Hot-Wired in Brooklyn (22 page)

“You can’t prove a word of this.”

“That’s right, I can’t. But a boy’s going to die unless you tell the truth. All the jury’ll know is that his fingerprints
are on the hammer you drove into Shork’s skull. You wore gloves, right?”

“Doesn’t everyone, in winter?”

I stopped to read his expression, but it didn’t betray him. “Look,” I said, “I’m not saying Shork didn’t deserve what he got.
I might even want to shake your hand…”

“Then leave things as they are.”

“I can’t. Look, let’s even say you
didn’t
go there to kill Shork or to frame Arnold. Let’s say you just tried to reason with Shork one last time. Maybe he tried to
bully you, and maybe you panicked. You saw the hammer in Arnold’s toolbox
and took it for protection. And when Shork went for his gun in the desk drawer, you hit him and you ran. Self-defense. Extenuating
circumstances. Maybe a jury’d buy that. I don’t know. But you’re gonna carry two big sins around, not just one, if Arnold
takes the fall for this.”

“And how many more pictures are there?”

“Just the ones in the car.”

“And these? How much?” He was still clutching the envelope I’d handed him in his office.

“Didn’t your brother tell you about my price for the briefcase?

“He said he offered you ten thousand dollars.”

“And?”

“And you didn’t take it.”

“I’m not here to take from you, either.”

“And the pictures in the car, the so-called last of the last?”

“They’re with whoever has the Scarpetti evidence file. When I return that to the cops, I’ll return the pictures to you.”

“For what?”

“I could say in exchange for Arnold, but that’s not what I told your brother.”

“You sound very certain that you’ll find the pictures.”

“I’m not. I’m just trying to keep my word to some people. You think about it, Mr. Jorgenson. You think about what you’re doing,
and who’s gonna pay. You won’t be any better than Shork if you let Arnold Pulaski die for nothing.”

“And if I confess? What happens to Sissy while I’m in prison?”

“Her Chinese friends can take care of her. Your mother,
I’m sure, will handle the financial part.”

He walked past me toward the bank of doors that led back to the elevators, the envelope with Sissy’s pictures curled tightly
in his hand. “All of this over one poor woman’s weakness,” he said, gesturing with that hand.

“More than that, Mr. Jorgenson. A whole hell of a lot more than that.”

T
he Barracuda Brothers’ hearse was still parked across the street when I arrived home. I’d already returned Gino’s car, snuck
in the back way again, and was pretending to check my mail as I waved to them from the porch. A note was inside the mailbox.
The handwriting was Father Giacomo’s, the envelope official St. Margaret’s stationery. So I called.

Father Giacomo’s voice sounded unusually agitated and urgent. Even his typically sing-song vowels were clipped and off-key.
He told me to come to the rectory by the back entrance, and I did. The Barracuda Brothers followed, parked their hearse, and
waited.

In the dressing area behind his office, Father Giacomo was gazing somberly at a line of black cassocks hung on hangers inside
a long, narrow closet. The vestments for mass were in another closet, and the altar boys’ vestments in yet another.

“Eddie,” he said. “You stand-a here,” and held a cassock in front of me as if measuring me for a fit. It was chilly in the
room, but he was sweating.

“Father…”

“Stand-a up a little taller,” he said, watching the hem of the cassock spill over my shoes. He put the cassock back on the
rack and anxiously tried another. “Maybe-a Father Michcle’s, maybe his fit-a better.”

“Father, what’s going on?”

He held up the second cassock, urged me again to stand taller, watched the hem fall just to the tops of my shoes and said,
“Hold-a this.”

He paused to wipe the sweat from his troubled brow and make a hurried sign of the cross. He seemed in that moment to relax,
but then he took another look at my shoes. “You gotta brown-a shoes,” he said. “That’s-a no good. Black. Black shoes is-a
good.”

He burrowed through all three closets on hands and knees for the next few minutes while I stood holding the cassock. Finally
he asked, “What size-a shoe, Eddie?”

“Ten-and-a-half B.”

He looked perplexed. “That’s-a narrow.”

“I’m missing four toes, remember?”

“From a-Europe. From a-the frost-a-bite.”

