Brooklyn Noir Part 1

Brooklyn Noir.

by Tim McLoughlin.

INTRODUCTION.

LOVE & C & CRIME.

I recently received a phone call from one of my father's old friends. He's an interesting man who has led a dangerous life, and since my father's death I only hear from him every year or two. He was calling to tell me that his kid brother's daughter, fourteen years old, had gone missing. Thankfully, he called again the next day to say she'd been found safe at a friend's house. It had merely been a case of teenage angst acted out by briefly running away. I expressed my relief, and told him I'd take down the homemade flyers I'd posted. We talked for another few minutes, then signed off. recently received a phone call from one of my father's old friends. He's an interesting man who has led a dangerous life, and since my father's death I only hear from him every year or two. He was calling to tell me that his kid brother's daughter, fourteen years old, had gone missing. Thankfully, he called again the next day to say she'd been found safe at a friend's house. It had merely been a case of teenage angst acted out by briefly running away. I expressed my relief, and told him I'd take down the homemade flyers I'd posted. We talked for another few minutes, then signed off.

"Take care, you know I love you," he said as he hung up.

He is six-feet four-inches tall, and is a pretty formidable guy still, at age sixty-three, with a face full of scar tissue and a triple bypa.s.s behind him. You know I love you. You know I love you. I thought about the fact that the only men I've known, other than my father, who are comfortable telling me that they love me, are also men capable of extreme violence. Is it a personality trait? Are these men just so much more emotional that they are capable of greater feeling? Love and hate, compa.s.sion and violence. I thought about the fact that the only men I've known, other than my father, who are comfortable telling me that they love me, are also men capable of extreme violence. Is it a personality trait? Are these men just so much more emotional that they are capable of greater feeling? Love and hate, compa.s.sion and violence.

No. It's a code; an example of the language of inclusion. It has been used to the point of tedium in novels and films depicting organized crime families, but in the real world, membership in social alliances forged in the street can be between two people or twenty. And can stand for generations or dissolve the same evening. But the first thing that will emerge in such a.s.sociations is a commonality of language, or pattern of speech, that suggests acceptance and loyalty, even if the individuals are from vastly different backgrounds.

The communities across Brooklyn depicted in this book are for the most part not representative of the popular image of the borough today. Most stories from Brooklyn don't focus on places like Canarsie, as Ellen Miller's moody, disturbing tale does, or East New York, as in Maggie Estep's clever, evocative story. And when the places are familiar, the enclave within often isn't. The Park Slope of Pete Hamill's "The Book Signing" is not a latte-drenched smoke-free zone celebrating its latest gra.s.sroots civic victory over some perceived evil, but the neighborhood of those left behind-the handful of old-timers living over the stores on Seventh Avenue and in the few remaining rent-controlled apartments, having to walk further every day to find a real bar or grocery store. The Williamsburg of Pearl Abraham isn't the hipster hang, but the Hasidic stronghold. What these underground communities share, though, and these writers capture brilliantly, is the language.

With the exception of a few characters, like Arthur Nersesian's predatory protagonist, all of the actors in these pieces belong to some sort of community, and it is their membership that defines, and saves or dooms them.

Some of these neighborhoods overlap and some are from opposite ends of the borough, and it doesn't mean a thing in terms of language. Two or three of these stories could take place within a half-dozen blocks of each other, and the players would barely know where they were if their places were shifted. Ken Bruen's "Fade to ... Brooklyn" is actually set in Ireland, and though I know a number of people who consider Ireland just another part of the neighborhood, I like to think of it as our virtual Brooklyn story.

The tales presented here are as diverse as the borough itself, from the over-the-top violent world of gangster rap, to a Damon Runyonesque crew of hardboiled old men. There are s.e.xual predators, dirty cops, killers, and a horse thief. So the stories are different, but as I read them again, preparing to let this book go-reluctantly, because I don't want it to end-I'm also struck by the way that they are similar. And that is in the most important way; because as any scholar sitting at the bar in a Flatbush gin mill knows, it's about telling a good story. It is my privilege to share ours with you.

Tim McLoughlin Brooklyn, January 2004

PART I.

Old School Brooklyn

THE BOOK SIGNING.

BY P PETE H HAMILL.

Park Slope.

