Hot-Wired in Brooklyn

by Douglas Dinunzio

  Copyright

  HOT-WIRED IN BROOKLYN. Copyright © 2001 by Douglas DiNunzio. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  iPublish.com

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: October 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-2471-2

  for Jean,

  and for my Uncle Ed

  ...

  Dreams are true while they last,

  and do we not live in dreams?

  —Tennyson.

  In Memorian

  Contents

  Copyright

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER

  1

  Great view from the bridge, eh, Lombardi?”

  Not from where I was dangling.

  The goon who was standing on my fingers grinned, feral eyes gleaming through the early morning dark, phantom lips glowing like purple neon. The sky waxed a deeper black, space constricted, time stretched out as thin and taut as piano wire.

  He ground my fingers harder under his weight, turned to the goon next to him and laughed. The sound echoed off steel.

  “It’s freezin’ out here,” said the other goon, pulling his overcoat tighter around his bovine neck. He was in silhouette. Snowflakes fell behind him, just beyond the superstructure of what they used to call the Great East River Suspension Bridge.

  Brooklyn Bridge.

  “C’mon, the fun’s just startin’,” said the one on my fingers.

  “Yeah, well, my ass is freezin’.”

  Nobody was asking how I felt. As for the view, I could see only the underside of the roadbed that carried traffic to and from Manhattan. We were on a catwalk that ran beneath the bridge, protected from the snow and away from prying eyes. Not that there were any. There wasn’t a car on the road or a pedestrian on the promenade.

  About an hour had passed since they’d jammed a .45 against my kidney, muscled me into a black sedan outside my two-family house on 16th Avenue in Bensonhurst, and taken me for a little early morning interrogation. No faces, only disembodied features floating incongruously in pitch black. Voices harsh and loud, but remote, like they were on the radio. They’d been hounding me for what seemed a lot longer than an hour, and I’d been giving them the same reply.

  “Tell us,” they’d say.

  “Tell you what?”

  “You know.”

  Finally, the goon who was standing on my fingers bent over and grabbed my coat collar behind the neck. He slid his foot away and lifted me effortlessly. He said nothing. The snowflakes fell. The East River flowed dark and cold and unconcerned beneath us.

  I tried to read his intentions in the utter blankness of his face. When that failed, I went with my natural instinct and cracked wise. “Givin’ up already? But you were doin’ so swell. You got a real future, paisano, as a door stop.”

  I waited for a reaction. Most goons don’t like to be kidded when they’re working, but this one didn’t seem to care. He just lifted me higher. I had a kink in my neck now from looking up at him, but there was still nothing much to see. Like the other goon, he was there, but he wasn’t.

  “We don’t like wiseasses, shamus,” snarled the other as he moved closer. He was working a toothpick inside his cavernous mouth, as if to prove he could do it and still say medium-sized words at the same time. “Understand?” he added when I didn’t answer.

  I understood. Wiseass I am. Even my goombahs, my best pals, will tell you. Eddie Lombardi’s the name, Fast Eddie if you’re from the neighborhood. I find my share of trouble, but usually I know where it’s coming from and why.

  Not this time.

  As the big goon took me to eye level, his partner cuddled up. I could smell his breath, although I couldn’t see it in the frosty air.

  “You gonna tell us now?” he grumbled.

  “You oughta cut down on the calamari with garlic,” I answered, making a sour face. A big fist hit me in the stomach; the smiler kept his grip and my body swung out over the river. He lifted me even higher and extended his arm fully. Steel grip. Impossibly strong arms.

  Superman, I thought as my burning lungs sucked in cold air.

  “Let’s try again, shamus,” said Superman.

  “Sure,” I croaked. “I really wanna cooperate with you guys. I mean it. Just gimme a clue, okay?”

  “About what?”

  “About what I’m supposed to know so maybe I can tell you, so maybe you won’t drop me in the goddamn river”

  Superman turned to Calamari Breath. “He knows, don’t he?”

  “Sure he does. He’s just pullin’ our chain. He keeps pullin’ it, he’s gonna get flushed.”

  They cackled the way hoods always cackle at their own jokes, rudely, tediously. When they stopped, I tried a little bravado. “Look,” I said, “I’m gettin’ tired of this. I don’t know who or what you want. So, get specific or get lost.”

  That peeved Calamari Breath. He pulled a switchblade from his overcoat pocket, flicked it open, and Superman dangled me from the bridge again.

  “This how you want it?” asked Calamari Breath. Without waiting for an answer, he stuck the blade through the back of my left hand, deep enough to make me cry out, but not enough to dull the tip on the steel surface under it.

  “Just tell us,” said Superman.

  “Tell you what?”

  “You know.”

  “Yeah. You know.”

  Calamari Breath stuck the knife in again. Right hand this time. With the paralyzing pain came the sudden, welcome rush of an epiphany.

  “Okay! Okay! I think I know what you want.”

  “So, tell.”

  “Yeah, tell.”

