Hot-Wired in Brooklyn (25 page)

“And he clearly resents the costume. But Desiree doesn’t care about that. Only that you’re expected.”

“Til be there.”

“I have to go now,” he said, getting up. “The sitter’s fee is exorbitant.”

“Maybe we can take Desiree to a movie.”

“Eddie, I’ve told you…”

“I mean up in Harlem. One of those movies where nobody’s a… what were the categories again?”

“A domestic servant, a lackey, or a slave.”

“Exactly.”

“We’ll see,” he said, and left.

When the nurse came in to give me a shot, I asked her the question I’d thought about all day. “Is Nurse Hutchinson on duty?”
She didn’t know any Nurse Hutchinson, so I said, “She’s in pediatrics.”

“I’ll see if she’s working,” she said, and left. She came back about fifteen minutes later. Yes, Nurse Hutchinson was on duty
until midnight. I thanked her again, lay back and studied the ceiling for another hour. When the courage finally came to me,
I slid out of bed, picked up my crutches, and limped to the elevator.

“Second floor,” I told the operator. Only two floors down. It seemed like too short and easy a distance for the penance I
had to do.

I
sat on a small bench next to the elevator, just outside the pediatric ward. My heel was throbbing, but there was no way to
elevate it, so I just endured the pain. It was part of the penance anyway.

I waited an hour until she appeared. She saw me as she came through the double doors and froze there in silence. I tried to
smile, but it brought only an empty look. “Thank God for elevators,” I said finally. I pointed to my crutches when she didn’t
seem to get it.

“Clear the door!” an attendant shouted behind her. He pushed a gurney with a wheezing child on it past her and around a corner.
Caroline’s eyes followed the gurney for a moment, then looked at me without emotion, as if I were part of the furniture. It
was a harder, crueler punishment than any beating.

“So, you’re on swing shift now?”

She didn’t answer.

“I thought we should talk,” I said.

“Talk?”

“Yes.”

“You killed my sister, and you want to talk about it.”

“She was trying to kill
me,
Caroline. She killed your brother. She killed Teddy and Chick.”

She started walking, past me, past the elevator. I pulled myself up.

“I wanted you to understand what happened and why. I don’t expect you to forgive it, just to understand it.”

She stopped. “The police have already explained what happened. Haven’t you read the paper?”

“That’s not what happened.”

“’Deranged,’ that’s what they called her!”

“It’s not what happened. I’ll tell you what did, if you want to hear.”

We sat on the bench outside the pediatric ward for a while. By the time I finished the story, the pain in my foot was making
me wince, but there was still no response from Caroline.

“She killed your brother, Caroline. Does
that
mean anything to you?”

“Of course.”

“And I killed her to keep her from killing me.”

“… And some gangster.”

“That’s right.”

“I suppose he wasn’t being a gangster at that moment, so he didn’t deserve to die… at that moment.”

“Neither did Charlotte, until she tried to kill me.”

“None of this is making me feel better.”

“It isn’t meant to.”

“It’s to make
you
feel better, then?”

“It’s meant to explain.”

“So I’ll… ‘understand.’”

“Yes.”

“Very well, I understand. Is that all?” An even deeper coldness in her eyes dredged up images of Charlotte, but there was
no murder in them, only emptiness. She was entombed within herself now, no longer a woman, no longer alive in the world. She
stared blankly for another moment and then walked away.

The nurse was waiting when I got back to the fourth floor, armed with a hypo. She smiled like a satisfied lover when she was
through.

I slept like a baby that night, the nightmare banished, the phantoms in full retreat. I ate a hearty breakfast the next morning,
took my next hypo with a smile, and waded again into the newspaper. There was nothing more about Charlotte and me, nothing
about the Scarpetti files, nothing about Jorgenson confessing to murder. I’d mailed Shork’s folder to Jorgenson the same morning
DeMassio’d paid his visit, and I’d even called Jorgenson at the bank to say it was on its way. But he hadn’t come forward,
and I figured he never would.

The doctor checked me just before noon. The wound was infected, he explained, and I’d have to stay another day or so. The
goombahs
came by again that evening, armed with a Genoa salami and a deck of cards. We played gin for a nickel a point until the nurse
threatened us all with hypos. Then, after they’d left, she gave me a shot anyway.

