Red House

• Publisher: Pm Press E Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781604869088
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

First she was a beat cop, then she was unemployed. Now, Kenneth Wishnia's dynamic Filomena Buscarsela has apprenticed herself to a New York City P.I. firm. Trouble is, she often agrees to take on sticky neighbourhood cases pro bono rather than handle the big-bucks clients her bosses would prefer. When she witnesses a marijuana-possession arrest that nearly turns into a shoot-out with the police, Fil is roped into finding out what went wrong. Trying to balance charity cases like these with bread-and-butter cases, not to mention single motherhood, Fil is quickly in over her head.

CHAPTER ONE

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

—Anonymous Fortune Cookie

SOMETIMES I FEEL like my work is never done. Like the two weeks of madness that started when the elder Mrs. María Muñoz walked into the office one November morning, plunked herself in front of me and said,

“No sabemos de Pablito.”

“Excuse me, do you have an appointment?” asks Katwona.

“I’ll handle this,” I tell her, and switch into Spanish. “¿Qué estaba diciendo?”

The other trainees look up, because it’s always a sign of something. Trouble, usually, and no money. Somehow, none of the cases with Spanish-speaking clients ever lead to money.

Well, I’m here to change that.

Supposedly.

“Pablito is missing,” says Mrs. Muñoz, her earthy roundness supporting an old, gray cardigan.

“For how long?”

“Three days.”

I close the file I was reading and open a pale green steno pad to a clean sheet.

“Where’d you last see him?”

“He was working in West Cove, on Long Island? There’s a train station near there—”

“I know where it is.”

There’s a faint tremor below her blotchy skin as Mrs. Muñoz reacts to the slight harshness in my voice.

I don’t want to go out to LI. It costs too much, and it’s a pain in the ass. And I hate how working for money forces you to be ruthless.

“Sorry,” I say. Wednesday of a rough week. Dead-end cases dragging me down into the cold, black heart of next Monday’s performance review.

“But you know that I don’t have the time or the authority to do it for free, and I doubt that you have the money to pay us,” I explain in Spanish, as politely as possible. “Did you try calling the police?”

“No police,” she says. “He doesn’t have papers.”

Of course not. So she’s scared to call the police. Scared the Suffolk County cops will kick his ass instead of asking if he’s getting enough hot meals. Scared the money will dry up and there won’t be enough blankets to get through the long winter—gray, endless, and cruel to a family that once embraced the rich girdle of sunny, volcanic soil that carries the Savior’s name. Scared the unforgiving, icy Nordic sky will fall on her head. And that the West Cove cops don’t have the manpower to investigate a simple disappearance without evidence of a crime—like, say, a body.

“I’m not my own boss,” I say. “I can’t get to it for a couple of days, and I can’t do it for free.”

Eventually she accepts. “How much?”

Try seventy-five dollars an hour.

“A hundred dollars a day,” I say. “Two days for a hundred and fifty.”

“Oh. So much.”

“It’s the best I can do.”

And the boss’ll skin me for cutting his price by ninety percent.

I get the details, sign the contracts and lead Señora María Muñoz to the door. She grips my arms, confirming the bond between my flesh and hers, and thanks me for my offer of help, to which I am now committed. Now I’ve got to tell the man in the corner office.

“Davis and Brown, please hold,” says Katwona three times in rapid succession, patching each caller in with quick flicks of her two-inch, bright green nails dancing with abstract black squiggles that, when observed closely from the correct angle, represent ten different sexual positions.

“Ms. Brown is on another line, would you like to leave a message with her voicemail?”

Flick.

“Yes, sir. We are located at 147-02 Hillside Avenue and Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica. Our office hours are 8:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M., Mondays through Fridays, and 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. on Saturdays. No, you don’t need an appointment, but it would probably go quicker if you made one.” To me: “What precinct are we?”

“One-oh-seven,” I say.

Katwona relays the info.

Flick.

“This is Miss Williams. One moment, I’ll see if he’s available.” Flick. “Chip, Bobby Kane on line one.”

“Put him through,” says the boss.

Flick.

“We’re on the dividing line between the One-oh-three to the south and the One-oh-seven to the north,” I tell Katwona.

“‘Kay.” Flick. “Davis and Brown Investigations. One moment, please.” No intercom this time: “Karen, got a Mrs. DiNapoli asking for you.”

“Send it over,” says Karen.

“Please hold while I transfer you to Ms. Ricci.”

Len Hrabowski looks up from his screen. “What? No phone calls for me or Filomena?”