Carmody came up from the subway before dusk, and his eyegla.s.ses fogged in the sudden cold. He lifted them off his nose, holding them while they cooled, and saw his own face smiling from a pale green leaflet taped to the wall. There he was, in a six-year-old photograph, and the words Reading Reading and and Book Signin Book Signin and the date and place, and he paused for a moment, shivering in the hard wind. The subway was his idea. The publisher could have sent him to Brooklyn in a limousine, but he wanted to go to the old neighborhood the way he always did, long ago. He might, after all, never come this way again. and the date and place, and he paused for a moment, shivering in the hard wind. The subway was his idea. The publisher could have sent him to Brooklyn in a limousine, but he wanted to go to the old neighborhood the way he always did, long ago. He might, after all, never come this way again.

The subway stairs seemed steeper than he remembered and he felt twinges in his knees that he never felt in California. Sharp little needles of pain, like rumors of mortality. He didn't feel these pains after tennis, or even after speed-walking along the Malibu roads. But the pain was there now, and was not eased by the weather. The wind was blowing fiercely from the harbor, which lay off in the darkness to his right, and he donned his gla.s.ses again and used both gloved hands to pull his brown fedora more securely to his brow. His watch told him that he had more than a half hour to get to the bookstore. Just as he had hoped. He'd have some time for a visit, but not too much time. He crossed the street with his back to the place where the bookstore awaited him, and pa.s.sed along the avenue where he once was young.

His own aging face peered at him from the leaflets as he pa.s.sed, some pasted on walls, others taped inside the windows of shops. In a way, he thought, they looked like Wanted posters. He felt a sudden ... what was the word? Not fear. Certainly not panic. Unease Unease That was the word. An uneasiness in the stomach. A flexing and then relaxing of muscles, an unwilled release of liquids or acids, all those secret wordless messages that in California were cured by the beach and the surf or a quick hit of Maalox. He told himself to stop. This was no drama. It was just a trip through a few streets where once he had lived but had not seen for decades. After seventeen novels, this would be his first signing in the borough that had formed him. But the leaflets made clear that here, in this neighborhood, his appearance might be some kind of big deal. It might draw many people. And Carmody felt apprehensive, nervous, wormy with unease. That was the word. An uneasiness in the stomach. A flexing and then relaxing of muscles, an unwilled release of liquids or acids, all those secret wordless messages that in California were cured by the beach and the surf or a quick hit of Maalox. He told himself to stop. This was no drama. It was just a trip through a few streets where once he had lived but had not seen for decades. After seventeen novels, this would be his first signing in the borough that had formed him. But the leaflets made clear that here, in this neighborhood, his appearance might be some kind of big deal. It might draw many people. And Carmody felt apprehensive, nervous, wormy with unease.

"How does it feel, going back to Brooklyn?" Charlie Rose had asked him the night before, in a small dark television studio on Park Avenue.

"I don't know," Carmody said, and chuckled. "I just hope they don't throw books at me. Particularly my own books."

And wanted to add: I've never really left. I've never really left. Or to be more exact Or to be more exact Those streets have never left me. Those streets have never left me.

The buildings themselves were as Carmody remembered them. They were old-law tenements, with fire escapes on the facades, but they seemed oddly comforting to Carmody. This was not one of those New York neighborhoods desolated by time and arson and decay. On the coast of California, he had seen photographs of the enrubbled lots of Brownsville and East New York. There were no lots here in the old neighborhood. If anything, the buildings looked better now, with fresh paint and clear gla.s.s on the street level doors instead of hammered tin painted gray. He knew from reading the New York Times New York Times that the neighborhood had been gentrified, that most of the old families had moved away, to be replaced by younger people who paid higher rents. There was some unhappiness to all of that, the paper said, but still, the place looked better. As a boy he had walked these streets many times on nights like this, when most people retreated swiftly from the bitter cold to the uncertain warmth of the flats. Nights of piled snow and stranded streetcars. Now he noticed lights coming on in many of those old apartments, and shadows moving like ghosts behind drawn shades and curtains. He peered down a street toward the harbor, noticed some stubborn scabs of old snow, black between parked cars, and in the distance saw a thin scarlet band where the sun was setting in New Jersey. On this high slope, the harbor wind turned old snow into iron. But the sliver of sun was the same too. The day was dying. It would soon be night. that the neighborhood had been gentrified, that most of the old families had moved away, to be replaced by younger people who paid higher rents. There was some unhappiness to all of that, the paper said, but still, the place looked better. As a boy he had walked these streets many times on nights like this, when most people retreated swiftly from the bitter cold to the uncertain warmth of the flats. Nights of piled snow and stranded streetcars. Now he noticed lights coming on in many of those old apartments, and shadows moving like ghosts behind drawn shades and curtains. He peered down a street toward the harbor, noticed some stubborn scabs of old snow, black between parked cars, and in the distance saw a thin scarlet band where the sun was setting in New Jersey. On this high slope, the harbor wind turned old snow into iron. But the sliver of sun was the same too. The day was dying. It would soon be night.