  “This is about the kid, isn’t it? Arnold Pulaski!”

  Superman turned to Calamari Breath. “I told you he knew.”

  “I don’t know where the chicken-thievin’ little prick is,” I protested. “But if you want to get him, I’ll help you for Chrissake!”

  I told them everything. His address, who his parents were, and what he looked like: a skinny, pimply, teenaged jerk with greasy hair slicked back into a duck’s ass. Arnold Pulaski. My nemesis, my open wound, still making my life a purgatory.

  Superman
’s eyes glowed like a hobgoblin’s, and Calamari Breath grinned as if it were time to do some dirty business. So this was no joke. They were going to cash my ticket here and now under the Brooklyn Bridge. They’d slip the knife in deep and watch my corpse drop into the freezing water a hundred and thirty-five feet below. If it didn’t get snagged on a piling or a pier at Red Hook, the current would take it right into Upper New York Bay. Some tug pilot or barge captain would find it in the morning, after the fish had nibbled on it for breakfast.

  Calamari Breath attempted another wisecrack. “Too bad this didn’t happen last week,” he needled. “We had a special: ‘You Talk, You Walk.’ But this here is ‘No Witnesses Week.’”

  I was about to argue with that when I felt a sudden, searing pain that told me he’d pushed the knife in. Warm blood gushed out, soaked into my shirt, and ran down my side.

  “Oh, Jesus,” I said, half prayer, half astonishment.

  He pulled the knife out slowly, gave it a twist, then shoved it in again, his grin expanding as he heard me whimper. He wiped the blade on my shirt, and he and Superman stepped back. Fine points of white light danced in my dying vision like fireflies, then dimmed. My two tormentors faded into the snowy background, looking like they’d been wrapped in cellophane. Their laughter warped into white noise, then merciful silence.

  But I could still hear. Somebody was trying to say his Hail Marys. Me. The words came out clearly, but skipped like a cracked 78.

  “Hail Mary, full of…”

  “Hail Mary, full of…”

  “… Shit,” said a harsh, reedy voice, and the goons cackled again.

  The bridge beam in my grasp felt slicker, colder, the night air heavier. The East River seemed closer now, as if it were rising to meet me.

  Superman and Calamari Breath faded further into the dark and the reedy-voiced phantom took their place. I squinted hard.

  “Stupid fuckin’ dago,” he said with a wide grin. Arnold, my Polack chicken thief. My affliction. My murderer. I tried spitting at him, which was one of his tricks, but my mouth had gone dry.

  “Why, Arnold?”

  He cackled.

  “Why, you pimply-faced son of a bitch?!”

  “Why the hell not?” said Arnold.

  He took up gleefully where Superman had left off, crushing my bleeding hands under a pair of heavy work boots. When at last he got bored with me and eased off, I let go of the Brooklyn Bridge. And my life.

  I didn’t do any praying in my plunge through the frigid air with the gentle snowflakes falling all around me. I knew I was going straight to Hell, just like Father Luigi, the parish priest, had warned me when I was ten. No reprieve for an unrepentant wiseass. No mercy expected or offered.

  I cursed Arnold fortissimo as I dropped, waiting for the fatal impact of the East River.

  But I never hit the water.

  I woke up instead.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Somebody was knocking on my door, but I was already bolt upright in my Murphy bed, sweating a small lake into the sheets and breathing rapid-fire. My heart was pounding like a howitzer. Some damn nightmare. Fourth time in as many days. It was making me loon crazy when it wasn’t scaring the hell out of me.

  How do you fight a nightmare, anyway?

  The knocking continued. It was coming from my upstairs door, which was okay. Only my goombahs have spare keys to the front door. An enemy couldn’t get upstairs unless he first broke in downstairs, where my office is. He wouldn’t be knocking, either.

  I opened the door.

  My goombah Gino was standing there looking serious. Gino’s the patron saint of the serious. One of these days, after he’s been properly canonized, they’ll name a parochial school or a parish hall after him. A greengrocer by profession, he’s also 16th Avenue’s Number One Concerned Citizen. Whatever trouble I can’t get into by myself, Gino obligingly finds for me.

  “Jesus, Eddie. You look like hell.”

  “Buon giorno to you, too, and lay off about how I look. I had a rough night.” I wandered into the kitchen, he followed, and we sat down. I eyeballed him. “So, what’s it this time, paisano? Somebody writing naughty words on Mrs. Nanfito’s flowerpots? Altar boys spiking the communion wafers? A customer secretly pissing on your leaf lettuce?”

  “Ha, ha.”

  I stood up. “Coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “No? It’s A&P.”

  “No coffee.”

  “You sick or something?”

  “No.”

  “Uh oh,” I said, frowning, and went to make some anyway.

  “What’s ‘uh oh’ mean?”

  “It means you’ve got that look like it’s not all sunshine and roses in the neighborhood, and you’ve got no stomach for my excellent A&P coffee.”