He says it with a long “e.” Fil-o-meen-a. Wrong.

“Hey, I get your name right, Mr. Hrabowski. It’s Fil-o-men-a. Men. Got it? Tell me what’s so hard about ‘men’?”

I regret that as soon as it’s out.

“Well, let me tell you—” He begins half-rising out of his seat like he’s about to strip down and strut around with the big hand on his Viagra-fueled clock pointing to 11:35. Possibly 11:40.

“It’s a short ‘e,’ like in demented,” I say directly into his leering eyes.

“Oh, I get it. Filomena. Short ‘e,’ like in semen.”

“Right, Len. Like in semen.”

“So what was all that Spanish about?”

I look over to see if Chip Davis is off the phone yet. Len gets the hint—another charity case—and sits back down, shaking his head, and continues cruising the infobanks.

“Don’t undersell, Filomena! It pisses off the competition,” Chip admonishes me, hanging up the phone.

“What competition? There’s only a dozen Spanish-speaking PIs in the whole borough.”

“That’s because the latino cases don’t make any money.”

“They will. Cases like this buy a lot of good will.”

“You ever try to put ‘good will’ between two slices of bread? It tastes like bread.”

“I’m building rapport with the community,” I say. “Give me the rest of today and tomorrow afternoon off. I’ll hit the biggest latino businesses in the area and give ’em my best pitch. If I don’t bring back a solid-gold case within two weeks you can go ahead and can me.”

That changes the energy. Chip leans back in his high-backed leather chair, glides his thumbs under his suspenders and stretches them into a nice pair of Vs away from his chest. I think this actually increases the blood flow to his brain.

“Look, Fil, you know I ain’t gonna can you. You were collaring mopes before Morgan Stanley had their own Web site.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“I mean you’ve got street smarts,” he says, pointing a finger at me while his thumbs stay hooked under the suspender straps. “You’ve hunted ’em down the old-fashioned way, plus you know your way around a database.”

He snaps the straps back and sits up facing me. “But we’re supposed to be charging six hundred dollars a day, not fifteen dollars an hour.”

“The last defense attorney you tossed at me only paid twenty an hour.”

“We’ll get more next time. Lawyers have money. And big mouths. That means repeat business, Fil, with clients who actually pay money.”

I glance past his shoulder out the window at the dirty, light-blue diesels and the gleaming metal elevated trains pulling into Jamaica station above the block-long piss-filled underpass. Two worlds of darkness and light, of crime and money, with a dreary stairway running between them. It’s my job to know the face of every janitor who sweeps those stairs.

“I need time away from this case, anyway,” I say.

“What case? It’s just a background check.”

“Yeah, but the guy’s coming up clean, and I’ve got a feeling he’s dirty.”

“A feeling? How the fuck do we bill the client for a feeling?”

I lean in closer. “You better learn to start trusting my instincts.”

Not the way a first-year trainee usually talks to the top half of Davis & Brown, Private Investigations, but I’ve got fifteen years of back street bloodhounding to his three under a civil investigator at a white shoe and powder-puff law firm.

“I’ve reread the reports several times, and I need to come at them from a fresh angle.”

“Okay,” he says, checking his watch. “Give me an hour of courthouse duty and I’ll think about it. Fair?”

“Fair enough.”

Ms. Abigail Brown calls to me as I walk past her door. “Filomena? Are you going to the courthouse?”

“Yes.”

I lean in. Abby’s a trained professional with two decades of experience as a black woman who has to dress sharply at all times or else she’ll be followed by store security on suspicion of shoplifting. Abby does forensic accounting and she’s good on the phone, and she doesn’t know the street stuff from a tub of Shinola.

“Could you take this over to Tim Gallagher for me?” she says, holding up a thick manila envelope.

“Sure. Tell him to meet me on the steps.”

She looks at me a moment, then acknowledges my request.

When going to the courthouse to troll for business, one tries to look professional. I pull one of the in-house trench coats off the hook, so I won’t get followed by security.

Karen stops me with her arm. “Fil, my client has some underwear that she wants tested for DNA and, uh, I guess you’d call it ‘substance ID.’”

Len makes a face and says, “Eeeww.”

“So send it to a freaking lab. How much does she want to spend?”

“Oh. I’ll check.”

“You do that.”

“I knew that dame was trouble the minute she walked in,” says Len, giving his tight-lipped imitation of a doomed B-movie detective.

Enough of this. I step out too soon into the cool, bright air of a brisk November day and cross the street while buttoning up the trench coat. Halloween came and went, but I really didn’t have much stomach...