Hot-Wired in Brooklyn

by Douglas Dinunzio

  “Oh, yourself.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  We studied each other. She was even more beautiful than Charlotte, but it was a beauty she’d suppressed, as if she feared it. Her black hair was combed stiffly behind her head and tied in a bun. She wore no makeup over her pale skin. Still, even without a smile, there was a gentleness and warmth in her eyes that was a world away from Charlotte. I saw loneliness there, too, and an overwhelming sadness.

  “If you’re looking for Charlotte, she went that way,” I said, pointing at the stairwell.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “She your sister?”

  She stared past me, past the walls, lost in some great, troublesome thought.

  “Charlotte… she’s your sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s a nymphomaniac. You should take her to a specialist.”

  “Who are you?” she asked, but I was still trying to figure her out. The sad brown eyes and pinched mouth suggested responsibility, long-suffering patience, propriety. Her clothing matched the profile: a conservative plaid skirt and loose-fitting sweater; sensible low-heeled shoes over plain nylons. Somebody’s reliable, uncharismatic older sister, without a doubt. Charlotte had called her “Caroline” through the door.

  “Mr….?” she prompted.

  I handed her my business card. “Your sister’s boyfriend, Arnold, wanted her to come see him at Raymond Street. I told him I’d talk to her.”

  She’d stopped listening and was staring, almost reverently, at my card. “You’re really a detective?”

  “I like to think so in my bolder moments.”

  “Won’t you please come inside, Mr….?”

  “Lombardi,” I said. “Eddie.” I hesitated. I was trying to be courteous, to pay attention, but my mind drifted back to the landing. Part of me was still fixed on Charlotte, body swaying seductively, mind burgeoning with depraved thoughts.

  Assatanata, and dangerous as they come.

  “Is something wrong?” the sister asked.

  “Are you anything like her?”

  “Who?”

  “Who else? Charlotte.”

  “I… Won’t you please come inside?”

  She served tea. It was okay if you like tea. She went through half a cup before she told me what business we were drinking tea over.

  “I’m worried about my brother Jimmy,” she said. She sat on an afghan-draped sofa, her legs crossed demurely, her hand resting on the hem of her skirt, as if a cyclonic burst of air might come from somewhere, anywhere, and blow it unacceptably above the knee. I sat in a worn but comfortable easy chair across from her, trying to look like I wasn’t interested in her legs. They were great legs, so I forced myself to study the room instead. It was sparse, clean, fussy. Charlotte obviously hadn’t helped with the staid decor. Or anything else.

  I examined her face again and added “independent” to my list of character traits, but with a caveat. She’d made it on her own, I figured, but not happily and probably long before she was ready.

  “Why are you worried about your brother?” I asked. “And why should that be my business?”

  “Well… You know about Stinky.”

  “Who?”

  “Arnold.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “Is there something wrong?” she asked.

  “No, not a thing. Please continue about… Stinky.”

  “If you know about him, you must know about the stolen car, and Mr. Shork…”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And Chick and Teddy?”

  “His pals, Gunderson and Mitchell.”

  “Then you must know they’re missing. My brother Jimmy’s missing with them.”

  “I see. And what’s your brother’s last name?”

  “The same as mine, of course.”

  “And what’s that?”

  She blushed, her hand moved clumsily to her mouth, then fell back into her lap. “Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t say, did I? It’s Hutchinson.”

  “No problem. Keep going.”

  “He’s only fifteen. Look, I know Stinky and the other two like to find trouble, but not Jimmy. He’s a good kid. I’ve got him steered right.” She stopped to gauge my reaction to that thought. “My parents are both dead,” she explained. “I’m in charge of Jimmy now… and Charlotte, too, I suppose, for whatever that’s worth.”

  “And?”

  “Well, Chick and Teddy, maybe they’ve got a reason to hide from the police, but Jimmy doesn’t need to hide out from anybody.”

  “So, you’re concerned.”