Visiting time was almost over when Liam arrived, his head swathed in bandages.

“Well, don’t
we
look like all hell,” I said.

“Would’ve come sooner, Eddie lad,” he said as he sat down, offering me his good ear. “But I’ve been havin’ headaches that
are somethin’ t’ behold. Doctor says they’ll go away. ‘And sure they will,’ I answer, ‘when I’m in the ground.’ And how are
you, lad?”

“Okay, but I think the nurse has a thing for my sweet Italian ass.”

“Encourage her, lad.”

“She’s buck-toothed and looks like my old drill sergeant in Georgia.”

“Encourage her anyway.”

We made up limericks that brought a smile to my mouth-wired roommate until the nurse chased Liam out.

I slept like a baby again.

They didn’t give me a hypo the next morning, and the doctor looked bored examining my heel, so I figured they’d release me
soon. I was feeling chipper, too, wolfing down my breakfast and then asking for seconds. Using a cane now instead of the crutches,
I made my social trip through the ward in record time and read the newspaper in the solarium. Still nothing about Jorgenson,
which meant there’d be nothing about Arnold.

It was almost noon and I was still reading the sports pages in my room when Nick DeMassio strolled in. I hadn’t expected him
back; he’d eaten enough crow the first time not to want a repeat. I pretended it was a social call, which I knew it wasn’t.

“Morning, Nick.”

“Eddie.”

“Read about that welterweight fight at the Garden? KO in thirty seconds of the first round. Had to carry the guy out on a
stretcher.”

“Uh huh.”

“Tough way to make a living.”

“Uh huh.”

“Makes shamus work look easy.”

“I went to see that Jorgenson guy after I saw you.”

“Yeah? What happened?”

“We talked. I couldn’t come right out and accuse him, you know. Like you said, nothin’s provable.”

“And?”

“I did the best I could to draw him out…”

“But?”

“But he wouldn’t take the bait. His sister came in while we were talking.”

“Sissy?”

“Yeah, that’s her, Sissy.”

“And?”

“And she listened. That was about it.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t get anywhere with the guy.”

“Thanks just the same, Nick.”

“After that, I went to Raymond Street, saw the kid, Arnold, talked to him, told him what you were tryin’ to do for him. He
said he knew. He’s a changed kid, Eddie. His pals are all dead. He’s had to do some quick growin’ up in a hard spot. I was
wishin’ to hell I coulda helped him more when I left, but…”

“You did your best. That’s good enough.”

“Yeah, I suppose. Anyway, I’m at the station the last coupla clays tryin’ to figure how to put some pressure on this Jorgenson
guy, how to smoke him out, maybe, and then this morning I get a call from the watch commander up at Manhattan South. He tells
me that the sister, Sissy, came in with this Chinese woman, Jing or somethin’…”

“Jiang.”

“Yeah, that’s her. They walked in together. Seems that Sissy and her brother had a big argument after I’d left, about Shork.
She didn’t even know the guy was dead until I’d mentioned it. Anyway, I guess the brother admitted to it, but since nobody
could prove it, he told her he wasn’t turning himself in. He gave
her
as the reason. Said that without
him
she’d slide right into trouble again.”

“So, now it’s her word against his if she makes a statement.”

“Not exactly. She and this Chinese woman, they had a big shopping bag with them when they walked into Manhattan South. Guess
what was in it?”

“No idea, Nick.”

“A bloodstained glove and a winter coat with blood on the sleeve. She’d taken it right out of the brother’s closet. He’d washed
most of the blood off, but there was enough left, even to the naked eye. Guess whose blood it matched?”

I couldn’t answer.

“Guess what else matched? Fibers. Perfect match with specimens we swept up from the scene.”

“She turned in her
brother?”

“That’s what the lady did. Ain’t it a pisser?” A smile crept out.

“Jesus H. Christ” was all I could manage.

“You know what got to her, what
really
made the lady mad?”

“What?”

