Hot-Wired in Brooklyn

by Douglas Dinunzio

  “Okay, Mr. Pulaski, what’s the problem?” I was nice. I didn’t say, “This time.”

  He started bawling again. I wanted to throw my hands up in despair, but I just grimaced. Gino patted him reassuringly and then became his voice. “Arnold’s been workin’ over at the Victory Wreckin’ Company. You know, dismantlin’ cars…”

  “Do me a favor, Gino,” I interrupted. “Don’t say ’you know’ anymore, like that. Okay?”

  Gino offered a perplexed look, then continued. “Arnold’s boss, a guy named Joe Shork, tells him to drive a car—not a wrecked one, of course—to some address up in Manhattan. Before he even gets there, some cops pull him over and arrest him. The car belongs to John Carlson, the D.A. It’s been reported stolen. The cops book Arnold at Felony Court and take him to the Raymond Street Jail.”

  “This is all according to Arnold, right?”

  Mr. Pulaski stifled his sobs long enough to interject, “Joe Shork, he says my boy Arnold lies about the car. My Arnold would not lie!”

  I patronized him with a smile. If self-deception was bliss, Mr. Pulaski had to be the most blissful Polack son of a bitch in Brooklyn.

  “When did all this happen?” I asked. I was looking at Pulaski, but it was Gino who answered.

  “Coupla nights ago.”

  I held on Pulaski. “Okay, whatta you want me to do?”

  “Why Joe Shork lies,” he answered. “You find out.”

  I threw a hard glance at Gino, whose eyes could dredge up sympathy better than a little old lady in a hospital bed.

  “All right,” I said, leaning forward. I pulled out a contract from my desk drawer. “My standard fee…”

  Gino shot me a fierce, withering look. I shot one back, but I couldn’t match him, so I finished with “… will, of course, be waived.” “What’s that mean?” the big Polack asked Gino.

  “It means you don’t have to pay him.”

  Mr. Pulaski reached across the desk and repeated his pump handle routine, his tears replaced by sudden and unbounded jubilation. He thanked me until my right hand went numb.

  “Think nothin’ of it,” I said, glaring at Gino. “It’s the least I can do.”

  Gino was beaming. I almost expected a circle of tiny angels to form around his big, thick, balding head. “There,” he said, patting Mr. Pulaski’s shoulder again. “You see? Eddie here’ll take care of everything. Right, Eddie?”

  “Almost,” I cautioned. “Does the little bas— Does Arnold have a lawyer?”

  “No,” said Mr. Pulaski grimly.

  I smiled again. Here I could afford to be generous, because I wouldn’t be doing the work. “Okay,” I said. “I know somebody who can help. He’ll come down and bail Arnold out, and we’ll take it from there. He’s at Raymond Street, you said?”

  “What a terrible place. It’s like a dungeon. You get him out soon?”

  “Soon as you can raise bail.”

  “Raise bail?”

  “To get him out of Raymond Street.”

  While Mr. Pulaski dried his eyes and pretended not to remember what bail was, I put through a call to Herm Kowalski, my lawyer. Herm was an unmarried Polack and therefore uncursed with evil spawn like Arnold. He lived in Coogan’s Bluff, not far from the Polo Grounds in Upper Manhattan. That’s where his office was, too. It was a different telephone exchange, so I had to wait for an operator. When I got through, we had our usual brief, businesslike chat. I told him where he had to be, and he told me when he’d be there. I saved his life once, along with one of his eyes. Gratitude and guilt keep him loyal whenever friendship wears thin.

  “It’s all set,” I told Mr. Pulaski. I explained about Herm, endured that crippling handshake one last time, and showed the way to the front door.

  “I could kiss ya, Eddie,” said Gino, offering a bear hug, his face glowing with righteous joy.

  “Only if you wanna lose some teeth, big guy.”

  I watched them walk away, then lingered on my front porch, breathing the crisp, late January air and enjoying the warmth of a distant but still generous sun.

  The gossip ladies were already out on the sidewalk, dressed in conspiratorial black. Sinewy young men with pompadours waxed cars that already had shines as deep as the Grand Canyon, and three little girls marked off the sidewalk for a serious game of hopscotch. I took it all in. Every day in Bensonhurst is beautiful, but the sunny ones are pure magic.

