THUGLIT Issue Fourteen

by Scott Sanders

  Fortunately, he couldn't see her eyes roll in response.

  So it was back to Lakeview. Soon Diana came to the same traffic light where she and Tillotson had waited earlier in the evening. She hadn't met a single car, but now a vehicle pulled up to her left. Diana turned her head to look.

  And she knew.

  There was enough light for her to recognize Officer Holman, and enough for him to see the single woman in the driver's seat.

  Just as he would have seen Britney Loya on Saturday.

  Diana knew cops, and she knew police departments. They worked to keep all shifts under the same supervision, but their efforts could fall short at night. If an officer couldn't withstand the long hours in the dark with his own sweaty thoughts for company, there was no one to see the signs.

  Her hooker's radar was bleeping. She felt the intensity of his stare, and she could feel his urges building up, and bursting out. If she knew men, Britney Loya had been his first step over the line between fantasy and reality. Diana could imagine him working up his nerve and blaming the young woman in the provocative outfit for what he planned to do.

  But the second time would be easy, especially with another young blonde who reminded him of the first. Diana spared a fraction of a second on the irony of it all. The one who dressed as a hooker wasn't one, and the one who didn't, was.

  The traffic light turned green. Diana gave the car some gas and watched her rearview mirror. The patrol car fell in behind her, and the rotating flashers came on.

  Diana stomped on the accelerator. Now was the time for him to bleep the siren, but instead he turned the flashers off. That settled it. This was no traffic stop. Not that she had ever believed it was.

  He stayed right on her rear bumper. She put her foot down harder, and the car leaped forward. Her Maxima, the gift of a long term client, was earning its keep tonight.

  Holman pulled out into the left lane and started to pass her. She sped up even more. She needed just another hundred yards.

  Holman coaxed more speed out of his cruiser. He cut hard in front of her, but Diana stomped on the brake and turned even harder into driveway on her right. She leaned on the horn as she stopped in front of Ralph's split-level.

  She knew her client was waiting for her. He always liked to watch her getting out of the car and to know she was there for him. And there he was, opening the front door.

  But this time was different. She could already see his alarm at the noise and its effect on the neighbors.

  "What the hell?"

  "Stay right there, Ralph. I need you."

  Out on the road, Holman had stopped, blocking the driveway. He hesitated, and again Diana could read his thoughts. He had a choice to make. He could cut his losses and run, or he could escalate. But that would mean dealing with Ralph, who was standing by and doing his impression of a solid citizen.

  And now lights were coming on in the neighborhood.

  The patrol car sat. Diana watched. Ralph stood with his mouth hanging open.

  Holman chose flight over murder. The tires of the patrol car shrieked as it sped away.

  "Ralph, I need you to call 9-1-1."

  "That was the cops right there."

  "Not just any cop. Ask for Detective Tillotson. Insist."

  He hesitated.

  "Fast, Ralph. That cop might change his mind and come back. Trust me, we don't want that."

  "Why?"

  "It's about that girl who disappeared. And if you're worried about the cops finding out about you and me, trust me, they already know. They know everything about everybody."

  She had learned that long ago.

  "Tonight they won't care."

  Her desperation got through to him. Ralph turned and went back into the house. She followed. She had to make sure he did it, and did it right.

  He came through. She listened and approved as he got tough with the 9-1-1 operator.

  Ralph hung up. Only a minute or so later the phone rang. He picked up and listened for a moment.

  "It's for you."

  His expression said it. He wasn't sure what he thought about her getting calls from the cops in his home.

  She took the phone from Ralph and told Tillotson what had just happened.

  "He's the one who took Britney Loya. I'm sure of it."

  She listened to Tillotson's breathing. It was decision time. She had nothing but her suspicions, and she had been wrong once already. Tillotson would weigh that against all the other times she had helped him. It could go either way, and for a long moment she thought she had lost him.

  "Okay," he said. "If you're right, I have to move fast. If he has her, he'll get rid of her."

  He didn't need to add that if Diana was wrong, they had a problem.

  He hung up. She handed the phone back to Ralph.

  "Sorry, Ralph. I know this isn't what you had in mind. I'll make it up to you another time."