“That the brother thought
he
was the only one who could take care of her. Not this Jiang lady, just him. That’s what started her rummaging through his
closet. Know what else she found? A .25 caliber pistol, registered to Shork.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

“Manhattan South pulled the guy in a couple of hours ago, put it all in front of him and he sang like Crosby. I went over
to Raymond Street soon as I got the call. Your boy Arnold’s free.”

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. DeMassio’s grin was unrestrained, flashing like cool, white neon. “Just thought
maybe you’d like to know,” he said as he walked out the door. He even smiled at the Barracuda Brothers, who were on their
way in, but weren’t smiling.

S
o,” I needled, “how are the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum of crime doing this fine day?” One of them stepped forward, flashing
his pointy teeth. He surveyed the room like it might be a place of ambush, relaxing only when he was sure there was nobody
else there. My roommate was in an operating room somewhere having his jaw rewired.

“Which one are you?” I asked, feeling cocky.

“I’m Carmine,” he said with a sneer. “He’s Rico.”

“I’m Rico,” said Rico with a matching look.

“It was cold as Hell in that fuckin’ car,” Carmine complained.

“Cold as fuckin’ Hell,” echoed Rico.

“I thought Hell was supposed to be hot,” I said with my biggest wiseass grin. They didn’t get the joke.

“Pop, he told us to watch you, so we watched you,” said Carmine. “We always do what Pop says.”

“Always,” echoed Rico.

“Pop says Al Scarpetti, may his fuckin’ mother die of rabies, offered you ten grand for the file we handed to the cops. That
right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Maybe you think Pop thinks you was givin’ that file back yourself, once you got it from the broad.”

“I don’t know what your father thinks, Carmine. I only hope he thinks well of me. I respect your father.”

“You
was
bringin’ it back, right?”

“That was the idea.”

“Rico here, he figured you was gonna make the deal with Scarpetti…”

“No…”

“Don’t interrupt. He figured that until you pulled the broad by the hair when she had a bead on him. Now he thinks different.”

“I think different,” said Rico with a pointy-toothed smile.

“So, now, Pop says I gotta give you this.” I flinched when he reached inside his topcoat. My reaction brought a second pointy-toothed
smile, and as he handed me the sealed legal-size envelope, he said, “Bang-bang,” and laughed. Rico laughed with him and said,
“Bang-bang” once more as the door closed behind them. Alone in the room, I opened the envelope. Hundred dollar bills. An even
hundred of them. Jimmy Santini wasn’t about to let Alberto Scarpetti offer a sum that Santini couldn’t match. I counted it
three times to make sure I wasn’t in another dream. It was just pocket change to Santini, but it was a whole two years’ pay
to me.

The doctor returned in late afternoon, the nurse took my temperature, orally for once, and I was declared fit to leave.
My left foot was bandaged too heavily even to fit inside a hospital slipper, so they planned to take me out in a wheelchair,
which was procedure anyway. Herm Kowalski was going to drive me home.

He arrived around seven o’clock and handed me a small suitcase. “Didn’t have time to stop at your place,” he explained, “so
I brought you some of my own clothes. You ready to go?”

“Gotta make one more trip through the ward. Meet you at the car?”

“Sure,” said Herm, and he walked out the door.

I toured the ward in record time. When I got back to the room, Arnold Pulaski was standing next to my bed.

“I met your lawyer pal on the way up,” he said. It almost sounded like the old wiseass Arnold.

“I’m sorry I missed that. What’d you do, spit at each other?”

“I apologized.”

“You
apologized?
Then what?”

“He said ‘okay.’ I kinda expected him to spit, though,” he added with the hint of a handsome, boyish smile. When he laughed,
I laughed with him.

“Nick DeMassio came to see me a little while ago,” I said. “He told me they’d released you.”

“He the cop from Bath Avenue?”

“That’s him. Big Sicilian guy.”

“He’s the guy who came to let me out.”

“I hope you didn’t tell
him
to wait.”

“Naah,” he said, and offered a broader smile. That stopped me dead, not because I wasn’t expecting it, but because it was
my father’s smile.

“What’s the matter?” he asked of my staring.

“You remind me of someone I used to know.” I let it go at that, and his smile faded to a look of concern. A silence set in,
and I turned to the suitcase that Herm had left.