Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics (6 page)

He and Palangio entered the Bar and Grill, followed by a hundred men, women, and children. Elias dialed the number deliberately.

“Hullo,” he said, “hullo, Charlie? Lissen, Charlie, if yuh send a wreckin’ car down to Lammanawitz’s Bar and Grill, yuh will find two of yer automobiles. Yuh lousy Charlie.” He hung up carefully.

“All right, Palangio,” he said.

“Yuh bet,” Palangio answered.

“Now we oughta go to the movies,” Elias said.

“That’s right,” Palangio nodded seriously.

“Yuh oughta be shot,” Geary shouted.

“They’re playin’ Simone Simon,” Elias announced to the crowd. “Let’s go see Simone Simon.”

Walking steadily, arm in arm, like two gentlemen, Elias and Angelo Palangio went down the street, through the lengthening shadows, toward Simone Simon.

LUCK BE A LADY

BY
M
AGGIE
E
STEP
Kensington
(Originally published in 2004)

Harry Sparrow’d had a run of luck so rotten you could smell it three blocks away. Harry felt like everywhere he set foot folks gave him the twice over and then some. Even doing hump things like his laundry and shopping. Used to be Old Elsa at the Laundorama on Caton Avenue always had a kind word for him, even sometimes let him use the special dryer at the end free of charge. Nowadays Elsa acted like Harry had Ebola. Lousy way to go. Blood pouring out of your eyes and mouth. Harry didn’t like blood much. Or he guessed he didn’t. He’d somehow made it through a lot of years living on the left side of the law without coming close to blood. Probably because Harry never carried a weapon. You took a fall with a weapon, it was Armed Robbery. Harry kept it to Breaking and Entering. He’d only ever done a little time. Jail not prison. Harry wanted to keep it that way.

Harry’s luck took a turn for the better one night when he least expected it. The day had been lousy. The mercury hitting a hundred and staying there even though it was barely May. Harry hadn’t wanted to be cooped up in his room that stank of baroque spices from his landlady Mrs. Desuj’s cooking. So Harry had taken the F train to the A train to Aqueduct Racetrack to meet Mc-Cormick, a sometimes associate who swore he had a live tip from an apprentice jockey. McCormick was a small man who wore the same navy three-piece suit every day of the week. He had a history of mental illness and Harry took everything he said with a grain of salt. But Harry knew that sometimes McCormick’s tips were live. So he kept an open mind about it. He tucked a C note in his sock and two twenties in the money clip given him by Susan, the last girl he’d dated. Susan had been arrested for forgery shortly after moving into Harry’s room with him. Harry couldn’t say he’d been sorry to see her go. She was pretty and fond of having sex in public places. Thing was, she had a mean streak. Even that would have been okay, but it was unpredictable. Harry would ask Susan to pass the sugar and she would snap. Start shouting at Harry and kicking him in the shins.

Harry and McCormick were at the rail in time for the first race. Harry glanced at the program. He was familiar with several of the horses running. He played a straight two dollar trifecta with an 18-1 shot over a 10-1 with the favorite to show. Miraculously, with just a sixteenth of a mile to go, the three horses in Harry’s trifecta were running in the order he’d bet them. Harry felt the whole world opening up for him. The sky was wide and beautiful. Two strides shy of the wire, the second place horse stuck her nose in front of the 18-1 shot, ruining Harry’s trifecta. Harry felt sick and headed home, leaving McCormick behind to chat up a floozy brunette with a skin condition.

On the train ride home, two kids got on with a boom box blaring an old Grandmaster Flash song. Harry had seen these kids before. They had a good act. People liked to give them money. The taller of the kids sat the boombox down in the middle of the floor as the shorter one started dancing like Michael Jackson. The kid could dance. Everyone on the train could see it. Then the bigger kid got in on it. He moved well too. He did a few somersaults and a standing back flip. He picked up the smaller kid, twirled him above his head, and miscalculated. There was a horrible sound as the smaller kid’s head smashed against the ceiling of the train. At first the tall kid tried to pretend everything was okay. But the smaller kid was just lying there on the floor. There was a nurse on the train car. She examined the small kid. Told him not to move. Harry knew a bad day was getting worse. Even when the kid eventually sat up and seemed okay. It was a day full of bad things.