  She turned to go.

  "Where you going?" said Ralph.

  "Getting out of your hair. I've made enough trouble for one night."

  "Hell, no. This is the hottest thing that ever happened."

  He took her arm and started pulling her toward his bedroom. If he had looked back, he would have caught her rolling her eyes heavenward, which was a major lapse of etiquette that she had never committed with a client.

  There was a first time for everything.

  Her wallet was full, and her tank was empty. She couldn't remember feeling so limp.

  Coffee was helping a little. Diana sat at her kitchen table with a full cup in front of her. It was her second refill.

  She waited. There was no way she could sleep, and nothing she could focus her mind on. Twice she got up and emptied the pot into the sink so she could make fresh coffee. It was the only thing she could concentrate on, and she expected company.

  Tillotson arrived with the gray light outside. When she opened the door, he stepped inside and breathed the coffee smell in.

  "That smells so good, I almost don't need to drink it."

  He produced a tired smile.

  "Just kidding."

  She led the way to the kitchen, although by now he ought to know where it was. She poured coffee into the two cups waiting on the table. They both took it black, no sugar.

  He had looked better. All-nighters obviously weren't as easy as they used to be. He had once been prematurely gray. Now he was just gray. His poplin suit didn't like late hours any more than he did.

  "We got him," he said.

  "How?"

  "I fell back on my desperation move. When you've got nothing, just flat out ask. Make the bad guy think you know everything. I wasn't sure it would work on a cop, though."

  "Cops are human."

  "So they tell me. Anyway, I rang his doorbell and said, it's over. Where is she? If he had stonewalled me, we would have run right over him. Exigent circumstances. Fine if we're right, a problem if we're wrong."

  "But you weren't."

  "We weren't. Turns out he took her home and tied her up in his basement. Then he just sauntered right back to move her car. Pretty ballsy, but who's going to question a cop?"

  Diana slumped over her coffee. "Wish I could have figured this out before it was too late."

  "Who said it was too late?"

  She looked up at him. He was grinning. He still looked tired, but now the long night seemed worth it to him.

  "She was still tied up. A little dehydrated, and a lot distraught."

  "Do I want to know what he did to her?"

  "You don't. What you should concentrate on is how much worse it could have been. He was keeping her alive for the long haul."

  Diana felt tears start from her eyes. Well, it stood to reason, didn't it?

  "I could have been next," she said, as if Tillotson might make an issue of her bawling.

  His smile vanished. "I've never asked this before. If I'm out of line, tell me. But how do you do it?"

  "Do what?"

  "Go out there and
do what you do, knowing what could happen?"

  "I don't think about it."

  "Not sure I believe that."

  "Okay, I do think about it. But so does every woman."

  "Well," he said, "I did ask."

  "Yes, you did."

  Authenti City

  by Eddie McNamara

  Enzo sipped his cappuccino, his third of the day. His sausage fingers were unable to fit through the cup's handle, forcing him to carefully use the callused pads of his digits to raise and lower it.

  "Come here, you gotta see this shit," Juan Carlos called out to Enzo, the chef/owner of Cucina Spolidoro. "It's not even 9:30 yet and they're lined up around the goddamn block, and this guy don't even open 'til noon. I don't understand. What are we doing wrong here?"

  Enzo looked out his window toward the crowd gathered in front of Sotterraneo, television chef Brad Jensen's Sicilian concept restaurant. It popped up three months ago, across the street from the little Italian restaurant that had been in Enzo's family since 1957.

  "Look who's on his line waiting," said Juan Carlos. "Not one of them people are from the neighborhood. Buncha dirty hippies, buncha stunads that don't know shit. Look at these filthy animals. We don't want them in here anyway."

  "Bro, yuppies like that are exactly who we want in here," said Enzo. "I sell a rice ball for $1.50, but they rather spend $7 at his joint cuz he calls it arancini di riso and flies his water in from Palermo. We can fumigate after they spend their money and leave."

  "No doubt," said Juan Carlos. "What makes me crazy is his address. He calls it Cristoforo Colombo Boulevard. Nobody calls it that—it's 18th Avenue. That's like some jackass saying that his place is on Avenue of the Americas. It's a Wonderbread move. What kind of asshole does a thing like that?"