  “You ain’t a father, Eddie. Fathers worry about their kids. They give you the agita, even when they’re goin’ straight.”

  “Don’t start with that agita business. It’s too early.” I got the coffee pot going.

  “Fathers, Eddie,” he persisted. “They worry about their kids.”

  I should mention that Gino is the ideal husband and father. He married Gina, his high school sweetheart, right after graduation, and they quickly became the Neapolitan Ozzie and Harriet. All their kids’ names started with G. The oldest boy, Giorgio, was only eight, so I wondered what kind of trouble he could be in.

  “You remember the Pulaskis?” Gino asked, stiff-jawed, as though every word were a land mine.

  “Why don’t you ask if I remember Bastogne and the Nazis, or a week of throwin’ up? How the hell could I forget?”

  Gino sighed. “The chicken business, that was just a little bad judgment on the boy’s part.”

  I watched the coffee percolate and sat down again. The chair made a sound like an empty barrel against the floor. “What is it with you, anyway? Runnin’ the neighborhood’s not enough? You tryin’ for Father Giacomo’s job, too?” Father Giacomo was our current parish priest, Father Luigi’s successor.

  “What’re you talkin’ about?”

  I clasped my hands in prayer, rolled my eyes toward Heaven and droned, “It was just-a little-a bad judgment onna the boy’s-a part.”

  “I’m sure the kid was sorry.”

  “Enough to steal twenty sets of hubcaps a month later.”

  “Not from our neighborhood.”

  “That’s ‘cause he knew I’d kill him if he did.”

  “He gave ‘em back.”

  “After he tried to sell ‘em all to an off-duty cop.”

  “He got six months.”

  “Suspended sentence. Judge Hines is too damn easy on these punks.”

  I drifted back to the stove and checked the coffee.

  Gino extended his arms like a priest offering a benediction. “It’s not good to hate the kid so much, Eddie. Past is past.”

  “Not for me.”

  His arms collapsed to his sides. “Okay,” he conceded, “but just because you hate him, that’s no reason to take it out on his parents.”

  I didn’t, even though they’d come to the little bastard’s rescue while I was trying to collar him for stealing the neighborhood’s chickens. Thanks to them, I’d wound up with a ruined suit, various scrapes and bruises, and a banged-up knee that still isn’t right.

  I took the coffee pot off the stove, poured a cup, and sat down. I drank slowly, tantalizing Gino with the aroma.

  “Maybe I’ll have some after all,” he said.

  I poured him a cup. Then we locked eyes. “Okay, so what’s this about?” I asked. “And don’t say, ‘You know,’ because I don’t.”

  “We were talkin’ about Mr. Pulaski…”

  “So?”

  “He’s got a problem.”

  “Does it involve Arnold?”

  “It’s important, Eddie.”

  “Is it about Arnold?”

  “In away.”

  “In what way?”

  “Some trouble.” />
  “What trouble?”

  “Mr. Pulaski needs help, Eddie. He’s a father in trouble. You don’t know. You’re not a father…”

  “Goddamn it, Gino!” I snapped, muscling myself away from the table. “You’re not doin’ this to me again!”

  I kept my back to him as he followed me into the living room. “Mr. Pulaski’s name is John,” he said plaintively. “Did you know that, Eddie?” John was my father’s name. He died delivering a load of coal when I was a kid. I pretended not to listen.

  “Eddie?…”

  “So it’s John. So what?” I didn’t turn around, so he didn’t see the sadness that welled for a moment in my eyes.

  “He’s worried about his son, Eddie. He’s sorry about what he did to you, but, hey, you know that already.”

  It was true. Mr. Pulaski had cried like a baby all through the chicken trial. A week later, he’d even come to the house to apologize.

  “Just talk to him, Eddie,” Gino pleaded. “Just listen to what he’s gotta say, all right?”

  I turned around. “Okay, so what’d the little bastard do this time?”

  Gino didn’t want to answer that.

  “What’d he do, Gino?”

  “Well…”

  “Well, what?”

  “He stole a car.”

  “Whose?”

  “You’re not gonna like it.”

  “Whose?”

  “The district attorney’s.” Before I could react, he added, “Talk to Mr. Pulaski, Eddie. Talk to John. For me, okay?”

  I gave up. “Okay. I’ll get dressed. Where is he?”

  “Downstairs.”

  “Where?”

  “Downstairs, in your office.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  Mr. Pulaski was crying his Polack eyes out in the big stuffed chair where my clients sit. He looked a little smaller than the last time I’d seen him, but grief and worry can do that to you. He still had a florid, goofy, agreeable face and the openness of a simple, if not always law-abiding, man. Under drastically different circumstances, I could’ve liked him on sight.

  He bounded from the chair when I walked in, shook my hand like it was a pump handle in a drought, and wouldn’t let go. If I’d been wearing a ring, he’d have genuflected and kissed it. I finally pulled my hand loose and we faced off across my desk. Gino stood next to him, a comforting hand on his beefy shoulder.