“That’s right, Father. Listen…”

“You just-a gonna have to settle for eleven C,” he said, pulling out a pair of black shoes and placing them at my feet. “The
cassock, the shoes, you put-a them on.” He sat down, exhausted, as I removed my coat and shirt, slipped the cassock over my
undershirt and trousers, and
buttoned it up. I took off my shoes, swam around in eleven C black oxfords, stood straight up, and stared at him.

“You want to tell me now, Father?”

A look of pure bliss briefly crossed his troubled face. “Your sweet-a mother, she all-a-ways want-a you to be a priest. She
look at you now, from a-Heaven, and she-a smile!”

“Father…”

He pointed to a small round table and two chairs and we sat down. “There’s a boy in-a the confessional, he wants a-talk-a
to you. A-nobody else. He say he’s not-a gonna come out lest-a you go in.”

“How long’s he been in there?”

“One-a two hours a-maybe. I phone-a you, then I send-a Sister Ursula with-a the note.”

“This boy, he give his name?”

“No. He’s a-scared. He gives-a your name, wants-a talk with-a you only, and only if-a you come lookin’-a like a priest. He
say he make a confession.”

“Is that something I’m allowed to do?” The anguish in Father Giacomo’s eyes confirmed that it wasn’t.

“It’s-a not-a real confession, not-a like to a priest. If he done a-somethin’ bad, somethin’ to put him in-a state of mortal
sin, you no can-a take it away…”

“I understand, Father.”

“Maybe you make him a-understand, he needs-a to talk to a real-a priest…”

“I will, Father.”

“He’s in-a confessional number two.”

He made another sign of the cross, pointed me to the
door, and I walked the short distance to St. Margaret’s. I used the side door that Chick Gunderson had used each of five nights.
There were no broken panes. The sight of that saddened me for a moment as I tipped my head down, folded my hands in front
of me and made my way as unobtrusively as possible to the door of confessional number two. I closed it silently behind me,
slid the connecting window open, and heard a frightened voice say, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned” through a fine wire
mesh.

Before he could tell me how long it’d been since his last confession, I said, “I’m Eddie Lombardi. Father Giacomo says you
want to talk to me.”

“I
gotta”

“Look, this isn’t exactly above board, what I’m doin’ here, kid. You got any real sins, you gotta confess ’em to a priest,
not me. You understand?”

“I’m scared,” he said, his voice at the edge of tears.

“What of?”

“They got Chick and Teddy. Maybe they’ll get me, too.”

I sat up stiff. “You knew Chick and Teddy?”

“I’m Teddy’s cousin.”

“Who sent you to me?”

“His pals in Brownsville, they said you was tryin’ to help him, and that you wasn’t a cop. I hadda tell somebody, so…”

“Keep talking.”

“Chick, he came to see me after they heisted the D.A.’s car.”

“Right away after?”

“Uh uh. He’d been hidin’ all over. I figured he’d go to
that little hideout they got by the bridge. That’s where they always went when they got in trouble. But he said he couldn’t
this time.”

“He say why?”

“Naah. He was so scared, he wasn’t makin’ a whole lotta sense.”

“Been there yourself? The hideout?”

“Naah. I never hung out with Stinky and that bunch. That’s why I was surprised when he came to see me that night. Maybe that’s
why he came.”

“What night was that?”

“Night after Teddy got shot.”

“Which was the night
before
Chick got shot.”

“Yeah. Tapped on my bedroom window till I woke up. Past midnight.”

“Where do you live?”

“Eightieth Street, just off New Utrecht. He was a mess. Like I said, he’d been hidin’ all over the place. Inside this here
church, in people’s sheds and garages. I gave him some of my clothes and he cleaned himself up a bit. Jesus, he was scared.
I never seen
anybody
so scared before.”

“Scared of the goons who went to his house?”

“And somethin’ else.”

“What else?”

“He wouldn’t say. Man, he was so scared!”

“And now he’s dead, and
you’re
scared.”

“What’s goin’
on?

“I was hopin’ you’d tell me. He talk about a briefcase?”

“Yeah. Dirty pictures of some dame. Negatives, too. Blackmail kinda stuff.”

“Anything else?”

“Some papers, he said, some kinda legal file, but Teddy and Charlotte, they’d been workin’ on it.”

“Teddy and Charlotte? Charlotte Hutchinson?”

“Yeah. Jimmy’s sister, poor kid.”

“And they were doin’
what
with this file?”

