Hot-Wired in Brooklyn
Page 20
“So, you’re on swing shift now?”
She didn’t answer.
“I thought we should talk,” I said.
“Talk?”
“Yes.”
“You killed my sister, and you want to talk about it.”
“She was trying to kill me, Caroline. She killed your brother. She killed Teddy and Chick.”
She started walking, past me, past the elevator. I pulled myself up.
“I wanted you to understand what happened and why. I don’t expect you to forgive it, just to understand it.”
She stopped. “The police have already explained what happened. Haven’t you read the paper?”
“That’s not what happened.”
“’Deranged,’ that’s what they called her!”
“It’s not what happened. I’ll tell you what did, if you want to hear.”
We sat on the bench outside the pediatric ward for a while. By the time I finished the story, the pain in my foot was making me wince, but there was still no response from Caroline.
“She killed your brother, Caroline. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Of course.”
“And I killed her to keep her from killing me.”
“… And some gangster.”
“That’s right.”
“I suppose he wasn’t being a gangster at that moment, so he didn’t deserve to die… at that moment.”
“Neither did Charlotte, until she tried to kill me.”
“None of this is making me feel better.”
“It isn’t meant to.”
“It’s to make you feel better, then?”
“It’s meant to explain.”
“So I’ll… ‘understand.’”
“Yes.”
“Very well, I understand. Is that all?” An even deeper coldness in her eyes dredged up images of Charlotte, but there was no murder in them, only emptiness. She was entombed within herself now, no longer a woman, no longer alive in the world. She stared blankly for another moment and then walked away.
The nurse was waiting when I got back to the fourth floor, armed with a hypo. She smiled like a satisfied lover when she was through.
I slept like a baby that night, the nightmare banished, the phantoms in full retreat. I ate a hearty breakfast the next morning, took my next hypo with a smile, and waded again into the newspaper. There was nothing more about Charlotte and me, nothing about the Scarpetti files, nothing about Jorgenson confessing to murder. I’d mailed Shork’s folder to Jorgenson the same morning DeMassio’d paid his visit, and I’d even called Jorgenson at the bank to say it was on its way. But he hadn’t come forward, and I figured he never would.
The doctor checked me just before noon. The wound was infected, he explained, and I’d have to stay another day or so. The goombahs came by again that evening, armed with a Genoa salami and a deck of cards. We played gin for a nickel a point until the nurse threatened us all with hypos. Then, after they’d left, she gave me a shot anyway.
Visiting time was almost over when Liam arrived, his head swathed in bandages.
“Well, don’t we look like all hell,” I said.
“Would’ve come sooner, Eddie lad,” he said as he sat down, offering me his good ear. “But I’ve been havin’ headaches that are somethin’ t’ behold. Doctor says they’ll go away. ‘And sure they will,’ I answer, ‘when I’m in the ground.’ And how are you, lad?”
“Okay, but I think the nurse has a thing for my sweet Italian ass.”
“Encourage her, lad.”
“She’s buck-toothed and looks like my old drill sergeant in Georgia.”
“Encourage her anyway.”
We made up limericks that brought a smile to my mouth-wired roommate until the nurse chased Liam out.
I slept like a baby again.
They didn’t give me a hypo the next morning, and the doctor looked bored examining my heel, so I figured they’d release me soon. I was feeling chipper, too, wolfing down my breakfast and then asking for seconds. Using a cane now instead of the crutches, I made my social trip through the ward in record time and read the newspaper in the solarium. Still nothing about Jorgenson, which meant there’d be nothing about Arnold.
It was almost noon and I was still reading the sports pages in my room when Nick DeMassio strolled in. I hadn’t expected him back; he’d eaten enough crow the first time not to want a repeat. I pretended it was a social call, which I knew it wasn’t.
“Morning, Nick.”
“Eddie.”
“Read about that welterweight fight at the Garden? KO in thirty seconds of the first round. Had to carry the guy out on a stretcher.”
“Uh huh.”
“Tough way to make a living.”
“Uh huh.”
“Makes shamus work look easy.”
“I went to see that Jorgenson guy after I saw you.”
“Yeah? What happened?”
“We talked. I couldn’t come right out and accuse him, you know. Like you said, nothin’s provable.”
“And?”
“I did the best I could to draw him out…”
“But?”
“But he wouldn’t take the bait. His sister came in while we were talking.”
“Sissy?”
“Yeah, that’s her, Sissy.”
“And?”
“And she listened. That was about it.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t get anywhere with the guy.”
“Thanks just the same, Nick.”
“After that, I went to Raymond Street, saw the kid, Arnold, talked to him, told him what you were tryin’ to do for him. He said he knew. He’s a changed kid, Eddie. His pals are all dead. He’s had to do some quick growin’ up in a hard spot. I was wishin’ to hell I coulda helped him more when I left, but…”
“You did your best. That’s good enough.”
“Yeah, I suppose. Anyway, I’m at the station the last coupla clays tryin’ to figure how to put some pressure on this Jorgenson guy, how to smoke him out, maybe, and then this morning I get a call from the watch commander up at Manhattan South. He tells me that the sister, Sissy, came in with this Chinese woman, Jing or somethin’…”
“Jiang.”
