Hot-Wired in Brooklyn (13 page)

“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.

T
here 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.

“Ka-boom!”
exclaimed Lucille, by way of a greeting, and everybody laughed.

Everybody but me.

A
t eight-thirty, after a few hours’ sleep and a shower, I returned to Caroline Hutchinson’s building, hoping she didn’t work
the day shift. My unanswered knocks told me that she probably did. I didn’t know which hospital she worked at, and I didn’t
have time to go looking. Charlotte would know, but I couldn’t expect any help from her.

Especially her. So I left.

But I didn’t go far. The address Arnold had given for Teddy was just one floor down, apartment 2B. I heard small noises inside
when I knocked, but no one came to the door. I knocked again, and a woman’s voice responded, faintly, and thick with fear.
“Please go away. He’s not home.”

“I’m a friend of Arnold’s, I’m looking for Teddy,” I shouted through the wood, but no voice answered. I was about to try again
when I heard footsteps in the stairwell. Caroline Hutchinson stepped onto the landing, saw me, and froze in place.

“Graveyard shift,” I heard myself say.

Her coat was open, revealing a white nurse’s uniform and more of her natural assets. She still looked haggard, burdened.

“Teddy’s mother won’t answer the door,” I explained. “Maybe you… can help.”

Her eyes were still fixed on me when she knocked. I didn’t understand the look. “It’s Caroline, Mrs. Mitchell,” she said to
the woman inside. “Please open the door.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I need to talk to you, Eddie,” she said softly, just as the door opened.

A pale, middle-aged woman in an apron peered out. Her back was bowed, her shoulders slumped, as if she were used to carrying
an anvil around. Her eyes conveyed the same deep, desolate sadness as Caroline’s.

“This is the man I told you about,” she reassured the woman. “It’s all right. He can help you.”

The woman backed slowly away from the door. The room was small and poorly-lighted, like Caroline’s, and it matched the mood.

She led us to the kitchen. I sat in one of the straight-backed chairs at the table, hoping the woman would sit also. She did,
but she gave no sign of comfort in being off her feet. Caroline stood behind her, offering a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
The woman smiled warily, kneading her kitchen apron as I spoke.

“Mrs. Mitchell, do you know where Teddy is?”

“No.”

“Why are you so frightened?”

She twitched in the chair but didn’t answer. Her eyes sought out Caroline.

“Two men came here.” Caroline explained finally. “They demanded to know where Teddy was. They threatened her, first with rape,
then with death, if she didn’t tell them.”

“What did these men look like?” I asked the woman.

“Gangsters,” she said in a small, bitter voice.

“Were they large, wearing heavy coats and hats pulled low?”

“Gangsters. Animals. Touched me, one of them… touched me.” She closed her eyes, trying to blot out the memory.

“Mrs. Mitchell?”

I glanced at Caroline, who shook her head.

“I don’t know what your son looks like, Mrs. Mitchell. Do you have any pictures of him?”

Caroline nodded in the direction of the living room, where a small cluster of photographs in frames adorned an end table.

“May I borrow the most recent picture of Teddy, Mrs. Mitchell? I promise to return it.”

She nodded, her eyes still closed. The photograph was of a lean, square-shouldered, dark-haired youth with strong features,
what the neighbors would call a fine-looking boy. He would mature into handsome manhood if he lived long enough.

Caroline took my arm and we withdrew. The woman followed, closing the door behind us without a good-bye. I heard the click
of the latch, and Caroline and I were alone in the hall.