Carlson was out of his chair again. “Really, Mr….”
“Lombardi.” I pulled my business card out of my shirt pocket and flipped it across the desk. He picked it up and looked at it. “Does that help?” I asked.
“You’re a private investigator.”
“Private and discreet. Well?”
“I don’t know what you…”
“Look, it should be easy. The kid knows what you’re up to or he doesn’t.”
“Really, Mr. Lombardi, this is too much!”
“What is?”
“You cannot simply barge in here…”
“I didn’t barge, remember? I sat in a chair for an hour. That’s called waiting.”
“Really, Mr. Lombardi…”
“Okay. Let’s start simple. Arnold says the keys were on the seat…”
“You represent this hoodlum?”
“The card says shamus, not shyster. I’m just tryin’ to help the kid’s father. So, were the keys on the seat?”
“Of course not. I was at home that evening in Flatbush. The car was at the curb, the keys were in the house.”
“You got a garage?”
“Of course.”
“How come the car wasn’t in the garage?”
“I had a dinner to attend that evening.”
“Sons of Italy?”
“Lions Club. Really, Mr. Lombardi…”
“The police report says the car was stolen around eleven P.M.”
“How do you know what the police report said?”
“I heard it from a little bird.” A big Sicilian bluebird, but Carlson didn’t have to know that. “So you were already back from the Lions Club meeting by, what, nine, nine-thirty? Why didn’t you put it in the garage then?”
“Are you interrogating me, Mr. Lombardi? Do you know how easily I could have you put away?”
“For what? I’m not trying to shake you down. I just want to know what the kid’s got on you. It’s a simple question.”
He didn’t answer.
“Okay, let’s talk about the car again. Why was it parked at the curb instead of in the garage at eleven o’clock that night?”
The color drained from his face as he tilted forward, bone-white fists pressed hard against the polished mahogany of the desk. “If it’s any of your business, I was meeting a young lady at the Hotel Bossert for a nightcap.”
“Ever eat at Fulton Joe’s?”
He took refuge again in his swivel chair, still testy. “Of course.”
“Ever park outside it?”
“Of course, but not my own car. I only attend luncheons there. I use the county car.”
“And you don’t leave the keys on the seat?”
“Of course not.”
“So, what does Arnold know?”
“Nothing!”
“What does he have on you?”
“He has nothing on me!” he exploded. “Quite the contrary. I have grand theft auto and felony murder on him!”
“Then why are you so scared? What does he know, Carlson?!”
“This is absurd!”
My voice rose as I stood up and kicked the chair out behind me. “Is it? He’s sitting down there in Raymond Street, Mr. District Attorney, like a Cheshire cat with a whole goddamn stomach full of canaries. He doesn’t even care about your grand theft auto rap. He’s laughing, out loud, at your murder charge. He’s laughing at you, Carlson. Why?”
“How should I…?”
My fist came down hard on his desk. “Why?”
“Very well, Mr. Lombardi.” His hand, shaking, went for the intercom. “You force me to call for the guard.”
“Does he know?”
He kept eye contact only a moment before pushing the button. “Phyllis,” he said hollowly into the box, “Mr. Lombardi is leaving now. Please see him to the door.”
“Okay, Carlson,” I said, “if that’s the way it has to be.” He eased back into his chair and offered a look that was as little-boy frightened as it was rich-boy defiant.
“Mr. Jorgenson is here to see you,” Phyllis’s voice called back, too sweetly.
“Have him come right in,” he answered, and let go of the button. He was pretending to look at his mail as I walked out, his chest heaving as if he’d run up twenty flights of stairs.
The guy waiting in reception reminded me of my high school French teacher: feminine, tall, angular, blotchy reddish skin, fuzzy head of red, unkempt hair. He looked Carlson’s age, maybe a little younger. He was too casually dressed to be here on business, so I figured him to be Carlson’s buddy. Figuring that, I couldn’t resist the temptation to bust his balls.
“Give him a big kiss for me,” I said, nodding toward Carlson’s office. The pretty-eyed way he looked back, I was almost sure he would.
