Hot-Wired in Brooklyn

by Douglas Dinunzio

  “Ha ha.”

  “You know they’re in trouble. They tell you why?”

  “Haven’t seen them.”

  “Or talked to them?”

  “No.” She was slinking closer, making another pass at me from behind. I heard the smooth friction of denim against denim and felt a caressing arm on my shoulder.

  “Give it a rest, Charlotte. I’m not interested.”

  “You don’t want me to think you’re a fag, do you?” she whispered.

  “Actually, I want you to think I’m an incorruptible vice cop who hasn’t made his quota. Better for both of us.”

  “I put a lotta time into you,” she said testily. “Findin’ out about you from your pal and all.”

  “Listen, Charlotte…”

  I’d made the mistake of turning around, and she was right there waiting. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me full on the mouth. It was a long, forceful, penetrating kiss, hot and dripping with animal lust, but without human feeling. Looking into her Medusa eyes up close, I could see why Arnold had fallen so hard. I could see myself falling, too, if I kept looking. Into a hole that had no bottom, a Hell with no limits. I closed my eyes and pulled back from the edge.

  “You better be going now,” I said. Gently, I pushed her away. “I’ll call a cab.” I was already dialing when she began to laugh again.

  “Why don’t you call your pal, Tony, and tell him to come and get me. He’s cute. I bet he’s more fun, too.”

  “Tony’s simple,” I said.

  “They say the dumb ones have the biggest…”

  “Tony doesn’t understand people like you.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  I put the phone down. “Stay away from him.” She caught the burr in my voice and took it as a challenge.

  “And what if I don’t?”

  I stepped close to her. She didn’t back off. “Then I’ll see you regret it.”

  “Relax. I won’t hurt the little chump. I’ll just have a little fun with him, that’s all.”

  My hands were on her, roughly, like vises, pushing her toward the wall. When she was flat against it, I shifted one hand to her throat, the other under her left breast. I squeezed the breast hard, pushing upward, until I saw pain in her eyes. Then I let her go. She sputtered wordlessly for a moment and recoiled against the door frame. Her skin blanched whiter, and I saw madness, for the first time, in her dark eyes.

  “You fuckin’ prick!” she sputtered. Her voice was a thin, metallic rasp. I walked past her, pushed the door open and waited as she righted herself against the wall.

  “Stay away from Tony. And stay away from me, Charlotte. You fool with me or anybody I care about, I’ll find a way to hurt you.”

  She staggered into the hall, voice still rasping. “Uh uh, Lombardi,” she seethed. “You’re the one doesn’t know what hurt is.”

  I watched her struggle down the stairs on elastic legs, fling the front door wide open, step from the porch and disappear cursing into the street.

  I didn’t notice the snow until I went down to close the front door. Soft, white flakes were falling in eerie slow motion, exactly as I’d seen them in my nightmare. I stood on the porch and watched them, tiny pieces of a great white mosaic that was also, perhaps, a shroud. I thought about Charlotte, and Arnold, and Carlson, and Superman and Calamari Breath, and wondered if just maybe my nightmare was about to come true.

  CHAPTER

  23

  I called Watusi first. Desiree’s cold had settled into her chest, the doctor had come and gone, and Watusi had the vaporizer going in her bedroom. The noise had scared the cat away, and Desiree was crying tears of abandonment when she wasn’t hacking. Given the situation, I didn’t bother to ask for help with the prowler. Besides, I figured I could do that myself.

  What I couldn’t do was patrol St. Margaret’s and keep an eye on Carlson at the same time; so I called Liam O’Rourke, a sweet, cadaver-faced operative from Canarsie with a talent for limericks. I gave him Carlson’s address on Albemarle Road in Flatbush and told him I’d meet him there sometime after ten. I didn’t expect the prowler to show much before that, unless the rapidly accumulating snow drove him indoors sooner. There was already an inch on the ground.

  I put on a fedora and a warm overcoat that was a size too big for me. It was the only overcoat I owned that hid the .38 I’d slung under my right arm. Until this Carlson business was settled, I’d need that gun all the time. So what if I wasn’t a fashion plate for a few days?