“Yeah, that’s her. They walked in together. Seems that Sissy and her brother had a big argument after I’d left, about Shork. She didn’t even know the guy was dead until I’d mentioned it. Anyway, I guess the brother admitted to it, but since nobody could prove it, he told her he wasn’t turning himself in. He gave her as the reason. Said that without him she’d slide right into trouble again.”
“So, now it’s her word against his if she makes a statement.”
“Not exactly. She and this Chinese woman, they had a big shopping bag with them when they walked into Manhattan South. Guess what was in it?”
“No idea, Nick.”
“A bloodstained glove and a winter coat with blood on the sleeve. She’d taken it right out of the brother’s closet. He’d washed most of the blood off, but there was enough left, even to the naked eye. Guess whose blood it matched?”
I couldn’t answer.
“Guess what else matched? Fibers. Perfect match with specimens we swept up from the scene.”
“She turned in her brother?”
“That’s what the lady did. Ain’t it a pisser?” A smile crept out.
“Jesus H. Christ” was all I could manage.
“You know what got to her, what really made the lady mad?”
“What?”
“That the brother thought he was the only one who could take care of her. Not this Jiang lady, just him. That’s what started her rummaging through his closet. Know what else she found? A .25 caliber pistol, registered to Shork.”
“Jesus H. Christ.”
“Manhattan South pulled the guy in a couple of hours ago, put it all in front of him and he sang like Crosby. I went over to Raymond Street soon as I got the call. Your boy Arnold’s free.”
CHAPTER
47
So,” I needled, “how are the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum of crime doing this fine day?” One of them stepped forward, flashing his pointy teeth. He surveyed the room like it might be a place of ambush, relaxing only when he was sure there was nobody else there. My roommate was in an operating room somewhere having his jaw rewired.
“Which one are you?” I asked, feeling cocky.
“I’m Carmine,” he said with a sneer. “He’s Rico.”
“I’m Rico,” said Rico with a matching look.
“It was cold as Hell in that fuckin’ car,” Carmine complained.
“Cold as fuckin’ Hell,” echoed Rico.
“I thought Hell was supposed to be hot,” I said with my biggest wiseass grin. They didn’t get the joke.
“Pop, he told us to watch you, so we watched you,” said Carmine. “We always do what Pop says.”
“Always,” echoed Rico.
“Pop says Al Scarpetti, may his fuckin’ mother die of rabies, offered you ten grand for the file we handed to the cops. That right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Maybe you think Pop thinks you was givin’ that file back yourself, once you got it from the broad.”
“I don’t know what your father thinks, Carmine. I only hope he thinks well of me. I respect your father.”
“You was bringin’ it back, right?”
“That was the idea.”
“Rico here, he figured you was gonna make the deal with Scarpetti…”
“No…”
“Don’t interrupt. He figured that until you pulled the broad by the hair when she had a bead on him. Now he thinks different.”
“I think different,” said Rico with a pointy-toothed smile.
“So, now, Pop says I gotta give you this.” I flinched when he reached inside his topcoat. My reaction brought a second pointy-toothed smile, and as he handed me the sealed legal-size envelope, he said, “Bang-bang,” and laughed. Rico laughed with him and said, “Bang-bang” once more as the door closed behind them. Alone in the room, I opened the envelope. Hundred dollar bills. An even hundred of them. Jimmy Santini wasn’t about to let Alberto Scarpetti offer a sum that Santini couldn’t match. I counted it three times to make sure I wasn’t in another dream. It was just pocket change to Santini, but it was a whole two years’ pay to me.
The doctor returned in late afternoon, the nurse took my temperature, orally for once, and I was declared fit to leave. My left foot was bandaged too heavily even to fit inside a hospital slipper, so they planned to take me out in a wheelchair, which was procedure anyway. Herm Kowalski was going to drive me home.
He arrived around seven o’clock and handed me a small suitcase. “Didn’t have time to stop at your place,” he explained, “so I brought you some of my own clothes. You ready to go?”
“Gotta make one more trip through the ward. Meet you at the car?”
“Sure,” said Herm, and he walked out the door.
I toured the ward in record time. When I got back to the room, Arnold Pulaski was standing next to my bed.
“I met your lawyer pal on the way up,” he said. It almost sounded like the old wiseass Arnold.
“I’m sorry I missed that. What’d you do, spit at each other?”
“I apologized.”
“You apologized? Then what?”
“He said ‘okay.’ I kinda expected him to spit, though,” he added with the hint of a handsome, boyish smile. When he laughed, I laughed with him.
“Nick DeMassio came to see me a little while ago,” I said. “He told me they’d released you.”
“He the cop from Bath Avenue?”
“That’s him. Big Sicilian guy.”
“He’s the guy who came to let me out.”
“I hope you didn’t tell him to wait.”
“Naah,” he said, and offered a broader smile. That stopped me dead, not because I wasn’t expecting it, but because it was my father’s smile.