So it was with some surprise that at 11:53 that night Harry Sparrow realized his luck had turned. At 10:15 he had walked down 17th Street. He was wearing dark clothing and noiseless rubber-soled shoes. He carried a black briefcase. He passed by the house he’d been eyeing and noted that the front stoop light was on but the rest of the brownstone was in darkness as it had been for many nights. He’d been careful in staking this place out. Had gotten an inside scoop from the maid who had once dated a friend of Harry’s uncle. The Millers were upstate at their summer place for two weeks and they did not have an alarm. Harry approached from the backyard. The windows were locked. He put tape on the window then discretely cracked it. He reached his arm in, undid the window lock, and climbed in.

He didn’t know much about the layout of the place. Only that the master bedroom was on the second floor, the safe behind an oil painting of a landscape. Jewelry and savings bonds in the safe. The Millers did not trust banks. They were the children of Holocaust survivors. Or so the maid had told the friend of Harry’s uncle. Maybe it was wrong to rob the children of Holocaust survivors, but Harry’s uncle had mentioned the Millers were unkind to their pet cat. Harry liked animals.

Harry had trained himself to see in the dark. He had a tiny beautiful flashlight in his briefcase, but so far he hadn’t run into the kind of darkness he couldn’t see through. Harry now made his way to the central staircase and went upstairs.

Harry had a big surprise waiting for him when he set foot in the master bedroom. It was a lavish bedroom. There was velvet and brocade. The ceilings soared and wore their 19th-century moldings intact. At the center of the room was an immense antique sleigh bed. On the bed sat a small woman with a gun. Just sitting in the dark like that with a gun. She was pointing the gun at Harry. Harry didn’t like guns but he knew a little about them. He thought this one looked like a Raven .25.

“Hello, you must be the burglar,” the girl said.

“Harry Sparrow, nice to meet you,” Harry said. What else was he going to say? She was wildly attractive and she had a gun.

“We’re in a quandary, aren’t we?” the girl asked. She smiled. She had cute teeth. She also had very long brown hair and a face like a fox. She was petite but looked like she had some strength in her. Maybe she’d taken gymnastics as a child. Maybe even gone semi-pro with the gymnastics but wasn’t quite good enough for the big leagues. Had enrolled in college studying some subject her heart wasn’t really in. Her heart had been in the gymnastics. So there was a little bitterness there for one so young. But she could have been thirty. It was hard to tell. After college, she drifted a little. Now she was the house sitter for the Millers. Maybe the nanny? But the kids weren’t here. Maybe she was pet sitting for the abused cat.

“A quandary. Yup,” Harry said. Harry couldn’t quite figure it. What made her wildly attractive. She was dressed in a pair of baggy navy gym shorts and a white tank top. She was close to flatchested and her legs were short, albeit shapely. Mostly it had to do with her face and what was in her eyes. Mischief was in her eyes.

“Are you the house sitter?”

“Something like that,” she said. Smiled a little, showing off the cute teeth.

“You’re not what I expected,” she added.

“You were expecting me?”

“I heard the window cracking downstairs. My pa’s house got broke into once when I was ten. Same thing. The burglar cracked the glass. Pretty quiet about it, but I have overdeveloped auditory and visual senses. Always been that way. Some folks say it’s a gift, but like all gifts it’s a curse. I hear too much and I can’t bear bright light.”

She looked so tired when she said it. She was tired of hearing too much. Tired of the light hurting her eyes.

“Lucky I have my friend,” she said, indicating the gun with her chin.

“I wish you’d stop pointing that at me, I don’t like guns.”

“An outlaw who doesn’t like guns. You’re a man of many faces, Harry Sparrow.”

He liked the way she used his name.

“I don’t believe in violence,” Harry said.

“Ah yes, but the twenty-thousand-dollar question is, do you believe in love, Harry Sparrow?”