  The snow was falling harder as I drove the few blocks to St. Margaret’s. I wore rubbers over my shoes in case I had to do some actual chasing, but I was hoping to roust the prowler without ever leaving the car. “On your way, pal,” I’d call out to him from the comfort of my driver’s seat. He’d take one look at me, lam it back to Kalamazoo or wherever he’d come from, and never be seen in Brooklyn again. That was the Plan.

  But he didn’t show. I watched the church for over two hours and didn’t see a soul. Even with the heater on full blast, I was getting chilled. I cruised the neighborhood for another hour, negotiating my Chevy through the light slush. By the time I gave up on catching the prowler, the snow had almost stopped, so I decided to check on Liam in Flatbush. Maybe Carlson would be more obliging this cold winter’s night and lead us to whatever his fear was hiding. And if he wasn’t, Liam was always great company.

  Along the way, I stopped at a liquor store on New Utrecht Avenue for a bottle of rye. The kind that burns hot but smooth. Then I drove to Albemarle Road.

  Liam’s car was parked across the street and about a hundred feet away from Carlson’s elegant three-story Victorian. The lights were on inside. Carlson’s new Hudson Hornet, the “sharp set of wheels” Arnold had stolen from outside Victory Wrecking, was at the curb. Two full inches of snow covered it. I parked another hundred feet behind Liam, sloshed my way along the unshoveled sidewalk, tapped on the passenger side window and slipped inside.

  “Sweet bleedin’ Jaysus, but it’s cold,” said Liam, his grinning undertaker face frightful in the dim light.

  “Sure as hell is. What’s our boy up to?”

  “Not one blessed thing. Hasn’t budged. Eddie, lad, I’ve got a bit of a question to ask.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Our boy’s got a perfectly good garage there at the side of his great big bleedin’ castle. Why doesn’t he bleedin’ use it?”

  I smiled.

  “Shame to see a fine vehicle like that sittin’ out in the weather.”

  “I’m with you.”

  “Rust, Eddie lad. Rust is the bleedin’ mortal enemy of the American auto-mo-bile.”

  “This guy doesn’t care about that. He’s got plenty of money. He’ll just buy himself another one.”

  “It’s a sad state of affairs when honest workin’ men like ourselves are the only ones left who know the blessed value of anything. Buy a new one, will he? For shame!”

  “It tells us one thing, anyway. That he’s goin’ someplace tonight.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll just wait.”

  “And why exactly are we waitin’ for this rich bugger?”

  So I told him.

  “Well, now. D’you know there could be some unpleasantness here, given the likes o’ what you’re sayin’?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And doin’ it all for the sake of this Polack lad who spits in your lawyer’s face and calls you a bleedin’ dago. Not to mention makin’ yourself the enemy of the fookin’ D.A. himself! You’ve a couple o’ screws loose somewhere, Eddie lad, if you’re askin’ me.”

  “You could always go back to Canarsie,” I ribbed him gently. “I mean, if the job doesn’t appeal to you.”

  “Sweet bleedin’ Jaysus! And what else would I be doin’ on a fine Monday evenin’ such as this without a woman?”

  We sat for an hour and got colder. Liam tried to warm the air with a few obscene limericks, his specialty:
/>   “There once was a lass from Culloden

  Whose poo-berty came on quite sudden…”

  He offered a wicked smile, then started in again:

  “A delicate lad named O’Rourke

  Once blocked up his arse with a cork…”

  “If you gotta go,” I said, “Use the can in that bar on Ocean Avenue.”

  “The one with the mahogany crappers?”

  “Very comfortable seats.”

  “Me? Do me business in an upper-crusted old mausoleum like that? I’d sooner use the D.A.’s bleedin’ lawn! But now that you mention the bar, I am a tad on the dry side.”

  “Almost forgot. Got some liquid refreshment in the car. Be right back.” I swung the passenger door open and a flurry of white blew in.

  I’d taken about a dozen strides when Carlson opened his front door and stepped onto the brick path that led to the snow-covered Hudson at the curb. He was hatless, but the expensive-looking topcoat he wore probably kept him warm enough. I kept walking, keeping him at the edge of my vision, knowing that he wouldn’t recognize me here, on his own patrician turf, in the falling snow. This was going to work out even better than I’d planned. I’d get in my own car, which Carlson had never seen, and Liam and I would play two-car tag with him wherever he went. We knew the routine like our mothers’ names.