If the buildings were the same, the shops along the avenue were all different. Fitzgerald's bar was gone, where his father did most of his drinking, and so was Sussman's Hardware and Fischetti's Fruit and Vegetable and the Freedom Meats store and the pharmacy. What was the name of that drugstore? Right there. On that corner. An art supply store now. An art supply store! Moloff's Moloff's. The drugstore was called Moloff's, and next door was a bakery. "Our Own" they called it. And now there was a computer store where a TV repair shop once stood. And a dry cleaners where men once stood at the bar of Rattigan's, singing the old songs. All gone. Even the old clock factory had been converted into a condominium.

None of this surprised Carmody. He knew they'd all be gone. Nothing lasts. Marriages don't last. Ball clubs don't last. Why should shops last? Wasn't that the point of each one of his seventeen books? The critics never saw that point, but he didn't care. Those novels were not literature, even to Carmody. He would say in interviews that he wrote for readers, not for critics. And said to himself: I'm not Stendhal, or Hemingway, or Faulkner. He knew that from the beginning. Those novels were the work he did after turning forty, when he reached the age limit for screen-writing. He worked at the top of his talent, to be sure, and used his knowledge of movies to create plots that kept readers turning the pages. But he knew they were commercial products, novels about industries and how they worked, his characters woven from gossip and profiles in Fortune Fortune or or Business Week Business Week. He had started with the automobile industry, and then moved to the television industry, and the sugar industry, and the weapons industry. In each of them the old was destroyed by the new, the old ruling families decayed and collapsed and newer, more ruthless men and women took their places. The new one was about the food industry, from the farms of California to the dinner plates of New York and Los Angeles. Like the others, it had no aspirations to be seen as art. That would be pretentious. But they were good examples of craft, as honest as well-made chairs. In each of them, he knew, research served as a subst.i.tute for imagination and art and memory. Three different researchers had filed memos on this last one, the new one, the novel he would sign here tonight, in the Barnes & n.o.ble store five blocks behind him. He hoped n.o.body in the audience would ask why he had never once written about Brooklyn.

To be sure, he had never denied his origins. There was a profile in People People magazine in 1984, when his novel about the gambling industry went to number one on the magazine in 1984, when his novel about the gambling industry went to number one on the New York Times New York Times bestseller list, and stayed there for seventeen weeks. He was photographed on the terrace of the house in Malibu with the Pacific stretched out beyond him, and they used an old high school newspaper photograph showing him in pegged pants and a t-shirt, looking like an apprentice gangster or some variation on the persona of James Dean. The article mentioned his two ex-wives (there was now a third woman receiving his alimony checks), but the reporter was also from Brooklyn and was more intrigued by the Brooklyn mug who had become a bestselling author. bestseller list, and stayed there for seventeen weeks. He was photographed on the terrace of the house in Malibu with the Pacific stretched out beyond him, and they used an old high school newspaper photograph showing him in pegged pants and a t-shirt, looking like an apprentice gangster or some variation on the persona of James Dean. The article mentioned his two ex-wives (there was now a third woman receiving his alimony checks), but the reporter was also from Brooklyn and was more intrigued by the Brooklyn mug who had become a bestselling author.

"You went west in 1957," the reporter said. "Just like the Dodgers."

"When they left, I left too, because that was the end of Brooklyn as I knew it," Carmody said. "I figured I'd have my revenge on Los Angeles by forcing it to pay me a decent living."

That was a lie, of course. One among many. He didn't leave Brooklyn because of the Dodgers. He left because of Molly Mulrane.