  "The kinda asshole who thinks he discovered this part of Brooklyn," said Enzo with a dismissive wave, "and we're just the natives he found here."

  "Pinche maricon," Juan Carlos sputtered.

  A curly-haired man wearing a crisp blue gingham shirt under a white blazer knocked loudly on the door, ignoring the "closed" sign. Juan Carlos walked to the door in slow motion.

  "Can I help you?"

  The man spoke with put-on friendliness. "I hate to bother you, but I'm desperate for a restroom. May I use yours?"

  "Sorry, I can't help you," said Juan Carlos, shutting the door.

  The man stopped the door with his foot. "I'm Dave Colby from the Times. I'm doing a story about restaurants in Bensonhurst."

  "I don't care who you are, you gotta buy something to use the bathroom, and we ain't open yet. So—"

  "That's OK, come in," shouted Enzo, motioning at the reporter. "The toilet's all the way in the back on the left."

  "Thanks a million."

  Enzo turned to Juan Carlos. "Quick, start putting together a panelle special."

  The panelle sandwich—a chickpea fritter topped with melted queso blanco and served on a hamburger bun, their take on Sicily's most popular street food—was Spolidoro's specialty. In less than two minutes, Enzo emerged from the kitchen with the fried patty, handed it off, and Juan Carlos finished the sandwich with cheese and herbs.

  "Thanks again, guys. You're lifesavers."

  "Buddy, a panelle special, on the house," said Enzo. "Please sit down—enjoy. Something to drink with that?"

  "Thanks, but I have to save my appetite. I'll be eating at Sotterraneo for the first time later, and I want to try a bite of everything. Is it panelle or panella? Jensen calls his panella."

  "Same thing. Panella is just how they call it in Ragusa," said a dejected Enzo, looking down at the dusting of CiCi flour coating his hairy knuckles as the door swung shut after the reporter.

  "Once it's in the Times, it ain't cool anymore. That's what they say, right?" offered Juan Carlos. "Forget that reporter, and that jabroni chef. What the hell goes through that weasel's head, charging $11 for his panelle?"

  "It's liberals is what it is. With the Facebook and the blogging," Enzo said. "Do me a favor, grab your son's iPad and do a Google of this Brad Jensen—let's see what he's all about."

  "My obsession is the cuisine of Sicily in its purest form. The minute Bites From the Underground wrapped for the season, I was on an Alitalia flight. I apprenticed for the great Carlo Bertollini of Il Duomo for six months, not being paid a cent for 12-hour days in the kitchen, just because I wanted to absorb the techniques of the master."

  —Brad Jensen, Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow's e-newsletter, January 12, 2014

  "The true key to regional Italian cooking is the quality of the ingredients. For Sotterraneo to work, I had to disregard conventional restaurant logic when sourcing. No one in the world, not even Jiro himself, has access to better rice. Our tonno is line-caught off the Sicilian coast and shipped directly to me. I have exclusive deals with dairy farmers in the Hyblean region that are unprecedented. Their cows eat nothing but rosemary. To achieve perfection, you must go overboard, and I don't apologize for doing so. Criticism from locavores means nothing to me—it almost fuels me."

  —Brad Jensen, Bon Appetit, February 2014

  "I chose Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, because it has the largest Sicilian-born population outside of Italy. I'm here to give them a taste of home—even better than when they were still living on the island. The pizzerias and red-sauce dinosaurs on every block make a mockery of Italian cuisine and have corrupted their palates. There's a place across the street from Sotterraneo that serves panella with Mexican cheese. It's laughable. No, of course I haven't eaten there."

  —Brad Jensen, brooklynspectator.com, March 5, 2014

  Juan Carlos put the iPad facedown: "This is the kinda guy who never caught a beating in his life and feels like he's safe to say whatever he wants because he don't know about consequences. Maybe I change that."

  "Bro, I promise you on my mother's eyes," said Enzo, "that everything's gonna work out for us. You gotta trust me on this." Enzo straightened his posture, "This is the only thing in the world that matters to me. I'll do whatever it takes for us to make it. All I need is your trust."

