Pete Hamill - Brooklyn Noir

The marbles are there, so I ask him for the story. “No song and dance, Scoop,” I say. “We only got so long. Sanchez is doing us a favor. Just a run through, not twice around.”

Scoop confirms pretty much what Sylvia has told me — the history of the poker game, the poisoned mustard, the clues on his cuff, pants, fly. I’m taking notes, scratching times, names, the menu. Seems the scene of the crime is a small office off the main drag of Senior’s, the deli Sylvia has opened less than a month ago.

“I never wanted her to do it,” Scoop says. “What we need a business for at our age? We should be rolling in the clover or at least the sands of Miami Beach. But you know Sylvia, once she got it in her head to make pastrami on rye with a slice of cheesecake for McDonald’s prices, there was no stopping her. She’s talking franchises coast to coast, going public on the big board, and we’re lucky if we can pay the bills even with my kid—” Scoop breaks off, shrugs, collects himself. “I mean our nephew I.F. Izzy. Ain’t he an egg cream with a dash of cinnamon if you ever seen one?”

Egg creams with cinnamon? That’s a new one on me, but I let it pass. I’m hearing “my kid” before “our nephew.” I say, “Tell me something, Scoop. This nephew of yourn, he’s your sister’s kid? Molly who I remember lived in Sea Gate before she run off with a retired cutter from the garment district and moved to South Fallsburg?”

“Naw. Naw,” Scoop says. “The cutter — may his creases rest in peace — is long since gone. Molly married again, an artist. She’s got a place in Brooklyn Heights, right there looking over the southern tip of Manhattan.”

I know Scoop has no other sisters or brothers and this “nephew” definitely does not run in Sylvia’s family. I put it to him: “This kid, I.F. Izzy. He is or is no Molly’s son?”

Scoop shrugs, comes as close as I’ve ever seen him to blushing, starts fumbling for a butt. I’d stake him to a White Owl, but it is definitely not a good idea to light up a fat stogie in a precinct house when you’re being held for murder.

“He’s no nephew,” Scoop says like he’s breaking the Lindbergh case. “The kid is my son. Not by Sylvia. Sylvia and I couldn’t have kids — not in the cards for us.”

I’m sitting cool as a cucumber, no how do you do, it’s all news to me It’s a confession, right out of Bernard Macfadden’s True Story, Truer Romance, Truest Experience. A marriage gone lightly sour, a career diving for cover, not much happening except for poker with the boys and a chippy who likes to sing duets. Scoop tells me he picked up I.F.’s mother in a journalism class he was teaching part-time at L.I.U. twenty years ago.

“A good kid. I really liked her, had a lot of respect for that babe. Would have broken up with Sylvia for her, but she — Martha Gellhorn Washington — would you believe it, named for one of the great foreign correspondents of her time, who also never won a Polk Award. Anyway, Martha said it was just a fling. I was too old for her, not really her type. But she wanted to have the kid. When Martha’s number was up, got hit by an external fuel tank jettisoned from a F14 Tomcat, something like that, there was our kid hanging in there, out in L.A. He thinks I done her wrong, set his mamalochen up for disaster. He drops the line to Sylvia. The rest of the story you can write for yourself.”

Pablo is flashing a signal. I lip read: Son las dos en punto. I got to wrap it up now that it’s 2 o’clock.

I say, “So your kid, I.F., winds up living with you and Sylvia. And the day of the poker game — was I.F. there for the Last Lunch?”

Scoop raises his hands and slaps them on the desk. “Turns out Sylvia is crazy about the kid. Moves I.F. right in with us, signs him on for Senior’s full time. He’s with her, day and night. Night and day. You are the one. Only you beneath the moon and under the sun. Whether near to me or far…” Scoop cuts out for the solo, but I got no time for musical interludes.

“Answer the question, Scoop,” I say. “Where was I.F. when the mustard hit the fan?”

Scoop tells me I.F. was right there. “Matter of fact…” Scoop lowers his voice. I got no idea who he thinks is listening to us, but I register that this is prime cut information. “I’m not sure I.F. picked up those sandwiches from Junior’s for us. Sylvia would hit the ceiling if she knew my guys and me were not even considering Senior’s mini-stuffed. We are strictly Junior’s disciples until — pardon the expression — until the day we die. We always order the same,” Scoop says. “Sherlock and Front Page go halves on a pastrami and corned beef. For me it’s white meat turkey, lettuce and tomato, with Russian on the side. The first week of each month we split a hunk of cheesecake.”

“And the mustard?”

“I noticed a little blob on my jacket when James L., the old man who works part-time for Sylv, handed it back to me as I was coming out of the crapper after lunch. I may have took a swipe at it and smeared it on my cuff and fly. Who knows? I was deep into the game. I don’t even remember unwrapping my sandwich. Once we upped the stakes to one and five and I’m down big bucks, what do I know from mustard? I’m thinking about losing C notes and lots of ’em. Last I remember before the guys caved in was pouring the tea for Front Page, the decaf for Sherlock, the straight java for me,” says Scoop, and breaks into song. “I like java. I like tea. I like the java jive. It likes me…”

He’s into the soft shoe as Pablo Sanchez escorts him back to the holding cell.

As soon as we check out of the precinct house, Sylvia is all over me. “I knew you could solve it, Pistol Pete. So tell us, who done it?”

I say, “Slow and easy, sweetheart. Like I told you, I’m a little out of shape, been sitting on the bench too many years.” Then I tell her I got to get a look at the scene of the crime.

We’re in the neighborhood. A hop, skip, and jump and I’m sitting at a big table loaded with bowls of sauerkraut, pickles, jars of ketchup — mustard! There’s not a customer in the joint. But the walls are plastered with pictures — all shots of the great Dodgers of our past — Hodges, Reese, Stanky, Roy Campanella, and a blowup the size of a billboard on Times Square of Scoop interviewing the immortal Jackie Robinson.

Sylvia ducks back into the kitchen to get us some eats. Never mind that I just come off half a late lunch. That’s her cover. She wants me to cut it up with I.F., so he can tell me what an Auntie-Mame-stepmother she’s turned out to be.

Only it doesn’t break according to Sylvia’s script.

I’m asking the questions and I.F., true to his name, talks straight. He’s known his father was a Brooklyn newspaper hack since he was five years old.

“My mother told me his name, left me a number to call if anything happened to her when she ran off on foreign assignments. The Balkans, Middle East, Afghanistan, anywhere someone was taking a shot, dropping a bomb, throwing a stone, was Mama’s beat. 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’?”