NO EXIT FROM BROOKLYN
by Robert J. Randisi
The whole thing started—
Let me rephrase that: The entire thing started because of boredom and a middle-of-the-night phone call. It sure wasn’t because I needed the money. My bank account was pretty healthy at the time, as a matter of fact. I’d just finished a case that would keep me in groceries, rent, and fast food for months, and that was all I ever really needed.
But if there’s one thing I hate, it’s being bored.
I went into this business of private investigation after an incident that got me pensioned off the police department with one-third of my salary instead of a prison sentence, and I had to find something that would allow me to do the things I was good at. The same “rabbi” who saved me from being railroaded off the job and into prison got me my P.I.’s license, and that was four years ago. Since that time I’d taken a lot of cases in the name of boredom that I shouldn’t have, and you’d think I would have learned from that.
Not a chance.
When I get bored, I make the same mistakes all over again.
So the first connection I had with the entire affair was a middle-of-the-night phone call—which I hate almost as much as being bored.
I didn’t know how many times the goddamn phone had rung already when I knocked it off its perch and groped about the floor for it.
“Hum, yeah, wha—”
“This Delvecchio?” a man’s voice asked.
“Mmm hmm.”
“You the private eye?” he asked. I didn’t recognize his voice, but then in the middle of the night I probably wouldn’t recognize my own father’s voice.
“Is this an obscene phone call?”
“Forget the whole thing, pal.”
“Fine by me, pal.”
“No, I mean it, Delvecchio,” the guy said. “Forget the whole thing. Got it?”
He stretched out the two words when he said “whole thing,” like it really meant something.
“Look, pal,” I said, swinging my feet around to the floor, “you woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me to forget the whole thing? Shit, I’d rather get an obscene phone call. At least they make sense.”
“Delvecchio, you better wake up and listen to what I’m telling you. If you want to stay healthy, just forget the whole thing.”
“Hey,” I said amiably, “it’s forgotten—” but he had hung up with a loud click.
It was so dark that I couldn’t see the phone in my hand, but I knew it was there so I stared at it for a few seconds, then said, “Screw it,” left it off the hook, got back under the covers, and went back to sleep.
~ 1 ~
I wasn’t really in my office the next day, but the same phone line in my one-room office also goes into the adjoining three-room apartment. Summer was knocking on the door, and I was caught trying to decide whether to be bored with the TV, a book, or going down the block to OTB, so I welcomed the interruption.
I answered on the second ring, so real was my dread of boredom.
“Delvecchio.”
“Are you the private detective?”
“I’m a private detective.”
The voice was a girl’s and she didn’t sound real sure of herself, so I let my remarks end there and waited. It was up to her to decide if I was the private detective she wanted.
“I—I’d like to hire you, but I don’t want to come to your office.”
“Make a suggestion.”
“Can we meet somewhere?”
“Sure. Near you or near me?”
“I live in Bay Ridge, but I don’t want to meet there.”
“All right. Do you know where the Promenade is?”
“Sure.”
“When would you like to meet?”
“In an hour?”
“That’s fine with me. Can you tell me your name?”
“Jodi,” she said. “I’ll meet you in an hour.”
She hung up before we could arrange some way for one of us to recognize the other.
Well, at least I had boredom beat for a while.
The official name for it was the Esplanade, but everyone in Brooklyn called it the Promenade. I don’t know why, they—we—just do. It’s sort of a park without grass that hangs over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and from it Brooklynites and tourists alike can stare out across the East River at the classic skyline of New York City. It was a nice mile walk from my office on Sackett Street.
Of course, it wouldn’t be complete without Jake and his hot-dog stand.
That was where I saw Jodi Hayworth for the first time, standing by Jake’s stand with a handful of hot dog smothered in onions.
I walked over to where she was standing, a girl who was probably about nineteen or twenty with long, straight blonde hair, incredible blue cat’s eyes on a tomboy face, and an attitude and demeanor that said, “You can feel the cushions, buster, but you can’t sit down.” Coincidentally, she reminded me of another Jody—Jodie Foster, the way she looked in a movie called Carny, Tomboyish, but sexy as hell.
She was wearing Jeans and a tank top, and she didn’t have an ounce of excess flesh on her. She had taut breasts, a nonexistent waist, and long, trim legs. On her feet were a pair of calf-high boots with heels that added a couple of inches to her height, which in bare feet I would have put at five-four.
I spotted her because it wasn’t noon yet, so the office workers were still at their desks and not having lunch on the Promenade. There was a couple standing at the rail, another sitting on a bench, an elderly woman walking a dog, and this girl. It was either the woman with the dog or the girl.
I opted for the girl.
“Jodi?”
“Are you Nick Delvecchio?” she asked, turning her attention from the hot dog to me.
“That’s me.”
I looked at the hot dog in her hand and saw that beneath the onions there was no mustard.
“I think I love you,” I said.
Her eyes widened and she said, “What?” as if she wasn’t sure she heard me right.
“The hot dog,” I said, pointing. “No mustard, right?”
“I hate mustard!” she said, with feeling. “I wouldn’t put it on my worst enemy.”
“I thought I was the only person in the world that felt that way,” I said. “This must be love.”
“Please,” she said, as if she suddenly thought I was running a line.
I don’t know. Maybe I was.
“Build me one, will you, Jake?”
“Onions, no mustard,” Jake said, shaking his head. “Yer both nuts.”
If anyone ever asked me what Brooklyn was, I’d tell them to go and talk to Jake. He was Brooklyn born and bred, ran his little hot-dog stand nine months out of the year, and spent the other three months in his condo in Florida. He was built like a fire hydrant, his seamed face defying you to guess his age. His fingers were almost like sausages themselves, but they were deft as they plucked hot dogs from the water, laid them gently on the bun, and then built it to your specifications. Sometimes I’m almost tempted to order one with everything just to watch his hands fly around.
He handed me mine and I paid him for both.
“Let’s go over by the rail,” I said. I led the way to the rail, from which we could see the World Trade Center’s twin towers. We could hear the traffic whooshing by on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway beneath us.
“Okay,” I said, “I’m Delvecchio, you’re Jodi. What can I do for you?”
“I’ve got a problem I’d like to talk to you about.”
“Well, sit down and talk, then.”
We sat on a bench, still facing the city. The breeze coming off the water was cool, and strong enough to whip her fine hair about her face. She was carrying a large shoulder bag, and she brought it around so that she could sit with it at her feet. Close up, her eyes were even more startling.
“Why don’t we start with your full name.”
“It’s Hayworth, Jodi Hayworth.”
“All right, Miss Hayworth. Why don’t you tell me what your problem is.”
“Uh, well, I want you to find something for me.”
“Something that you lost,” I asked, “or something that was taken from you?”
“It’s something that’s missing—actually, it is something that was stolen . . . from my house.”
It was obvious that she didn’t have her story straight yet.
Oh, she knew what her problem was, all right, but she just wasn’t sure how much she wanted to tell me.
I decided to let her go on for a while and see what developed.
“What is it?” I asked, taking a huge bite out of my hot dog.
She made a face and said, “It’s what my mother calls an ‘object of art,’ or something. It’s kind of, uh, round with a little, um, hole in the middle—well, actually it’s more of a big hole—really, it’s more like all hole—ah, shit,” she cursed shortly. “I kind of have my own name for the thing.”
“Which is?”
“I call it ‘the hole thing’.”
“The hole thing?” I asked, my late-night call coming back to me in a rush. He hadn’t said forget the whole thing, he’d said forget the hole thing!
Suddenly, I wasn’t bored at all anymore.