  “Yes. It isn’t like Jimmy to stay away from home, Mr. Lombardi.”

  “Call me Eddie.”

  “I’m really worried… Eddie.”

  “And you want me to find him.”

  “Would you?”

  “First, tell me a little bit more about… Stinky… and the other two.”

  “I guess I made them sound like criminals. They’re not really bad kids, just a little wild.”

  “That why Charlotte hangs out with them?”

  “It’s the other way around, mostly. She enjoys pushing them, prodding them… into doing things.”

  “Bad things?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like stealing cars?”

  “I suppose…” She studied the plaid pattern of her skirt as if it offered a quick window of escape. When the opportunity fled, she looked at me again.

  “How long’s your brother been gone?”

  “Since the day before Stinky got out on bail.”

  “Chick and Teddy, were they around?”

  “No. They were already hiding somewhere.”

  “Any guess where?”

  “They have a hideout, some abandoned building near the bridge. I don’t know exactly where it is.”

  “Brooklyn Bridge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could Jimmy be there?”

  “I don’t think so.” Her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. I wanted to move closer, to offer some comfort, but I didn’t dare. Just talking to her was like walking on thin-shelled eggs.

  She wove her shaking hands together in her lap. “I haven’t been totally honest, Mr…. I mean, Eddie. Maybe it’s because I don’t really want to believe what I think.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That Jimmy’s not alive. I dreamed last night that he died, horribly.”

  That stopped me. She caught me staring, saw the distress in my eyes.

  “Eddie?”

  “I’m sorry. You were saying…”

  “It was in my dream. Someone had murdered him in a dark, cold place. His body was… unrecognizable, except to me. Do you believe in dreams, Eddie?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I believe in mine.”

  “And because of your dream, you believe your brother’s dead.”

  “Yes.”

  “In that case…”

  “Yes?”

  “In that case, I guess you know where we’d have to look first.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I know,” as a solitary tear ran down her cheek.

  CHAPTER

  14

  The city morgue was a Raymond Street for the dead. Worse. At least at Raymond Street you had hope. The poor, forsaken stiffs in the morgue had used up all their hope. They were the nameless, the friendless: rummies who’d frozen in doorways, overdosed addicts, transients murdered for pocket change. Only the cops and the medical examiner paid their respects, if you could call it that.

  Even sadder were the stiffs who actually had people looking for them, who waited like grim Halloween surprises for their unprepared and disbelieving friends and relatives. Tricks, not treats, under the white sheets. In the ugly, inhumane world I knew as a private detective, there was no uglier or more inhumane place than the morgue.

  But Caroline Hutchinson wanted to find her lost brother Jimmy, following wherever her nightmare would take her, a
nd hoping it hadn’t come true. I was there to hold her timid little hand if it had.

  I knew one of the morgue attendants, a weaselly little guy called Paulie the Pickler. I just called him Pickle, because his sallow complexion reflected the institutional green from the walls more readily than anybody else’s, and because he practically lived there. In all the years I’d known him, I’d never seen him in natural light.

  He spotted me as I brought Caroline in through the ambulance entrance. The basement hallway was filled with gurneys, plain white sheets covering lumps of former humanity. The sheer number of them put a pause in Caroline’s step. Pickle, sporting a perverse grin, stepped forward to greet us.

  “Hey, Eddie.”

  “Evening, Pickle.”

  Pickle’s eyes made quick, eager passes between me and Caroline, turning lecherous each time they settled on her. Nobody in the morgue was known for tact, and Pickle was probably the worst. The way his pill-eyes were ogling Caroline, I figured he was imagining her naked on a slab. When Caroline’s eyes briefly left the gurneys, Pickle took notice and tried to get conversational.

  “What’s the little lady shoppin’ for?”

  She wouldn’t answer, so I did. “A brother. Fifteen years old.”

  Pickle spread his arms expansively, as if to sum up the contents of the corridor. “We got a great selection tonight,” he said. “Must be a full moon.”

