. I sometimes felt he’d just disappear into his own past and never return.
“The Land of the Lost, used to be wild dogs, packs of them, around here because of the garbage dump close by.”
“Right.”
“I’ll make some calls, if you want,” Sonny said.
“Sure, Sonny, thank you. I should probably get going.” I knew there was no point keeping him here.
“You know you can call on me anytime, man, you know that.”
“Thanks.” I put my hand on his shoulder and he smiled slightly. “Thank you.”
“She was naked?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look for her clothes, man. I’m telling you, look for the clothes. You always find it in the clothes. They looked? Your girl on the swing, girl on a red velvet swing.”
“What?”
“Nothing, man. Just something out of a story,” said Sonny, then looked up as Bobo Leven appeared at the edge of the playground.
He greeted Sonny formally. He was polite, he showed deference. He asked him some questions about the case, what did Sonny think, did he have any insights? He was attentive.
“I have to go,” Sonny said.
“I’ll walk you,” I said, and went with Sonny back to his car.
“What is he?” said Lippert glancing towards the playground and Bobo Leven. “What is he, Artie, your Sundance?”
“He have anything interesting to say, Mr Lippert, I mean?” said Bobo when I got back to the playground.
“Anybody find the girl’s clothes?” I said.
“We didn’t find anything, not yet,” Bobo said.
“Put a few uniforms to work on it, Bobo, get some of the beat cops to look everywhere for the clothes,” I said and shoved the necklace with the blue charm on it in my pocket, and didn’t know why.
All the way to Brighton Beach the presence of the charm in my pocket, reminded me of the dead girl. I was going to meet Valentina Sverdloff. By the time I got there, I wished I’d unloaded the charm on Bobo Leven.
CHAPTER SIX
“Hello, darling Artie,” said Val as soon as I saw her at Dubi Petrovsky’s bookshop. She kissed me like a big sloppy puppy on the cheek, not having to reach up because she was as tall as me, just met me head on and kissed me. “Did you get my message?”
I’d come from the playground. By the time I got to Dubi’s, on Brighton Beach Avenue, people were out strolling in the late afternoon, a holiday afternoon, buying fruit, eating hot dogs, heading for the beach.
The bookshop was next to a juice bar. Dubi sold books in Russian, other Sov languages, English books on Russia, his own books on the Beatles in the former Soviet Union, other stuff too, CDs, DVDs, said you had to do it to stay afloat. He had added photographic equipment, old-style cameras, antique lenses, dusty packages of printing paper. From someplace in back “Penny Lane” was playing. I didn’t mention the girl in the playground to Dubi, or to Val; I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want it in my life.
“I got your message,” I said to Val. “Do you want to go swimming?”
“I need a favor,” she said.
“Anything.”
“Thank you.”
For a while Val had worn her hair chopped into a platinum crew cut, but she had started growing it and letting it go back to her natural red color. I liked it better. She wore a little white t-shirt and cut-off jeans.
“I was going to call you,” said Petrovsky, emerging from the back of the shop. “You thirsty?” he asked, then, without waiting, disappeared and returned, carrying a trio of cold Baltikas for us. “Good to see you, Artyom. You
