Hot-Wired in Brooklyn Read Online Free PDF

demonic laugh follow me, and waited once
     more for the hard impact of the East River.
    The ringing of a telephone woke me. I studied the blurred face of my nightstand clock until the luminous little handfocused into a three and the big hand into a five. I fumbled for the phone in the same muddled moment and picked up. There
     was cop noise at the other end.
    “Morning, Eddie,” said Nick DeMassio.
    “Uhh.”
    “Good
morning,
Eddie.”
    I stared at the clock again. It seemed to hover in blackness above the nightstand. “Jesus, Nick, it’s still the middle of
     the night.”
    “Sorry to wake you, but I figured you’d want to know.”
    “Know?”
    “That guy Shork at Victory Wrecking.”
    “Uh huh.”
    “Somebody got more than mad at him.”
    “Oh?”
    “Yeah. He’s lyin’ on the floor in front of me with the action end of a ball peen hammer through the back of his skull. You
     wanna look?”
    Somebody popped gum at DeMassio’s end. I sat up. “Where are you?”
    “His office. Victory Wrecking.”
    “Jesus! Be right over.”
    “Make it quick, okay? We’re all gettin’ bored.”
    . . .
    Victory Wrecking was lit up like a hookers’ convention. A half dozen prowl cars were parked outside the yard, their revolving
     cherry lights washing garish purple over Shork’s dilapidated blue shack. Across the street, red-eyed reporters waited like
     starving jackals.
    DeMassio’s car was at the curb half a block down. I parked behind him, gave my name to the uniformed cop at the gate, and
     walked in. The police photographer and the fingerprint guys were packing up their equipment while the meat wagon driver and
     two attendants played gin on top of a waiting gurney.
    A second uniformed cop stopped me at Shork’s office door and popped his gum in my face. DeMassio called out, “He’s okay.”
     I blew the cop a mouthful of air, grinned a “Fuck you, too,” and went inside.
    Shork was face down on the floor beside his desk, his head framed by a dark halo of coagulated blood. The hammer that had
     killed him was still embedded in the back of his bloody skull.
    I nodded DeMassio a quick hello. “Your case?” I asked. “Or is it just fun to look?”
    “My case.”
    “How long’s he been dead?”
    “Since ten, or thereabouts. Night watchman found him.”
    “How come he’s still decorated?” I was looking at the hammer.
    “It’s wedged in between a coupla pieces of skull. Coroner doesn’t want to fool with it here. He’ll wait till he gets to the
     morgue.”
    “Took a lot offeree to drive it in that deep.”
    “A lotta anger, too.” He stared expectantly at me. A smile should’ve come to my lips, considering what we were both thinking,
     but it didn’t. Instead, a full squadron of moths fluttered in my stomach.
    “Arnold?”
    “Who the hell else?” said DeMassio.
    My eyes drifted to the rectangular red metal box behind the open door. DeMassio watched me look. “Kid’s hammer, too,” he added.
     “Name’s stenciled on the toolbox. Know anything about it?”
    “I was here yesterday afternoon. Shork said he was gonna ram that box of tools up Arnold’s ass. Too bad he won’t get the chance.”
    “We picked the kid up a couple of hours ago. At home. You know what he told the arresting officer? ‘Stupid fuckin’ mick. Served
     him right.’ When he heard his own hammer was the murder weapon, he just laughed. He laughed all the way back to Raymond Street.
     That’s where he is now.”
    “Kid offer an alibi?”
    “Yeah. A humdinger. Said he’d been ‘out,’ and this right after his old man swore he’d been home, in his room, ‘playing Monopoly.’”
    “By himself?”
    “They don’t even own the game.”
    I leaned over the body for a closer inspection. There was fingerprint powder on the handle of the hammer, and plenty of prints.
     Most were smudged, especially low on the grip, but there were enough partials and even one or two higher up that were close
     to pristine.
    “Wanna