  Enzo never envisioned himself in the restaurant business. As a teenager, he hated working for his parents—washing dishes, bussing tables, and filling in wherever needed. Seven 16-hour days a week making food for other people was poor immigrant work, and Enzo was born an American. He dreamt of acting, and his parents encouraged him to pursue his passion by sending him to acting classes, improv-comedy workshops, even funding his move to West Hollywood. At first California was good to Enzo. An imdb.com search for "Vic Vincent" will show that he landed roles as a stereotypical New York hood on nearly every crime procedural on television. Enzo's big break came in 2004 when he was cast in the role of Turtle in HBO's Entourage. He had finally made it as an actor…until the first day of shooting, when he broke the Marky Mark Rule. Mark Wahlberg, the show's producer, didn't like to be reminded of his rapping past. If anyone referred to him as Marky Mark on set, they were given the boot. Unsurprisingly, the Brooklyn art of ball-busting didn't go over with a Boston guy like Wahlberg.

  Enzo hung around L.A. and got fat. The roles dried up, but he did a commercial for Mitsubishi of Anaheim and managed to pay his rent until he landed a big role on Law and Order: LA—which was promptly cancelled. When Mateo Spolidoro died in 2010, Enzo came home to move in with his mother (who was no good in the kitchen since the arthritis and gout) and run the family restaurant with his father's right-hand man, Juan Carlos (Mexican by birth, Italian at heart).

  Brad Jensen's rise to celebrity chefdom was quite the opposite: He began at the bottom rung of the restaurant industry. Nils Jensen left Willmar, Minnesota the day he graduated high school, and he never looked back. The bullied kid from the drama club with the big mouth and quick wit headed to New York City with dreams of stand-up comedy fame. Between acting classes, he took a job washing dishes at the Comedy Basement, desperately waiting for a comedian to no-show so he could hit the stage and fill in for seven glorious minutes while the dishes
piled up. Nils was quickly promoted to prep cook, then line cook, then head chef at the club's café.

  At the same time, he was using his open-mic time to perfect his alt-comedy material. His go-to character was Foodie Brad, a vegan, gluten-free, small-batch, locavore, organic, artisanal douchebag. Brad was the epitome of New Brooklyn awfulness: ironic mustache, size 26 skinny jeans, and pitch-perfect condescension. Audiences loved to hate him. One night, a group of producers from the Food Network caught his act and saw their next star on stage. Nils left the kitchen and became Brad Jensen, the host of Bites From the Underground, a show that took viewers to places they'd never heard of, eating foods they didn't recognize in neighborhoods even the post office didn't know about. Nils Jensen had finally made it.

  Spolidoro's lunch service was in full swing, for a nearly empty restaurant. Enzo and Juan Carlos were performing kitchen ballet in perfect sync, finishing each other's dishes and getting them to the window without a single misstep. Gennaro, Juan Carlos's son and a busboy at the restaurant, hustled into the kitchen and called out to Enzo.

  "'Sup, GuiVato?" asked Enzo without looking away from the spaghetti alla norma he was tossing in his sauté pan. "Tony Dukes and some other guy are waiting for you in the front. Let me take your spot on the line. I can hold it down."

  "Fuck. That guy always shows up at the worst possible time."

  "My boy can handle it. Go. Don't keep him waiting," said Juan Carlos.

  Enzo washed his hands and face and headed out to the dining room, where Antonio LoDuca was standing, looking like a Dick Tracy villain, drawing stares and smiles from the lunchtime crowd.

  Tony Dukes gave a big hug and said, "The kid Lorenzo. How the hell are ya?"

  "I'm all right, Tony, you?"

  "I miss seeing your parents here, but you and Pancho Villa are keeping the place up. You sure everything's all right? How's business since that mezzo finocchio opened up?"

  Enzo opened the cash register and pulled out an envelope from under the bill slots. "I don't wanna complain, but it's dead in here since he opened up. I still got a few old time regulars, but nobody walks in off the street anymore. They go to his joint to see what the big deal is all about. What can you do?"