  I kept walking. I wasn’t trying to watch Carlson anymore, but I could hear him opening his car door, brushing off the windshield, closing the door after him.

  In a minute, I’d be starting my engine and falling in behind Liam. Then we might see where Carlson’s panic was leading him.

  Carlson’s ignition turned, but the sound was lost in a shock wave that hit with a bright flash and a roaring sound I’d known only as a soldier. I was on the ground suddenly, rolling onto my back and looking up into a snowy night sky that was raining down the twisted, flaming pieces of a Hudson Hornet. The heavier fragments, including a burning tire, a wheel hub, and part of the engine block, bounced onto the soft white blanket of the street and hissed as they came to rest. The smaller parts followed: bolts, melted rubber bearings, a door handle, a mangled license plate. They, too, fell into the snowy street, briefly sibilant, burning small, irregular holes in the snow blanket. More pieces of the Hudson landed just behind me; another bounced right in front of my car before it sputtered into white silence. With everything raining down, I found myself still looking up. It was a strangely beautiful sight. The snow was still falling, a gentle coda to the awful concussion, the blinding light and the terrible explosive sound I thought I’d never hear again after I’d left the airborne. I fixed on the snowflakes, not just because they were beautiful, but because some of them were unlike any I’d ever seen. I lay on my back and held out my hand to catch them before they melted, to prove that what my eyes were seeing was true.

  And it was.

  Some of the snowflakes were red.

  CHAPTER

  24

  There was a crater in the street where Carlson’s Hudson Hornet had been parked. The front windows of his big house had all been shattered, and part of a tire was burning fiercely on his lawn.

  Other debris had landed on the roof of the house next door, where the owner stared at it in disbelief from a dormer window. The other startled neighbors were in the street exercising their curiosity, picking through the still-hot fragments, collecting in small groups, and waiting for the fire trucks and the cops. Suddenly, a woman’s shrill scream rose above the small talk. Standing like a block of stone, she pointed to a maple tree on her lawn. Wedged between the trunk and one of the branches was part of a human hand.

  Liam’s sedan rested on its roof like a helpless gray turtle with wheels. It wasn’t on fire; the blast had simply upended it. But the windows had shattered, and Liam, lying on his back next to the dome light, was covered with shards of various sizes. I tried opening the door to get to him, but it wouldn’t move, so I crawled in through the window, sniffing the air for gasoline.

  He was awake, smiling with a bloody face. “Sweet bleedin’ O’Rourke,” he said in a cheery voice, but loudly, as if I were across the street.

  “Don’t try to move, Liam,” I said as I brushed the broken glass away.

  “Would you mind talkin’ into the other ear, Eddie lad,” he answered, louder still. “I don’t think this one’s workin’.”

  “Anything else busted?”

  “Try the other ear, lad.”

  I crawled to his other side and repeated the question.

  “Well, this left arm here’s smartin’ a tad, me skull’s poundin’ like the great Irish Sea, and I’ve got to use the crapper somewhat desperate. Other than that, I’m bleedin’ fit as a fiddle.”

  The first fire trucks were arriving, sirens howling, followed by a pair of patrol cars. I was trying to tell Liam that I’d wait for the ambulance crew to move him, but he couldn’t hear a word through that racket, even with his good ear. A cop poked his head in as I was crawling out. He called to his partner, who shouted for the ambulance that had just pulled up beside the great chasm in the street. I looked in on Liam once more and found him as relaxed and comfortable as a scout beside a campfire. He was amusing himself with a limerick:

  “There once was a dolly from Dublin

  Who the lads were always a-troublin’…”

  The cops were still asking me questions when the ambulance took Liam away: Who was I, where did I live, what had I seen, what was I doing there? I gave them the usual lies: I was just driving by, saw one car explode and the other flip over, tried to help. I pretended not to know what Liam was doing there. He’d say the same about me when they questioned him at the hospital.

