Hot-Wired in Brooklyn (6 page)

“Sure, I know, Carlson. You’re the public prosecutor. That makes this a public office. And I’m your public.”

I studied him. He reminded me of a lieutenant I broke in during the war. Same squared shoulders, well-trimmed blond good looks,
china-blue eyes, peach fuzz. At least that blue blood had learned how to bark orders by the time he tripped and fell pretty-face-first
onto a land mine in northern France. I doubted if this guy Carlson had even earned a bloody nose on a grammar school playground.
Maybe he was a regular dynamo in court, but right now he looked like a worried little boy in a Brooks Brothers suit.

He turned, leaned his putter against a mahogany desk as big as a boxcar, and sat down in the swivel chair behind it. It seemed
to give him courage, like a deep foxhole.

“You had no right to barge in here,” he said with a little more moxie. “I can have you thrown out.” He glanced at the intercom,
finger at the ready.

“You can sure try.”

His finger wavered.

“You can call your blue goons if you want,” I said, taking the burr out of my voice. “But I phoned for an appointment, and
I’ve been waiting an hour. I’ve got a reason to be here.”

“I assume this is important.”

“More than your golf game.”

He glanced, expressionless, at the putter, then turned
back to me. “I have a few important cases pending. The putting helps me think.”

“It wasn’t helping me wait.”

“Very well. My apologies.”

I sat down without being asked. An uncomfortable, straight-backed chair, the kind they have in those little, windowless rooms
at the precinct houses where big-fisted cops bully confessions out of small, frightened men. But I was doing the interrogating
here.

“Pulaski, the kid who stole your car…”

“Yes?”

“He’s got something on you. What is it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What’s he got? What does he know?”

Carlson was out of his chair again. “Really, Mr….”

“Lombardi.” I pulled my business card out of my shirt pocket and flipped it across the desk. He picked it up and looked at
it. “Does that help?” I asked.

“You’re a private investigator.”

“Private and discreet. Well?”

“I don’t know what you…”

“Look, it should be easy. The kid knows what you’re up to or he doesn’t.”

“Really, Mr. Lombardi, this is too much!”

“What is?”

“You cannot simply barge in here…”

“I didn’t barge, remember? I sat in a chair for an hour. That’s called waiting.”

“Really, Mr. Lombardi…”

“Okay. Let’s start simple. Arnold says the keys were on
the seat…”

“You represent this hoodlum?”

“The card says shamus, not shyster. I’m just tryin’ to help the kid’s father. So, were the keys on the seat?”

“Of course not. I was at home that evening in Flatbush. The car was at the curb, the keys were in the house.”

“You got a garage?”

“Of course.”

“How come the car wasn’t in the garage?”

“I had a dinner to attend that evening.”

“Sons of Italy?”

“Lions Club. Really, Mr. Lombardi…”

“The police report says the car was stolen around eleven
P.M.
”

“How do
you
know what the police report said?”

“I heard it from a little bird.” A big Sicilian bluebird, but Carlson didn’t have to know that. “So you were already back
from the Lions Club meeting by, what, nine, nine-thirty? Why didn’t you put it in the garage then?”

“Are you
interrogating
me, Mr. Lombardi? Do you know how easily I could have you put away?”

“For what? I’m not trying to shake you down. I just want to know what the kid’s got on you. It’s a simple question.”

He didn’t answer.

“Okay, let’s talk about the car again. Why was it parked at the curb instead of in the garage at eleven o’clock that night?”

The color drained from his face as he tilted forward, bone-white fists pressed hard against the polished mahogany of the desk.
“If it’s any of your
business,
I was meeting a young lady
at the Hotel Bossert for a nightcap.”

“Ever eat at Fulton Joe’s?”

He took refuge again in his swivel chair, still testy. “Of course.”

“Ever park outside it?”

“Of course, but not my own car. I only attend luncheons there. I use the county car.”

“And you don’t leave the keys on the seat?”

“Of course not.”

“So, what does Arnold know?”

“Nothing!”

“What does he have on you?”

“He has
nothing
on me!” he exploded. “Quite the contrary. I have grand theft auto and felony murder on
him!”

“Then why are you so scared? What does he
know,
Carlson?!”

“This is absurd!”