  “Fifteen year old boy,” I reminded him.

  Pickle scratched his chin. “Could be a half-dozen of those, between the stiffs out here and the ones in the cooler. Had a bad fire up in Bed-Stuy, coupla shootings, a jumper on Fulton, big smash-up down on Avenue U…”

  A set of double doors swung open down the hall, somebody called Pickle’s name, and he toddled off. “You folks feel free to browse if you like,” he said as he left, like a furniture salesman bouncing between customers. “Won’t be more than a minute.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked Caroline. Without answering, she approached the first gurney, lifted the sheet, and looked into a dead face. I was ready to catch her if she swooned, but she surprised me and didn’t even flinch. The body was male, mid-fifties, shabbily dressed. It smelled of shit and liquor.

  She glanced at the single-page form that the ambulance attendant had placed next to the body, dropped the sheet and walked to the next gurney.

  A burn victim rested on it, scorched face, mouth agape, tongue protruding. Middle-aged colored woman. Caroline didn’t react. She moved on to the next gurney, and I followed, more like a tag-along now than a protector.

  I winced at the next body. Male accident victim, early twenties, face gashed in a dozen places, shards of windshield embedded in its ruined features. Still recognizable. A handsome kid until he’d hit the glass. Crew cut, good clothes. Someone would come soon to claim him, and to grieve.

  Caroline moved on systematically, never looking long enough to let her feelings accumulate, to think: this used to be a human being. It was like she’d had combat experience, but that was impossible.

  We went through five more gurneys the same way. We’d started on the other side of the corridor when Pickle returned.

  “Made any friends yet?” he asked cheerfully. I tried to bother him with a frown, but it didn’t faze him. The innocuous little jerk had long since lost his sensitivities among the living. Caroline was lifting another sheet when Pickle added, “Those ones along that wall, they’re all from the fire. Up in Bed-Stuy. All niggers. You wasn’t lookin’ for niggers, was you?”

  Caroline didn’t react, but I did. Because of Desiree and Watusi, it was a word I didn’t like to hear. I held back a reprimand, but not before Caroline caught the fierce glow in my eyes. Her own eyes fell hard on Pickle.

  “Where are the others?” she asked curtly.

  “Others?”

  “The ones you’ve already processed. The ones with the toe tags. In the drawers.”

  “Oh. The drawers. Sure, sure,” said Pickle, his furniture-salesman smile re-emerging. “Right this way.”

  The refrigeration room looked like what it was: a meat locker. I kept my attention on Caroline, still impressed by her resolve, but waiting for it to crack. She knew the protocol here, waiting for Pickle to open the drawers and pull down the sheets. Pickle was thinking out loud.

  “Teenager, huh?”

  “Male. Fifteen,” I said.

  Pickle scratched his head. “Only one like that in here, but it ain’t got no face.” Pickle waited for a reaction, didn’t get one, and continued. “Gunshot wound, back of the head, close range, .45 caliber, hollow-point probably. Blew the whole face right off. What’s left is just mush. You gotta go with fingerprints on this one, believe me.”

  He walked to the far end of the room, opened the middle drawer of the last row, slid out its contents and pulled down the sheet to just below the chin. He was right. The exit wound was as big as a grapefruit, the face utterly gone. Caroline looked at the wound without any reaction, but when Pickle went to cover the face again, she said, “Pull it down lower, please. Down to the elbows.”

  Pickle shrugged and pulled the sheet lower.

  “Rotate the left arm, please.”

  Pickle complied.

  She went pale instantly, and I caught her as she collapsed.

  CHAPTER

  15

  I carried her to the cot in Pickle’s back room. While the cobwebs cleared from her head, I asked Pickle the obvious questions.

  “When’d the body come in?”

  “Coupla nights ago.”

  “Who found it?”

  “Beat cop.”

  “Where?”

  “Alley off Sands Street, by the bridge.”

  “Find the slug?”