“What’s the matter?” he asked of my staring.
“You remind me of someone I used to know.” I let it go at that, and his smile faded to a look of concern. A silence set in, and I turned to the suitcase that Herm had left.
“I gotta get dressed,” I said. “They’re lettin’ me leave now.”
“I can wait outside if you want.”
“Actually, I could use some help, gettin’ my pants on.”
“Sure, okay,” said Arnold.
I slipped the hospital gown off, sat on the bed, and put on the shorts that Herm had brought for me. They were a couple of sizes too big, but that wasn’t what got Arnold’s openmouthed attention.
I followed his gaze to my feet. “I lost the toes at Bastogne, during the war,” I explained. “Frostbite and trench foot.”
“Jeez. You were at Bastogne?”
“Spent a week there.”
His eyes drifted higher, to a series of scars along the length of my right leg. “Got those the day I jumped into France. Shrapnel from a Nazi potato masher.”
“A what?”
“Grenade. All superficial wounds, luckily. Poured a little sulfa powder on ’em, got bandaged at the aid station, went right back into the fight the same day. The medics took the fragments out later.”
His eyes moved still higher, past my appendectomy scar to the inch-and-a-half gash just under my right shoulder blade. “Knife wound,” I said. “Got that in ’39, my first year as a shamus. Help me with my pants, okay?”
We got my pants on without any trouble. Herm’s waist was a couple of inches bigger than mine. I even got his sock over the heavy bandage on my foot.
Same story with Herm’s big Hawaiian shirt. I was buttoning the last button when the kid observed, “I’m guessin’ these ain’t your clothes.”
“Damn good guess, Arnold.”
“My friends, they call me Stinky.”
“That what you want me to call you?”
“Well, it’s kind of a kid’s name. I mean, I knew Teddy and Chick from grammar school, Jimmy too. Them all bein’ dead now, I don’t know.”
“Charlotte ever call you Stinky?”
He lowered his eyes. “No.”
“Why don’t I just call you Arnie?”
He grinned at me, eyes rising. “Okay.”
I closed Herm’s suitcase, slipping the Barracuda Brothers’ thick envelope inside, and put it beside me on the floor. The nurse came in with the wheelchair, looked at Arnold, then at me. “Shall I take you downstairs now, Mr. Lombardi?”
“Another minute, okay, nurse?” She nodded and started to leave. “Say good-bye to old lockjaw for me,” I added, pointing at my absent roommate’s bed, and she closed the door. I eased myself into the chair, propped my feet on the supports, and placed the suitcase securely on my lap.
“So, Arnie, whaddya think?”
He looked like he might cry. His eyes filled up as swells of suppressed emotion rolled like high waves through him.
“I wanted to say thanks,” he said, fighting those emotions, trying not to shame himself with tears, not old enough to know there wasn’t shame in tears. Still a kid, Arnold, but he had all the material for being a man.
“You’re welcome,” I answered, offering a smile and letting it spread into my father’s. Pop’s smile, my smile, and Arnie’s smile, one and the same. “Want to push me out?” I asked. “Save the nurse some trouble?”
“Sure.” He started pushing the wheelchair, then stopped. “I’m real sorry, Mr. Lombardi. About everything. I really mean it.”
“I know you do, kid.”
“Pa, he’s got nothin’ but good stuff to say about you.”
“He’s a good man. His heart’s in the right
place.”
“And Ma, she’s sorry she hit you with the fryin’ pan that time.”
“All forgiven.”
“She was wond’rin’, y’ know, if maybe you could come over for dinner sometime. Ma, she cooks sausage and potatoes like nobody.”
“Sounds good.”
“Maybe you could be friends with Pa.”
“Don’t see why not.”
“Maybe even you and me… could be friends… even.”
“Maybe.”
“You think a dumb fuckin’ dago like you could be friends with a dumb fuckin’ Polack like me? You think so, Mr. Lombardi?”
“It’s a possibility.”
He offered my father’s warm smile again, and his hand. I took it firmly and held it.
“Thanks again, Mr. Lombardi.” He started pushing the wheelchair.
“Hey, Arnie,” I said.
“Yeah, Mr. Lombardi?”
“Call me Eddie.”
Brooklyn. Winter 1949. Private eye Eddie Lombardi is having a very bad dream—and it starts coming true the minute he wakes up.
Eddie has no interest in helping Arnold Pulaski get out of jail—as far as he’s concerned, the little weasel can rot in there. Only a tearful plea from Arnold’s father and some major arm-twisting from Eddie’s old pal Gino makes him take the case.
Arnold, whose lack of repentance is irritating in the extreme, is charged with stealing the district attorney’s car. It seems like a typical case of petty criminals trying for the big time, until Arnold’s teenage partners-in-crime are killed off one by one.
Hot on the trail of a cold-blooded killer, Eddie is confronted with opposition at every turn, in the form of a compromised D.A., an amoral female, blackmail, and a missing file that holds the case against one of Brooklyn’s biggest crime lords. If only Eddie can stay alive long enough to figure out how everything fits together…