  It was still morning, so I went for my regular haircut at Frankie DeFilippo’s barber shop. Frankie’s another goombah, a tall, wiry guy with dark olive skin and wavy Frank Sinatra hair. Like all barbers, he’s a listener. Like all Italians, he’s a talker. We traded neighborhood news, argued sports, and then I told him about my nightmare.

  “I bet this is one o’ those premonition things,” Frankie said as he snipped around my ears with the scissors. His eyes had a Gypsy fortune-teller look, so I knew he was going to start in about luck again.

  In the Italian scheme of things, luck is always two-faced. Good luck isn’t so good, because bad luck is always chasing right behind it. You win at the track, and the next day somebody sideswipes your car. Your wife has a baby, and then your front porch collapses. Then again, bad luck isn’t so bad, because it means something good must be coming. For an Italian, though, the best luck is probably none at all.

  “Yeah, it’s a premonition thing for sure,” Frankie decided. “So, you been havin’ any?” He buzzed away the stubble behind my neck while he waited for an answer. “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Good luck, for Chrissake. You havin’ any lately?”

  “I guess, maybe. Won five from Gino on the Knicks game Sunday. You oughta know. You were there.”

  Every Sunday afternoon, my goombahs came up to my place. I made a lasagna, we put away a case of Schaefer beer and listened to whatever game was on the radio. That Sunday, the Knicks had taken the Pistons by three, and I’d taken Gino for five.

  “That’s prob’ly it,” Frankie advised.

  I shot him a hostile, wounded look. “You think winnin’ a lousy five bucks is enough good luck to bring on a million-dollar bad dream?”

  “I see what ya mean,” said Frankie. “Still, ya better start lookin’ over your shoulder for the bad luck. Sounds like it’s comin’.”

  He powdered me up, dusted me off, and I got out of the chair. “What shoulder should I be lookin’ over?”

  “Dunno. Could come from anywhere.” I nodded and put the haircut money, as always, in the March of Dimes box by the door. “See ya, Frankie.”

  “Keep your eyes an’ ears open,” he warned as I walked out. “I will.”

  “That ill wind, it ain’t blowin’ no good.”

  “You’re tellin’ me.”

  I could already feel it on my neck.

  CHAPTER

  4

  The day was turning ugly fast. Too many phantoms lurked inside my head, too many scavenger thoughts picked at my peace of mind. Offering to help a punk like Arnold Pulaski went against every instinct I had, not to mention common sense. If you stumble on a wounded rattlesnake, you don’t offer a helping hand.

  You crush it with a big rock.

  I had a single saving grace that day. I was going to my godchild’s school in the afternoon to watch her play a swan in a dance recital. Nine years old and wearing her first bright, white tutu. The tutu would make a nice contrast with her dark chocolate skin. My godchild’s name was Desiree, and at one time I was in love with her mother, Alma. Nobody in Bensonhurst knew, not even my goombahs. It wasn’t something I could talk about in the neighborhood. That’s the way it was. You stayed with your own kind, if you knew what was good for you. You didn’t mix, especially with the coloreds. I knew all that, but I loved my little chocolate godchild almost as much as I’d loved her mother.

  Her father, an ebony giant named Watusi, hadn’t acknowledged her as his own until her mother’s death. Desiree always came first for us, but in that winter of ’48-’49, he was playing the role
of father with a vengeance. It wasn’t easy enlisting him for night surveillance or bodyguard duty on my tougher cases. He was making up for years of lost time on the home front.

  I had four or five hours to kill before the recital at a private girls’ school in Harlem, plenty of time to check on Arnold’s story. Not that I was looking for any discrepancies to rescue him by. I knew the pimply-faced little bastard was lying himself blue. I just wanted to know what shade.

  I telephoned Lieutenant Nick DeMassio, the only friend I had in the police department, and asked to hear the complaint against Arnold. Police reports are duller than the Baltimore Catechism, so when he started to read it verbatim, I interrupted.

  “Skip chapter and verse, okay, Nick?”

  “Sure,” the big Sicilian answered.

  “So. Any surprises?”

  “Naah. Arrested in Greenpoint while still behind the wheel of a car belonging to John G. Carlson, District Attorney for Kings County, Borough of Brooklyn.”

