Read Online Brooklyn Noir by Tim McLoughlin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Tim McLoughlin
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Crime, Short Stories, American Fiction, New York, New York (State), Anthologies (Multiple Authors), Detective and Mystery Stories; American, Brooklyn (New York; N.Y.), American fiction - New York (State) - New York, Noir fiction; American
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light is beginning to dawn. “We have here a former New York Giants fan who has never forgiven the Dodgers.”
“You got it right, kid,” Dusty snarls. “And I’m up to my keester with all this Dodger talk, all them pictures and not one shot of Master Melvin Ott, King Carl Hubbell, Sal Maglie, the Greatest Willie Mays…”
Before he can run down all the rosters from ’35 through ’57, I throw him the spitter: “And we might add James Lamar ‘Dusty’ Rhodes, who come from nowhere to run off with the 1954 World Series.”
“You better believe it,” Dusty says. “.667, two home runs, seben, I said seben runs batted in and dat was a four-game series. So where is Dusty on dis wall? Do I hear a woid, one stinkin’ woid from any of them wiseguys pitchin’ cards, talkin’ Dodgers, Dodgers, Dodgers. Dem Bums. And youse. Youse got the noive to talk
Deus? Deus
Latin prayers in this joint?”
Dusty goes quietly after that.
We spring Scoop the next afternoon. Sylvia wants to celebrate with a steak at Gage and Tollner’s. She’s had enough of the deli business—“Bad memories”—and declares this her farewell party.
I.F. invites us to join him for a stroll through the Brooklyn Museum. “I’d like to take a look at Bierstadt’s
Storm in the Rockies, Mt. Rosalie.
A guy I met on the plane, flying in from L.A. last week, told me he’s a friend of Robert Levinson who was the chairman of the board and could recommend me for a job there. Then we can amble over to the lobby of the former Paramount Theater. It’s the Eugene & Beverly Luntey Commons of the Brooklyn Center, L.I.U. now. We could sit and read poems by Robert Donald Spector and maybe be lucky enough to run into JoAnn Allen or Mike Bush, all stars of their faculty.”
Scoop breaks into a chorus of “Thanks for the Memories” and Sylvia takes his hand like two kids on their way to the boardwalk at Coney Island.
Out of the blue, I.F. says to me, “Harold Patrick Reiser, 1941 through 1948, a Dodgers’ Dodger until he ran into a fence.” Then he gently nudges my holster. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Pistol Pete.”
WHEN ALL THIS
WAS BAY RIDGE
BY TIM MCLOUGHLIN
Sunset Park
Standing in church at my father’s funeral, I thought about being arrested on the night of my seventeenth birthday. It had occurred in the trainyard at Avenue X, in Coney Island. Me and Pancho and a kid named Freddie were working a three-car piece, the most ambitious I’d tried to that point, and more time-consuming than was judicious to spend trespassing on city property. Two Transit cops with German shepherds caught us in the middle of the second car. I dropped my aerosol can and took off, and was perhaps two hundred feet along the beginning of the trench that becomes the IRT line to the Bronx, when I saw the hand. It was human, adult, and severed neatly, seemingly surgically, at the wrist. My first thought was that it looked bare without a watch. Then I made a whooping sound, trying to take in air, and turned and ran back toward the cops and their dogs.
At the 60th Precinct, we three were ushered into a small cell. We sat for several hours, then the door opened and I was led out. My father was waiting in the main room, in front of the counter.
The desk sergeant, middle-aged, black, and noticeably bored, looked up briefly. “Him?”
“Him,” my father echoed, sounding defeated.
“Goodnight,” the sergeant said.
My father took my arm and led me out of the precinct. As we cleared the door and stepped into the humid night he turned to me and said, “This was it. Your one free ride. It doesn’t happen again.”
“What did it cost?” I asked. My father had retired from the Police Department years earlier, and I knew this had been expensive.
He shook his head. “This once, that’s all.”
I followed him to his car. “I have two friends in there.”
“Fuck’em. Spics. That’s half your problem.”
“What’s the
“You got it right, kid,” Dusty snarls. “And I’m up to my keester with all this Dodger talk, all them pictures and not one shot of Master Melvin Ott, King Carl Hubbell, Sal Maglie, the Greatest Willie Mays…”
Before he can run down all the rosters from ’35 through ’57, I throw him the spitter: “And we might add James Lamar ‘Dusty’ Rhodes, who come from nowhere to run off with the 1954 World Series.”
“You better believe it,” Dusty says. “.667, two home runs, seben, I said seben runs batted in and dat was a four-game series. So where is Dusty on dis wall? Do I hear a woid, one stinkin’ woid from any of them wiseguys pitchin’ cards, talkin’ Dodgers, Dodgers, Dodgers. Dem Bums. And youse. Youse got the noive to talk
Deus? Deus
Latin prayers in this joint?”
Dusty goes quietly after that.
We spring Scoop the next afternoon. Sylvia wants to celebrate with a steak at Gage and Tollner’s. She’s had enough of the deli business—“Bad memories”—and declares this her farewell party.
I.F. invites us to join him for a stroll through the Brooklyn Museum. “I’d like to take a look at Bierstadt’s
Storm in the Rockies, Mt. Rosalie.
A guy I met on the plane, flying in from L.A. last week, told me he’s a friend of Robert Levinson who was the chairman of the board and could recommend me for a job there. Then we can amble over to the lobby of the former Paramount Theater. It’s the Eugene & Beverly Luntey Commons of the Brooklyn Center, L.I.U. now. We could sit and read poems by Robert Donald Spector and maybe be lucky enough to run into JoAnn Allen or Mike Bush, all stars of their faculty.”
Scoop breaks into a chorus of “Thanks for the Memories” and Sylvia takes his hand like two kids on their way to the boardwalk at Coney Island.
Out of the blue, I.F. says to me, “Harold Patrick Reiser, 1941 through 1948, a Dodgers’ Dodger until he ran into a fence.” Then he gently nudges my holster. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Pistol Pete.”
WHEN ALL THIS
WAS BAY RIDGE
BY TIM MCLOUGHLIN
Sunset Park
Standing in church at my father’s funeral, I thought about being arrested on the night of my seventeenth birthday. It had occurred in the trainyard at Avenue X, in Coney Island. Me and Pancho and a kid named Freddie were working a three-car piece, the most ambitious I’d tried to that point, and more time-consuming than was judicious to spend trespassing on city property. Two Transit cops with German shepherds caught us in the middle of the second car. I dropped my aerosol can and took off, and was perhaps two hundred feet along the beginning of the trench that becomes the IRT line to the Bronx, when I saw the hand. It was human, adult, and severed neatly, seemingly surgically, at the wrist. My first thought was that it looked bare without a watch. Then I made a whooping sound, trying to take in air, and turned and ran back toward the cops and their dogs.
At the 60th Precinct, we three were ushered into a small cell. We sat for several hours, then the door opened and I was led out. My father was waiting in the main room, in front of the counter.
The desk sergeant, middle-aged, black, and noticeably bored, looked up briefly. “Him?”
“Him,” my father echoed, sounding defeated.
“Goodnight,” the sergeant said.
My father took my arm and led me out of the precinct. As we cleared the door and stepped into the humid night he turned to me and said, “This was it. Your one free ride. It doesn’t happen again.”
“What did it cost?” I asked. My father had retired from the Police Department years earlier, and I knew this had been expensive.
He shook his head. “This once, that’s all.”
I followed him to his car. “I have two friends in there.”
“Fuck’em. Spics. That’s half your problem.”
“What’s the
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