“You haven’t told me your name,” Harry said.

“Rebecca Church,” the girl said.

Keeping an eye on the Raven .25, Harry sat down at the edge of the bed. He began asking the girl questions about herself. He asked did she like gymnastics.

“I hate sports,” she said.

Harry said that sports were often detestable.

Rebecca was sitting cross-legged now. Her gym shorts were loose and Harry found himself staring at the place where gym short separated from inner thigh. Rebecca was not wearing underwear. Harry knew it couldn’t be wise to stare at an armed girl’s privates, but the more he struggled not to, the more he stared.

“You’re staring,” Rebecca said. Though she’d been resting the gun on her knee, she now picked it up and pointed it at Harry again. She made no effort to close her legs.

The gun was too close to Harry. It made him see double. It made his heart bump against his ribs. He reached over and touched Rebecca’s cheek. Her eyes became smaller. He then ran one finger from her left knee up to her inner thigh. He let his finger rest there just where the gym shorts ended. The gun was inches from Harry’s head. He put his mouth where his finger was resting. He repeatedly kissed that spot of thigh. He closed his eyes.

Harry Sparrow had always had a keen sense of self-preservation. That was all gone now. He started biting into Rebecca’s upper thigh. He wanted to transplant himself inside of her.

Harry finally stopped biting the thigh, reached his fingers under the elastic waist of the gym shorts, and pulled them down to her knees. Rebecca kept holding the gun even as Harry yanked the tank top over her head. Harry let out a moan as he looked at her small body. The pubic hair a little unruly. It made Harry love her slightly, right then and there.

Rebecca rested the gun on her belly and moaned. Eventually, Harry reached for the gun. He got hold of it before Rebecca realized what was what. He didn’t point it at her. Just held it.

“Get up,” Harry said. All he wanted was to swallow her. Instead, he dressed her. She let him, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Harry retrieved her hairbrush from the bathroom and brushed her hair. She pouted. She put one hand down the front of her gym shorts and sucked the thumb of her other hand. Harry gave her the gun back.

Later on that night, Harry Sparrow learned that Rebecca Church was indeed the house sitter for the Millers. The Millers were friends of her second cousin Jim. Rebecca had been drifting from sublet to sublet since hitting town six months earlier. She’d been glad for a nice place to stay, but then found she didn’t like the Millers. They’d seemed fine when she’d briefly met them the day they left on their trip, but once Rebecca had been in their house twenty-four hours, she disliked the Millers intensely. She disliked their magazines and their clothes that she saw hanging in their closets. The children’s rooms were all wrong, decorated in banal pastels, as if all kids were supposed to like pastel. No kids Rebecca knew liked pastel.

By the time Harry Sparrow came to burglarize the place, Rebecca actively hated the Millers. Harry she liked. She didn’t have second thoughts about helping Harry clean the place out.

“What about your cousin? Isn’t this going to reflect badly on him?”

“I barely know him,” Rebecca said, leaving it at that.

When Harry had a little trouble with the safe, Rebecca came and put her ear to it. She could hear things Harry could never hear. She could hear strangers’ heartbeats on the subway. She could hear the small sounds insects made. She helped Harry get the safe open.

Once Harry had taken the jewelry and bonds and put them into the bag he’d had folded in his briefcase, Rebecca went to find Sally, the cat. She hadn’t heard about the Millers’s alleged cruelty to animals the way Harry had, but the food they had left for Sally contained by-products. Rebecca strongly disapproved of by-products so she decided to take the cat. As they left the house by the front door, Rebecca not even bothering to lock it behind her, Harry glanced at his watch. It was 11:53 p.m. on May 2 and Harry Sparrow’s luck had turned.

Rebecca came with Harry to his furnished room in the attic of the Desuj’s house on Friel Place. It was a stubby street just a few blocks from Prospect Park, but worlds away from some of the more upscale neighborhoods that hugged the park’s perimeter. Humble frame houses were jammed together like teeth. The houses’ inhabitants were working-class people from India, the Dominican Republic, and Guyana. Harry himself was from New Jersey. But no one minded.