My voice rose as I stood up and kicked the chair out behind me.
“Is it?
He’s sitting down there in Raymond Street, Mr. District Attorney, like a Cheshire cat with a whole goddamn stomach full of
canaries. He doesn’t even care about your grand theft auto rap. He’s laughing, out loud, at your murder charge. He’s laughing
at you, Carlson. Why?”

“How should I…?”

My fist came down hard on his desk.
“Why?”

“Very well, Mr. Lombardi.” His hand, shaking, went for the intercom. “You force me to call for the guard.”

“Does
he
know?”

He kept eye contact only a moment before pushing the button. “Phyllis,” he said hollowly into the box, “Mr.
Lombardi is leaving now. Please see him to the door.”

“Okay, Carlson,” I said, “if that’s the way it has to be.” He eased back into his chair and offered a look that was as little-boy
frightened as it was rich-boy defiant.

“Mr. Jorgenson is here to see you,” Phyllis’s voice called back, too sweetly.

“Have him come right in,” he answered, and let go of the button. He was pretending to look at his mail as I walked out, his
chest heaving as if he’d run up twenty flights of stairs.

The guy waiting in reception reminded me of my high school French teacher: feminine, tall, angular, blotchy reddish skin,
fuzzy head of red, unkempt hair. He looked Carlson’s age, maybe a little younger. He was too casually dressed to be here on
business, so I figured him to be Carlson’s buddy. Figuring that, I couldn’t resist the temptation to bust his balls.

“Give him a big kiss for me,” I said, nodding toward Carlson’s office. The pretty-eyed way he looked back, I was almost sure
he would.

M
y sister Letty lived on 77th Street, in a red brick two-family with an old, sheltering oak in front. Her lawn was home to
half a dozen hand-painted statues of the saints, each protected by a small stone grotto. In spring she grew festive daffodils
and geraniums around them, but this was winter, and they looked stark and abandoned. St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost
things, looked a little lost himself beside the porch steps.

I arrived conspicuously early, hoping to make an early exit. Letty kissed me at the door, took my coat, and shunted me into
the living room. Her three little
bambini
were too busy screaming at each other in a back bedroom to notice me, but fat Dino, her imbecile husband, was right up front
in his recliner chair waving a finger at me. As usual, he had crime on his mind, and as usual, that one thought filled it
to capacity.

“I’m betting they didn’t do it, Ed,” Dino announced. “I’m betting they’re not guilty.” Dino is the only person who calls
me Ed. I could dislike him for it, but I have so many better reasons. He attracts contempt like an electromagnet.

“Give up on the Sacco-Vanzetti thing, will ya?” I harped. “They fried those guys twenty years ago. Lotta good you can do ’em
now.” Dino figures that every
italiano
arrested since those two saps, including Lucky Luciano and Capone, was probably railroaded. You listen to Dino long enough,
you’ll think even Caligula and the Borgias were misunderstood.

“No, no, this is different,” he harped back.

“That so?”

I slumped into the chair across from him, a Queen Anne with bulging springs in the seat and back. Its thin armrests were covered
by white lace doilies that stuck to my suit jacket whenever I lifted my arms.

The three
bambini,
having just noticed me, rushed up like a wave and clung to my legs like soft, warm barnacles, shouting, “Uncle Eddie! Uncle
Eddie! Horsey ride!” I patted their heads and waited for Letty to come in from the kitchen and peel them off. They could strip
me to my boxer shorts and decorate me with linguini and meat sauce before fat Dino lifted a finger.

“Leave your uncle alone,” Letty scolded. “Papa wants to talk to him. He’ll play horsey later. Won’t you, Uncle Eddie?” I nodded,
they raced screaming into the entrance hall, fought each other for their winter coats, then stampeded like the Canarsie Indians
out the front door.

Letty leaned over, kissed me, brushed her hand softly through my hair, and smiled down. Even through the smile, her face looked
harsh. It always does, even when she’s thinking happy thoughts. My other two sisters, Maggie and Fran, are knockouts, but
Letty was born with a mug like a constipated
nun. It takes all her effort just to put the best side of a bad face forward.

She lingered a moment, then returned to the kitchen.

“Okay, Dino,” I said. “So who’s not guilty this time?”