  “Sure. Didn’t go far when it came out.”

  “Any other wounds?”

  “Naah,” said Pickle. “Hey, the little lady’s awake.”

  Caroline sat up and scowled as if she’d caught Pickle looking up her dress. When she spoke to him, her words were clear and hard, her eyes full of venom. “I’m certain that the young man in there is my brother, James Hutchinson, but you’ll need more than just my word. Will the finger and toe prints from his birth record be adequate?”

  “Them’ll do,” said Pickle.

  She gave Pickle her address on Sutter Avenue, the address of a funeral home in Brownsville when the coroner was ready to release Jimmy’s body, and then we left.

  “Some detectives from the 84th precinct will probably want to talk with you,” I explained as I drove her home. “The body was discovered on their turf. If you don’t want to deal with them by yourself, you can call me. I can also bring a lawyer.” She didn’t respond, so I kept silent all the way back to Brownsville.

  It was past midnight when I pulled up outside her building. “Would you like some tea?” she asked. I didn’t have an exit line, so I just nodded and said, “Okay.”

  The apartment was empty when we arrived. I assumed that Charlotte was out tearing up the town somewhere, and it was probably better that way. No infusions of wild abandon to break the perfect funereal mood that Caroline had set. After ten minutes of silence broken only by the sound of a tea kettle, she finally spoke.

  “Do you take sugar?”

  “Sugar?”

  “In your tea. I seem to have forgotten if you had a preference.”

  For a moment, our eyes met and held. Her face had turned sickly pale. Her voice was still steady, but hollow, like the sound of a Dictaphone. That part of her that was machine had taken over, mercifully, I guess.

  “I don’t usually drink tea,” I answered. “I take my coffee black, if that’ll help.”

  “Plain, then,” she said absently, and went on with her preparations. A minute later she set the cup and saucer down in front of me. We’d taken the same seats as before, she on the couch with the afghan, me in the chair. She sipped her tea once and centered the cup on its saucer.

  “How’d you know?” I asked. “About your
brother.”

  “His elbow. A bad scar he’d had since he was seven. He fell off his bicycle in the street. He needed stitches, but we couldn’t afford a doctor, and I wasn’t trained as a nurse yet. It healed, but it left a jagged scar.”

  “That answers another question I was going to ask.”

  “Oh?” She took another sip.

  “That was pretty gruesome stuff at the morgue.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t even flinch. Not until you saw…”

  “The scar on his elbow.”

  “When’d you go into nursing?”

  “During the war. My husband was in the service. I was working as a file clerk during the day and studying nursing at night.”

  “What branch?”

  “Branch?”

  I realized I’d lost her and tried to apologize in my tone. “Of the military. What branch was he in?”

  “The Marines,” she said. “He died on the beach at Tarawa.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And you?”

  “Hundred and First Infantry. Airborne.”

  “A hero of Bastogne,” she said with an ironic half-smile.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ma’am?” The word carried a chill.

  “Sorry. Just trying to be polite.”

  “I see. Are you deferential to war widows in general, or just to me?” I didn’t answer, she let the question hang icily in midair, and the thin-shelled eggs I’d been walking on all evening felt like they might be cracking. She walked back into the kitchen with long, deliberate strides and lifted the kettle off the stove.

  “More tea?” she asked flatly.

  “No, thanks. You said before your name was Hutchinson, and that it was Jimmy’s name, too. But you were married.”

  “I took back my maiden name,” she said, colder. “Isn’t that allowed?”

  “I guess.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So, you’re alone now?”

  “I have no man, if that’s what you mean. Is that what you were hoping I’d say?” The dullness in her eyes turned suddenly to a fire hot enough to boil thin-shelled eggs.

  “I’d better be going,” I said.

  A flash of anger crossed her face. “Aren’t you waiting for me to ask you to stay? Isn’t that what happens next for someone in your line of work? To comfort the poor, grieving, brotherless war widow between her… sheets?”