Hot-Wired in Brooklyn
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Authors: Douglas Dinunzio
HOT-WIRED IN BROOKLYN
. Copyright © 2001 by Douglas DiNunzio. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
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First eBook Edition: October 2009
ISBN: 978-0-7595-2471-2
for Jean,
and for my Uncle Ed
...
Dreams are true while they last,
and do we not live in dreams?
—Tennyson.
In Memorian
Contents
1
G
reat view from the bridge, eh, Lombardi?”
Not from where I was dangling.
The goon who was standing on my fingers grinned, feral eyes gleaming through the early morning dark, phantom lips glowing
like purple neon. The sky waxed a deeper black, space constricted, time stretched out as thin and taut as piano wire.
He ground my fingers harder under his weight, turned to the goon next to him and laughed. The sound echoed off steel.
“It’s freezin’ out here,” said the other goon, pulling his overcoat tighter around his bovine neck. He was in silhouette.
Snowflakes fell behind him, just beyond the superstructure of what they used to call the Great East River Suspension Bridge.
Brooklyn Bridge.
“C’mon, the fun’s just startin’,” said the one on my fingers.
“Yeah, well, my ass is freezin’.”
Nobody was asking how
I
felt. As for the view, I could see only the underside of the roadbed that carried traffic to and from Manhattan. We were
on a catwalk that ran beneath the bridge, protected from the snow and away from prying eyes. Not that there were any. There
wasn’t a car on the road or a pedestrian on the promenade.
About an hour had passed since they’d jammed a .45 against my kidney, muscled me into a black sedan outside my two-family
house on 16th Avenue in Bensonhurst, and taken me for a little early morning interrogation. No faces, only disembodied features
floating incongruously in pitch black. Voices harsh and loud, but remote, like they were on the radio. They’d been hounding
me for what seemed a lot longer than an hour, and I’d been giving them the same reply.
“Tell us,” they’d say.
“Tell you
what?”
“You
know.”
Finally, the goon who was standing on my fingers bent over and grabbed my coat collar behind the neck. He slid his foot away
and lifted me effortlessly. He said nothing. The snowflakes fell. The East River flowed dark and cold and unconcerned beneath
us.
I tried to read his intentions in the utter blankness of his face. When that failed, I went with my natural instinct and cracked
wise. “Givin’ up already? But you were doin’ so
swell.
You got a real future,
paisano,
as a door stop.”
I waited for a reaction. Most goons don’t like to be kidded when they’re working, but this one didn’t seem to care. He just
lifted me higher. I had a kink in my neck now from looking
up at him, but there was still nothing much to see. Like the other goon, he was there, but he wasn’t.
“We don’t
like
wiseasses, shamus,” snarled the other as he moved closer. He was working a toothpick inside his cavernous mouth, as if to
prove he could do it and still say medium-sized words at the same time.
“Understand?”
he added when I didn’t answer.
I understood. Wiseass I am. Even my
goombahs,
my best pals, will tell you. Eddie Lombardi’s the name, Fast Eddie if you’re from the neighborhood. I find my share of trouble,
but usually I know where it’s coming from and why.
Not this time.
As the big goon took me to eye level, his partner cuddled up. I could smell his breath, although I couldn’t see it in the
frosty air.
“You gonna tell us now?” he grumbled.
“You oughta cut down on the calamari with garlic,” I answered, making a sour face. A big fist hit me in the stomach; the smiler
kept his grip and my body swung out over the river. He lifted me even higher and extended his arm fully. Steel grip. Impossibly
strong arms.
Superman, I thought as my burning lungs sucked in cold air.
“Let’s try again, shamus,” said Superman.
“Sure,” I croaked. “I really wanna cooperate with you guys. I mean it. Just gimme a clue, okay?”
“About what?”
“About what I’m supposed to
know
so maybe I can
tell
you, so maybe you won’t drop me in the goddamn
river”
Superman turned to Calamari Breath. “He knows, don’t he?”
“Sure he does. He’s just pullin’ our chain. He keeps pullin’ it, he’s gonna get flushed.”
They cackled the way hoods always cackle at their own jokes, rudely, tediously. When they stopped, I tried a little bravado.
“Look,” I said, “I’m gettin’ tired of this. I don’t know who or what you want. So, get specific or get lost.”
That peeved Calamari Breath. He pulled a switchblade from his overcoat pocket, flicked it open, and Superman dangled me from
the bridge again.
“This how you want it?” asked Calamari Breath. Without waiting for an answer, he stuck the blade through the back of my left
hand, deep enough to make me cry out, but not enough to dull the tip on the steel surface under it.
“Just tell us,” said Superman.
“Tell you
what?”
“You
know.”
“Yeah.
You
know.”
Calamari Breath stuck the knife in again. Right hand this time. With the paralyzing pain came the sudden, welcome rush of
an epiphany.
“Okay! Okay! I think I know what you want.”
“So, tell.”
“Yeah, tell.”
“This is about the kid, isn’t it? Arnold Pulaski!”
Superman turned to Calamari Breath. “I told you he knew.”
“I don’t know where the chicken-thievin’ little prick is,” I protested. “But if you want to get him, I’ll help you for Chrissake!”
