Pete Hamill - Brooklyn Noir

Before I can apologize or fake it, the kid is into a verse:

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 him?”

“The motives are there for you, Sylv,” I say again. “And you had the opportunity. How tough would it be for you to smear the mustard and plant the clues on Scoop’s shirt, cuff, fly? Knock ’em all off with one big splash of doctored Gold’s Own, or was it French’s?”

I.F. has been sitting cool and easy but now he stands up, starts smacking a fist into a palm. “We don’t use Gold’s mustard,” he says. “That’s Junior’s special blend. But when Junior’s delivers, it’s packets — no pre-smeared.”

“You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought, sonny boy,” I say to I.F. “So, you’re telling me the sandwiches were made at Senior’s? You got your old man and his two cronies squatting right there in your step-mamalochen’s deli and it’s your call on what to do about them ordering out.”

“This is too much. You’re insulting me.” Sylvia switches off the slicer and plunks into a chair. She’s sitting under a shot of Sandy Amoros’s spectacular running catch of Berra’s fly ball in the seventh game of the ’55 Series.

“Let’s assume the sandwiches were made here that fatal day. Nothing to do with Junior’s. That suggests our killer is a home team spoiler.”

“James Lamar, where are you when I need you?” Sylvia says again. “I want that coffee black.”

“You’re saying my father has been framed, and the killer, the person who smeared the mustard, works right here at Senior’s?” The kid breaks off and, with a wry smile right out of the L.A. handbook, We Own the Dodgers Now says, “Why not me? Abandoned son. Oedipus knocks off King Laius, also known as Seamus ‘Scoop’ O’Neil, and in the next act, according to your script, I marry Iocasta, also known as Mama Sylvia, and I inherit the Kingdom of Senior’s.”

“Marries his mother?” Sylvia repeats. “That is the most disgusting story I ever heard. I’ve had enough of you, Pistol Pete. I shoulda known better…”

“Let him talk,” I.F. says, as the door from the kitchen swings open and a guy must be my age comes limping in carrying a tray of mini-deli sandwiches and a decanter of java.

“Tea time,” I say, trying to change the mood. “Don’t mind if I do.” I move to the tray like Robinson feinting off third base. Then I sit back and say, “I’m not saying it is, just could be.”

“So?” I.F. says. The Dodger cap is rotated so the logo no longer faces me. “Sylvia or me — who’s your pleasure?”

“Youse want skimmed or regular with the coffee?” James Lamar is wearing a baseball cap, too, with the logo facing the wall. “Wese outa half an’ half.”

“Excuse me, James Lamar,” I say. “Anybody ever call you Dusty?”

The smile is big as Willie Mays’s glove making the basket catch. “For shure. For shure. And how’d you know dat?”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I say like Walter Alston calling Clem Labine in from the bullpen, “we got our deus ex machina.”

James Lamar — Dusty! — plunks the tray down and makes a move for the mustard jar.

I’m on my feet, pull out the ole Smith and Wesson for which I plunked down 250 smackeroos for the permit just last year without any thought of ever using it again. “Not so fast, Dusty,” I say. “And if you don’t mind, would you be so kind as to pull the visor of that cap around?”

Sylvia is still not convinced. “What’s that got to do with anything? What is going on here? And that Day Ox you was talking about…”

“Deus ex machina,” I.F. corrects her. “God from the machine. Introduced at the last minute often by a crane in ancient Greek and Roman drama to resolve an insoluble dilemma.”

“On the button,” I say to I.F. “And if you will be so kind as to take a gander at Dusty’s cap, you can appreciate the motive for murder.”

“I don’t see nothing,” Sylvia says, “only a crummy old baseball cap with an SF logo.”

“The logo of the San Francisco, formerly New York, Giants,” says I.F. as the 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?”