CHAPTER
11
My sister Letty lived on 77th Street, in a red brick two-family with an old, sheltering oak in front. Her lawn was home to half a dozen hand-painted statues of the saints, each protected by a small stone grotto. In spring she grew festive daffodils and geraniums around them, but this was winter, and they looked stark and abandoned. St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things, looked a little lost himself beside the porch steps.
I arrived conspicuously early, hoping to make an early exit. Letty kissed me at the door, took my coat, and shunted me into the living room. Her three little bambini were too busy screaming at each other in a back bedroom to notice me, but fat Dino, her imbecile husband, was right up front in his recliner chair waving a finger at me. As usual, he had crime on his mind, and as usual, that one thought filled it to capacity.
“I’m betting they didn’t do it, Ed,” Dino announced. “I’m betting they’re not guilty.” Dino is the only person who calls me Ed. I could dislike him for it, but I have so many better reasons. He attracts contempt like an electromagnet.
“Give up on the Sacco-Vanzetti thing, will ya?” I harped. “They fried those guys twenty years ago. Lotta good you can do ’em now.” Dino figures that every italiano arrested since those two saps, including Lucky Luciano and Capone, was probably railroaded. You listen to Dino long enough, you’ll think even Caligula and the Borgias were misunderstood.
“No, no, this is different,” he harped back.
“That so?”
I slumped into the chair across from him, a Queen Anne with bulging springs in the seat and back. Its thin armrests were covered by white lace doilies that stuck to my suit jacket whenever I lifted my arms.
The three bambini, having just noticed me, rushed up like a wave and clung to my legs like soft, warm barnacles, shouting, “Uncle Eddie! Uncle Eddie! Horsey ride!” I patted their heads and waited for Letty to come in from the kitchen and peel them off. They could strip me to my boxer shorts and decorate me with linguini and meat sauce before fat Dino lifted a finger.
“Leave your uncle alone,” Letty scolded. “Papa wants to talk to him. He’ll play horsey later. Won’t you, Uncle Eddie?” I nodded, they raced screaming into the entrance hall, fought each other for their winter coats, then stampeded like the Canarsie Indians out the front door.
Letty leaned over, kissed me, brushed her hand softly through my hair, and smiled down. Even through the smile, her face looked harsh. It always does, even when she’s thinking happy thoughts. My other two sisters, Maggie and Fran, are knockouts, but Letty was born with a mug like a constipated nun. It takes all her effort just to put the best side of a bad face forward.
She lingered a moment, then returned to the kitchen.
“Okay, Dino,” I said. “So who’s not guilty this time?”
Dino eased forward, eyes aglow. “You hear about those kids who got arrested for shootin’ crap on the roof at New Utrecht High?” He shifted in the recliner and grabbed a handful of biscotti from the big bowl in his lap. The Brooklyn Eagle, where he’d read about the break-in, was wedged between his fat behind and the armrest.
“The way I heard it, they got arrested for breakin’ in, wreckin’ the school cafeter
ia, and bustin’ down doors so they could get to the roof.”
“That’s why they got arrested, sure, but how do we know it was them, Ed? How do we know they didn’t chase the real vandals away, then stop to shoot crap on the roof?”
“Don’t you believe in evidence, Dino? Like fingerprints on doors, like the crowbar one of ’em had to jimmy the doors?”
“Maybe the real vandals wore gloves. Maybe these kids just picked the crowbar up so nobody’d trip on it.”
“Real considerate crap shooters.”
“All right, Ed, but there’s two sides to every coin. Cops never even try to turn the coin over.”
“The kids who got caught, what’d they say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Yes, and that’s my point.”
“Which is?”
“Which is that maybe they got in trouble for what they didn’t say and didn’t do.”
I mulled that over for a moment. When I was certain that Dino was as serious as he sounded, I said, “You know, it’s too bad you weren’t around when they knocked off that guy Caesar.”
Dino’s eyes bulged and his mouth fell open. “Jesus! Somebody knocked off Sid Caesar?”