I told them everything. His address, who his parents were, and what he looked like: a skinny, pimply, teenaged jerk with
greasy hair slicked back into a duck’s ass. Arnold Pulaski. My nemesis, my open wound, still making my life a purgatory.
Superman’s eyes glowed like a hobgoblin’s, and Calamari Breath grinned as if it were time to do some dirty business. So this
was no joke. They were going to cash my ticket here and now under the Brooklyn Bridge. They’d slip the knife in deep and watch
my corpse drop into the freezing water a hundred and thirty-five feet below. If it didn’t get snagged on a piling or a pier
at Red Hook, the current would take it right into Upper New York Bay. Some tug pilot or barge captain would find it in the
morning, after the fish had nibbled on it for breakfast.
Calamari Breath attempted another wisecrack. “Too bad this didn’t happen last week,” he needled. “We had a special: ‘You Talk,
You Walk.’ But this here is ‘No Witnesses Week.’”
I was about to argue with that when I felt a sudden, searing pain that told me he’d pushed the knife in. Warm blood gushed
out, soaked into my shirt, and ran down my side.
“Oh, Jesus,” I said, half prayer, half astonishment.
He pulled the knife out slowly, gave it a twist, then shoved it in again, his grin expanding as he heard me whimper. He wiped
the blade on my shirt, and he and Superman stepped back. Fine points of white light danced in my dying vision like fireflies,
then dimmed. My two tormentors faded into the snowy background, looking like they’d been wrapped in cellophane. Their laughter
warped into white noise, then merciful silence.
But I could still hear. Somebody was trying to say his Hail Marys. Me. The words came out clearly, but skipped like a cracked
78.
“Hail Mary, full of…”
“Hail Mary, full of…”
“… Shit,” said a harsh, reedy voice, and the goons cackled again.
The bridge beam in my grasp felt slicker, colder, the night air heavier. The East River seemed closer now, as if it were rising
to meet me.
Superman and Calamari Breath faded further into the dark and the reedy-voiced phantom took their place. I squinted hard.
“Stupid fuckin’ dago,” he said with a wide grin. Arnold, my Polack chicken thief. My affliction. My murderer. I tried spitting
at him, which was one of
his
tricks, but my mouth had gone dry.
“Why, Arnold?”
He cackled.
“Why, you pimply-faced son of a bitch?!”
“Why the hell not?” said Arnold.
He took up gleefully where Superman had left off, crushing my bleeding hands under a pair of heavy work boots. When at last
he got bored with me and eased off, I let go of the Brooklyn Bridge. And my life.
I didn’t do any praying in my plunge through the frigid air with the gentle snowflakes falling all around me. I knew I was
going straight to Hell, just like Father Luigi, the parish priest, had warned me when I was ten. No reprieve for an unrepentant
wiseass. No mercy expected or offered.
I cursed Arnold
fortissimo
as I dropped, waiting for the fatal impact of the East River.
But I never hit the water.
I woke up instead.
2
S
omebody was knocking on my door, but I was already bolt upright in my Murphy bed, sweating a small lake into the sheets and
breathing rapid-fire. My heart was pounding like a howitzer. Some damn nightmare. Fourth time in as many days. It was making
me loon crazy when it wasn’t scaring the hell out of me.
How do you fight a nightmare, anyway?
The knocking continued. It was coming from my upstairs door, which was okay. Only my
goombahs
have spare keys to the front door. An enemy couldn’t get upstairs unless he first broke in downstairs, where my office is.
He wouldn’t be knocking, either.
I opened the door.
My
goombah
Gino was standing there looking serious. Gino’s the patron saint of the serious. One of these days, after he’s been properly
canonized, they’ll name a parochial school or a parish hall after him. A greengrocer by profession, he’s also
16th Avenue’s Number One Concerned Citizen. Whatever trouble I can’t get into by myself, Gino obligingly finds for me.
“Jesus, Eddie. You look like hell.”
“Buon giorno
to you, too, and lay off about how I look. I had a rough night.” I wandered into the kitchen, he followed, and we sat down.
I eyeballed him. “So, what’s it this time,
paisano?
Somebody writing naughty words on Mrs. Nanfito’s flowerpots? Altar boys spiking the communion wafers? A customer secretly
pissing on your leaf lettuce?”
“Ha, ha.”
I stood up. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“No?
It’s A&P.”
“No coffee.”
“You sick or something?”
“No.”
“Uh oh,” I said, frowning, and went to make some anyway.
“What’s ‘uh oh’ mean?”
“It means you’ve got that look like it’s not all sunshine and roses in the neighborhood, and you’ve got no stomach for my
excellent A&P coffee.”
“You ain’t a father, Eddie. Fathers worry about their kids. They give you the
agita,
even when they’re goin’ straight.”
“Don’t start with that
agita
business. It’s too early.” I got the coffee pot going.
“Fathers, Eddie,” he persisted. “They worry about their kids.”
I should mention that Gino is the ideal husband and father. He married Gina, his high school sweetheart, right after graduation,
and they quickly became the Neapolitan Ozzie
and Harriet. All their kids’ names started with G. The oldest boy, Giorgio, was only eight, so I wondered what kind of trouble
he could be in.