Read Online Brooklyn Noir by Tim McLoughlin - Free Book Online

I lived mostly in L.A. with grandparents and eventually foster homes. No complaints. When I heard my mother died, I checked in with the number she gave me. Sylvia answered the phone. She asked me who I was. I told her. I didn’t know Scoop never told her about me. I guess I blew it. Less than a day later Scoop calls. He’s wiring me money to come to Brooklyn. He and Sylvia have talked it over, he said. They want to meet me, get to know me, make up for all the lost years.”
    The kid is telling me all this without a blink, a snicker, or a tear.
    “So you come to Brooklyn,” I say, going for the extra base. “What happens next?”
    “I did a little preparation, beefing up.” For the first time I.F. half smiles. “When I want to know about a place I read the poets and study the baseball teams. Are you familiar with Marianne Moore’s ‘Keeping Their World Large’?”
    Before I can apologize or fake it, the kid is into a verse:
“They fought the enemy,/we fight fat living and self-pity/ Shine, 0 shine/unfalsifying sun on this sick scene.”
    I say, “I’m gonna think about that.”
    The kid is on a run. “Marianne Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, but lived for a long time on Cumberland Street in Brooklyn.”
    “Hey, that’s real interesting,” I say. “Marianne Moore. Soon as I reread
Boys of Summer
I’m gonna look into Marianne Moore.” Then, I send my fastball down the middle. “So tell me, you know any reason Scoop would have to do in Front Page and Sherlock?”
    I.F. shrugs, gives his Dodger cap a twist and twirl. “How many reasons you want?” he says. “Would about ten thousand dollars in debt from the poker games be a reason? Or the fact that he discovered soon as Sylvia heard about me she had a romp in the hay with each of them?” As he’s circling the bases, I.F. goes on with a dose of Walt Whitman.
“I do not press my fingers across my mouth,/ I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,/ Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.”
    I’m getting that same uneasy feeling I get when his old man breaks into song. Songs, poetry, batting averages. Maybe I’m on to something. Call it the prayer gene.
    I’m thinking over my next pitch when Sylvia’s voice comes from the kitchen. “You boys ready for a little snack? This corned beef is right out of the brine. You never tasted nothing like it in your life.” I hear the slicer and then Sylvia comes to the door with this kitchen saw. I never seen a chef in high heels and an apron color coordinated with her hair dye.
    “So?” she says, pointing the slicer at me. “I can’t wait any longer, Pistol Pete. Who done it?”
    “Well, Sylv,” I say. “We got five possibilities here.”
    “Solving a murder is that logical, an exercise in Kant’s pure reason?” I.F. pulls the cap around so the Dodger logo is facing me.
    “Starting back to front there is always the possibility of suicide, but a double suicide over a pastrami and corned beef?” I get an immediate waiver on number one. “So we have two, three, and four. Number two is Scoop with the mustard stains, who has motive and clues.”
    “I didn’t hire you for that,” Sylvia reminds me. “Not Scoop. My Scoop may be a good-for-nothing—but he’d never spoil perfectly good corned beef and pastrami sandwiches with poisoned mustard.”
    “Scoop is the patsy,” I go on. “He’s set up. Try it this way—someone with a motive to knock him off frames him for a double murder.”
    Sylvia calls into the kitchen, “James Lamar, we need coffee. Black with those sandwiches.”
    “That could be you, Sylvia,” I say quietly. “You’re number three on our suspect list.”
    “Me?” Sylvia stamps her foot and switches on the slicer.
    Her eyes are shifting fast as Koufax’s curveball. “You got to be out of your mind. I put up with that son of a bitch lying, cheating all these years, and you can’t see I love