“No! No! I’m talkin’ about Julius. Some guys got in a lotta trouble for stickin’ knives in him, way back when, remember?”
“Julius? Julius Caesar! Oh, yeah.”
“Well, it’s too bad you weren’t around then.”
“Oh?”
“Sure. Don’t you see? You coulda explained to everybody that some other guys must’ve stuck the knives in. Brutus, Cassius and their pals, good Samaritans all, they were just try in’ to pull the knives out.”
I waited. I didn’t crack a smile. When Dino’s open mouth started twitching at the corners, I knew exactly what he was going to do next.
“Letty!” he whined. When she rushed in from the kitchen, Dino pointed rudely at me. “He’s tryin’ to make me look stupid again!”
“Who needs to try?” See?
“Letty, your husband’s an idiot. Imbecille. His next thought’s gonna die of loneliness.”
Letty’s quick, testy glare dissolved almost immediately into forgiveness. She patted Dino on the head, smiled her harsh, loving smile, and returned to the kitchen without a word. Dino picked up his copy of the Brooklyn Eagle and hid behind it, munching his biscotti like a starved water buffalo. I connected the dots on the wallpaper, savored the aromas of Letty’s fine Neapolitan cooking, and enjoyed the welcome silence.
Shining through the dullness of Dino’s argument lay a small gem of truth, though I didn’t have the kindness to credit him: you might get arrested for being stupid, or silent, but you shouldn’t have to do time or fry for it. Like the kids on the roof, like Arnold. Arnold figured his silence was a kind of power, but it was also his weakness, his stupidita, because if he kept it long enough, it’d follow him right into the grave. Neither Dom Scarpetti’s goons nor Carlson’s brutes in blue were the kind you’d want to fool with. If you had any secrets, you’d soon be sharing them, or spitting teeth. Or worse. That made me think about Charlotte, the only person Arnold did want to talk to. I had to find her, and soon.
But first I had to get past my other two sisters, their idiot husbands, and their gaggle of kids. When Maggie, her husband Romeo, and their twin daughters arrived, Dino was still hiding behind the newspaper. But he perked up when the girls charged his recliner and bounced onto his ample lap. Fran, her husband Joe, and their three kids came next, and Letty’s three bambini rushed in from outside to round out the madhouse. I wolfed my way through dinner, gave the obligatory horsey rides, and finally begged off around seven o’clock.
Dino refused to see me to the door, shake hands, or be placated. For a moment I felt blessed, invincible, but it didn’t last. I stepped off Letty’s porch into the January cold and looked briefly into the eyes of her stone saints before turning away. St. Jude, the patron saint of desperate causes, whispered a warning, but I didn’t quite hear it.
CHAPTER
12
The address Arnold had shouted at me was in Brownsville, on Sutter Avenue. I recognized the building immediately. Back in his chicken-stealing days, I’d tailed him there. He’d met a pal and two teenage girls on the front stoop. The girl Arnold had kissed was a looker who looked like real trouble. In the movies, a “black widow,” but to the Italian boys of Bensonhurst, una assatanata, a man-eater. Remembering that rainy, windswept afternoon started me thinking, and hoping her name wasn’t Charlotte.
There were no familiar names under the mailboxes, and I didn’t feel like jousting with the building super, so I just walked inside. The halls were dimly lit, the cooking smells fainter now, several hours after dinnertime.
I hadn’t run into anybody on the first two floors, and I’d just stepped onto the third floor landing when I heard shouting inside one of the flats. Women’s voices. I walked casually toward the source, 3C.
The door burst open and a young, dark-haired woman emerged. She slammed the door and shouted, “Oh, go to hell, Caroline!” through the inch and a half of wood. She was even more stunning now: cascading, silken hair blacker than Watusi’s skin; pale, marble-smooth features; hard, mesmerizing brown eyes. She wore an open pea coat over a cotton blouse and jeans tight enough to cut off the blood flow to her legs.
Charlotte.
As soon as she saw me, she smiled and put on a pose.
“Well, well,” she said. “Lookey here.”
