Hot-Wired in Brooklyn (12 page)

“Long, black hair, real pretty face, Tony says. Name’s Charlotte.”

“I’ll see you later, Ang,” I said, and walked away.

“Remember, about best man. I asked first.”

. . .

It was overcast and prematurely dark when I got home. It would be snowing soon. Except for an occasional blizzard,
like the one in ‘46—’47, Brooklyn didn’t experience snow in the extreme. I was wondering whether a snowstorm would aid or
hinder me in tracking down the parish prowler. I could follow his footprints easily enough, but could I see him through all
that white camouflage?

I didn’t notice the light in my second floor window until I was right under it. That wasn’t how I’d left the place. It could’ve
been Gino or Tony, or even Frankie up there; they all have keys. But they don’t usually come up unless the light’s already
on. My mind dwelled just for a moment on Carlson and his warning: that I could be dead if I knew more about what was in the
briefcase. Did I already know too much? Did somebody think I knew too much? But if somebody was up there waiting to silence
me, why tip me off by turning on the light? I did a quick survey of the street, out of habit. No stray cars, nothing out of
order.

I didn’t have my gun. There was no reason to think I needed it at Fulton Joe’s or St. Margaret’s, but I might need it here.
The downstairs was dark. That could mean the intruder or intruders had gone straight upstairs, which would give me the chance
to get my gun from my desk drawer or the spare in the wall safe. That was, if somebody wasn’t hiding in the dark down there
and using the light upstairs as a decoy.

I decided to chance an entry. I opened the downstairs door slowly and let it swing open. I closed it just as carefully and
listened for noises inside. My office was quiet and empty. I unlocked my desk drawer, pulled out my .38 and checked the cylinders.
I closed the drawer without a sound and started slowly up the stairs. I was halfway up when I heard the radio, very low. One
of the pop stations. Bing Crosby. I moved even
more slowly to the landing and waited to the left of the door. Still nothing but the music. The door was already open an inch
from the jamb, so I just pushed it the rest of the way.

“Ooooo!” squealed the young woman who was sprawled across my couch. “Let’s see your other gun, too!”

Charlotte, grinning, without a stitch.

M
y eyes settled on a familiar pair of well-formed, buoyant breasts, the nipples swollen and apple red. I fought the urge to
let my eyes drift any lower. She was beautiful poison, and only a fool drank it.

“How’d you get in here?” I asked icily.

She stood up from the couch and wiggle-walked toward me. A stalking mode, breasts ands hips swaying together. “I picked your
lock,” she said when she was in front of me.

Her smooth ivory skin looked even whiter against her dark hair, and my eyes drifted downward in spite of my best intentions.
“With what?” I asked.

A sultry laugh followed. “I didn’t walk in here like
this.
Too cold. The picks are with my clothes.” She was near enough now to touch, but she stepped back to give me a better look.
Her hand moved easily down her bare flank. I followed it to the inside of her thigh, past even whiter ivory, watching the
tip of her index finger disappear into folds of
pink flesh.

“Maybe you should do more of that and leave saps like Arnold alone,” I said, walking past her into the kitchen.

“This is just warm-up.”

“Not for anything that includes me.”

“You don’t want this?”

I pulled the kitchen curtains closed. “Sorry. Try next door.” I wondered for a moment what would happen if she took that suggestion
literally. Mrs. Pellino, a sixty-year-old widow, lived one house down. One house up belonged to the spinster Cappoletti sisters
and their invalid father. Whatever would they think if they saw Charlotte leaving my place, even fully dressed?

Charlotte struck another pose and put on a pouty face. “You’re really going to pass this up?”

“Exactly right. Where are your clothes?”

She moved closer, cupping her breasts in her hands. “Come on, big boy, you want that drink now? You don’t have to be afraid
of little Charlotte.”

I pushed her away, harder than I meant to, and she landed on the rug in front of the sofa. She laughed at me from the floor.

“Your clothes…”

She was still laughing. She pointed to a small heap next to the couch.

“Your sister know where you are?”

Her tone turned quickly acid. “It’s not her business.”

“It will be now,” I said, and walked to the telephone.

“You’re calling my sister?”

“That’s right.”

“The
hell
you are!” She rushed me, tearing at the handset,
and I pushed her away again.

“Don’t care much for your big sister, do you?”

“She’s an ugly cow,” she hissed, stepping back.

“And I thought
you
were the one with the milk.” I put the handset down, and she relaxed. “Okay, then. Just put your clothes on and get out of
here.”

“Sure. Have it your way.” She dressed slowly, provocatively, like a strip tease in reverse. I wondered if she did anything—washing
the dishes, cooking hamburgers, licking an envelope—without erotic overtones. To keep my moral defenses up, I turned my back
to her and put the coffee pot on. I didn’t offer.

“When’s your brother’s funeral?”

“Saturday,” she said, as if I’d asked about a bus she never took.

“You always grieve so hard?”

She didn’t answer that one, so I sent out another feeler. “Been to see Arnold?”

She laughed.

“How about Chick and Teddy. Talked to them lately?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“In your own pants, or somebody else’s?”

“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.

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.”