  “Official car?”

  “Naah. His own.”

  “Time of arrest?”

  “Wait a minute,” said DeMassio. I heard pages flipping. “A little before midnight.”

  “When did Carlson report it?”

  “Elevenish.”

  “Any damage to the vehicle?”

  “Broken window on the passenger side.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Like?”

  “Like, did the kid make any kind of statement?”

  “Oh, yeah. Almost forgot about that. He threatened the yard foreman at Victory Wrecking.”

  “Shork?”

  “Yeah. Told the arresting officer that Shork was, and this is a quote, ‘a goddamn fuckin’ mick liar.’ Kid kept insisting it was Shork who told him to drive the car up to Manhattan.”

  “Anything else?”

  DeMassio laughed. “Yeah, and this is the best part. He said he was gonna bash the guy’s head in as soon as he got sprung.”

  “‘Sprung,’ huh? Is that what he said?”

  “Accordin’ to this report.”

  “He’s learnin’ the vocabulary quick enough.”

  “These young punks, they just talk like tough guys. You put a little scare in ’em, they crap their pants.”

  “I don’t know about this one, Nick. He’s got a little somethin’ extra.”

  “Time’ll tell.”

  “Long as it’s not my time. Thanks, Nick.”

  “No problem. Hey, Eddie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just one little question. Where do you find these assholes?”

  “In my dreams, Nick. In my goddamn dreams.”

  I hung up and had a bite of lunch in my little kitchen. Prosciutto and provolone on Italian bread, a few hot peppers on the side and a cold bottle of Schaefer to wash it all down. A working man’s lunch, and real food for thought. I was already thinking. Arnold was a liar, but he was a creative, polished liar. Joe Shork, from what little I’d heard on the street, was a liar ordinario. Neither of them had Pinocchio’s nose, so which liar could I believe?

  Something else gnawed at me. Shork was strictly a smalltime hoodlum. Confidence games, petty blackmail, a little smuggling. He was absolutely nobody. How did he rate the job of yard foreman at Victory if he wasn’t Italian and didn’t belong to the Mob?

  Because Victory Wrecking did. Big Dom Scarpetti, a lesser star in the Mafia’s secret constellation, owned the operation. His older brother, Alberto, was one of the most successful hoods in Brooklyn; but Big Dom had made enough stupid mistakes in his callow youth to be banished to the farthest corner of Alberto’s far-flung criminal empire. That corner, at Stillwell and Avenue T, was Victory Wrecking.

  Victory dismantled cars, but they weren’t wrecks when they got there, and they didn’t belong to Victory Wrecking. It was hot-wire heaven. Everybody on the street knew what went on. The beat cops knew, too, and even some higher-ups in the police department. But Big Dom always gave them enough green reasons not to complain. Over the years, Alberto’s failed younger brother had made a tidy profit down there on Stillwell, slowly building a little empire inside the big one. There was talk that he had other fish frying, too, with some important people. In paunchy middle age, all on his own and after years of living down his earlier mistakes, Big Dom was finally looking like a comer.

  It was no surprise that Arnold worked at Victory. The Scarpettis employed dozens of young punks to steal cars for parts and hijack trucks for their cargoes. Punks were always expendable. If anyone got caught and considered singing, one of Alberto’s lethal emissaries paid a visit to his house. Arnold was a jerk, but he wasn’t stupid. He hadn’t sung; he’d turned on Joe Shork instead. Two practiced liars, but one of them had to be telling the truth.

  Before going up to Harlem, I decided to stop off at Victory Wrecking, just for laughs.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Shork was in his office, a dark blue clapboard shack that sat like a bruise at the entrance to the wrecking yard. He was ogling a girlie magazine as I walked in. When he saw me, he turned it around for show-and-tell.

  “Some babe, huh, pal?” he said, as if we’d been chummy for an hour. The babe was in her mid-forties, overweight and melon-breasted, her lower torso contorted to display her sagging back porch at the same time.

  “Not your type?” Shork asked when I didn’t react.

  “I prefer ’em live and with a little more class.”