“Well, well yourself,” I answered. I was about to offer my name when she reached out and brushed the tips of her fingers across my cheek.
“Nice close shave,” she said.
“Thanks. Twice a day sometimes.”
“I like to keep close-shaved myself.” She slid her hand languidly down her flank, let it rest on the inside of her thigh and waited for a response.
“I’ll bet you used to be shy,” I said.
Her smile broadened as her hands drifted slowly upward in a self-caress that ended at her ample breasts. Her eyes never left mine. Slitted cobra eyes, hypnotizing for the kill. To avoid them, I looked back at her breasts, still cupped in her hands.
“That’s quite a dairy.”
“You want a taste?”
“A taste?”
She screwed up her mouth. “There’s an echo in here. Well?”
“Well what?”
“You interested in these or not?”
“No, thanks. I only drink homogenized.”
She turned pouty. “That how you get your vitamins, too?”
“I’m Italian. We don’t need vitamins.”
She shifted her weight with an easy, fluid motion, her breasts bobbing gently under her clothing like buoys on a lake. “Drinking’s only half the fun, anyway,” she continued. “There’s squeezing, too.” When I didn’t react, her tone turned peevish. “You do know what to do, don’t you?”
“I’ve had some lessons.”
“I’ll bet.” Her left hand glided like the head of a snake from her breast to my shoulder. As it moved steadily south, she scanned my eyes again for weakness. “You’re a little old,” she observed, “but you might be fun anyway.”
“I shoot a mean game of pool, too. They say that’s proof of a wasted life, but…”
Her hand continued its slow, maddening caress. When I felt myself responding, I tried to name in my head all the rides at Coney Island, just like Father Luigi had taught us to keep away thoughts of mortal sin. That didn’t work, so I computed batting averages, which did. By the time her roving hand found home, I didn’t even flinch. She drew it away and looked up.
“Doesn’t it like to play?”
“With the right woman. At the right time.”
“You’re one of those, huh? Don’t make love unless you’re in love?”
“Something like that.”
“How boring. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Eddie. Eddie Lombardi.”
“I’m Ch
arlotte.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You know?”
“Arnold told me. That’s why I’m here. He wants you to go see him at Raymond Street.”
“You’re Arnold’s lackey? A big boy like you?”
“I’m nobody’s lackey.”
Lethal satisfaction flashed in her cobra eyes, and she started stroking me again.
“Arnold wants you to visit him at Raymond Street,” I repeated with an iciness that didn’t begin to match hers. “I’m just doing him a favor.”
“You his pal or something?”
I suppressed the laugh I felt coming. “Yeah. We go way back, Arnold and me. So, are you going to see him?”
She sighed. “I’ve seen Arnold plenty. Right now, I’m looking for something a little bigger and better.”
“You’re Arnold’s girl, aren’t you?”
She pulled her hand away, her eyes turning darker, more dangerous. “I’m nobody’s girl, understand?”
“Sure. But Arnold, he’s your boy, right?”
“He is a boy,” she said, more seductively. “Like I said, I’m ready for a man.” Impatience crept into her voice. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Jesus, you’re slow on the uptake…”
“Oh, that. I’m kind of busy right now.”
“That can be fixed.” Her hand moved slowly down my thigh again, and I countered with Father Luigi’s most surefire antidote to impure thoughts: an alphabetical list of the saints. I was up to St. Ignatius when she finally gave up. “No offense,” I said when she drew her hand away, “but maybe you’re the one oughta be fixed.”
“Come and see me anyway,” she said, just like Mae West. “I live right here.” Her hand made one more glancing pass over my flank as she walked past me toward the stairs.
“You going to see Arnold?”
“Told you. Seen him plenty.”
“I meant at Raymond Street.”
“Maybe,” she said as she reached the stairwell. She said something else on the way down, but I couldn’t hear it. The door to 3C had just opened. The young woman in the doorway looked like Charlotte’s twin, but maybe five years older.
“Oh,” she said when she saw me.
Hot-Wired in Brooklyn Page 5