Now he was standing across the street from the building where both of them had lived. The entrance then was between a meat market and a fruit store, converted now into a toy store and a cellphone shop. Molly lived on the first floor left. Carmody on the top floor right. She was three years younger than Carmody and he didn't pay her much attention until he returned from the Army in 1954. An old story: She had blossomed. And one thing had led to another.

He remembered her father's rough, unhappy, threatening face when he first came calling to take her to the movies. Patty Mulrane, the cop. And the way he looked when he went out in his police uniform for a 4-to-12 shift, his gun on his hip, his usual slouch shifting as he walked taller and a.s.sumed a kind of swagger. And how appalled Patty Mulrane was when Carmody told him he was using the GI Bill to become a writer. "A writer? What the h.e.l.l is that? I'm a writer too. I write tickets. Ha ha. A writer ... How do you make a living with that? What about being a lawyer? A doctor? What about, what do they call it now, criminology? criminology? At least you'd have a shot at becoming a lieutenant ..." The father liked his Fleischman's and beer and used the Dodgers as a subst.i.tute for conversation. The mother was a dim, shadowy woman, who did very little talking. That summer, Molly was the youngest of the three children, and the only one still at home. Her brother, Frankie, was a fireman and lived with his wife in Bay Ridge. There was another brother: What was his name? Sean. Seanie. Flat face, hooded eyes, a hard tank-like body. Carmody didn't remember much about him. There had been some kind of trouble, something about a robbery, which meant he could never follow his father into the police department, and Seanie had moved to Florida where he was said to be a fisherman in the Keys. Every Sunday morning, father, mother, and daughter went to ma.s.s together. At least you'd have a shot at becoming a lieutenant ..." The father liked his Fleischman's and beer and used the Dodgers as a subst.i.tute for conversation. The mother was a dim, shadowy woman, who did very little talking. That summer, Molly was the youngest of the three children, and the only one still at home. Her brother, Frankie, was a fireman and lived with his wife in Bay Ridge. There was another brother: What was his name? Sean. Seanie. Flat face, hooded eyes, a hard tank-like body. Carmody didn't remember much about him. There had been some kind of trouble, something about a robbery, which meant he could never follow his father into the police department, and Seanie had moved to Florida where he was said to be a fisherman in the Keys. Every Sunday morning, father, mother, and daughter went to ma.s.s together.

Now, on this frozen night, decades later, Carmody's unease rushed back. Ah, Molly, my Molly-O ... The fire escapes still climbed three stories to the top floor where the Carmodys lived. But the building looked better, like all the others on the avenue. On the top floor right on this frozen night, the shades were up and Carmody could see ochre-colored walls, and a warm light cast by table lamps. This startled him. In memory, the Carmody flat was always cold, the windows rimmed with frost in winter, he and his sisters making drawings with their fingernails in the cold bluish light cast from a fluorescent ceiling lamp. His father was cold too, a withdrawn bitter man who resented the world, and the youth of his children. His mother was a drinker, and her own chilly remorse was relieved only by occasional bursts of rage. They nodded or grunted when Carmody told them about his ambitions, and his mother once said, in a slurred voice, "Who do you think you are, anyway?"

One Sat.u.r.day afternoon in the Mulrane flat, he and Molly were alone, her parents gone off to see Frankie and his small child. Molly proudly showed him her father's winter uniform, encased in plastic from Kent's dry cleaners, and the medals he had won, and the extra gun, a nickel-plated .38 caliber Smith and Wesson, oiled and ready in a felt box. She talked to him about a book she was reading by A.J. Cronin and he told her she should read F. Scott Fitzgerald. She made him a ham-and-swiss-cheese sandwich for lunch. They sipped tea with milk, thick with sugar. And then, for the first time, they went to bed together in her tiny room with its window leading to the fire escape. She was in an agony, murmuring prayers, her hands and arms moving in a jittery way to cover b.r.e.a.s.t.s and hair, trembling with fear and desire. "Hold me tight," "Hold me tight," she whispered. she whispered. "Don't ever leave me." "Don't ever leave me."

He had never written any of that, or how at the end of his first year of college, at the same time that she graduated from St. Joseph's, he rented the room near New York University, to get away from his parents and hers, and how she would come to him after work as a file clerk at Metropolitan Life and they would vanish into each other. He still went back to Brooklyn. He still visited the ice house of his parents. He still called formally in the Mulrane apartment to take Molly to the Sanders or the RKO Prospect. He was learning how to perform. But the tiny room had become their place, their gangster's hideout, the secret place to which they went for sin.