  Shork put the magazine down, marking the page. “So, what can I do for ya?” I didn’t answer because I was studying his face. It was on the pale, pasty side and small-featured. He had the standard number-two-pencil mustache that was all the rage with petty grifters, and his skin was pitted with acne craters. That, or somebody had peppered his face with buckshot. Considering his line of work, the buckshot seemed just as likely. “Ya need parts? Ya wanna sell a wreck?” he prompted.

  “Came to talk about Arnold.”

  Shork exploded out of the chair and spat a litany of expletives that made my heart glow. I took a seat next to the desk, smiled engagingly, and enjoyed the moment. When he’d finished, he muscled himself back into the chair, his face red as a new turnip. “Fuckin’ little prick!” he said in closing.

  His expression changed suddenly, as if a stray second thought had intruded. “Yer not a cop, are ya?”

  “Nothin’ like that.” I explained about Mr. Pulaski. “Believe me, Joe, I’m just doin’ this by the numbers.”

  Shork put on an outraged face. “Can ya believe the little bastard? He steals the goddamn D.A.’s car and says I put him up to it! Can ya believe that shit?! Fuckin’ little wiseass prick! Shoulda never took him on. Hey, ya want a drink or somethin’?” He was already rummaging in one of the desk drawers.

  “Sure. Whatever you’ve got.”

  Shork brought out a bottle and two shot glasses and poured us each a double. “It ain’t Johnnie Walker, but it burns good goin’ down.”

  The door swung open as he finished pouring. The two goons who entered looked strangely familiar. They were big and broad-shouldered and wore heavy coats. Their fedoras kept their eyes in shadow. Shork’s own eyes grew wide and fearful as he tried, poorly, to hide that fear. He gestured, as if to summon them, but they didn’t move. I kept trying to place them. The Barracuda Brothers, possibly, but until I saw two mouths full of pointy teeth I couldn’t be sure.

  One of the goons shut the door and blocked it as his partner approached Shork. The partner gave me a passing glance, then leaned over and whispered in Shork’s ear. It was a lengthy message. Shork did a lot of nodding, streams of sweat rolling down his pale, cratered face.

  When the big goon was through whispering, he saw Shork’s fear and grinned. The goon at the door matched him. Not the Barracuda Brothers, I realized. More like Superman and Calamari Breath, the faceless phantoms from my nightmare.

  When they sauntered out, Shork and I both breathed a little easier. We made small talk and drank for a while. A minion
or two knocked on the door to present an invoice or paper for Shork to sign. As if to prove he was still in charge, Shork snapped at each of them. Finally, a little pie-eyed, he gave me another suspicious look.

  “What’d ya say yer name was?”

  “I didn’t, but it’s Lombardi.”

  “And yer helpin’ this little jerk?”

  “Uh uh. Just goin’ through the motions for his father, like I said.”

  “So, what ya want?”

  “Well, one thing puzzles me. Why’d he give your name to the cops?”

  “Like I should know?”

  “Oh, come on now, Joe. Why you? Why not somebody else?”

  Shork’s voice turned whiney. “He’s always bustin’ my balls, ya know? Him and his pals, they think they’re hot shit wiseguys. Little Johnny Dillingers, every one of ’em. Like they’re workin’ here just for kicks. They act like I’m nobody, so I ride em, ride ’em hard, every day. I show ’em who’s fuckin’ boss here.”

  “How many pals we talkin’ about?”

  “The three of ’em. All wiseasses.”

  “Names, Joe.”

  “Chick Gunderson, Teddy Mitchell, that’s the other two.”

  “They around?”

  “They didn’t come to work the next day, and I ain’t seen ’em since. Good riddance. Let ’em all go up the river.”

  “Ever have ’em steal cars for you, Joe? Strictly on orders from Big Dom, of course, you bein’ an honest and upright guy.”

  Shork’s pasty, pock-marked face turned nasty. “Who are ya?”

  “Name’s Lombardi, like I said. Don’t have a heart attack over this, Joe. I don’t care if you steal ’em first or wreck ’em first, as long as they don’t belong to me or anybody I know. I just wanna find out why the kid picked you, that’s all.”

  Shork poured himself another drink and downed it. He didn’t offer. “I could have yer mouth shut, talkin’ like that.”

  I grinned. “You could sure try, Joe.”

  “Ya saw those two guys.”