  When the cops finally let me leave, the forensics crew were still picking small pieces of Carlson and his Hudson Hornet out of hedges, trees, and ground cover. Reporters and the morbidly curious were clustered behind barricades at both ends of the street waiting for them to finish. Carlson’s high-born neighbors were either giving depositions or gossiping in small groups, making disparaging pronouncements on his life and character before his scattered remnants had even cooled. It was unacceptable, of course, for someone of his background and breeding to be blown to smithereens, and unforgivably bad form to desecrate their expensively landscaped grounds with his piecemeal remains.

  The Kings County Hospital was on Rutland Road. I continued the Good Samaritan routine there, but I couldn’t get to see Liam. They’d already given him a heavy sedative and he was sleeping soundly in a room on the fourth floor. Aside from a broken arm, a ruptured eardrum, a concussion, and various minor cuts and bruises, he was as fit as a bleedin’ fiddle. They’d let him go home in a couple of days.

  I didn’t give Carlson another thought until I’d left the hospital. I drove to an all-night beanery on Empire Boulevard called the Home Run Diner, three blocks from Ebbets Field. A plump old Jewish lady named Lucille ran it. She served the vilest coffee in town, along with the best eggs and hash browns. The radio was already spreading the grim news about Carlson when I walked in.

  “Ka-boom!” exclaimed Lucille with a toothless smile. Two customers in a booth chuckled. I took a seat at the end of the counter, near the radio.

  “They’ll make him a goddamn saint now,” snorted Lucille, pouring me the usual cup of murky brown liquid.

  “Hows that?” I asked.

  “Well, you gotta be dead to be a saint, don’tcha?”

  “I think there’s more to it than that, Lucille.”

  “Ain’t no such thing as a Jewish saint, you know. It’s a goddamn shame. Plenty of good Jews. Albert Einstein. Milton Berle…”

  “They’re both still alive, Lucille. And if it’s any comfort to you, I don’t think Carlson was Catholic.”

  “Plenty of good Jews around,” she persisted.

  “You’re certainly one of ’em, Lucille,” I said. “You’d get picked in a minute.”

  “Aaah,” she grunted, dismissing me with a wave.

  “When you pass on, I’ll talk
to the Pope about it. Maybe they can get you in on the sly. Unless you wanna convert first.”

  She was already ignoring me, cooking up the hash browns and sunny-side eggs she knew I’d order. I took a sip of her witch’s brew and listened to the radio announcer review the late, great D.A.’s accomplishments. Carlson’s office, the mayor, the governor and all the bigwigs would treat his death as one of those in-the-line-of-duty sacrifices, but I couldn’t buy into that. Not after seeing him so frightened in his office that day, or later at Fulton Joe’s, sounding like a man who was reciting his own obituary. What had he said? A critical lapse in judgment, leading to a series of bad decisions, crowned by an act of sheer recklessness? What act was that? Was this just about dirty pictures or something a lot more lethal? Maybe Alberto Scarpetti and the pending indictment? Was that why two of his bodyguards had followed me around? What else was in the briefcase that Arnold, Chick, and Teddy had stolen right from under the late, great Carlson’s nose?

  And what about Jorgenson? Was he just a friend who’d gone to Victory Wrecking as Carlson’s moral support, or was he in up to his effeminate little eyeballs as well?

  In what?

  Tommy Dorsey’s band had replaced the news by the time Lucille delivered the steaming eggs and hash browns. Music—life—had replaced grisly death on the airwaves of Brooklyn. Lucille was humming along with the sweet swing music, tapping her chubby fingers in time on the counter.

  My watch told me it was two in the morning. The clock over the beanery door said two-fifteen. I’d wait until first light to start tracking down Chick and Teddy. And the neighborhood prowler? He seemed even more insignificant now. Carlson’s death had raised the stakes dramatically for Arnold, Chick, Teddy, and anybody else who might know the contents of that leather briefcase. Whoever had planted the dynamite in Carlson’s car, whoever’d hot-wired him, had wanted to make triple-sure he wouldn’t walk away. They’d also sent a message as clear and chilling as a winter’s night: They were scared, too.

  And desperate.

  I mopped up the last of my egg yolk with a slice of dry toast, finished the coffee before it fused to the inside of my cup, and paid my bill. Part of the night shift from the hospital was entering the diner as I left.