Now on this frozen night he stared at the dark windows of the first floor left, wondering who lived there now, and whether Molly's bones were lying in some frozen piece of the Brooklyn earth. He could still hear her voice, trembling and tentative: "We're sinners, aren't we?" He could hear her saying: "What's to become of us?" He could hear the common sense in her words and the curl of Brooklyn in her accent. "Where are we going?" she said. "Please don't ever leave me." He could see the mole inside her left thigh. He could see the fine hair at the top of her neck.

"Well, will ya lookit this," a hoa.r.s.e male voice said from behind him. "If it ain't Buddy Carmody."

Carmody turned and saw a burly man smoking a cigarette in the doorway of a tenement. He was wearing a thick ski jacket and jeans, but his head was bare. The face was not clear in the obscure light but the voice told Carmody it was definitely someone from back then. n.o.body had called him Buddy in forty-six years.

"How are ya?" Carmody said, peering at the man as he stepped out of the doorway. The man's face was puffy and seamed, and Carmody tried to peel away the flesh to see who had lived in it when they both were young.

"Couldn't stay away from the old neighborhood, could ya, Buddy?"

The unease was seething, but now Carmody felt a small stream of fear make its move in his stomach.

"It's been a long time," Carmody said. "Remind me, what's your name?"

"You s.h.i.ttin' me, Buddy? How could you figget my name?"

"I told you, man, it's been a long time."

"Yeah. It's easy to figget, for some people."

"Advanced age, and all that," Carmody said, performing a grin, glancing to his left, to the darkening shop windows, the empty street. Imagining himself running.

"But not everybody figgets," the man said.

He flipped his cigarette under a parked car.

"My sister didn't figget."

Oh.

Oh G.o.d.

"You must be Seanie," Carmody said quietly. "Am I right? Seanie Mulrane?"

"Ah, you remembered."

"How are you, Seanie?"

He could see Seanie's hooded eyes now, so like the eyes of his policeman father: still, unimpressed. He moved close enough so that Carmody could smell the whiskey on his breath.

"How am I? Huh. How am I ... Not as good as you, Buddy boy. We keep up, ya know. The books, that mini-series, or whatever it was on NBC. Pretty good, you're doing."

Carmody stepped back a foot, as subtly as possible, trying to decide how to leave. He wished a police car would turn the corner. He trembled, feeling a black wind of negation pushing at him, backing him up, a small focused wind that seemed to come from the furled brow of Seanie Mulrane. He tried to look casual, turned and glanced at the building where he was young, at the dark first floor left, the warm top floor right.

"She never got over you, you p.r.i.c.k."

Carmody shrugged. "It's a long time ago, Seanie," he said, trying to avoid being dismissive.

"I remember that first month after you split," Seanie said. "She cried all the time. She cried all day. She cried all night. She quit her job, 'cause she couldn't do it and cry at the same time. She'd start to eat, then, oof oof, she'd break up again. A million f.u.c.kin' tears, Buddy. I seen it. I was there, just back from the Keys, and my father wanted to find you and put a bullet in your head. And Molly, poor Molly ... You broke her f.u.c.kin' heart, Buddy."

Carmody said nothing. Other emotions were flowing now. Little rivers of regret. Remorse. Unforgivable mistakes. His stomach rose and fell and rose again.

"And that first month? Hey, that was just the start. The end of the second month after you cut out, she tells my mother she's knocked up."

"No ..."

"Yes."

"I didn't know that, Seanie. I swear-"

"Don't lie lie, Buddy. My old man told your old man. He pulled a gun on him, for Chrissakes, tryin' to find out where you was."

"I never heard any of this."

"Don't lie, Buddy. You lie for a livin', right? All those books, they're lies, ain't they? Don't lie to me."

"I didn't know, Seanie."

"Tell the truth: You ran because she was pregnant."

No: That wasn't why. He truly didn't know. He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes until the book signing. He felt an ache rising in his back.