“Workin’ on it, that’s what Chick said. Chick said Teddy wanted to wait for Stinky to get out of jail before they did anything
with it, but Charlotte, she said no, they had to do it right away. Then, when Teddy got shot, Chick tried to call Charlotte.
She was the only one, he figured, outside a’ Stinky, who could get him outa the mess he was in.”

“Did he reach her?”

“Heck, I gave him all the change I had, and I’m guessin’ he made calls from every pay phone in Brooklyn while he was runnin’,
but I don’t know if he ever got hold of her.”

“She try to find him through you?”

“She don’t know me from Adam. Like I said, I didn’t hang around with them. I’m studyin’ hard, stayin’ outa trouble.”

“Okay,” I said. I slumped against the back wall of the confessional.

“Is this when I’m supposed to make my act of contrition?” the boy asked suddenly.

“I told you, kid, I’m not a priest. And it doesn’t sound like you committed a sin.”

“I didn’t help Chick much.”

“Sure you did. You gave him clean clothes, and money to make phone calls. And you didn’t give him away.”

No, Lombardi, you were the one who did that, who’d frightened
him out of the warm sanctuary of the church, into the cold, snowcovered street, into the path of a hollow-point .45 slug.

I was punishing myself with that thought, and had almost forgotten he was still there, when I heard his voice again.

“So, I guess Charlotte’s next, huh?”

“If she’s got that file, and if somebody who wants it knows she’s got it, yeah, she’ll be next.”

“You know Charlotte?”

“Not very well.”

“Me neither, like I said, but Stinky, he’s nuts about her. She’s a looker, and she’s tough, too, Stinky says. And she don’t
take shit from anybody. Whoops!”

“What?”

“Jesus, I just cussed in church.”

“You did better than that, kid,” I said, making a smile he couldn’t see through the fine wire mesh. “You just cussed in a
confessional.”

“You ain’t a priest, though.”

“Still a sin, kid, and probably mortal.”

He laughed.

“What’s your name?”

“Tommy.”

“You’re an okay kid, Tommy. Look me up when you’re old enough, and I’ll buy you a beer.”

“Heck, I’m old enough now.”

“Okay. Listen, I’m gonna leave now. You wait a few minutes after I’m gone, like you’re makin’ your act of contrition, then
go act like you’re makin’ your penance up at the rail, and go home, and don’t say a word to anybody.”

“Sure, Mr. Lombardi.”

“Call me Eddie.”

“Okay… Eddie. And thanks. I guess I had a lot on my mind.”

“No problem, kid.” I got up to leave.

“Hey, Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“I wouldn’t worry none about Charlotte.”

“No?”

“Uh uh. She’s tough, like Stinky says, and she knows how to use that thing. That’s what she told Chick and Teddy when she
took it out of the briefcase.”

“The file, yeah. She knows what to do with it.”

“Naah, not the
file.
The
gun.”

T
he kid even knew it was a .45. I quizzed him for a few more details, shot like a rocket from the confessional, and returned
my borrowed shoes and cassock to Father Giacomo with barely a proper good-bye. Then I drove home, ten miles over the speed
limit, just in time to find Tony and Angelo fist-fighting on my front porch.

When they reach the fighting stage, they’ve usually forgotten what they were arguing about and know only that they’re angry
enough to trade blows. But this time they’d remembered.

“Saw her first!” yelled Tony, hitting Angelo with a glancing right hook on the head.

“Asked first!” Angelo countered, missing with a left but scoring with a ringing kick to the shins.

“Saw her first!”

“Doesn’t count! Asked first!”

Tony’s next punch caught me high on the shoulder as I
stepped between them. I shot him a hostile look, shared it a moment with Angelo, and waited until their arms were at the sides
with their palms open before I said a word.

“Okay,” was the word, but it was misunderstood. Tony tried a big looping right that bounced off Angelo’s collar bone and then
caught my right ear. I shook it off, pushed Tony hard across the porch and shouted, “Inside! Now!”

The Barracuda Brothers were just pulling into their usual spot across the street. Whichever one was driving smiled and showed
his pointy teeth. Only a few of the gossip ladies were outside, and only a few windows along that part of 16th Avenue were
open, so Tony and Angelo hadn’t yet made a major disturbance. Major or minor, I was going to make sure it didn’t continue.