Dino eased forward, eyes aglow. “You hear about those kids who got arrested for shootin’ crap on the roof at New Utrecht High?”
He shifted in the recliner and grabbed a handful of
biscotti
from the big bowl in his lap. The
Brooklyn Eagle,
where he’d read about the break-in, was wedged between his fat behind and the armrest.

“The way I heard it, they got arrested for breakin’ in, wreckin’ the school cafeteria, and bustin’ down doors so they could
get
to the roof.”

“That’s
why
they got arrested, sure, but how do we know it was
them,
Ed? How do we know they didn’t chase the real vandals away, then stop to shoot crap on the roof?”

“Don’t you believe in evidence, Dino? Like fingerprints on doors, like the crowbar one of ’em had to jimmy the doors?”

“Maybe the real vandals wore gloves. Maybe these kids just picked the crowbar up so nobody’d trip on it.”

“Real considerate crap shooters.”

“All right, Ed, but there’s two sides to every coin. Cops never even try to turn the coin over.”

“The kids who got caught, what’d they say?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yes, and that’s my point.”

“Which is?”

“Which is that maybe they got in trouble for what they didn’t say and didn’t do.”

I mulled that over for a moment. When I was certain that Dino was as serious as he sounded, I said, “You know, it’s too bad
you weren’t around when they knocked off that guy Caesar.”

Dino’s eyes bulged and his mouth fell open. “Jesus! Somebody knocked off Sid Caesar?”

“No! No! I’m talkin’ about Julius. Some guys got in a lotta trouble for stickin’ knives in him, way back when, remember?”

“Julius? Julius Caesar! Oh, yeah.”

“Well, it’s too bad you weren’t around then.”

“Oh?”

“Sure. Don’t you see? You coulda explained to everybody that some
other
guys must’ve stuck the knives
in.
Brutus, Cassius and their pals, good Samaritans all, they were just try in’ to pull the knives
out.”

I waited. I didn’t crack a smile. When Dino’s open mouth started twitching at the corners, I knew exactly what he was going
to do next.

“Letty!”
he whined. When she rushed in from the kitchen, Dino pointed rudely at me. “He’s tryin’ to make me look stupid again!”

“Who needs to try?” See?

“Letty, your husband’s an idiot.
Imbecille.
His next thought’s gonna die of loneliness.”

Letty’s quick, testy glare dissolved almost immediately into forgiveness. She patted Dino on the head, smiled her harsh, loving
smile, and returned to the kitchen without a word. Dino picked up his copy of the
Brooklyn Eagle
and hid behind it, munching his
biscotti
like a starved water buffalo. I connected
the dots on the wallpaper, savored the aromas of Letty’s fine Neapolitan cooking, and enjoyed the welcome silence.

Shining through the dullness of Dino’s argument lay a small gem of truth, though I didn’t have the kindness to credit him:
you might get arrested for being stupid, or silent, but you shouldn’t have to do time or fry for it. Like the kids on the
roof, like Arnold. Arnold figured his silence was a kind of power, but it was also his weakness, his
stupidita,
because if he kept it long enough, it’d follow him right into the grave. Neither Dom Scarpetti’s goons nor Carlson’s brutes
in blue were the kind you’d want to fool with. If you had any secrets, you’d soon be sharing them, or spitting teeth. Or worse.
That made me think about Charlotte, the only person Arnold
did
want to talk to. I had to find her, and soon.

But first I had to get past my other two sisters,
their
idiot husbands, and their gaggle of kids. When Maggie, her husband Romeo, and their twin daughters arrived, Dino was still
hiding behind the newspaper. But he perked up when the girls charged his recliner and bounced onto his ample lap. Fran, her
husband Joe, and their three kids came next, and Letty’s three
bambini
rushed in from outside to round out the madhouse. I wolfed my way through dinner, gave the obligatory horsey rides, and finally
begged off around seven o’clock.

Dino refused to see me to the door, shake hands, or be placated. For a moment I felt blessed, invincible, but it didn’t last.
I stepped off Letty’s porch into the January cold and looked briefly into the eyes of her stone saints before turning away.
St. Jude, the patron saint of desperate causes, whispered a warning, but I didn’t quite hear it.