"She had the baby, some place in New Jersey," Seanie said. "Catholic nuns or something. And gave it up. A boy it was. A son. Then she came home and went in her room. She went to ma.s.s every morning, I guess prayin' to G.o.d to forgive her. But she never went to another movie with a guy, never went on a date. She stood in her room, like another G.o.dd.a.m.ned nun. She saw my mother die, and buried her, and saw my father die, and buried him, and saw me get married and move here wit' my Mary, right across the street, to live upstairs. I'd come see her every day, and try talkin' to her, but it was like, 'You want tea, Seanie, or coffee?'"

Seanie moved slightly, placing his bulk between Carmody and the path to Barnes & n.o.ble.

"Once I said to her, I said, 'How about you come with me an' Mary to Florida? You like it, we could all move there. It's beautiful,' I said to her. 'Palm trees and the ocean. You'd love it.' Figuring I had to get her out of that f.u.c.kin' room. She looked at me like I said, 'Hey, let's move to Mars.'" Seanie paused, trembling with anger and memory, and lit another cigarette. "Just once, she talked a blue streak, drinkin' gin, I guess it was. And said to me, real mad, 'I don't want to see anyone, you understand me, Seanie? I don't want to see people holdin' hands. I don't want to see little boys playin' ball. You understand me?'" He took a deep drag on the Camel. "'I want to be here,' she says to me, 'when Buddy comes back.'"

Carmody stared at the sidewalk, at Seanie's scuffed black shoes, and heard her voice: When Buddy comes back. When Buddy comes back. Saw the fine hair at the top of her neck. Thinking: Here I am, I'm back. Saw the fine hair at the top of her neck. Thinking: Here I am, I'm back.

"So she waited for you, Buddy. Year after year in that dark G.o.dd.a.m.ned flat. Everything was like it was when you split. My mother's room, my father's room, her room. All the same clothes. It wasn't right what you done to her, Buddy. She was a beautiful girl."

"That she was."

"And a sweet girl."

"Yes."

"It wasn't right. You had the sweet life and she shoulda had it with you."

Carmody turned. "And how did she ... When did she ..."

"Die? She didn't die, Buddy. She's still there. Right across the street. Waitin' for you, you p.r.i.c.k."

Carmody turned then, lurching toward the corner, heading to the bookstore. He did not run, but his legs carried him in flight. Thinking: She's alive. Molly Mulrane is alive. He was certain she had gone off, married someone, a cop or a fireman or car salesman, had settled in the safety of Bay Ridge or some far-off green suburb. A place without memory. Without ghosts. He was certain that she had lived a long while, married, had children, and then died. The way everybody did. And now he knew the only child she ever had was his, a son, and he was in flight, afraid to look back.

He could sense the feral pack behind him, filling the silent streets with howls. He had heard them often in the past few years, on beaches at dusk, in too many dreams. The voices of women, wordless but full of accusation: wives, and girlfriends, and one-night stands in college towns; women his own age and women not yet women; women discarded, women used, women injured, coming after him on a foggy moor, from groves of leafless trees, their eyes yellow, their clothing mere patchy rags. If they could speak, the words would be about lies, treacheries, theft, broken vows. He could see many of their faces as he moved, remembering some of their names, and knew that in front, leading the pack, was Molly Mulrane.

Crossing a street, he slipped on a ridge of black ice and banged against the hood of a parked car. Then he looked back. n.o.body was there.

He paused, breathing hard and deep.

Not even Seanie had come after him.

And now the book signing filled him with another kind of fear. Who else might come there tonight, knowing the truth? Hauling up the ashes of the past? What other sin would someone dredge up? Who else might come for an accounting?

He hurried on, the feral visions erased. He was breathing heavily, as he always did when waking from bad dreams. A taxi cruised along the avenue, its rooftop light on, as if pleading for a fare to Manhattan. Carmody thought: I could just go. Just jump in this cab. Call the store. Plead sudden illness. Just go. But someone was sure to call Rush & Malloy at the Daily News Daily News or Page Six at the or Page Six at the Post Post and report the no-show. and report the no-show. Brooklyn Boy Calls It In. Brooklyn Boy Calls It In. All that s.h.i.t. No. All that s.h.i.t. No.

And then a rosy-cheeked woman was smiling at him. The manager of the bookstore.

"Oh, Mister Carmody, we thought you got lost."

"Not in this neighborhood," he said. And smiled, as required by the performance.